Alistair swiftly dispatched Salrias with a decisive strike, channeling his two stored kinetic energies into a powerful assault. Initially, Salrias hesitated to join the other fight, but after realizing his partner, Dagger, had perished in the earlier explosion, he changed his mind. Unfortunately for Salrias, this hesitation proved fatal as he fell victim to Alistair's attack. Though Zutriniz attempted to intervene, momentarily diverting Alistair's attention, he couldn't react swiftly enough to counter Alistair's assault.
Zutriniz was the last of the attackers left standing. Alistair knew he could not allow Zutriniz to run as guerilla warfare with him would be extremely problematic as Alistair still had not figured out how to detect or track Zutriniz. But he did know how to kill him. The trick now was to accumulate enough damage on Zutriniz that he could put him down by converting the stored Kinetic energy into one powerful attack. He felt Riseth calming down and sent her a message not to spook Zutriniz, giving her a rough account of his ability and known weakness.
"You should use your resources early and let me jump in to guarantee the kill. Your opponent seems smart enough to know when it is at risk of being killed by you," Riseth requested over the link as she made her way to their position.
Alistair thought about it for a moment. "Alright, but keep out of sight and keep magic at a minimum. I'm quite sure its senses are solid." Alistair eventually responded as he continued to nick his opponent with his pole axe swings, blocking, dodging, and tanking Zutriniz's counterattacks.
Alistair lashed out with his poleaxe before following up with a stab of one of his swords with his off-hand, catching Zutriniz by surprise as it took a nasty stab into its shoulder, immobilizing one of the four arms. Alistair noticed that Zutriniz only closed the wound but did not fully heal it anymore. Was Zutriniz running out of its hidden resources?
"What is your race?" Alistair probed, trying to get some information out of the Alien.
"Wouldn't you like to know," Zutriniz said in its low eerie voice.
Alistair could not sense any intent from the Alien. However, he felt quite confident in assuming it was a more obscure and secretive species that might not even have genders, a trait common among the more obscure Alien races. He was also quite confident that the ability to obscure his senses and reject foreign magic was a racial skill. The odds of anybody at this level being capable and willing to develop a skill of completely hiding all energy signatures were incredibly low. Zutriniz, being an unknown Alien species unwilling to give away even the name, only increased the likelihood of it being a racial skill.
"Suit yourself, I guess," Alistair remarked before pressing forward with his assault once more.
Riseth watched the fight from below, ready to teleport once Alistair made his move. Alistair seemed to struggle to hurt the teleporting and unreadable opponent. She had worried on more than one occasion that Zutriniz would teleport away further and flee. Alistair's dispelling aura seemed to only moderately impede the Alien's teleportation. She watched as Alistair managed to cut another gash across Zutriniz's chest but failed to grasp the alien before it teleported away again. Frustration was evident on Alistair's face, confusing Riseth as their resonance showed that Alistair wasn't frustrated but incredibly calm and determined not to let his opponent away to the point she was worried that Zutriniz had caught on to this as well. Riseth regretted killing Nizguc and not using him as a hostage; depending on how fast Zutriniz noticed the changes on the leaderboard, he would expect her to show up soon.
Alistair executed another feint, feigning a move to grapple Zutriniz again before landing another cut across the chest. The key to his plan was to lull Zutriniz into a false sense of security, convincing it that it could narrowly evade Alistair's grappling efforts even if he were using boosting skills. Alistair was confident that Zutriniz would cut off its own extremities if it meant avoiding being pinned down by him. This meant Alistair would need to target an extremity it could not afford to lose, so he would target the somewhat slender neck of the Alien. Immobilizing one of its arms had been an unexpected boon as it would make grappling Zutriniz much easier, but his Intuition told him he would need to act soon.
Zutriniz swung its hammer just as Alistair pulled back from his last attack. Alistair tried intercepting the attack with his shield, but his timing was off. Alistair could feel his ribs crack and let out a grunt. It wasn't just dispelling but the strange, untraceable energies Zutriniz used that caused him issues. It naturally rejected regular energies, innately bypassing his kinetic skinguard by displacing his magic with ambient energies. Alistair was confident that if it weren't for his augmented skin rigorously resisting the displacement, his skill would not be working at all. Rather than the magic being displaced, his skin tore and bruised, and most of his body radiated a dulled, burning, and stinging pain.
Alistair thrust his poleaxe at Zutriniz just for it to barely dodge the attack. Alistair twisted the weapon and pulled it as fast as he could, hooking the Alien and pulling it towards him. Alistair increased Qi's expenditure to the maximum and activated his cold rage to get as much power and speed as possible. His hand snaked out and closed around the Zutriniz's neck, crushing it under the force as he pushed his dispelling magic through to prevent it from teleporting, if only for a moment. Riseth teleported behind Zutriniz and plunged her bone blades into him, pulling them down with all the power she could muster as she was sprayed with gray blood.
Alistair, already holding the alien's neck with a vice-like grip, swiftly exchanged his poleaxe for the most robust Navih blade in his arsenal. With the alien firmly restrained, he directed all available kinetic energy into boosting his power as he executed a powerful diagonal strike. The blade tore through the alien's flesh and bones from shoulder to hip, almost bisecting it until meeting its end at the alien's hip bone, causing the blade to break upon impact.
Zutriniz was dead, but neither Riseth nor Alistair realized or heard the chime as Riseth stabbed her blade into its head, and Alistair pulled out another blade to hack away the connection holding the Alien in one piece. They both breathed heavily, exchanging glances covered in grey blood before checking the leaderboard to confirm Zutriniz's death.
"Thank god, hunting this thing would have been a massive pain in the ass," Alistair said, exhaling sharply as he let go of the neck.
He reached out and touched Riseth's shoulder and used the coating trick he had learned from Esta to clean off the blood before doing the same for himself. Their Armor would have cleaned the blood off eventually, but Alistair wasn't keen on waiting for that to finish. Riseth gave him an appreciative smile as she started to heal him.
"Based on the Scoreboard, there are four people left besides us. Let's recover a bit, then hunt them down," Riseth suggested as she looked over his damaged skin.
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Alistair nodded in agreement as they landed on one of the tallest towers overlooking the urban sprawl. They observed the landscape as they recovered. After a while Alistair spotted somebody hiding with magic in the distance. He then summoned King, who started to circling the tower.
"Sic 'em!" Alistair said to King's delight, who started to cross the distance in record time.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Riseth asked as she watched King unleash hell on what appeared to be another Rabbitkin.
"Unless he pretended to suck at stealth that Rabbit survived this long by sheer luck, I'm quite sure King can handle it," Alistair retorted.
He was proven right as King eventually killed the Rabbit with his sonic beam attack. The last three opponents were quickly found and dispatched, as they emerged as the winner of the match with 24 kills at the top of the leaderboard. They were unceremoniously kicked out of the instance and teleported back into the noticeably less busy arena dungeon, followed by multiple chimes and a surge of power Alistair rarely experienced anymore. Both he and Riseth exchanged glances as they checked their notifications.
Notifications:
Title [Grade 10] Duo Free for all Champion [Unique] has been obtained. Title Gladiator of Carnage [Rare] has been obtained.
The Gladiator title has been upgraded to [Gladiator VII] [Level 49 reached. Stat points allocated, free stat points available.] [Level 50 reached. Stat points allocated, free stat points available.] The Grade 10 threshold has been reached. Advancement requirements determined.
Advancement requirements have been met, and Grade advancement is available.
Titles: Tier: Name Effect: Origin: [Unique] Grade 10 Duo Free for all Champion Grants a +1 to every stat for each kill in the Tournament [24 Kills] and doubled for obtaining first place on the match leaderboard for a total of +48 stat points.
Obtained by participating and winning the Grade 10 Duo Free-For-All Tournament within the System Trial. The stat benefit has been doubled for ranking first on the match leaderboard. [Rare]
Gladiator of Carnage
Grants +20 to all stats when fighting in an Arena or similar environment. The potency of Intimidation-based [Mind] attacks is permanently increased by a large degree.
Obtained for Killing 20 or more opponents of the same or higher Grade in a single arena match.
Alistair almost spluttered when he saw the benefits of his titles. The stat increases were massive. Aiming for first place had been well worth it, proving that the system favored those striving for greatness. He was surprised his second title was only rare, though, considering it was not guarded by the system. He could see people of the multiverse abusing this title by setting their Scions up against manageable opponents in tournaments they presumably would frequently host themselves or seek out. Though, perhaps the system would not recognize such victories. Another thing he noticed was that he did not obtain a new skill selection, but when he checked, he did obtain a skill point.
Besides the titles and notifications, a new window appeared, but Alistair did not get the chance to pay attention to it before he received a group call from Nessyra.
"Alistair, Riseth, get out of the arena dungeon. You have drawn a lot of attention with your match. Particularly you, Alistair, for mocking a Vampire and defeating a goddamn Zarnonsian," Nessyra said urgently.
They made their way to the exit, but both of them questioned why that was such a big deal.
"There are individuals with skills that will let them know when a previously marked target enters their vicinity. They will ruin our betting pools and potentially become a nuisance in the future," Nessyra explained.
Alistair and Riseth had follow-up questions as they ran through the corridors toward the closest gate room. They learned that Desily and Zathron also won their match as well as they got lucky with their opponents. Their title tripled the stat gain for being at the top of the leaderboard, though they had only managed 18 kills. Nessyra had obtained ten kills but did not receive a multiplier. The rest were still in their respective instances. Many matches were plagued by teams hiding themselves and only striking when they were guaranteed to win. Some didn't even bother killing anyone and just buried themself underground, waiting for everyone else to give up and forfeit, not knowing that the title would not reward them for their cowardly methods.
"What the hell is a Zarnonsian anyway?" Alistair asked curiously.
"A very high-tier subspecies of the grey aliens, they are very secretive and rare. There is little to no information about them. To be honest, you would already be considered an expert on the topic, considering you actually beat one of them. An absurd amount of money was bet on Zutriniz, and the Vampire was up there as well. But both of them being beaten was far outside expectations, and we made almost fifty million USC!" Nessyra exclaimed, excitement bubbling in her voice.
Riseth froze for a second, a flicker of realization crossing her features before excitement lit up her expression like a firework. With a smoldering gaze aimed at Alistair,
"Looks like that got the Covetix in you going. It's a Good thing the gate is nearby," Alistair quipped as he jogged to one of the consoles, using his key to start the process. Riseth caught up to him shortly after. Alistair picked her up again, and they shared a kiss before rushing through the portal to their personal quarters.