As soon as Axel broke his concentration, he found out that there were three people on the same bench as him, each one placing one hand on one of the other's people's shoulders. Obviously, the one that had his hand on his shoulder was Adam, but he couldn't recognize the other two, and when he looked over at Emma, he found out that the same thing was happening with her.

"What the hell are you guys doing?" Axel asked as he saw the scene.

"We were all spectating your battle. Emma's battles always attract a lot of people, as they are always fun to see." Adam explained.

"How the hell are they fun? I was destroyed by her horrendous world! " Axel exclaimed indignantly.

Adam responded by laughing:"I said that they are fun to see, not to fight."

"At the very least, you broke all of the pentagrams. My troops died before I managed to even break one, "said a teenager that had been spectating the battle.

"And what the hell was that? Why did everything begin to go wrong after my troops broke the pentagrams? What the hell was that giant ball of eyes? " Axel asked, as he needed to understand what he had just seen.

"You all always fall for that trap," Emma replied while laughing.

"Trap?" Axel asked.

"Man, the pentagrams were obviously a trap. I mean, why the hell would she let the people from her world help your troops defeat her? When people fight against her for the first time, they always underestimate her because of her age, so she deliberately laid a few traps around to make you fall for them. " Adam explained."The truth is that the mist restrained the eye's powers, which let her make them more powerful than they should be with their ranks."

"What? If you add restrictions to something, can you make it more powerful for free? " Axel asked, surprised.

"Well, usually you don't get as much power as she got, but yes. She even made the monsters inside her world weaker so all the energy could go to those eyes. That way, if someone breaks the pentagrams, they will get their troops corrupted and used against their own world, and if he can't break the pentagrams, he has already lost. " Adam continued explaining.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"Wow, that's truly clever," Axel said while he opened his eyes wide and looked over at Emma.

"Thanks." She replied happily before standing up."Know that we have finished, I will go and tell daddy about our fight."

And with that, the little girl began to run toward the front of the store.

"And where the hell was her beacon? My troops did nothing else apart from going up trying to reach it. " Axel continued asking Adam.

"The giant ball of eyes was her beacon," Adam replied.

"The ball of eyes was her what?!" Axel asked incredulously, as he thought he had heard wrong.

"Yeah, I know, crazy right?" William said as he suddenly appeared by Axel's side. "That little girl has managed to create such a strong world that I didn't manage to win against her until I developed a special type of autonomous robot."

"I must say that your troops actually did pretty well. If it wasn't for that big guy that lost control, maybe you would have managed to force a draw. " Adam said.

"Well, that's true. I guess that they trained their sea of consciousness just enough to be able to resist those mental attacks from those things, but that big guy probably skipped the brain day on his training schedule. " Axel said, while sighing.

"Don't you worry, man; she is simply too strong for you just yet. She had a hundred more special monsters prepared, but she only used three to bait your troops to separate themselves into couples. Even if they managed to break the pentagrams safely, resist the mental attacks and somehow try to attack the eyes, she could try to destroy your troops just with numbers. Fighting against a defensive world is hard, even more so when you have just reached rank 1 and it is your first battle. I'm sure that you will do it much better the next time." William said while patting Axel's back.

After that, they continued talking for a while about different battles and how a lot of people suffered the same defeat against Emma when they fought against her for the first time.

From time to time, some people would come and ask them if they wanted to fight, but Axel let his friends have all the fights, as he needed to think about how to make his world better before fighting anyone.

A few hours later, the three of them decided that it was time to leave, but when they were about to walk out the door, Mark suddenly called for Axel.

"Axel, I heard about your battle with Emma, and it seems like you did pretty well." He said while laughing.

"And you are going to let me participate in any rift that I want even if I didn't win?" Axel tried to anticipate Mark's words.

"Obviously not. But maybe we can try to arrange something so you can get into some rift from time to time. " Mark replied while smiling.