The second day ended uneventfully, and at this moment, the tournament was halfway completed. Besides the expected Dragon’s Lair, the others in the top four positions were Lemegeton, Sea Emperor Palace, and the dark horse that many of the audience believed to not deserve their spot in the rankings, Nexus University. It wasn’t due to their lack of strength, reputation or anything along those lines. It was more because the opponents they had fought were rather lackluster.
Plana Academia and Atlantica Royal School were usually ranked in the middle compared to the combat oriented schools and with Dragon’s Lair eliminating most of the combat oriented teams, many believed that Nexus University had merely lucked their way to the top. However, their series of wins end here, nobody thought that they could beat Lemegeton.
Previously ranked third under Heavenly Sanctuary these demonic beings composed of Doom Knights, Demons, Succubuses, and Undead Sorcerers was something very troublesome for Nexus University to deal with it.
Before their matches began, the male announcer said, “Congratulations and let’s welcome, the top 4 best solar systems this year!”
A round of applause circulated from the crowd, although there were some boring and unpleasant moments during these battles, most of the crowd found this year's contest to be quite interesting.
Excited from the attention, Janet waved her hand to the crowd more energetically than the others who were lightly doing so in response to his remark.
After the crowd’s reaction dimmed a little the groups retreated away from the stage, and the male announcer said, “The matches so far have been very entertaining.”
The female announcer nodded as she said, “This may be one of the most entertaining ones so far in the last few years. There have been some insane matches before, and we have seen some crazy maneuvers used so far.”
“Speaking of crazy maneuvers that plan that Atlantica had in their second match was quite encouraging and unique, we can expect that next year's results may not be the same. Although they lost this year, with failure there will always be some success,” said the male announcer.
“But this year isn’t over yet! I’m very excited to see the future matches and see what the Sea Princess and Valerie from Dragon’s Lair have to show. Valerie could be considered one of the best dragonkins for the past few years besides Athos, while the Sea Princess, Mei Ming is the best within her hundreds of brothers and sisters,” said the female announcer.
“It would be difficult to determine who turn out to be the winner between the two indeed, but this is a team battle, compared the Sea Princess team, Valerie’s is rather solid,” said the male announcer.
“That’s mainly because of their team is full of all-stars from four solar systems. According to my research, the majority of their members were the top students from Titan’s Valley, Magician’s Tower and Harmonic Forest. Besides Valerie, her sub captain and two other members the rest are from different schools,” the female announcer pointed out.
“Compared to the Sea Emperor Palace they are in indeed underwhelming, but many still believe that they might create an upset,” said the male announcer.
“Upset or not, the battle for third place after the top two are selected is something to look forward to. It looks like the first battle is about to start, as the map choices have been finalized,” said the female announcer.
“This...” the male announcer was speechless from the map selection and team lineups.
“...It’s quite unexpected, to think Valerie’s team would be placed in the first battle against Mei Ming’s team who did the same thing! The top two teams are already battling each other in the first match! Not only that but the map they chose was the same, the default map that nobody uses!” the female announcer.
Although many teams have chosen a map type more favorable to them the developers had left an empty map type for merely testing features that were open for anyone, they never would have thought this map would be picked at all.
An enormous blank white room was created, and the two teams could see each other almost immediately. Although they were separated by several kilometers worth of distance, with Valerie’s Dragon Eyes and Mei Ming’s who received a telescope from her teammate, they were able to see each other.
Despite being an empty blank room the border rule was still applied, and all the members from Dragon’s Lair were unable to cross the border which was displayed a red line that had the width of a meter.
Unlike the members of from Dragon’s Lair, the members of Sea Emperor Palace weren’t bound by these rules. Right away they summoned a bunch of human operators and departed to the border.
Valerie frowned, unlike her teammates Mei Ming had chosen sea monsters as teammates. On top of four Lizard-like creatures were a team of humans and Mei Ming. She was curious and piqued about what tricks she had up her sleeves.
Mei Ming voice resonated in the minds of the four sea monsters as they roared in response. The four of them charged towards the borderline just barely out of range of the magician.
Cautiously the members of Dragon’s Lair observed as the human operators jumped off the sea monsters and got to work. The sea monsters brought out a series of parts which was placed into the gear slots, and Mei Ming handed a blueprint to one of the humans who took command of the site.
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Within three minutes 4 Gatling Gun shaped objects were attached to the sea monsters. The magician conjured up a barrier in anticipation of a ranged attack. He was confident of the strength of barrier and arrogantly gazed at their opponents. The Dryad beside him also had set up some trees as a precaution.
Sure enough, the gun started to twirl except what confused people the most was that there were no bullets attached to the gun. In everyone's mind, they wonder what it was going to shoot out. Blue streams of bullets came flying towards the members of Dragon’s Lair. The bullets clashed against the barrier, however, to the magician's dismay, it penetrated the barrier as if it were a knife slicing into warm butter.
The bullets continued to fly piercing the series of trees without dropping an inch of speed. The scene was devastating as it had shocked both the Magician and the Dryad. Never before did these top students experience such a wondrous view, they didn’t know what to do.
It was at this moment the member from Titan’s Valley jumped in front of the two and pulled out a shield that was enough to cover all three of them. The bullets weren’t able to penetrate the shield, but the force was still able to carry over causing the three to fly backward. The muscular male contestant was a half-titan, and even with his strength, he was sent flying! He looked forward as he had seen an even scarier fact.
Despite blocking the bullets, they were still completely intact as they pushed him back. The three of them felt as if they were hit by a car and were still being dragged around by it.
Valerie widens her eyes in surprise, the weapon that Mei Ming used was potent. To Valerie’s eyes, it was equivalent to a level 84 attack. The key point of this attack was the bullet that was used had the combination of several different energy types stored inside of it. There was a blue hue displaying it was a water element attack, and yet at the same time, there were a series of white dots.
Valerie knew what those white dots represented, typically no one would have done such a thing in a real battle, but since it was a false reality, it made sense to use this technique. The four sea monsters injected both mana and life force into their attack creating a force to be reckoned with.
The half-titan’s body wobbled as his grip on the shield began to loosen, the moment he let go, he would immediately be eliminated by these terrifying bullets.
The Magician and the Dryad desperately clung to his body as they tightened their grip. Soon a hand arrived at his back, or rather he came in front of Valerie as he had traveled over several kilometers from the point he had started at. Looking indifferently, Valerie sent her gaze at Mei Ming who’s eyes happened to meet her own.
She smiled at this brief exchange as she pushed the three team members aside, and openly taunted Mei Ming. Rather than responding kindly at her, Mei Ming told the sea monsters to lock on to a different target. She felt some killing intent as a new series of bullets were sent to Valerie who responded quickly as her sword and repelled the bullets.
Unlike the half-titan, Valerie was able to calculate and change the trajectory of the bullet, so none of them had even grazed at her.
Seeing how she had lost her firepower, Mei Ming equipped a spear and dashed in - to attack Valerie. While Valerie was level 85 naturally, Mei Ming was at level 83 without any power-ups. However, before she had begun the assault, she had equipped a bloodlust mask and her NG-Arms temporarily raising her level to be the same.
The spear and sword clashed against one another, for the first few bouts there was no clear winner. As for their teammates, they were also found in a stalemate position. The members of Dragon’s Lair were pinned by the suppressive fire as the sea monsters to continued to rain bullets on them.
It was a frightening sight, the sea monsters depleted their life reserves without hesitation. If they continued to shoot they would soon run out of life points and die. But that moment never came, somehow Valerie managed to outplay Mei Ming’s attack and dashed closed into range using movement type skill.
Mei Ming who was caught by surprise tried to step back as a sword penetrated one of her legs. She screamed in pain as Valerie made quick work of her, relieving her from the battle. The match soon ended since Mei Ming was still registered as the commander of the match and the first battle went to Dragon’s Lair.
But Sea Emperor Palace didn’t give up yet. On the second round, they sent the same line up once more as 4 other sea monsters were attached with a weapon loadout and wrecked their foes.
However, Valerie had used the second match to evaluate the weapon that they had used and managed to create a strategy for their participants in the third match, bringing home the victory with a score of 2 to 1.
This match made the crowd shiver, Sea Emperor Palace was very close to causing an upset of this era. If it weren’t for Valerie who strategized a counter, then the one entering the finals wouldn’t be the continuously reigning champion.
The announcers quickly discuss over several segments of the match while interviewing the contestants and crowd about the match.
At this moment, Luon, Arisa, and Zythos sat in front of each other for a meaningful discussion. Moments earlier the headmaster said it was okay to settle for fourth place and if it was possible, get a higher position. If they had lost, he wouldn’t blame them for doing so. However, Luon and Arisa knew that this was a match they couldn’t lose. In fact, Zythos had also identified the reason since he received a report from one of his spies who was roleplaying as a servant in the Nightwalker’s family subsidiary divisions. His father said that it was his choice whether or not to win or lose, it didn’t matter to him at all, thus confusing Zythos on what to do. If he won, Nexus University would get more resources which would make his father happy. If he were to lose, then all that would happen is that the Nightwalker family would lose an heir. They could always make another one, so this plan wasn’t helpful to them.
Although Daimon Werebringer wanted Zythos to win, no matter the result it there was still a positive thing that happens to them. As a result, his actions or the stance he took didn’t matter to him.
Arisa stood up, and the two looked at her, she then said, “For this match, the line up will be my team, Zythos’s team and then Luon’s team.”
“Hey, hey, hey, and why is it that? Why should you go first?” asked Zythos.
“According to the previous matches, Deminier would predict our line up. He would go up first and beat Zythos before sending the succubus team in the last position. With Luon’s mental resistance tools he’ll find that an easy victory. As for their third team, there was nothing that amazing about them so I am sure even you can beat them in the second match,” analyzed Arisa.
Luon nodded as he found her words to be entirely true. Although Zythos’s wasn’t satisfied, he didn’t have too much an opinion on which battle he wanted to be in any way, so he decided to play along with it.
With the first match of the semi-finals over. It was now time who would be the victor between Nexus and Lemegeton.