They knew what to do. Go up on the arena and win. Simple. The stadium was ecstatic. The crowd roared. Twenty-four two-star Archhumans would battle for a position in the round of sixteen. A shot at greatness.
Robert's fight was scheduled for three in the afternoon. Amanda at five. The broadcasting company liked their money very much. Too bad they couldn't bet on themselves as it was considered unethical by Academy standards. It was also a big social faux pas because every student at the Academy was at least a millionaire and they should be blasé about money.
Robert, with all the Prime Vestiges he was getting from killing deviants he never even met eye to eye (as he learned that killing normal monsters never created a Prime), was swimming in money.
He climbed into the arena. This time, it was bigger than four basketball courts put together. Two such arenas stood side-by-side. The shielding was at its maximum. The contestants were expected to go all out. His adversary also climbed on the other side, cheering and boasting to the crowd. Robert remained calm and collected, not a single mote of worry in his body language or expression.
The referee approached the shield controls.
"Wait!" Noah shouted. "We need to load something onto the arena!"
The referee smiled and moved his arms away from the console. The bastard knew of what was to come but would trigger the shield anyway, denying Robert his trump card.
Loud thumps echo from the access ramp. Three hulking armored figures, eleven feet tall and completely clad in ethertech assault armor move on their thick digitigrade legs. The armor retail price is five million each. The monsters each carry a giant axe as wide as a king-size bed. They climb onto the arena and line up behind Robert.
The crowd is silent. Nobody but the tournament organizers knew.
"WHAT IS THAT?" Robert's opponent shouted.
Robert smirked and offered him a shrug.
The opposing professor leaned near the edge of the arena and said something.
"Begin!" The referee shouts, triggering the shield.
"What the hell are these?" The guy on the other side shouts. Now that the shield was up, they could talk.
"Your doom," Robert said as he cast haste and mind shield on all of his three demonic Minotaurs. With a mental command, the three monsters roar and charge at his opponent. Robert trails behind.
"Come, vengeful spirit!" The guy shouted, using his talent straight away. A ghost fifteen feet tall appeared behind him. Then he waved both hands forward and threw twin jets of yellow flames at the Minotaurs.
Robert slowed down to keep the flames from reaching him. The Minotaurs' ethertech armor glowed green at the joints. The monsters didn't halt, each thundering step eating more than six feet of ground. The flames died. Robert picked up the pace with his boar spear in hand.
The vengeful spirit dove down and extended its arms, in an attempt to hug the Minotaurs. At least it was what it seemed. In fact, it delivered a powerful psionic attack to their minds. Robert fed essence to all three mind shields, tanking the attack.
"Infernal Nova!" The guy shouted. A blast of Fire and Force erupted in a ring around him, rushing outward. The Minotaurs were pushed backward as they slammed their great axes on the ground and braced themselves to endure. They dug furrows on the stone.
Robert cast sap stamina on the Fire Arch. The minotaurs recovered and closed in. One slashed with its ax.
"Force Barrier!" The guy cried.
The ax slammed on the barrier, leaving spider-web cracks on it. Then another. Then the third. Then the first one. Robert coordinated his tame monsters' attacks with the precision of an orchestra conductor. On the fifth strike, the shield broke.
The spirit came for Robert. He ignored the apparition and went around to flank his adversary. The spirit touched Robert and was instantly attacked by all the psychic weaponry in Robert's mind palace's bastions. With a pained cry, it dissipated.
"Impossible!" The guy said as he rolled away to dodge the great axe meant to cleave him in half.
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
Robert was pulling no punches. Other than revealing his secondary talent or his Void affinity, he would use everything he needed to win.
"Force Barrier!" The guy shouted with a smirk.
Another barrier appeared around him, this time a dome so thick it was milky at an angle. It was probably cast with both of his stars.
The Minotaurs let loose on the shield, pounding it with their axes and causing massive shockwaves around the arena. Robert watched as the spirit summoner smirked inside his shield.
"Psionic Blast!" Spirit Summoner shouted.
A wave of Mental energy spread out, passing through the shield and striking the minotaurs. It was so intense Robert couldn't feed the three shields enough essence to defend against it. Again, it was a spell using both of his stars. The shockwave washed over the walls of Robert's bastions. Realization dawned upon the spirit summoner. He figured out that Robert could use Mental spells, even though the circle on Robert's corner was flashing silver just like his.
Stunned, the Minotaurs dropped their axes and wobbled in place. Robert rushed forward, putting pressure on the spirit summoner to keep him from frying his minotaurs' brains. All along, he was getting stamina from the guy so it was a matter of time before his opponent went unconscious. Already he could see that the guy was trying to catch a breath that would never come.
Robert slapped the shield with his temporal cleave spell, the dual-layered one he tried to create yesterday. Space distorted and cracked on the far side of the spell, shearing the shield and causing it to wobble and crack. The disc on his side of the arena flashed sand beige for the Time affinity.
"What the hell?"
Robert cast it again. The shield cracked into a thousand shards of Force which quickly degenerated into raw essence and evaporated. Robert stabbed with his spear. The spirit summoner rolled away and got on his feet.
"What are you? How many affinities do you have?"
Robert didn't answer. He put pressure on his adversary, forcing him to dodge his spear swings. He foresaw a jet of flames coming his way and jumped backward, disengaging. The flames roared but failed to reach him. Once the flamethrower spell was canceled, Robert rushed forward again. He cast slow on the spirit summoner and haste on himself. Five times faster than his opponent, Robert quickly caught up to him and stabbed with his spear, cutting a gash along the man's waist on the left side.
"Psionic Blast!" The spirit summoner shouted.
Robert thought he was an idiot for calling out his spells. The psionic blast wrecked the countryside of his mind palace but crashed ineffectively against his bastions' bulwark. The difference in tempering between them was so massive it was pitiful.
"Should I try a Mental attack against you too?" Robert broke his silence as he cut the man across the arm, the blade of his spear scratching down the bone. Then he cut the other arm and a leg. None of the blows was crippling because the guy's reactions were fast. Faster than Robert, even. His thought acceleration spell was higher than Robert's.
The Minotaurs recovered from the stun. Robert had them get their axes back and run down the middle of the arena to cut the spirit summoner's path of escape.
As they reached Robert's end of the arena, Robert stopped chasing to go on the diagonal. Now he had the spirit summoner cornered. The guy reached the corner and turned around. He touched the shield.
"Sympathetic Shielding!" He shouted with a challenging grin.
The arena shield split at the top and a wedge descended upon the spirit summoner. Robert stabbed at it but it was as hard as the shield keeping them away from the outside world. He deduced, by the thing the guy shouted, that he was somehow resonating with the arena shield to change its vector.
Which was forbidden by the tournament rules because it was tampering with the shield. Robert said that to Noah, who went to argue with the referee. The other teacher also rushed to defend his pupil, while Robert and his three demonic Minotaurs stared at the spirit summoner. The guy was still bleeding.
"Cauterize!" He shouted. Flames erupted on his wounds and did exactly as it said on the label.
The crowd started to boo. The teachers argued with the referee.
Robert pondered his choices. Sap stamina was still working but he was receiving no stamina because the shield blocked it. The spirit summoner looked tired. Would he go unconscious? Robert had no idea.
"Break this shield," Robert ordered his hasted minotaurs. The four of them laid down heavy punishment on the shield. Five minutes of incessant blows. Eight. Nine.
Ten minutes and the Minotaurs enrage timer triggered. In that state, their strength, speed, and resilience all tripled. The axes were a blur, flashes of metallic sheen catching the light from the shield.
"Bwooooooom, bwoooom, bwooom, boom, wooom!"
The incessant barrage of attacks reached a crescendo where no individual blow could be heard. The whole arena shook and the shield became opaque. Robert looked around. The whole shield was opaque. Robert could feel the vibrations resonate along the shield. Would it break?
The demonic Minotaurs were tireless. for fifteen minutes, they wailed on the shield incessantly. Robert noticed they used essence, probably with the Metal affinity, to reinforce the axes, keeping them from breaking.
"FINISH!" The referee shouted.
Robert had his minotaurs back away but didn't let the buffs off yet.
The shield came down. The spirit summoner slumped and fell off the arena, completely unconscious. Robert dismissed the sap stamina spell. He checked the timer and noticed he used almost the entirety of his time.
Noah gave him a thumbs up. Robert looked at the leaderboard. He had made it into the round of sixteen. But the spirit summoner label was weird. Not only it was greyed out like all losers but it was also crossed out with a glowing red X.
Disqualified.
That one wouldn't even make it into the round of sixteen. Robert later learned that the referee had to consider that customized Sympathetic Shielding for what it was. An attempt to tamper with the arena's shield.
With his minotaurs following him in a single line, Robert went down the tunnel. Now it was all up to Amanda to win so they could both move forward.