At least half of the trios moving nearby changed their path or were attacked before they got close enough to be considered a real threat by Mahon. He ignored them and focused on the rest. Those that planned to reach him.
From his right, four trios had allied together and looked like they wanted to give a go at the three Protectors. From the front, a lone member was being pursued by another trio, and they were all running towards him. Finally, another trio approached from the left, measuring their approach as to arrive at the same time as the other groups surrounding him.
Mahon didn’t hesitate long before leading his group towards the latter. The move surprised the different parties involved as the Protectors hadn’t bulged since the beginning of the battle. And when Mahon had started moving, it was to rush at full speed towards his enemy.
There was no hesitation in neither Jorik nor Myrthil’s gestures, and they were all careful to stay close to each other. The enemy trio saw them coming and slowed their careful advance. But before they could react further to the situation, Mahon’s trio already appeared in front of them.
Mahon, Jorik and Myrthil split and each targeted one of their enemies. Each individual fight barely lasted two seconds before the three armors bursted in flames, and the trio was eliminated.
It almost surprised Mahon from how easy it was, but in hindsight, he had trained for the last months against trios of seven-stars and sorcerers, it was normal that when he switched to normal people at four-stars or five-stars, there wasn't much they could do.
Mahon didn’t stop once they had dealt with the trio, and he led his group further away, faithful to his plan of avoiding most fights to survive longer.
But their pursuers weren’t of the same mind. They dealt with the lone runaway coming in their way as well as his pursuing trio with ease before they continued their course towards Mahon.
They should be six-stars. The leader probably even at the peak of it.
Mahon quickly analyzed the situation while Jorik and Myrthil scanned their surroundings.
“We hold our ground and fight.” He ordered after seeing that the four trios didn’t plan to let them go.
Instantly, Myrthil and Jorik took their position beside him while they let the enemy come to them. Seeing they weren’t planning on escaping further, the twelve people slowed down their approach and raised their guards.
“Protectors!” The leader of the pack yelled. “Come and show me your strength!”
“One versus one?” Jorik yelled back.
The leader didn’t answer, but he gestured for his man to stay back while he advanced alone in the area between their two groups. Jorik exchanged a glance with Mahon.
There was a certain advantage in taking down the leader first, but it’d expose Jorik. If something happened to him, it would compromise their chance at reaching the next stage.
Worst-case scenario, and since there is no sorcerer, I’m pretty sure I could survive on my own as long as I want. But that would prevent us from going wild afterwards.
Mahon wasn’t one to take risks. It was a battle royal, not a friendly duel show off. A Protector might have been tempted to answer to the challenge and prove its worth. But Mahon was a general before a Protector. A general didn’t care about showing off. He only cared about results.
Why would he allow a drop in efficiency for someone he didn’t even know? Just for show? That was without knowing Mahon. On any other occasions, he might have indulged the other man. He didn’t seem to be a bad guy.
But today Mahon had a mission. A mission of much greater importance. A quest worth antagonizing thousand of such men.
Mahon slightly shook his head, and Jorik held his ground without any debate. Seeing the situation, the enemy leader roared in anger.
“Are you really Protectors?! You’re just a bunch of fearful cowards!” He yelled at their faces while gesturing to his teammates to attack them.
Mahon could have answered they were ganging at twelve versus three and that cowardice had nothing to do with his decision, but he stayed impervious to the provocations. They would soon understand, anyway.
During their month of training, they had tried numerous formations with Myrthil, but given Mahon and Jorik’s common past, the woman always remained the weakest link. She was a bit stronger than Jorik regarding fighting capabilities, but with the help of the Flow, the noble was just too efficient to be beaten by someone just slightly stronger.
In the end, they had decided on their default formation to be Jorik and Myrthil in duo, since they were close in fighting capabilities, and Mahon on his own, because he was the one with the most survivability. Obviously, they were able to change to any other formation they had trained with, but this one was the default one, and they would always try to come back to it.
It was then without surprise that Mahon bolted on his own to meet the leftmost trio while Jorik and Myrthil followed just after him and assumed a defensive position to protect Mahon from the other trios.
Mahon tricked his first opponent with a feint and managed to pass at his side before the poor man could realize what had happened. Without stopping his course, Mahon positioned his sword such that it would scratch all the way against the man’s leather armor, and he was already behind him when the armor ignited and the man was eliminated.
The two remaining warriors tried to attack him, but Mahon nimbly dodged their poor attempts and retaliated with a swipe at their face. They couldn’t prevent themselves from blinking and stepping back as Mahon’s sword appeared straight in front of their eyes. Mahon then exploited their short blindness to crouch between their swords and eliminate them in two fast swipes.
Their armors ignited at the same time from how fast his motions had been. Although he showed his back to his trio, Mahon knew perfectly what had happened to Jorik and Myrthil with his Flow. After he had dealt with the trio, and in the same fluid movement, he switched his footwork and came back sprinting towards them.
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When he reached them, they just finished dealing with another trio, and only six people were left to face them. In less than five seconds, Mahon, Jorik and Myrthil had wiped six people.
The six remaining barely lasted four. The three Protectors each took out two as they attacked at the same time in perfect coordination. The supposed stronger leader of the twelve didn’t make any difference in front of Mahon's sword and got eliminated all the same.
They paused for a bit once they got rid of them and took a look around after the smoke dissipated. More than half of the thousand people had been eliminated now, and a big area had been cleared around Mahon’s trio. The guilty parties were no ones else than the trios alliance that they had just gotten rid of.
Satisfied at their situation for now, Mahon gestured to Jorik and Myrthil to stay there and observe. Minutes slowly passed as the fights started to last longer. Since the weakest warriors had been eliminated first, the more time passed, the more difficult the fight turned between the survivors.
In the meantime, only two groups tried their luck against Mahon’s one, but both got dispatched as quickly as they had rushed to them.
“It starting to change again.” Jorik noticed as they continued their observation from the edge.
As the fights were becoming less one-sided, there were no more clean wipe out and numerous trios were down to two or even one member. When that happened, they tried to escape at the edges of the arena, away from the biggest, dangerous battles.
Around Mahon’s trio, most fights were now single duels or two versus two fights. And none dared to attack them simply because they were still three. When they finally dipped under two hundred survivors, there were two clearly distinct groups.
The first one was composed of the remaining members of crippled trios escaping to the edges. The other was made of the trios that had managed to fight their way through the arena without losing any member. They were the best warriors that had remained unscathed even through numerous fights.
As the space cleared, they were now in sight of each other. Each trio stood alone in their zone, with no survivor besides them in the vicinity. A tacit pact formed, and they started butchering the remaining crippled trios while moving slowly towards the center, where they would meet more worthy opponents.
“Time to change our strategy.” Mahon stated. “Now we hunt.”
“The runaways? Is it really worth it?” Myrthil asked.
“No.” Mahon agreed with a sinister smile. “Not them.”
A wide smile appeared on Jorik’s face as well. “The tournament isn’t going to end today.” He explained to Myrthil. “We need to thin the competition for tomorrow while the battlefield is still chaotic.”
Her smile spread on her face too as she finally understood what they were getting at. “It was about time we faced some real opponents.”
The trio then moved to the center in a spiral. Contrary to the other teams, however, they avoided the lone warriors running around and focused on the full trios instead. They didn’t rush directly to the center, because only people wanting to show off would stand there in the middle of the storm.
Intelligent people, instead, would have used the same strategy as Mahon and stayed on the edges to avoid getting tired needlessly. With his Flow, Mahon was capable of tracking any fights happening in the arena if he focused hard enough, and he started to search specifically for trios with the best cooperation and fighting prowess.
When he had locked onto one, he would go straight for them and get rid of the trio expertly with Jorik and Myrthil. They took particular attention not to stay too long in the same position so as not to get stuck in an uncomfortable situation with many people surrounding them.
They mainly targeted seven-star trios, and even though the fights were harder than before, Mahon was more than capable of isolating and then getting rid of a seven-star on his own, while Jorik and Myrthil held off the two others. At three versus two, it was then only a matter of time before they completely eliminated the enemy trio.
Only once did Mahon spare an interesting trio as they wore the insignia of the Protectors. The friendly trio’s members were all at the peak of six-stars, and they exchanged a nod with Mahon, Jorik and Myrthil before going on their own way. The Protectors Circle, and all the other organizations, had prohibited any collusion between their members, because with their sheer numbers they would have too much of an edge otherwise.
But even in these conditions, allies would avoid fighting each other.
Half an hour after the beginning of the battle, there were only seventy warriors left standing. Mahon’s group was the last one to join the numerous standoffs happening at the center of the arena.
The situation was a far cry from the initial chaos of the thousand-men battle. With only seventy people remaining, the teams felt they were too close to winning to risk it all engaging in a hard fight while others could then attack them when they were at their lowest.
Actually, if everybody thought like that, there would never have been any fights at all. But because of the fame involved in such an event, the different organizations went at each other’s throat every time they encountered their competitors, forgetting all logic.
The Protectors Circle and the Pack of Hawks were no exception. Among the remaining trios, close to half belonged to one of the two bodyguard centers, and except for Mahon’s team that had just arrived, they were all fervently fighting against each other.
In the very middle of the arena, two giants stood side by side with the number fifty-eight printed in their chest. They were both more than two meters tall and incredibly muscular. A circle had formed between them and the rest of the fighting teams. No one dared to approach the two, and in fact, most teams tried to push their opponents towards the duo who would eliminate whoever got too close with efficient ease.
The two giants had marked a wide circle around them in the sand, and whoever dared to cross it would have to face their attacks and get eliminated within seconds. On the other hand, they completely ignored anyone outside their circle.
Mahon didn’t waste any time as he arrived in the middle, and he led his team around the different fights, continuing his job of thinning the arena of the better teams. At that time of the battle, most teams were only consisting of six-stars or seven-stars, but even among them there were some that stood out for their talents and some that didn’t pose any real threat. Mahon only targeted the former, letting the other weaker teams clash and eliminate each other.
Often, they intervened to save weaker teams from stronger ones. Or rather, they ambushed the stronger teams while they were trying to eliminate their competition. But the weaker teams were so happy to get sudden support that they often helped Mahon’s trio to get rid of the stronger team, and rarely lashed out at their timely saviors once they were done. Mahon would still always grab the opportunity to escape right after, though. He didn’t want to take the risk of another team seizing the opportunity to gang on their group and then get entangled in a messy battle.
One after the other, he eliminated the best teams until only the two giants in the middle of the arena remained. There were still forty people fighting each other, but they were mainly from teams Mahon had judged too weak to cause any problem during the following stages. The two giants, though, were clearly troublesome opponents.
They could have waited together for the other teams to fight among themselves until only twenty-seven people remained, but that would mean risking meeting the two giants and their missing comrade later in the tournament where the rules and the situation would be different. And that wasn’t Mahon’s plan.
Without missing any time, for fear the remaining teams would get to seven trios too fast and he wouldn’t have time to eliminate both giants, Mahon stepped inside the circle with his team while the two giants smiled crazily at them.