The fights had started to get a lot more interesting now that it was exclusively people in the top 10. I’ve already seen quite a few skills and abilities that I wouldn’t have even thought of trying to create. I had a feeling that soon there would start being quite a few people copying the fighting styles of those at the top.
The next fight was Fionna versus Ram. I still had yet to ever see Ram fight, though from what I have heard he primarily fights with daggers with a very heavy focus on stealth. In other words, he was an assassin. I wasn’t sure how effective that would be with him starting in clear view of his opponent, but he would probably find some way to overcome that. He definitely hadn’t earned rank 4 by not being a very skilled individual.
When the fight started, it became pretty clear that in terms of sheer technique with daggers, Fionna had a slight edge. Her blades seemed to always be positioned perfectly, ready to block an attack that she had correctly predicted.
On the other hand, Ram was noticeably faster. His weapons could move quicker and his feet seemed to blur across the ground. Actually, his entire body was kind of blurry at this distance. It took me a moment to realize I was looking at some kind of stealth spell. It was making it hard to see him, but after infusing some mana into my eyes it became a bit easier.
The skill was clearly a passive one, and if I was standing up close to the man I probably wouldn’t even notice it. At this distance though, it did have an effect on me. Hell, a good chunk of the crowd was probably having trouble tracking him, if they could even see him at all.
The two were pretty evenly matched as it was, but it was clear that neither were operating at their full capabilities right now. Fionna still had yet to release her poison cloud, while Ram didn’t have any way to use his active stealth skills. The real fight would begin once the poison cloud came out, as while Ram would suffer from the poison, his real power as a rogue would be brought forth by the cover of the gas. That was probably why Fionna was so hesitant to use them.
Eventually, the real fight did start. Ram managed to smash some of the bottles at his opponents hips, and a spray of gas erupted outwards. A large area was quickly filled up by the gas, and Fionna retreated away.
Ram had fully disappeared into the smoke, while Fionna now stood a few hundred meters away from the expanding cloud. There are a few beats of silence as everybody waited for the assassin to emerge, but instead a dagger flew out of the smoke, narrowly missing Fionna’s head.
Several more daggers fly out, then even more. Dozens of daggers pierce through the fog as Fionna struggles to dodge them. She manages to avoid most of them, but a few do manage to pierce her armor and dig into her skin. She seems to be waiting for Ram to run out of daggers, but given that they are made of mana she is going to be waiting a while.
The skill that Ram is using to summon those daggers seems pretty similar to my arcane arsenal skill. The biggest difference is that daggers seem to be the only thing he can make. It is difficult to tell at this distance, but each dagger seems to be exactly the same. I have been keeping count, and at any given moment there are no more than 5 daggers. They move with such speed though that it is hard to really tell.
Fionna finally seems to come to a decision, putting on her gas mask and diving into the poison cloud. That decision seems to be a very poor choice on her part. I couldn’t tell you exactly what happened over the course of the next minute, but I can take a few guesses. She probably managed to catch sight of the man briefly, landing an attack or two.
She then lost track of him again, allowing all of his stealth skills to reactivate. From there, she was a dead woman walking. He had sliced her up from all directions, leaving dozens of deep cuts and gashes across her body. That is my best guess at how it all went based off of how the two fighters looked once the smoke cleared. Fionna was almost unrecognizable, her body completely covered in cuts and blood. Ram was mostly fine on the outside other than a few cuts, but the poison did seem to have a lasting effect as he bent over and dry heaved.
The two of them appeared back in the observation room. The King then looked to me. “Are you ready for your next fight?” He asks, nodding over to the two that had just shown up.
“Ready as I’ll be.” I say. “Am I going against those two?”
“Yes you are.” he nods.
“So I have to deal with both of them in that poison cloud?”
“Yes you do.”
“Great.” I say, not particularly excited for having to deal with that. Ram had a massive advantage against Fionna because he could use her tactics against her, but if they worked together then I’d practically be fighting two shadows. Hopefully it wouldn’t be bad enough to force me to use my trump card. I still wanted to save that for the last fight of the tournament, which was almost certainly going to be against the cloaked man and the archer, who held ranks 2 and 3 respectively.
I was teleported back down to the arena, already trying to think of a plan to deal with that poison cloud. Going directly into it was absolutely off the table. Fighting off two rogues in an environment where I would barely be able to see did not sound like a fun time. I could try and use my mana shield to push the fog back, similar to what I had done on the underwater floors, but if the poison had even minor anti-magical properties then that would be extremely costly to pull off given that it would cover the entire surface area of my shield.
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If I didn’t need to deal with that poison cloud, this would be an easy fight. The two of them were skilled fighters and all, but high quantities of comparatively weak attacks such as the ones they would be unleashing with their daggers was exactly what my mana shield was good at dealing with.
Almost immediately, Fionna threw down several vials and created a massive poison cloud. She seemed to have at least some control over its shape, because while it was only a few meters tall, it extended for hundreds of meters in every other direction.
Daggers begin flying out from the poison, which I tediously dodge. There are a lot more of them now, and I suspect that Ram is conjuring some for Fionna to throw as well. I can’t dodge all of them, but the ones that do hit me don’t manage to pierce my shield.
As ideas race through my mind on how I could possibly deal with the poison, one finally crosses my mind that makes me pause.
“Would that actually work?” I ask myself aloud. The idea is so ridiculous that it feels weird not to question it. It can’t be this simple can it? Well, by the end of this fight I will probably still have at least some mana to spare, so I might as well waste some on this little gamble.
I stop dodging, needing to stand still and focus on what I am doing. My aura pulls in closer to me, taking the shape of what I had in mind. My arcane arsenal skill then activates, and thanks to the mold I made with my aura it is slightly cheaper to cast.
A structure about 2.5 meters tall manifests in front of me. I have to increase the size of my mana shield to protect it, but the daggers don’t chip away that much mana.
I start burning mana with my mana conversion skill, adding momentum to the three elongated blades on the front of my new device. The windmill spins to life, the air from behind me getting pushed forth to flow towards the poison cloud. I summon two handles on the back of it, and with quite a bit of effort pick it up and start moving towards the smoke.
I am not ashamed to admit that there is probably an easier way to do this that I just didn’t think of. This was just all I could think of in the moment. There was the bonus of it being really amusing to me, and really that is what matters the most.
The air being blown from the windmill slowly begins to disperse the cloud of poison. Emphasis on slowly. Even if it is working, it is not a fast process. There is simply so much fog that it takes a while to clear out. The entire time I am doing this, daggers are flying out to attack the windmill, though none are able to pierce through my barrier and stop it.
The smoke suddenly coughs out a very pissed off woman. Fionna rushes towards me, intent on stopping me, the windmill, or both. I had already thought of what I would do once this eventuality came around, and so I activated empower to its full 25% boost.
The windmill shrinks significantly as I move to hold it over my shoulder. All of the mana from the lost mass is now put purely into speeding what is left of the windmill up.
My new makeshift weapon moves at quite honestly an insane speed as it comes around and hits Fionna directly in the side of her head at a speed she had no hope of dodging. For a little extra oomph, I use my aura to cast a few mana blasts directly at the moment of impact, only increasing the force imparted onto her.
She is sent flying across the arena, slamming into the far wall with a very meaty thud. I wince a little as I hear the noise. That had sounded like it hurt. She quickly disappears in a flash of light, the two impacts have been enough to knock her out of the fight.
Now that she is no longer around to keep her cloud of poison from naturally dispersing, the gas starts to thin out and float away. There is a light fog of poison that now coats the ground, but as long as I don’t bend over and try to inhale the dirt I am probably going to be fine.
As the fog dispersed, Ram was nowhere to be seen. He must have managed to slip away before I could notice him, meaning all of his stealth skills were still fully active. I infuse a bit of mana into my eyes, looking all around to try and find the assassin before he gets to me.
After a few seconds, I do manage to spot him. Unfortunately, it was about a quarter of a second before his dagger was about to pierce my throat.
My back bends at a very unnatural angle as I try to avoid the attack, which only results in the dagger hitting the bottom of my jaw. The attack pierced right through my mana shield, going up through my lower jaw and exiting out my upper lip. Damn rouges and their stealth attacks. Normally that wouldn’t have been able to do that much damage, but his skills probably allowed him to do far more damage if I don’t see the attack coming.
Thankfully, the dagger had hit nothing vital like my brain. Having high stats meant bleeding out wasn’t much of a concern, but if I took a few more attacks like this one then I would have to start worrying about it.
I quickly pull myself off of his weapon and unleash an absolute carpet bombing of spells. The attack may not have killed me, but it still hurt pretty damn bad. The faster this fight ends the faster I can get this wound healed up.
The rogue, having evidently run out of tricks, soon dies to the bombardment. There really wasn’t much he could have done against the hundreds of spells that had descended upon him from every direction. It was pretty cool to see how well he dodged many of them though.
When we show up back in the observation room, I open and close my mouth a few times just to make sure everything was working properly. I knew logically that the system would fully heal me, but the phantom pain still lingered. Sometimes it is nice to get a reminder that I wasn’t invincible.
This was not one of those times.
“That was a good fight.” I hear from behind me. I turn and see Ram giving me a small bow. “This has shown me pretty clearly that I need to find more ways to deal with not having any cover to regain my stealth. Thank you for the insightful battle.”
He walks away before I can even say anything else. Fionna walks over with a slightly annoyed look on her face. “What the hell was that? One second I was running towards you and your big ass fan, and the next I was right back in here!”
Blair walks over, answering for me. I am kind of glad she did, because nothing I could have said would have been as good as the response she gave.
“River just hit one hell of a home run!”