Madness powder. An item used most of the time against intelligent monsters. It has the ability to make fall under an abnormal state of mind depending on the situation. For instance, if the monster was sleeping, he wouldn’t wake up no matter how hard one tried to wake him up and would do so only naturally. Furthermore, after the monster awakens, his sense of touch would be numbed making him unable to feel any kind of pain, which is very useful if one wished to inflict serious injuries on sleeping monsters without waking it up.

However, right now, in the middle of a tournament where only one skill and abilities are allowed, someone used madness powder on one of the contestants. But no one noticed it. They couldn’t feel any foreign mana or divine powder so they just thought that the contestant possessed a skill which allowed him to enter the berserk state.

No one could suspect the young red haired boy standing near the border with a small pouch in his hand to be the culprit of this situation. Not only they wouldn’t pay attention to him, they couldn’t even imagine him bypassing the surveillance of so many experts.

But someone had been looking at the boy for a while, and a smile grew on that person’s face.

Meanwhile, things were going according to the plan, Mephis was wondering how he should deal with Alice. But his thoughts were interrupted by a flying crushed skull which struck the barrier surrounding the arena. The demon man was caught off guard by this sudden transformation coming from the tiger man and couldn’t cope with his explosive speed. The latter just gripped the demon man’s head and separated it from its body while pulling out his spine in the process.

The grip was so strong that the skull was half crushed and blood was already coming out of every orifice. The headless corpse collapsed on the ground, letting the sand of the arena quench its thirst.

The other two contestants were frightened. When they saw the tiger man enter a berserk state they had no idea of how dangerous he’d become. Since they were at a standstill until now, they thought that regardless of his berserk state they will be able to suppress him if they ganged up on him.

However, not only did they not have the time to suppress him, he had killed one of them in less than a breath of time. This meant that since the beginning he was restraining himself and wanted to hide his strength. This was a good tactic since having the opponent underestimate oneself would sometimes lead him to leave more openings for you. But right now, both of them only cursed their luck and wanted to flee as fast as possible.

As one of them was about to raise his hand to forfeit, the arm to which the hand belonged to, was violently torn apart from the human’s body. And before he could utter a single sound from his mouth, the berserk tiger man bit his neck and twisted it, killing the human while horror and shock were visible on his face distorted by the pain he felt.

The remaining tiger man screamed ‘I give up’ multiple times while putting as much distance between him and the other tiger man when he saw this. The examiner announced the end of the battle but it was useless. For the first time, the berserk tiger man walked toward his next prey at a slow pace. Seeing this, the examiner coldly snorted before mana chains came from the ground and restrained the berserk tiger man. The latter had his limbs firmly shackled making him impossible to move them any longer.

He let out a terrifying howl who shook the soul of the surrounding living beings. Everyone was scared that he might free himself and start a butchery even among the citizens. More chains appeared and forced the berserk tiger man to be firmly bound to the ground, even his head was shackled, letting him only the possibility to breath as his bloodshot eyes were coldly looking at the escaping tiger man in front of him.

Seeing this, Lucifer was wondering if he should recruit him or not. But he sadly had no idea if he could in the first place. Although people who participated in this tournament should have circumstances which would help him form a contract with them, not all of them were as desperate as Belphegor. Lucifer could only sigh as Mephistopheles really lucked out on that one.

After restraining the berserk tiger man, the examiner thought that something was strange about his situation and inspected his body with magic. It didn’t take him a long time before he could find some remaining madness powder near his nostrils. This fact made his heart grow a bit restless. They had thoroughly checked each participant to prevent them from bringing any foreign substance inside the arena but he found some on the tiger man’s body. This meant that someone provided him this madness powder during the match under everyone’s surveillance. And To bypass their security that someone ought to be extremely powerful or skillful, maybe both. Thus, he planned to report this matter but didn’t want to meddle with it anymore. His superiors might be able to deal with the culprit but they couldn’t guarantee his life if information about him discovering the evidence leaked.

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In the end, he chose to report about this matter as he still needed to give some explanation about today’s incident. This was the safest choice he could take at that moment

//

The tournament was stopped for half an hour in order to calm the situation and prepare the second group. The explanation given to the citizens was that the participant broke the rules and thus was disqualified. Therefore, the tiger man who managed to keep his life by the end of this became the winner of the first batch. However, he retired from the tournament right after the announcement was made.

Some people called him a coward while others could only wryly smile in understanding. He had been scared out of his wits a few moments earlier and they could guess that his mind hadn’t completely recovered from the previous shock. And participating in this way was lowering his chance of survival, let alone his chance of winning this competition.

When the second batch entered, Mephis eyes were fixated on one person: Alice Asakawa. For this fight, he only wishes for one thing: to see the how strong she was. He still had many potions left to toy with the participants for that, he just needed to wait for an opportunity.

With the announcement the staff delivered earlier, he knew that they found some trace of madness powder on the berserk tiger man, but he also knew that they had no way to find out that he was the culprit. And besides interrogating everyone present they wouldn’t be able to find. And even if they did start interrogating the citizens, would they suspect a child who looked weaker than them? The answer was obviously no. Even if they did, their pride wouldn’t tolerate it. Everyone knew that powerful mages were overseeing this competition while hiding their selves. So, they would notice if a child manipulated mana in front of them. Mana, that is.

While looking at the fight earlier, Mephis had noticed that multiples threads of mana were constantly moving all around the arena. It wasn’t transparent like usual. No, it was, but it had like an “aura” which gave it some brilliance. Mephis deducted that this “aura” meant that the mana was connected or used by someone and not some “stray” type of mana. Since he wished to walk on the path of magic as a Devil, he wished to know more about those. He wanted to try to touch them, absorb them, steal the “aura” away but he couldn’t. If he did, he wouldn’t be able to escape. So he could only look at those dancing threads in front of him while keeping all of his future experiments in the back of his head.

The battle finally started after some time. The arena has been restored to its previous state as if nothing happened earlier.

The different participants were unknowingly forming a circle as they didn’t want to let anyone enter their blind spot without them noticing. However, no one took the initiative to attack for a whole minute.

They just stayed there, staring at each other, waiting for an opportunity.

Alice made her move and shook her rapier in her hand. A hurricane suddenly appeared at the center of the arena, attracting the participants. Alice moved and went to the person on her left, the latter quickly reacted and used the halberd he held in his hands to defend against her strike. Despite her slender body, the strength behind her strike managed to make her opponent take a few steps back as incredulity was visible on his face. But he quickly regained his wits and counterattacked her after stabilizing himself.

As she saw the incoming halberd, Alice wanted to side step to dodge the strike but her sixth told her otherwise. She quickly erected a {Divine Shell} to cover her body to block both the halberd and the fire lance aimed at her.

The one who tried to get her with a surprise attack was the woman who stood on her right when she did cast the hurricane. Seeing her back exposed, the latter decided that a person who could create a hurricane in such a short amount of time needed to be eliminated early otherwise she’ll definitely win. Thus, she waited for her target to focus on something else and show an opening before attacking. She was sure that she saw her opponent go for dodge instead of defending, which is why she fired her spell. But things ended up being different.

The {Divine Shell} raised by Alice was a spell only those blessed by the goddess of Order could use, and its efficiency depended on how much divine power was used for it. And the fact that it could easily fend off two different type of attacks at the same time meant that it was a very strong one.

Alice didn’t intend to use her divine power in this tournament but was forced to in just a few seconds. She thought that she may have underestimated this battle a bit too much and needed to take it more seriously. So, with her rapier in hand, she coldly glanced at the woman behind her before disappearing from where she stood.

A painful cry resounded in the arena as the woman was stripped naked and her body was covered in multiples wound. Each being small holes in her body where blood dripped.

Seeing this, Mephis had a smile on his face.

Now he knew how to deal with, and if he managed to kill her, he should have enough point to reach their first goal with Armageddon.

Putting his hand in his clothes, Mephis opened one of the pouches hidden within. And with the help of devil’s power, he slowly took out the content, before spreading it in the entire arena while avoiding a specific spot. Where Alice stood.

“Let’s see how she deals with that.”