Quickly retreating from the battleground the battered states of the Heavenly Sanctuary representatives appeared displeasing to the crowd. For the first five minutes nothing had happened between the two teams, but once the border went down the enemies came storming in. Magic was spammed across the battleground, shattering and causing havoc on the land it was directed to, it was soon followed by massive growth and change of terrain as the trees and plants that were decimated sprouted out of nowhere and came to life.
The team leader of Heavenly Sanctuary tried his best to predict the match pairings, he assumed that the third team from Dragon’s lair was Valerie’s team. Which was why his strongest team was placed in the second match while their second best team placed first. As long as they scored two wins, they would still be in this tournament. But he was wrong, completely wrong, the worst team from Dragon’s Lair fought the first match, and it ended after 22 minutes with them coming out on top. Things were going as planned, but the second match ruined his dreams of winning. They were up against Valerie’s team, the best teams from both battle academies confronted each other in the second match.
If he were to lose this than their worst team would have to face against their second best and considering the circumstances, they were more than likely to lose it. The Heavenly Sanctuary team leader needed to win this second match! It wasn’t impossible as he felt confident with his strength since he was personally taught by the one who fought against Athos Dragsteel last year.
Placing the best commander on the team in the back he stepped upon the frontlines.
According to the intel he received, Valerie's team composition was made up of an Elven magician, an Ogre warrior, a Human magician, and two Dragons. Due to the restriction besides the Dragons, only the ogre warrior, human magician, and elven magician would attack them once the 5 minutes were up.
Due to this fact the four warriors from Heavenly Sanctuary carefully watched the borderline for possible invaders, and sure enough, they found them confidently standing and waiting for the time to pass.
Keeping a reasonable distance away from them the members of Team Heavenly Sanctuary carefully observed their actions. They felt perplexed, why would they bother attacking them in a situation where it was 3 versus 4? No matter how good or bad Valerie was it was common sense to match their numbers.
Just as the first restriction was removed, the three attackers quickly jumped into their formation. Seeing this the warriors from team Heavenly Sanctuary intercepted them but were shocked to find that they themselves were absolutely no match compared to their combined might.
The Human mage casted several fireballs which caused the team members from Heavenly Sanctuary to channel an anti-magic barrier. This type of magic was categorized as paladin magic, an ability which most holy warriors from the Ark Judgement Empire learn. Just as it was about to go up the ground beneath them shook disturbing their concentration, vines gripped and tugged at their feet as trees grew from the ground beyond normal standards.
Fortunately, they were able to survive the onslaught with minor injuries, backing away the crew began to reevaluate the situation. Just as they were doing so, a shadow appeared from the cover of trees the Ogre warrior seemed more like an assassin quickly taking one of their teammates out before disappearing in the shroud of trees.
When there was an open clearing a fireball would appear to hinder them, and a tree would rise to scare them, this process repeated several times more as their surrounding region became a forest of trees.
Valerie had tactically placed these trees and command the situation from afar as if she were the play script writer writing and directing the demise of the opposing team. The situation became more and difficult, and soon enough, they were all eliminated, this all took only a few minutes to do.
The crowd was stupefied, 10 minutes! If it weren’t for the restriction couldn’t they possibly end the match in 5? The crowd was struck with amazement from the elegant display of the team from Dragon’s Lair.
Valerie smiled, there was almost no way for her to lose. Her teammates were the top student this year from their allied schools, with a team of all-stars who would be able to lose?
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The ogre warrior was the best student from Titan’s Valley, a school where mighty warriors come to fight and learn how to survive in this cruel era. The Elven Magician came from Harmonic Forest, a school that specializes in agriculture and food production. And the Human Magician came from the Magician’s Tower, the technological hub of Avalon.
In the end, Dragon’s Lair had beaten Heavenly Sanctuary with a score of 2 to 1, it was no surprise that their worse lost to Heavenly Sanctuary’s second best team.
The following teams that advanced onwards had no exciting matches to display.
The second battle academy that paired was between Alpha Hideout and Daemon’s gate, which the former simply surrendered as they didn’t care at all about the match. Daemon’s gate hopes to get to the top 4 were dashed as they were going against Dragon’s Lair next.
The third battle was between Heavenly Authority Academy versus Sea Emperor Palace where the Sea Princess and the Sea Dragon’s completely dominated the weak second school for Angelic beings.
If there was an exciting match before Luon’s group match, it was the fourth battle between Coral Reef and Magician’s Tower. As they were both technologically specialized, the battle felt more like a bunch of nerds showing off their cool devices to one another. In the end, Magician’s Tower came out on top as they actually had combatants, the magicians were merely the better nerd.
It was now the fifth battle of the tournament between Nexus University and Plana Academia, both of them were from Intergalactic Federation and had a similar amount of strength. Although they were close and friendly with each other, the competition still incited their desire to win. Especially since there was a chance to secure a good spot in the top 4!
The team leaders of Team Warbeast, Team Ascension and Team Girl’s Union met before the match to discuss one critical aspect of the battle, their match positions.
“So how do you want to do this?” asked Luon who sent his gaze after the other two. To him it didn’t matter where he went as long as they win, the third position was quite a stressful spot to be as it was literally the battle-winning match. At the same time, they may not even get to fight if either the first or second team both win or lose.
Luon felt that the second spot was the most ideal spot where he wanted to be in.
“Ha, you want to know how we’re going to do this? It’s obvious, I’ll go first, and you guys can come after me. If you dare lose than your simply a disgrace to our solar system,” scoffed Zythos.
Luon looked at Arisa who responded, “I don’t mind if you want to go first, as long as you win that is. Luon, I’ll let you decide where you want to go. I’ll just fill in the blanks.”
Luon nodded as he said, “Then my team we’ll go second if you don’t mind.”
She merely nodded as she went to input their decision in the matchmaking system. After doing so, the match was soon announced, and Team Warbeast was paired with Plana Academia’s second-best team.
The match became underway, Zythos’ line up was composed of the Naiz from team G2 playing as an assassin, Qi Ren who’s playing as the commander, the orc shaman, Ashgro, the tiger beastmen and Zythos who were playing the front line attacker. Janet didn’t participate as she didn’t find any value in playing this match, she was too busy strategizing her stellar debut.
Luon had secretly heard her say that once Team Warbeast would lose one match, she would take over and outperform her whole team becoming the one and only shining beauty.
Although it was quite a selfish idea, who knows whether or not it would become true.
Qi Ren began to summon warriors to support Zythos’ and the others quick rush attack meeting the team from Plana Academia head on. What was truly surprising was what the team from Plana Academia had done, instead of having a commander sit back and summon units, all five members of their team rushed towards Zythos’ base after placing a peon at summoning table, they only gave it a single instruction. Do whatever you want.
Four of the members from Plana Academia were orcs, they appeared more savage and ruthless compared to the orcs from the Nexus solar system. In fact, the orcs from the Plana solar system were many times more powerful as they inherited the warriors will from the predecessors. Before they could travel in space the orcs from this solar system fought many wars with many different races, and after an international peace treaty was made, they were itching to fight which was ingrained into their bones causing them to accumulate stress, and Plana Academia became their number one source to vent that feeling.
The last member on their team was an elven archer, although they debated whether or not to get another orc, they reluctantly took an elf as their teammate as the argument shattered when the higher-ups from Plana Academia said that the enemy might have air units. The orcs despised the dirty, dishonorable air attacks which made them warmingly accepted the archer.
Utilizing their NG-Arms the three members from Team Warbeast took to the sky as they quickly evaded their opponent's sudden attack. Just as they reached out of their attack range the orcs began to curse at Team Warbeast for playing despicably, the single elven archer shot arrows to harm his opponents to the best of his ability.
Too bad Naiz appeared behind him and beheaded him as if it were nothing, but as he had done so, the elven archer was prepared for the situation. Just as he was escaping he stepped on a trap which disabled his ability to move, the orcs took this opportunity to hack their axes at him.
Seeing their teammate die a cruel death the members of Team Warbeast began to attack the orcs from above which they replied with a threatening swing of the axe.
It was a stalemate situation where the initiative was too hard to dictate, it was at this time one of the orcs had said, “OH! I completely forgot what the manual said to do at times like this! Brothers, it said we have to attack the base if the cowards are stupidly flying above us. Come let’s go win this match!”
Because of how the orcs were able to smarten up Zythos’ and his team was forced to fight the orcs head-on, at first they were overpowering them, but when they placed on the bloodlust mask the situation completely changed.
The first match ended with Plana Academia coming out on top.
Luon had watched this from the start to the end facepalmed as he thought about what Zythos had said earlier. He silently thought, ‘A disgrace to the solar system…’