Chương 502: Limitless Path Chapter Five Hundred Twenty-Four

"We will be staying in here," Tazeen said.

"I will go out for each match with the selected contestant. They invoked an old rule to not allow additional team members on the floor during the fights, so you will have to watch from the ready room. I don't expect this to take too long."

"And if they decide they don't like the results?" Val asked.

"I wouldn't worry about that," Beth said with a smirk.

"Something I should know?" Val asked.

"I expect Tazeen to handle anything untowards that happens," Beth said.

"I wouldn't worry about them not holding up their end of the deal or attacking us or something."

"Well, if you have that much confidence," Val said, frowning slightly but settling back on her chair.

"I'll come and get each of you when it's your time to go out. I would ask that you don't leave the room and wander about during this whole process. I trust the team here, but it would be too easy for the White Feathers to start something and interrupt the proceedings in an underhanded way," Tazeen said.

"Bjorn, you will walk out with me first, as your match should be first." The titan got up and followed the elf out, even the unusually tall elf looking small in comparison. The team lost track of them for a minute as they navigated the hallways, but then they became visible on the monitor as they entered the arena floor. There were three people waiting at the first dueling field and Beth assumed it was the ref and two of the people from the White Feathers.

Apparently, that wasn't quite right, as two more people walked over from a different entry a moment later, each of their armor having the image of, well, a white feather on it some place distinctive. Looked like the three people waiting were all referees and this would be a case where multiple judges would be present so it wasn't all falling on a single person's shoulders. Beth idly wondered if the team should get a symbol, or, hell, a name even before that.

It was probably something to bring up later, after they had gotten through this song and dance and Tazeen had gotten what he wanted.

"Found a big bastard to represent ya?" Beth could hear the people on the floor talking through the screen and the others quieted down at that.

"He all ya got?"

"We have submitted our roster," Tazeen said coldly, which got scowls from both the White Feather representatives, but they stayed quiet.

"We all know the rules here?" asked the lead ref, getting nods and grunts from the others.

"Good, we'll do this by the book. Seven rounds, all seven play out as additional concessions are on the line depending on the exact record for the matches. Duels are standard one-versus-one format with no restrictions. Any final questions for us or each other before we start the first round?" When nobody had anything, the ref told the fighters to take their places and then split Tazeen and the White Feather's minder up to opposite sides of the field.

He then took a seat, along with the other judges, in a ref box before they got the field prepared. It was a really standard duel, as they were just using the basic dueling field with nothing set but the shielding to keep attacks in and interference out. Bjorn and the cocky dwarf faced off against each other in the ring before the shield snapped into place and the lead ref began the standard rigamarole.

Beth watched as the two acknowledged the refs and then got their weapons ready, waiting for the countdown to engage. At the refs signal, they both rocketed across the field towards each other; these might have been bruisers that were mostly strength and defenses, but at their level, even a slow start was a blur. The fight itself proved a bit anticlimactic, as Bjorn was clearly both stronger and tougher than the dwarf, nor did the opponent have anything wild up his sleeve.

Bjorn consistently and repeatedly hammered on the dwarf's defenses without giving more than a small opening here and there for a retaliation. The fight went on like that for a while and nothing the opponent did could get the pace or rhythm back into his favor. It was telling, watching his face go from assured to questioning to upset to afraid, but Bjorn just kept hammering, smashing the dwarf apart over the course of five minutes.

It was much like watching a landslide slowly crush a lost hiker to death, though the dwarf obviously wasn't dead when the arena stopped the fight and ruled in Bjorn's favor. The judges all agreed immediately with no need for discussion, giving Tazeen's team, since he was the one that was leading the effort against the White Feathers, a point.

Tazeen walked Bjorn back to the ready room after the fight had concluded and took Blood out with him next, the wolf lazily strolling behind him with her hands behind her head and her posture loose and slovenly. The team watched them appear on the screen again, and the man from the White Feathers also reappeared with Blood's opponent.

The opponent that was the knife-wielder said something to Blood that the mic didn't catch, but her answering "Don't care," was clearly audible, and did nothing to improve the woman's mood. The judges sent them into the arena before they could start a fight on the sidelines and everyone took their places just as last time. The woman had a long knife in each hand and was twirling them with rapid flourishes, something that would greatly impress most bystanders, but Beth just found it to be a little droll.

In a room with a bunch of Masters, Grandmasters, and far beyond watching, doing a few petty tricks with a couple knives was not all that impressive. Instead, she thought it spoke a little more towards the woman's character and temperament, but she wouldn't speculate any more on that subject. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

The ref started the fight the same as last time and the woman instantly vanished, though Blood didn't freak out, or even react at all. The woman had disappeared, moving extremely quickly and doing something to obscure her visual signature, but Blood had both a very keen nose and incredibly good hearing. Also, Blood had always been great with her eye power and she had a quite good one, so there was no saying that she even had fully lost visual lock on the woman in the first place.

That proved true, whether it was her never losing sight or her having tracked the woman with her other senses, as just a moment later, Blood blocked a vicious stab with her soulbound claws. A rapid and frantic exchange of strikes and parries followed, growing ever faster as both women poured on the speed, and Blood's relaxed look had very quickly faded. Not that she was looking all that concerned, but she wasn't taking it easy anymore, either.

Neither of them used any skills other than their weapon skills and skills that were boosting their speed and reflexes, not until the opponent disappeared and instantly reappeared on the other side of Blood, attacking as she did so. It became apparent pretty quickly that it was some kind of blink-strike or other such move to teleport to/around an opponent and attack them at the same time, and it had basically no cooldown.

Beth imagined the skill could be a little disorientating to spam over and over, as the woman started doing, but then again, she was able to do multiple Spatial Steps in a row without getting dizzy or losing track of her position. Whether it was messing up the woman's inner ear or not, it wasn't messing with Blood, who easily countered the barrage of attacks before she too disappeared, though this was with the skill Beth had just mentioned.

The wolf wasn't all that great at spatial skills, certainly not anywhere near Beth's level or anything like that, but she was competent and able to utilize the skill well in the middle of battle. The two slowly layered on attacks and skills after that, with the opponent using some kind of slowing effect that Blood didn't really seem to like all that much. Blood then started pouring out blood, though not quite literally, as she started hacking away with her several blood-themed attacks in quick succession.

The opponent started having a hard time once Blood was filling the space with sanguine attacks, the overlapping waves and beams and line attacks giving the opponent little space to maneuver. Considering the woman's whole shtick was speed and slowing whoever she was fighting, getting boxed in by very powerful attacks was extremely disadvantageous for her.

From the time Blood started filling the space to the time she had sliced the woman to ribbons was less than a minute, and Beth wasn't surprised that when Blood got serious, the other woman just couldn't keep up. Blood was already at the point of rune expression in her humanization, even if she wasn't showing it, and she had been at that point for a while, meaning her stats were pretty inflated.

Blood didn't even wait for Tazeen, which wasn't a problem considering the speed the elf could move at and still look like he was walking, and she started out of the arena after giving the judges a nod. Tazeen walked her back to their ready room and picked up Sera, who was going to battle the mage, and walked the dragon back out to the floor. The mage, funnily enough, started looking pretty nervous just as soon as he got a good look at Sera, and by good look, Beth meant enough off a look to Identify her.

Fighting a dragon wasn't exactly something everybody did every day, or most days, or at all, in fact, for a large portion of the Wayfarer population, and being a fire mage against a species known for their powerful fire, and resistance to it, wasn't a great setup. Sera wore her armor and had her spear at the ready, and the refs were eager to get the fight underway, starting them in record time. The match was maybe the second-most anticlimactic of the whole day, though the fire mage did put up a decent fight.

Sera's natural resistance to and control over fire, combined with her resistance skills and endurance/defensive skills, meant that the poor bastard couldn't really do anything to her. He tried to switch it up a bit and use lightning, but Sera was only mildly less resistant to that than to the fire, and she wasn't just sitting around getting blasted. The mage was not terrible in melee, but he wasn't some Sage duelist or anything, either, and Sera was able to overwhelm him with a bit of persistence.

The fact he had a blink and some kind of really strong telekinetic spell was what really drew the fight out, as he was able to hold Sera off for longer than Beth assumed he'd be able to last. In the end, Sera's spear did almost all the work, taking the man out after he had tired himself out trying to hold her back, run from her, and blast her with elemental spells all at the same time.

Sera was easily declared the winner, much to the White Feather's senior representative's chagrin, and Tazeen escorted her back to the ready room just afterwards. The next up to fight was Adam, the rather unimpressive looking young man giving the other team a glimmer of hope. That was a glimmer that was quite quickly squashed, as Adam, unlike the fire mage, was a top-tier duelist, even with his weapon skill only at the beginning of Master.

Beth had fought him several times before and in the arena the normally quiet and unbecoming man lit up and became extremely aggressive, displaying an impressive level of skill and tactical knowledge. The opponent he was up against was quite strong, with a higher weapon skill and some other tricks up his sleeve, but he hadn't been counting on Adam having a Mana Physique.

The difference was pretty obvious, both in how hard Adam hit, how much mana he was able to output at once, and how he was able to be so overwhelming for a much longer period of time. Despite Adam popping skills like they were breath mints, it was his opponent who was both exhausted and suffering from mana depletion first. Once they got to that point, the whole thing was over in just a handful of seconds.

Adam did the minimum necessary for thanking the judges and then was brought back by Tazeen, having essentially secured their victory with his fight. The next three fights were all about how much extra they could get in the negotiation that Tazeen had been doing, and Beth was thinking that that how much was going to be quite a lot. The last of the weaker opponents, as Beth thought of them, was going to be the chain user that Kris had said she wanted to fight.

Beth had to admit that she was a bit nervous for this one as, other than her own fight, she felt this was the place where things could really go sideways for them. It also looked like that concern was valid, as the start of the fight really didn't go Kris's way at all, the phoenix getting battered and pushed around with limited opportunities to fight back.

Beth was pretty sure she was watching their first loss, but she had underestimated the quiet, shy girl by more than a little, as Kris had simply been setting the field. She had distributed large amounts of water that still bore a heavy mana signature of hers around the field, and had also hidden large packets of her void lightning in various places in the floor panels.

Just when the man thought he had Kris, twisting the chain weapons he used into a vicious attack, she struck, causing several explosions around him that drove him right into the path of a concentrated beam of fire and lightning. She didn't let up for a single second after that, and the rest of the fight was a masterclass in why preparing the ground one was going to fight before, or even during, a fight was such a good idea and important battle tactic.

The man was just never able to recover after Kris started attacking in earnest, and he was thoroughly overwhelmed by Kris's preparations and the amount of power she could output given the right setup. Beth was privately rather curious, and a little frightened, to see just how much more power even a weak Mana Physique, let alone a very good one, was going to give Kris when they got to their next rebirth.