In the waiting room, Luon and his group began going over the information they had about Team Diva. Currently, the matches before their own had started, it was Team Warbeast versus Team Cork. According to Luon’s calculations, if Zythos and Luon continued to win their matches, they would face each other in the semifinals.
The format for the top 16 was similar to how the other segment of the qualifiers went. A single defeat led to elimination. Which is why they were supposed to be really focused on their preparation phase. Or at least Luon hoped they were… after several minutes of explanations by Thomas, besides Luon who was vigorously going over the information like a sponge. Gizmo, Tyron, and Bendan were sleeping without a single worry in the world.
Tyron and Bendan were understandable as they couldn’t understand the content as well as the others. On the other hand, Gizmo was sleeping because the information they had about their opponent's combat abilities was boring, shallow, and vague. Gizmo felt that it was a pointless effort as their opponents were shrouded in mystery.
This was mainly due to the tactic that they had used to win each match. Besides Janet who had the role of Commander, the other members specialized in mental attacks causing their opponents to receive hits from them without any repercussions. There were no special techniques between each attack, a press of a trigger on their rifles and they won the match. Besides their hypnotic ability, all information in regards to their combat abilities was shrouded in a layer of mystery.
What if they were a master swordsman? Or expert gunners? The team couldn’t tell as they didn’t show any signs of this. Which is why the three of them decided to sleep it off and not ponder about it.
Luon and Thomas, however, didn’t give up as they did. He could tell that they were more than what they looked like since Janet was able to receive a full powered charge attack from Luon with ease.
However, it did annoy him that his fellow pig-like teammates were sleeping while they were working hard gathering information.
Which is why he woke them up and said, “How about you guys watch some of their music videos and tell us how you feel about them?” Luon thought that at least that way they could adequately analyze one aspect of their opponents.
2 men grudgingly went through a series of information while 3 others were laughing and cheering to a popular music video. Was this scene better than when they were sleeping and snoring? No! The room just became rowdier than ever.
Fortunately, Luon was able to use wind magic to repel the sound waves coming towards him, which allowed him to focus on the task at hand. Thomas, however, started bickering with the crew, who then, in turn, converted him into a follower. Now it was only Luon who was studying the documents nearly doubling his workload.
His efforts weren’t fruitless though, Luon found that besides being idols, the members had one thing in common. They shared the same dance studio despite having come from different idol agencies.
Luon looked into dance studio even more and found that the owner, who was also the instructor, was a retired female blademaster that joined the army after graduating from Nexus University. Her combat level wasn’t at the pinnacle, but her sword style was unique and had an ancestral heritage that still continued today.
Luon suspected that they must have learned her sword skills and had hidden it deeply by using rifles as a primary weapon for the qualifiers. Just as Luon was about to tell the group of his findings, he found them watching a music video of their opponents singing and dancing while using blades to battle each other with.
Their attacks swiftly combed by each other as the beautiful blades dance had many thought-provoking moments. Luon thought of one thing as gazes over the series of documents he had on the table, ‘What a waste of time...’
After the video was over Luon told them his findings which they all agreed to, their opponents may be expert blademasters, or at least know how to use the sword better than the average person. Their hypnotic ability came from the vocal master and idol, Raven, who passed down her singing skills to the public. Everyone knew of this profound technique. However, not many could replicate it.
It required vigorous vocal training and dancing which people would have to spend a large chunk of time to master. Like the idol world, Luon had seen before in his first simulation, many weren’t able to stay in this competitive line of work, garnering fans increase the mastery of this technique, and not just everyone could do so.
They required beauty beyond their peers, a voice as delicate as angels, and talent, something that not everyone has. Armed with a profound sword art, athletic body, and a voice that causes their opponents to stand on their knees, they were difficult to deal with.
Unlike most people that they had faced, Luon was prepared for this. Thomas who studied their opponents like a madman made Luon create a hefty amount of devices during the break period. They provided some mental resistance once they knew that some of their future opponents may use some mental attacks.
This was a considerable advantage compared to the qualifying rounds before, it was also a disadvantage as their opponents knew what they were capable of one month ago.
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However, that one month the crew had a monumental change. If possible, Luon wanted to hide the fact that they were experts in handling NG-Arms.
Which is why he replaced their starting equipment with their default weapons for both range and melee, robots for construction work, and mental resistant items. They were not going to use NG-Arms this round.
After they confirmed their opponent's combat ability, besides Luon, everyone began to slack off instead of mentally preparing themselves for battle. There was still something that Luon had to study, that was the possible attack strategy their opponents may pull off.
Going through their combat records, their opponents had always picked a custom created ocean map. Not much scouting was required as Team Diva’s base was situated on a beach in the middle of the ocean. There were no details in regards to summoned units besides a few female units for visual display or aquatic mounts that allowed these beauties across the ocean surface to raid their opponents base.
If there were anything notable, the terrain would be the most challenging part of the match as most of Luon’s units were robots. Fortunately, the group decided to not go with the robotic strategy as they put Gizmo in charge of this match when he insisted that he could easily win this matchup.
Looking at the lazy Gizmo who was self-confident about his results, Luon couldn’t possibly think of what kind of strategy he would pull out.
Since there was not much information about their opponents, he decided not to worry about it too much as well. Luon began to prepare himself for the battle mentally for what was about to come.
Sure enough, the first two matches of the tournament were over, and it was now Luon’s team, Team Ascension’s turn to face Team Diva. The party was transported to a waiting room to finalize their details. After checking if everyone was ready, the crew pressed the confirmation button and waited for the transportation matrix to send them into the ring.
Seconds passed, but not a single change occurred. ‘Was the other team not ready?’ They all thought. At this moment Luon received a message from Arisa on his BMPU, in the message was a link of some kind of live stream.
Curious, Luon opened it up only to find an astonishing fact, instead of confirming whether or not they were ready, Team Diva decided to do a live broadcast while inside the preparation room with them singing and dancing to a song. No one could stop them from doing so, and the time they had, until they were forced to battle, was a whole five minutes. Just enough to squeeze in one tune before the action begins.
As the song continued to drive the crowd crazy, wearing similar uniforms with short skirts they danced and appeased the audience with their performance. Luon and the group could only patiently wait until the match started. Once the song was over Janet said to the viewers, “Thanks for your support! We’re about to start the battle where we would triumph over our opponent so come and watch us do so! Hehe, girls lets start!”
The group of girls gathered their hands together like one of those rallies that said a cheer before an event. With hands overlapping each other the group said all-together, “Go- Team- Diva!” With that remark, they pressed the start button.
The two teams were transported into their respective fields, Team Diva was placed on a beach while Team Ascension was situated in a forest. Gizmo who took the role of commander said to Luon, “Scouts are useless in this match, the ocean is vast and can hide many things, instead let’s reinforce the border and keep watch of any invaders. Everyone to the front line!”
Adhering to his command everyone left towards the border between each field, even Thomas was forced to go despite being a non-combatant, only the robots they brought in stayed behind. Once they arrived, Gizmo told the group to start cutting down trees and handcraft some boats. With Bendan and Luon’s strength it was an easy task to do, and with Thomas’s expertise and Tyron’s swift hands, several ships were made.
After creating several boats, the group heard a battle cry, a series of gurgling sounds, and rumble of footsteps coming from their side of the map. From the forest came an army of orcs and weird fishmen which were half the size of them. Seeing their type of reinforcements Luon frowned as he thought, ‘This is our army? Are we forcefully rushing the enemy into the ocean?’
Gizmo commanded the crew to wait a bit and prepare to move out while asking Thomas to retreat back to the camp. Forced to take a bunch of orcs and fishmen they got on the handcrafted ships with the fishmen as their escort.
Just as they were about to leave the half-assed docks, several shadows can be seen in a distance. Surfing on a series of surfboards was a series of bikini-wearing female warriors who uniformly sung a tune while surrounded by mermaids.
These females were all beautiful, and their voice shook the hearts of many viewers. Tyron and Bendan couldn’t help but be affected despite the mental resistant tools. After all, men even with reasoning were still men. Looking at his thirsty, ugly, pig-like teammates and comparing them with the team of beauties on the other side, Luon couldn’t help but think, ‘Am I with the right team?’
Luon gaze at the beauties with an indifferent look, there was no problem with his preference in love, he admired these beauties for their looks. However, this was a match, a battle which may determine whether or not he could represent his solar system in the Alliance Tournament and may affect his potential career path. Winning is all that matters which is why Luon was confident that this psychological attack wouldn’t be able to change his will.
Fortunately, for Luon he wasn’t the only one with this thought, the fishmen and orcs had a different taste in beauty and were unaffected by their enemies songs, Gizmo had already thought about this problem. Kicking both Tyron and Bendan off the boat to wake them up, Luon prepared himself for battle.
The female team who hadn’t noticed that their opponents were not affected by their charm grew closer and began to pull out their rifles. Just as they were about to enter shooting range, a loud noise resonated and shook the forest, a bullet soared through the sky instantly blowing off one of the idol members life viciously in front of numerous of viewers.
Bendan and Gizmo who had gotten out of the water and saw this series of actions. They faced Luon with an awkward look, Bendan took the opportunity to ask, “Do you not have any conscience?”
Besides Luon was a robot armed with a one time only power rifle, Luon who heard those words after eliminating one of their opponents said, “It’s just a match. Don’t take it too seriously. If you want to blow one of their heads off, just do it. We need to win, and nobody can blame you for it.”
With his words displayed for numerous of viewers to see, a bunch of unreasonable fanboys began to bellow out curses, unknowingly, Luon became the most notoriously well-known competitor for treating males and females the same regardless if they were famous or not.