Chapter 190 :

Episode 37 : Quarterfinals (3)

"Hmmff!!"

For safety reasons, Louis and Alaine are tied up with Mirai's ‘Miracle Web’ to assist them in recovery, not that they were too thrilled with their match earlier…

In any case, excited by the match a moment ago, Alaine and Louis were fully in the zone and to have someone interrupt them like that..

No wonder they would be in a fit of rage, so JoonChul ordered Mirai to put a stop to their pointless fury.

"No matter how delightful a fight can be, control yourself, fools." Frostina, as cold as ice, spoke with her hands crossed together.

"..!" Alaine and Louis listened, pausing their attempt to free themselves from the web.

On their side, Mirai said after she had finished up on wrapping the web around the two. "Give them a break, big sis~ It's normal for them to react that way~!"

Shortly after, Behemoth agreed with Mirai for once. "Right, right, right! This mighty cat fights this teeny spider all the time, so it's rude if someone were to barge in the fun."

"Ara Ara.. What did you say, cute kitty?"

Before long, Behemoth was creeped out by Mirai's pretentious smile, he then hissed at her. "Don't call me a cute kitty!"

"You guys can't seem to get along even though we went as far as putting you two far from each other." Raiden, not stressed by Mirai's and Behemoth's rivalry, spoke.

From left to right seats, Mirai was in the left second seat while Behemoth was on the fifth seat. In-between were JoonChul in the middle and next to him was Frostina while Raiden was on the far left beside Mirai.

Basically in this order, Raiden, Mirai, JoonChul, Frostina and Behemoth.

"Enough." One word left JoonChul's mouth.

And so his comrades became quiet.

Silence to the point of suffocation, and more so to Louis and Alaine who were waiting for their release.

"Hm hm.. hmg? (Are you okay?)" Alaine looked at Louis as she tried to ask for Louis' well-being.

‘Is he mad at me because I hid while he fought with my clones?’ Alaine pondered.

"Hm, uhm fhm. (Yeah, I'm fine.)" Louis vaguely understood it, relieving Alaine a bit with his response.

‘..Ooh, maybe he isn't upset.’ Alaine looked at Louis with slight surprise.

Their mouths were covered by the web which led them to this situation. Words were just "hm" and "uhm" to them now, but understanding them is surprising in and of itself.

Rustling…

Enough of them talking in secret, Raiden clapped his hands to get their attention, smiling in a dynamic way. "And with this, round 1 ended with Louis' win."

"I know you two have questions. And as judges, we'll give you our honest opinions and/or criticism."

"The winner is decided by the judges' votes by the way! Votes are what we judges see as a big improvement, so if we witness how far you have gone, we'll think about voting for you."

"So I'll start first." Raiden stood up from his seat. "Since I gave Alaine a vote, I'll explain why."

"Alaine, I'm not biased by picking you because you're my student, but because you used your skills perfectly."

"From taking advantage of Louis kun's weakness of not harming Mya, and using your daggers and boots with its skills to its fullest is a good choice. Well done, my disciple!"

"Then, to satisfy Louis' curiosity as to when and how Alaine disappeared during the match, she did so when Louis Kun spread the sand in the beginning, giving Alaine a reason to bail out while leaving behind a fake clone of hers."

"Because of this, it gave Alaine a chance to focus more on using her clones and conserve her energy and stamina, though the effect of controlling the clones must have been hard on her mind."

"Even though I informed you of this while training, you didn't listen, Alaine kun. Like I said, you must concentrate on a few clones first, Alaine Kun. It's best to do that, then to wear yourself out."

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"Are you done now~?" Mirai asked, to which Raiden replied with a nod, and Mirai began to speak. "Hai, it's my turn."

"Let's see~ My vote was on you, Alaine. Why didn't you continue staying inside him?" Mirai made it sound as vague as possible to not allow others to know Alaine's hidden skill.

Upon hearing that, Alaine's face turned red from her own thoughts which notified Mirai of the problem. "Ara.. Alaine.. Well, I do understand what you're thinking~"

"..?!" Alaine flustered.

Thought, Mirai as she moved her fan to her face. ‘Who would want to stay in the opposite gender's body? If it's my captain, then I might..’

"Fufu.. Alaine, if you have trouble over such a trivial thing, you might not get stronger as per your wishes. So take my advice to the heart."

Alaine, watching Mirai's genuine smile, nodded to Mirai's suggestions. ‘I swore I wanted to be strong, but instead, I didn't even get to win because I didn't use my skills to the best of its ability..’

‘..All because I was embarrassed to stay inside a boy's body..’ Alaine thought before realizing. ‘Uh.. I mean..!! It's a good reason to hesitate over that! I'm a girl after all..!’

‘..Being inside Louis' body was..’ Alaine blows up in steam, blushing a lot.

"Fufufu." Mirai giggled.

Meanwhile, JoonChul watched Alaine as he averted his glance to Frostina, remembering the time where he was in Frostina's body to save her from being controlled by the ‘Helpers’ and such.

‘Is this what Alaine feels?’ JoonChul thought, having a bit of a reaction. ‘Oh dear..’

As a result of JoonChul feeling a little out of it, Frostina proceeded. "I question whether or not it was wise to give a vote to a man who couldn't beat mere clones."

With that, Louis flinched at Frostina's cold statement. ‘She's the one who voted for me? And.. Isn't it only right I wouldn't want to hurt Mya even as a clone of Alaine's?’

As if Frostina could guess what Louis was thinking, she uttered. "Fool. Bear in mind, a clone is a clone. Not the person who you're thinking of."

"If a mere disguise of a child caused such restrictions to your movements, then I doubt you'll be useful in a real fight."

"However, considering the end result of the match, Alaine would have lost in a real fight nonetheless. Even her clones can be her enemies by bringing aching pain to her head which will guide her nowhere but death."

Looking at Louis, Frostina narrowed her eyes. "Don't be foolish. Alaine would have easily won in terms of strength, but because she used too many clones, you boy won this fight out of pure luck."

"Luck was fortunately on your side. You already knew it by witnessing the naiads appearing to support you, fool."

‘..Ah..’ Louis was speechless.

‘..Right, my trident has an effect of summoning water nymphs by chance. It hasn't occurred as much when I was training, so I guess it was only luck that it happened during the right moment.’

At that point, Louis looked down as he was contemplating for a while, along with Alaine who was doing the same thing as him.

"Meow meow! Meow!" Behemoth looked over to JoonChul as if wishing for him to be the translator.

Mood changes quickly, Alaine was talking in "hm", but for readers' sake, it was made understandable. "Aww, Blackie is so cute! What did it say, JoonChul?"

In the end, JoonChul became a cat's translator and an expert at deciphering Alaine's "hmf".

"Behemoth said he voted for Louis because he was cool at using his javelins, and manipulating it to give himself a ride up the sky. That's all."

"Whoa.. I wish I could understand the cat's language. Meow meow!"

"Mrow." Behemoth scoffed, magically understanding Alaine's "hmf".

In any case, it was JoonChul's turn to voice his opinions. "Louis, you're a moron, but I am the bigger idiot for voting for you."

"Hmf?" A little bit angry, Louis tilted his head, still stuck in the web.

"Nobody mentioned this, so I'll say it. You used your surroundings to your advantage. Instead of staying on dry land, you opted for the sea because your trident is best suited for it."

"The sand to blind Alaine and use it to escape to the sea, and the water to splash at the clones. Despite being in a predicament where you can't hit Mya clones, you managed to hold out till the end when you suddenly started attacking the clones."

"Either way, you're still an idiot. You were only able to attack those clones because of what Alaine said about self-harm. If she hasn't spoken about it, would you be able to attack the Mya clones? Nope, I don't think so."

"Here's a question for you. How would Mya feel if her appearance caused you to falter from killing? And end up dying in the process?"

Even though Louis didn't want to, he reluctantly nodded his head as if he admitted it. Times like these where Louis can't get infatuated by JoonChul since he was right about one thing.

‘..I want to protect Mya, that's the truth. But by protecting Mya, it was used against me when I couldn't attack the clones.’ Louis thought.

‘If I were in a real fight, and someone used a skill for illusion or something else on me, would I end up dying because I didn't have the courage to kill not the real Mya?’

While Louis was thinking by himself, he suddenly jolted when Raiden's loud voice reached his ears. "Now, now, everyone! It's time for the second round of the quarterfinals to begin!"

"You may wonder who'll fight in the next round! But there's no fun in doing that, so just wait for it after a short break!"

———

At the ‘Helpers’ headquarters, there were angels sitting and having a break in the living room.

Upon doing so, they had taken notice of the small tournament ‘The Rebels’ Guild was doing, and as to entertain themselves during their breaks, they were watching with excitement.

Crunch!

Eating very loudly, Ruby munched on ice cubes while viewing ‘The Rebels’ Guild, not for entertainment but for research purposes on how to defeat them or ruin them.

‘What a bunch of freaks.’ Ruby grumbled.

She wasn't the only one since Sapphire was also sitting across from Ruby, and was setting her eyes on every scene of ‘The Rebels’ Guild members' combat abilities.

Meanwhile, Zircon sipped her tea as she wasn't bothered by the atmosphere inside this living room.

"So cool! I didn't even notice when that teenage girl left the scene! So she was hiding all that time?!"

On the other hand, there was Tanzanite who was totally intrigued and thrilled by the show ‘The Rebels’ Guild hosted.

Spoken by Citrine, she took a bite of her cake. "Humans are quite smart sometimes. Who knew they would train all day for this moment."

"Right? It was getting so boring! This stage should have been so boring if it weren't for the ‘Fatal Savage' and ‘The Rebels’ Guilds to entertain us!"

"Indeed, it is." Zircon said. "But we must not get so distracted over this. We already got our hands full with the hacker."

Citrine asked. "You're still not sure who might cause it?"

"Sadly yes.. The problems had gotten worse when a certain time frame of events was cut off."

"Oh, is it about the blue screen that occurred? I heard it happened because of the last player and the first player. It also blackout when we tried to look at the last player. Currently, we are able to see the last player again without the blue and black screens."

"Yes, it's a mystery why we couldn't capture what was happening during that time."

For your information, the times where blue screens and black screens occurred were when HwanGi and JoonChul fought, revealing JoonChul's true identity, his body resting in a hidden room on the ship and a literal archangel Michael appearing.

However, the angels didn't know about those, not a single one because of the blue and black screens.

..One would wonder who would do such a thing to hide those facts from the angels?

Swish..

"Sister, sister~!" Tanzanite interrupted.

"Yes, Tanzanite?"

"You ought to take a rest. You have been going left and right because of this troublesome problem!"

"Are you going to give me a sweet massage?"

"Well~ I guess if you want it, then I might~!

"Alright, I'll leave the troublesome work to you." Zircon smiled while Tanzanite jolted.

"N-No..! I didn't mean that I would take your work, I uh.. Sis! How could you~?!"

"I can't leave my work untouched, can I?"

"Ahh!!! Sister!"

By then, Zircon chuckled with Citrine, gazing at Tanzanite pouting and crossing her arms in a grumpy mood.

"Now I know what to do." Ruby snickered by herself after coming up with an idea for her next plan. ‘I'll freaking make sure that 'they' get a horrible death.’

"Kekeke.." Ruby's sinister laugh? "Time for ‘The Rebels’ Guild's demise. Kekeke."

While Ruby figured out her plan, Sapphire glanced at the former before averting her eyes back at the scene, zooming in closely on Frostina.

‘She's an ice user like me, isn't she? Could she perhaps be stronger than me? Surely not.’ Sapphire thought.

Out of the blue, Sapphire noticed Frostina's glance locked onto the screen, it was as if Frostina knew Sapphire was watching her.

Except for Frostina, there was another who was gazing at Sapphire through the screen too.

‘You..’ Someone who caused failures to her, was glaring daggers at the screen as though he wished to kill Sapphire.

‘Wang JoonChul, I swear by my name I'll make you miserable.’ Sapphire swore as her hands in her laps were squeezing tightly.