Chapter 20 – Little bit serious

When I came inside the stadium, I completely forgot to tell others or even ask them where or when we will meet. Because of that, I’m all alone. We will meet when the second round starts anyway, so no reason to stay at the same place.

I was walking from place to place, buying sweets and some meat balls in some kind of sauce. All the things here are delicious though. There were even deserts, but they are a long ways away from those that Alice makes for me.

As I was wondering around, there was a crowd of people. Of course I immediately went to see what was happening there. Such things are always funny.

As I went through the crowd, I saw another competitor with a girl. I could not hear what they were saying but I knew that the girl was trying to sell something to him. Because she had her back to me, I could not see her face and as I was pondering about that, he pushed her and she fell on the ground. The girl crawled on the ground and tried to talk with him once more. He got pissed off and wanted to kick her. But I immediately closed the distance and kicked his leg to deflect it. I looked at him and was smiling, as my bloodlust that was focus on him, made him shudder. He did not even try to talk back and just left. The crowd dispersed shortly afterwards and I looked back towards the girl that was still on the ground.

Her hair was on her face so I still could not see her face. I crouched down and took her hand and told her.

“Can you stand up?”

She immediately replied.

“Y-yes.”

As I helped her to stand up, her hair swayed away and I could see her face.

“Kristy? What are you doing here?”

Yep, good old herb girl, Kristy.

“Heeeeeeeeee! Ris?”

“Yep, that’s me alright.”

I want to play around with her. Because of all the tests and training I couldn’t visit her to hear her sweet voice.

“How were you doing anyway Kristy? I thought not many people can get here?”

“Ah, it was okay. Thanks to your help we did not need to fear the gang anymore and when you bought from us all those herbs we got a better reputation and sales went up and thanks to it, we even could open a stand here.”

“Let me guess. Even though you opened the stand here to sell herbs for potions, you could not get even a single customer and so you tried to look around for a participant to sell to them directly. Am I right?”

“Wow, how did you know?”

“Because I am Risiel, the herb detective. Also known as protector of herb girls. Nothing can go unnoticed from my sight.”

“Wow, I never knew.”

“Ha ha ha, you really believed that?”

“Heh? It wasn’t so?”

“No, I just thought about all the details I knew and just pieced them together as a puzzle. It’s easy when you know how to, and as a merchant you should learn this too.”

“Un.”

“Anyway, I hope you did not forget our promise?”

“What do you mean?”

“It was two weeks since we met and so you owe it to me to listen to your beautiful voice. And I still want to hear you sing.”

She blushed as I said that. Am I imagining it or are girls blushing just when I start talking? It must be my imaginations. It could just happen to be when I tease them, so I really must be imagining it.

“Ok, I will sing just for you.”

As she said it, I put my face close to her face and with fully opened eyes I said.

“It’s a DEAL!”

She froze, her face in a daze, looking into my eyes like they want to suck her up.

I took my distance and coughed to make her think again.

“So don’t forget about this but because of the tournament we will need to let it go for the weekend.”

Dammit, stupid tournament.

“Un.”

“Well then Kristy, show me your stand.”

She looked at me with opened eyes, thinking she misheard. I took her hand and said

“Let’s go.”

She was looking down with red ears, so cute.

We reached the stand, her father there. As we reached it, she ran and talked with her father. Meanwhile I reached the place.

“Hello once again.”

“It’s nice to meet you Ris, what can I do for you?”

“Let me think about it.”

I don’t really need anything. I prepared all I needed already but I need to make people believe this place is a good place to buy herbs.

“I will take this, this, that and this.”

The herbs I bought will be used for a certain type of potion that increases reaction speed and also reflexes.

“That will be 1 gold and 20 silver.”

Expensive!

“Oh, for old time sake, let’s say 80 silver?”

“90”

“85”

“Deal. Such a good price.”

Truth is, this price is the lowest it could be, her father really knew what I wanted to do. It was quite simple, first of all make people just ignore us and then start talking in loud voice and then just shout the price, making people looked at us and see what I bought for how much. It won’t be like a herd will come, but at least someone will come and then it will grow from that and price will go up. Simple and not really great plan but quick. I have fights in a while after all.

I bid my farewell to the two of them and went to the stadium,going towards the participant’s seats because the calling for the 2nd round was about to begin.

I put the herbs into my ring and I even upgraded it and space now is 3m3. I say upgraded but I just wiped out the void mana that was there and used my own. Because it was my own, effectively the ring got better.

I reached the seats and looked around to find the three already sitting. I could see they were holding a spot for me, just between Irel and Lili.

Rejoining them, I came to them and said.

“Hey, why did you not wait for me?”

Irel immediately replied.

“And who is the one who did not say where and when the meeting place was?”

“You did not ask Sani?”

“Huh?”

She did not catch it. As expected of Sani. We all started to laugh at her and she pouted. I sat down but before that I patted her head to apologize.

We waited for the commentator to start and then his loud voice started.

“Ladies and gentlemen, today is the second day of the tournament and even 2nd and 3rd round will take a place. Because it would be quite boring to see fights at the same place, second round will be a little different.”

As he said it, ground of the arena started to shake and what appeared were sand dunes.

“There are 4 stages on which battles will be fought. They give advantage to one of the elements so in second round, your luck will be needed more than your fighting ability. Because there’s not much time left, let’s quickly start with second round and before I forget, after the second round there will be only 25 of you left. In the third round, that would mean one of you won’t be able to fight. The one who will be left out is called the Joker and will be able to go immediately to the next round. As I said, luck is needed but your own capabilities are what will allow you to win.”

Fighting ability and capability. It might seem the same but it isn’t. Fighting capability is how good you are in fight but capability is more. It’s how you can think several steps ahead, how you can use your environment, when to use potions, what gear to use and much more. Fights are not so easy. Opponent with lowers stats and level can defeat someone with higher. Master was always saying this.

“Now then, let the first fight of the second round begin.”

Now that I think about it, why isn’t there a stage for Void users like me? Isn’t this discrimination?

The cube started to show numbers and when two were picked, the competitors went to stage. The first one was someone I know quite well, Sani. Her opponent was a fire mage and because she is a fire mage as well and the arena is placed in fire stage, it should be quite a match.

Now that I think about it, even though such matches are exciting, they are, in a sense, boring. I then decided to train while watching. There’s not much I can do and if I would start releasing magic then I would probably be in deep trouble and they could think I tried to sabotage the match. I pondered about this problem a little and decided on what I will do.

I chose to train my mana control. This skill increases the effectiveness and speed of all mana related abilities, magic included so pretty much everything I do. No matter what skill, it all depends on mana. Some skills are said to not need any mana but that’s not true. The better your mana is, even though some skills won’t consume it, they will get stronger.

One of such skills is my Shock Absorption. Any physical damage is diminished and no mana is necessary to activate it but when I am hit, mana inside my body will position itself to increase the effectiveness, diminishing the damage even more. The problem with this is how fast it can congregate around the hit. I don’t have any control about it and that’s where mana control comes in. I can change the flow and the amount of mana wherever I want so if I would do that, the mana that will be used with shock absorption would be greater. The problem comes with the speed and stability when I control the mana inside my body, henceforth why I want to train with it. Side effects to mana control is that my affinity to mana allows me to even purify mana and increase my affinity during it. Affinity increases pretty well but purity is miniscule but still something.

I started with my training, increasing flow, decreasing, creating two different flows in one mana vein, changing position’s, density and much more. I even created strings of mana in my veins because I thought it would help with mana manipulation.

I probably did not explain the difference between the two skills. Mana control is just controlling your mana, nothing more to it. Mana manipulation allows you to shape mana. These two skills are mutually beneficent but one is more for internal use and the other for external. What would be the point of shaping your mana to ball in your mana veins?

It was a long time since I thought about these two skills. Those are basics you learn in first class of control but when you think about it, they are the strongest skills that you can get.

Will it be possible to remotely control my magic with high enough rank in mana control? Something to think about.

Anyway, while I was thinking such things, the fight already started. Sani wrapped her fists in flames and quickly dashed towards her opponent or at least she wanted to. Sand did not really allow her to move so well and rather hindered her movements. Her hand slipped and as she was falling down, she was hit by fireball.

As a fire mage she has resistance to fire so not much damage happened but she still flew away and rolled from dunes. Her opponent did not wait and used fire pillars against her. This spell has a great weakness with showing where it will land. So it’s easy to dodge it and Sani did just that by wrapping her legs in fire and hitting the ground. The explosion that happened, resulted in pushing her out of the way of fire pillars and the blast hindering the view of her opponent. She appeared from the sand, but due to the distance. Her opponent did not let her approach or at least, it should have happened thanks to his fire wall but Sani release the flames around her hands as missiles, blasting the opponent away and knocking him down. This spell is more like fire shock wave, so her opponent tried to stand but staggered.

Sani was closing the distance by wrapping her legs in flames, producing intense heat and propelling herself with small blasts whenever she stepped. They were just 2 meters apart when her opponent released flame all around him, making her stop.

She jumped up with an explosion helping her and went past the flames. Her opponent was low on mana after this and when she landed right next to him, he conceded.

The next few fights were much more boring and Lili won easily again. Irel had troubles because he fought against earth mage on water stage but won with some troubles. Ranks 1 and 2 easily defeated their opponents and finally, it was the last fight, my fights.

As I went to the arena, what awaited me was the wind stage. Stages were really simple designed.

Fire was desert.

Water was swamp.

Earth was mountain terrain.

In my case it was wind. Wind was open arena with nowhere to hide but with storm raging above our heads with lightning and such. The wind was blowing throughout the whole arena.

My opponent was a water mage and a beauty to the boot.

When the countdown ended, I created several mana balls and send them at her. She created a water shield around her and nothing much happened but I closed some distance between us. Water lances were fired at me and even some water bullets. I dodged them all with phantom steps and was almost flying in the air.

Ground was soaked at some places and water javelins attacked me. It was easy to dodge them and I concentrated mana through my whole right hand. When I was done, I concentrated it and just thought the length of my arm where my pinky was. With a movement of my arm and careful timing of releasing the mana from it. A mana blade appeared and like a sickle went to her water shield. Mana blade could not penetrate it but created a gap in it and because I fired mana ball directly behind it, it pierced through and hit her. Water shield disappeared and I was already too close for her to cast it again.

Before I could knock her down, I was hit from behind by water ball and send flying at her. Water lances were created and I would be like a hedgehog if I would land. I surround my hand with my Void mana and release a Void blast. It destroyed all lances and because void mana saps mana or willpower you could say, she started to be exhausted and I released mana from my feet to increases my speed and pushed her down.

I created mana ball in my hand and when she saw that, she conceded.

I still can’t understand how the water ball could hit me from behind. Even if it was sent before I hit her with my combo of mana blade and mana ball it, should have disappeared and she shouldn’t be able to control it.

The second round ended and from 50 only 25 competitor’s remained. There was one hour of free time to take a break and get back stamina.

First thing I did was that I asked Lili, Sani and Irel how I was hit. They just said they couldn’t see it properly and I learnt nothing at all. I will need to ask the girl in question.

We should have gone to eat something but I went to the medical ward. When I got there, just as I put my hand on the handle and wanted to open them, the door opened and the girl in question was before me. She was startled but quickly calmed down.

“Hi, I wanted to ask you something, do you have time?”

As I said that she looked at me and just went past me. I went after her.

“Of course you don’t really need to tell me for free. What do you say I would invite you to eat something? I’ll pay.”

She stopped, looked at me and went straight to the booth and bought the sweet water melon I already had. We went from stall to stall and after a while, my black card started to hurt. She ate so much I did not know where it went. Thankfully after 2 more stalls, she went to sit at the bench and just looked at me. Food still in her hands.

She was eating and I just waited for her to finish.

“What do you want to know?”

Finally.

“How did you attack me with the water ball from behind?”

“It’s secret.”

“Then you should not have eaten all those things with my money.”

She looked at me and put sweet rolls in her mouth one after another. I just waited. It’s no problem to me anyway. I’m patient guy.

“I condensed the water in the atmosphere and let it rode on the wind currents.”

“Yeah, that does not sound like something we should be able to do.”

“That’s why it is secret.”

“And because I won so easily you must be pissed off at me and so you wanted to take revenge with my wallet.”

“You invited.”

“Yeah. Thanks for the help and as apology I will treat you to something once more.”

She did not answer but if she will come to take this chance then I will treat her to something. If not, than no problem to me.

A lot of time went by and so I went back to my seat, waiting for the third round.

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Those of you who did not read author’s corner in last chapter should do so.

And I found a proofreader so everyone should give thanks to Vietxtreme

Hope you enjoyed.

PR: Hope you enjoyed this chapter!