Just as Melena said, his next two fights were simple, though not easy. The person slated to have been second place without upsets was a large woman wearing gold armor and wielding an unrealistically large golden axe, while third place wielded a polearm and used magic to supplement his combat. Up next was the melee burst fighter, which, without any tactics or skill from either party, should have been be able to tear through Degritone's relatively low maximum Health before his Regeneration could matter.

They wore nothing more than shorts and took a limp-fingered fighting stance.

Round 37 begin!

The instant combat began, Degritone leaned back as fast as he could and his opponent's fist flew through where his head had been and sent out a short beam of purple energy, which caught Degritone's forehead, tearing apart his armor and exposing bone. His pupils dilated and he continued his backward momentum into an upward kick. His now-spiked ankle made contact with his opponent's balls just as his opponent's non-accelerated mind realized he'd missed his first punch.

As his opponent's feet left the ground, he sent a punch into Degritone's leg, the beam severing it off his body. He began actively utilizing his Young Immortal Troll image and his flesh explosively regrew, now gray. His opponent, having forgone both Endurance and Vitality for raw Strength and Agility, was clutching his bleeding balls as he got close enough to the ground to strike with Degritone's sword. He sent a thrust upward at his opponent, but he took one hand off his balls to punch the sword to the side.

Degritone tried to get a slash in from his new position, but the attack was interrupted by his opponent punching the air in front of him to send a beam through Degritone's neck. Before his head could begin to fall, his next explosively regrew with gray flesh. The pain of being decapitated, though, caused him to be unable to put enough force behind the slash and his opponent safely landed.

He immediately appeared in front of Degritone with his fist already punching Degritone's face. Gray flesh and bone regrew as quickly as the beam could tear through Degritone's face, blowing his opponent's arm back and allowing him to get a single, full power slash off into his opponent's side, returning him to Melena's side. "I'm honestly surprised he survived the first hit," she said. "He put more into Endurance than I thought, maybe half his Free Stats instead of 20-30 total."

Degritone shrugged after he regenerated his body and they returned to their comfortable silence. The next eight rounds were uneventful as he slowly mastered his image more and more, each fight getting easier as he was now fighting weaker and weaker opponents while also learning to better bring his image to reality, though they were not trivial like most of the first many rounds had been.

His next two fights were slated to be against his worst match up: Agility-based ranged opponents. If he couldn't get in within 60 feet of them, the range of his Omens, he could do nothing. Aura Manipulation was terrible for enhancing the range of auras, only increasing the range of his Bloody Aura by around 4 feet if he optimally changed his Aura, so that wasn't an option, either.

As he entered the slow world of the clearing, Degritone had an idea that he wasn't certain of. His opponent was a human wielding an already spinning sling and wearing leather armor with a basket slung on their back, one arm already reaching for one of the many metallic balls within. "Your lucky streak ends-" they began to say, very slowly to Degritone's 17 times faster brain.

Round 46 begin!

"-now," they continued as a metal ball left their sling at mach 8. Degritone implemented his idea and tried to materialize a 1-foot-thick box of AR500 around his opponent, but it came up short as he accidentally caught his opponent's shot mid-air as it appeared around 25 feet from Degritone. He began to run toward his opponent at his maximum speed. "-knight!" His opponent finished as they launched a second ball.

The first ball impacted the box's closer edge and the metal buckled in slow motion before finally giving way to the now-glowing cyan metal ball. Degritone was already out of the way of its trajectory, and the second shot quickly impacted and pierced the box as a third shot was released.

As Degritone rounded the box and reentered his opponent's line of sight, they noticed him in a few fractions of a second of real time and began aiming where Degritone would be at, including the ball's travel time and spin-up time, with his current trajectory and speed. As Degritone switched his angle, his opponent shot off another ball and began moving to as far away as possible, but staying in the clearing. Even in slowed time, his opponent was ridiculously fast.

Given the size of the clearing, even if Degritone stood perfect center, he would still be 40 feet out of range. So, he began running away. The balls were moving too fast for Swordsman's Territory to be useful, so he simply ran backward, then jumped out of the way when his opponent had spun up his next attack. A few of them impacted the trees behind him, making one of them begin to fall.

It was no danger to his system-improved self and it would have hit him, anyway, so he continued. With one last jump, he was in the trees and before his opponent could spin up an attack, he was out of sight. A ball whizzed through the air near where he was, so he ran at an angle a few hundred feet away while figuring out exactly what to materialize to get him underground as fast as possible with as little visible damage to the ground.

He was certain he wouldn't be able to manage a black hole, which would have been optimal, so he settled for simply using two long spikes to pierce the ground and rotate around each other to produce a large, cone-shaped hole. It took a bit more force than he thought it would, but he was able to create a 10-foot deep hole. He pulled the dirt up with the spikes, materialized a heavy ball to compact the dirt under the hole just enough to fit him, and jumped in, dismissing the spikes and ball so the dirt fell on him.

With 10 feet between him and ground-level, he still had 5 feet of his 15-foot radius of Swordsman's Territory to detect when his opponent enters his range. Given how little he'd traveled, it actually took a surprisingly long time, almost an entire 10 minutes, for his opponent to walk into his trap. Degritone materialized 5-foot thick AR500 box around his opponent and punched himself out of the dirt above him.

The box was already dented by the time the box had entered Degritone's sight, and he began casting Omen of Pestilence inside the box over and over. On his 8th cast, the box was pierced, followed almost immediately by his chest. On his 9th cast, he was back in his and Melena's room.

"What are you going to do about the next opponent? They likely watched your match since it took so long, so I doubt that strategy will work on them."

Degritone shrugged. "We'll see. Can this room extend to the 200 feet of the clearing?"

Melena tapped her foot on the ground twice and the far wall extended rapidly until it was 200 feet away from Degritone. He tapped to make it extend another 10 feet so he'd have room to properly surround his opponent his opponent. Nodding, he tapped the couch twice to extend its back a bit and rotated so his legs went over its back and he dangled his head off the front of the couch.

Melena straddled Degritone's torso so her legs could properly fall over the edge of the couch and created a few pillows to out between Degritone's legs and her back to watch her protege be insane in comfort. Unlike all the times before, Degritone's training actually had a visual component as, using his over 17 times as fast processing of the world, he rapidly materialized and dismissed metal boxes as far from himself as he could.

After almost 4 subjective hours of training, Degritone had gotten the center of the box to appear a little over 58 feet from him, more than double what he'd done in the previous fight, and he was broken out of his groove by Melena tapping his throat twice and saying, "Almost time. Suit up," at a pace matching his time acceleration.

"Well, that didn't work," he said as he stood up.

His opponent was wielding a bow and wearing civilian clothing, an arrow already notched. Degritone tried to remember the exact speed of an arrow, but quickly dismissed the thought, since even if he could outrun a normal arrow, the system existed. His opponent drew his bow back, reaching full draw just as the round started.

Round 47 begin!

Fractions of a second, even to Degritone's sped up time, after the announcement, his opponent released their shot and Degritone jumped to the side. The arrow caught his upper arm and pierced straight through without even slowing down. He materialized as thick of a wall as he could between him and his opponent, roughly 11 feet of AR500. The next arrow pierced through, but was slow enough for Degritone to fully dodge.

Through the hole it created, he saw his opponent step back and seemingly meld into the trees. An arrow pierced the side of Degritone's thigh and he materialized a 7-foot thick box around himself. Using the amount the arrows slowed down while piercing the box and his Swordsman's Territory, he was able to dodge most of the incoming arrows, but still getting hit enough to have been losing Mana to Revitalize and Adaptive Palisade faster than he was regenerating it.

As holes were made, he materialized them closed so his opponent couldn't use them to see his exact position. It somewhat helped, but it wasn't enough and he had to figure out how to deal with this guy in a timely manner. Having an idea, he let a couple arrows hit his left wrist to cut off his hand fully, then actively utilized his Young Immortal Troll image to regenerate it, getting gray flesh in return.

While still dodging, he began tapping his fingers into his thumb, one at a time, from pinky to pointer as fast as he could with his normal right hand and noted how fast he could do it. Then, he did so with his left hand. It seemed to be about the same speed, but he soon put his idea into motion and, rather than directing the muscles to do it, he imagined doing it as fast as he could while instructing the system to make it real. His fingers snapped off and his thumb snapped in half from the force generated.

They quickly grew back and Degritone knew exactly what to do. It would hurt, but he knew it would work. He willingly let his legs get cut off, requiring four painful arrows each, before regenerating them with his Young Immortal Troll image. When the next arrow entered his Swordsman's Territory, he immediately reacted by dematerializing the box and imagining his legs sending him flying in the direction the arrow came from, directing the system to do so.

Degritone's legs ripped off painfully as he was launched through multiple trees. He felt something soft not long after the 33rd impact with a tree. It took him three more tree impacts move his eyes far enough to see his right shoulder had caught his opponent. Blood was still spurting from their back when they hit another tree, this time slow enough to come to an abrupt stop, rather than plowing through it.

Degritone materialized as thick of a box around the two of them as he could as they fell, then he cast his Omens as he brought his sword around for an up right slash. His opponent kicked off him before the slash could connect, but Degritone stopped his swing, kicked off the far wall of the box, and turned the missed slash into a flying thrust, which pierced through his opponent just as the box hit the ground.

Degritone used his opponent's momentum to assist an upward slash through his opponent, which caused him to return to Melena. Degritone dismissed his image and cast Revitalize enough times to get back to full health before blood could get anywhere. "You truly are crazy," Melena said.

"Yes," Degritone said.

"How did you know that would work?" She asked, sitting on his stomach as he laid back down.

"I didn't. Troll flesh is just as useful as normal flesh, so even if it hadn't worked, turning my left hand into troll flesh would have only come at the cost of pain and some Health. Since it did work," Degritone shrugged, "I won and now know a new trick. A painful one, sure, but still one to surprise people who didn't see that fight."

After a few minutes of being in silence together, Degritone said, "Oh, hey. Could I use the world gate token to connect our worlds? I assume it's a permanent teleport platform."

"You are correct, but it does not merely connect two worlds. It allows anyone to visit, so long as they know of your world and have a level equal to or less than that of the highest level person to originate from your world, and to leave to visit other worlds with their world gate made. When you win, alongside all the performances from people of your world so far, people should know not to mess with your world, but will definitely know of it.

"For being introduced such a short time ago, your world's performance is really good. 4 of you in the top 128, almost 50 of you in the top 1024, and the only times you were eliminated before the top one million, forty-eight thousand, five hundred seventy-six were when you fought one another. It's one of the best performances of any individual world ever, not to mention it's your world's first appearance at the tournament.

"I suspect, once you open that gate, people will flock to your world to meet the original denizens of the most dominant world in recent history. Personally, I would wait a long while so people stop talking about your world, or wait for everything to become organized again, before you open the planet to all visitors. Right now, only Patrons and a handful of people over level 80 have the power to visit your world.

"Opening the flood gates before your world is organizationally prepared would be a bad move, I believe, but you're the one who's lived on your world. What I have stated is not an order, simply me informing you of what I would do in your situation, without knowing the whole picture."

Degritone thought for a bit and decided to wait until he'd had control of the entire world to make the gate, then nodded.

His next four fights were simple yet again. Finally, it was time for the finals. On the opposite side of the clearing was a man wearing definitively Earth clothes. He was a somewhat lanky 18, maybe 19 year old. "This is the guy, chat," Degritone heard his opponent say in a 40 year old chain smoker voice. Right before the announcement hit, he saw what he recognized to be Minecraft's diamond helmet appear in his opponent's right hand before disappearing and appearing in smooth 3D atop his opponent's head.

The same rapidly repeated for a full suit of diamond armor, making his opponent fully clad in armor of blue with shimmering purple. Two oddly shaped glass vials were thrown unnaturally at his opponent's feet, one with a magenta liquid and another with a dark purple liquid.

Final round begin!