The next fight, just like the last, included the berserker in it. I actually felt kind of bad for the guy. He’d been defeated in both fights he had been in now, and was now being forced to fight against the rank #9 participant in the tournament.

His new opponent though was one that he was actually pretty well matched up against. Both me and Blair were pretty good at long range, with me being almost equally as effective at close range. This had put the melee fighter at a disadvantage from the get-go. His next opponent didn’t have that kind of range though.

On one side of the arena was the berserker. Even from here I could feel the annoyance at his loss practically pouring off of him. His opponent wielded two short swords and wore chainmail armor. He was clearly a more agility based melee fighter, focused on speed above strength.

As it turns out, strength trumps speed. The metal armor the berserker wore didn’t let very many attacks through, and the few that the swordsman did manage to slip past his guard were healed within 30 seconds of landing. The swordsman did pull some pretty flashy attacks, such as when he stabbed forward and doubled the length of his sword for a few seconds. The fight had been pretty much decided though once the berserkers boosting ability reached its peak.

At that point, the swordsman no longer had quite the speed advantage he did before, and the brute strength of the berserker managed to win out. The swordsman was cleaved in half from shoulder to hip, a powerful skill having been used to plow the axe through his armor.

The berserker reappeared in the King’s observation booth, having been promoted back to the top ten. Blair had been sent up to number 9, and the other man was nowhere to be seen.

The next several fights were pretty much title defense matches. There weren’t any more upsets, as typically the higher ranked person would win. The only two upsets out of the next 10 or so fights was when Blair defeated the person at rank 8, with the berserker also beating him. That had raised Blair to rank 8 and put the berserker at rank 9. Finally, it was once more my turn to step up to the plate. Just like the King had said, I would be challenging two people at a time.

Still, we needed to find my limit for how strong the two people could actually be. We would be starting fairly low within the top ten. My first two opponents would be Blair and the berserker, who had both been very much underestimated by the system’s evaluation.

My main goal right now was to not need to use my trump card. By that, I meant the active ability I had acquired upon upgrading my innate skill to its final state. It was a very powerful card I could play if I needed to, but I wanted to try and restrict myself to only using it once it was absolutely necessary.

As I appeared in the arena, I instantly threw two arcane tags on both of my opponents. Every extra bit of damage I could eek out here would be a huge help, as while I could easily beat either of these two on their own, it was a whole new story when they were paired together.

The fight started off with the two of them splitting up. It was a pretty smart move, as if they stuck together that only made a very easy target for me to aim for. The berserker began closing the distance between us as Blair used her machinegun backpack to fly up into the air. I dodged several shots from her weapons before the berserker managed to catch up with me.

Once he did, I activated empower at full burn. For what I was planning here, I needed to be able to be able to surpass the raw strength of this man. While I was sure my body stat was higher thanks to all of my multipliers to it, he almost certainly had his focus set to strength rather than agility like I did. That meant that even with a higher body stat he was about the same strength I was when I didn’t use empower.

My attention was split as I focused on parrying and blocking the attacks of the berserker while simultaneously firing a stream of mana bolts towards Blair. They weren’t landing, but I hadn’t really expected them to. I just didn’t want her getting too comfortable in any one spot. Forcing her to constantly reposition slightly slowed the rate that she could fire her weapons at.

The berserker in front of me was what took most of my concentration though. My attacks were slowly dealing damage which was quickly healed. It only served to empower the berserker as he began moving faster and faster, though for now I could still handle the man at close range.

I was pretty damn reluctant to use any super powerful attacks. I didn’t know the exact limitations of Blairs mimicking skill, but I was worried that if she saw me throw out a powerful use something like arcane shatter, she would be able to use it for herself and pierce my defenses.

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One of my greatest advantages in just about any fight was the fact that I had put a lot of effort into my defenses. The metal armor I wore, which I had yet to change out of after my previous fight against the axe wielding man, was great at dealing with his attacks. My mana shield on top of that nullified most of the damage, meaning that until I ran out of mana it was extremely hard to do meaningful damage to me. You needed to be able to pass through a certain threshold of damage in a single attack to overwhelm my defenses, which neither of these two could quite manage. Blair probably could with a charged up shot from her rifle, but at the distance she was at now I had confidence in dodging it.

My first hint that the charged shot was coming was the fact that she was now only using her revolvers. The rifle was slung over her back, on top of the machine gun. Shortly after that, I passed over the damage threshold to fully activate the berserkers boosting skill, his skin turning red and his muscles bulging as he sped up and began swinging his axe harder.

I had to put a bit more focus on the man now, which is why I was hit with quite the surprise when Blair was suddenly at his side, her skin also now turning red and her muscles growing larger. With the both of them at close range, I couldn’t block every attack. Several hits per second were slipping through and hitting my mana shield, quickly draining my mana.

I was about to use mana blast when Blair suddenly whips her rifle around to point at me. I try to dodge, but the berserker had already positioned himself to block my easiest path of escape. The shot went straight through my thigh, having pierced my mana shield.

“Nice hit.” I say through gritted teeth. Finally, I use mana blast to knock the both of them back quite far. Now that I had distance from the two of them, I leapt and used my arcane thrust skill to make even more distance.

After that, I simply kited them around the arena for a little over a minute. At roughly the same time the two of them collapsed, having run out of energy to continue. They both surrendered before I finished them off, and we reappeared in the observation room.

“Good fight.” The berserker says, seeming to have cooled down now that he actually had a few wins under his fight. “Can’t say I am happy that we lost a two on one, but I kind of expected it.”

“How low on mana were you?” Blair asks, frowning. “I swear, you seem to never run out.”

“I was around half of my total mana pool.” I say, shrugging. “I didn’t need to waste too much on attacking after you copied his berserker skill. I just had to last long enough for the two of you to run out of energy.”

Blair now frowns at her teammate. “You have to work on finding a way to deactivate that skill early. People being able to run away and leave you helpless seems like a huge downside.”

“Yeah, I guess I probably should work on that.” He sighs. “I haven’t had monsters try and just run from me yet, so it had never really occurred that I needed that. The skill usually just turns itself off when the fight is over.”

“Well,” the King says. “a large part of the tournament is finding your weaknesses so you can fix them before you reach level 100. It is no coincidence that this all is happening while you all are so close to your next evolution. It is often discussed as a ‘wall’ for progressions. For those of you that have yet to unlock your trait, it will be unlocked for you. Getting used to that is going to slow progress for a while compared to those who have had time to adjust to them. Leveling will also be significantly slower.”

“Damn, and here I was hoping that level 1000 was only a few good years of intense training away.” I say, chucking.

The King full on laughs at that, but not because he found my joke funny. “You wish it took that long.” He says. “Reaching that level is something that very, very few will ever achieve. Statistically speaking, not a single person in this room is expected to reach that level at all. Now, when you take into account that you are the ten strongest on your planet, your odds are a bit better but still not great.”

“Why is it something that is so difficult to do?” Fionna asks, confused. “I mean, wouldn’t it just be doing what we are already doing for a really long time? I am assuming that our lifespans are increasing dramatically with our levels increasing, but is time not the only concern?”

“There are a few reasons, but the biggest one is that every hundred levels, leveling gets a lot slower and each one is harder to achieve. Putting that aside, for those of you focused on combat you constantly run the risk of death. For every individual you slay, that is one more that had their chance at growing to greater things taken away.”

That thought is a bit sobering, and looking around I can tell most of the people present would agree.

“That is just how things are though.” The King shrugs. “It is a hard truth, but it is the truth. I see nothing wrong with fighting your way to the top, but I despise the people that step on those below them instead of using those above them to pull themselves up.”

The room is silent for a few minutes after the King is done speaking. Eventually Blair and Fionna start talking to one another again, and soon everybody in the room is back to talking. The fights continue for a while, with no more upsets occurring. One interesting thing I noted was that even if someone lost a fight, they could gain evaluation points simply from performing very well in it. This closed the gap between a lot of scores, and after Flynn’s most recent fight where he won against Blair, a fight started that I was extremely interested in.

Fionna versus Flynn. Both of them were level 93, so I had my doubts that either of them would upgrade their innate skills in the nick of time if they got into a bad situation. This would be a one on one fight where they would be putting everything they had into it. Out of the two of them, I honestly had no idea who would win. Fionna had the higher evaluation rank, but after seeing Flynn fight Blair it was hard to believe that someone would have an easy time against him if they were the same level.

All I could wonder now was what was going through their heads.