Sasha also summoned her white bird, the Snow Garuda. The bird immediately gave Sparky a glare when she came out, which Sparky simply ignored. This type of bird hates snakes with a passion. If Sasha wasn’t there to control it, it would undoubtedly try to rip Sparky apart.

As Sasha climbed her bird and rose to the air, Reyal enchanted everyone with several spells and Zellin summoned some enchantment spirits.

“Reyal, what does the scouter say about their power level?” Zellin asked, with an eager grin.

“It’s over 9000.” Reyal replied dryly, not seeing the point, but Zellin told him to say it earlier, and he really didn’t care.

Zellin began to laugh. Fuck, I love that show, Zellin thought to himself.

“But seriously, these guys are all Level 8 Warriors.” Reyal responded.

Earlier in the year, Reyal got a job to fix the enchantments at a local bathhouse near their house, which served to keep the water hot and produce bubbles. When Reyal heard of this magical public bath, he naturally spent some time peaking on the women’s side of the bathhouse.

Reyal would sneak in when no one was around and hide behind a bush, waiting for women to come in. But one day, he was appalled to see that some old man took his hiding spot. Reyal pretended to be an angry employee to hide his shame and the old man got scared of becoming exposed so he offered him an apprenticeship to keep Reyal quiet.

The old man actually turned out to be one of those rare, reclusive Scribesmen, who spent their lives analyzing and recording other people's skills into skill books that they made available to the public. Since class colleges would be so secretive with their skills, there were naturally people like the old man who wanted to learn those skills.

Although class skills were usually immediately bought by their respective colleges, Scribesmen still managed to make money. Actually, the fact that Zellin was able to get his desired Contract skill before getting his class, was pretty lucky as getting a class skill outside of a college would usually require certain connections.

Eventually, through his newfound apprenticeship, Reyal learned the skill Insightful Eye, which allowed him to analyze basic skills and people’s levels and classes. At higher levels they could even analyze the flow of mana in people’s levels.

“Whatever,” Zellin replied nonchalantly before casually suggesting, “Blitz?”

“Fine, but we have like 8 minutes. My mana will run out at that time.” Reyal replied, also not caring too much about it.

“You guys ready?” The referee asked, receiving nods from both teams. “Right, begin.” He said as he got out of the way.

The first thing to reach the other team was a hail of arrows from above. With Reyal’s enchantment and her natural skill, Sasha’s hand was a blur as she drew three arrows at a time and released them in her bow in an instant, before continuing to send three more in the next instant.

The second thing to reach the other team was Zellin, who was not only enchanted by Reyal, but also his own enchantment spirits, along with his Sprint skill. As the other team struggled as hard as they could to block the arrows with only their swords while occasionally getting shot, Zellin came in as a blur, thrusting out with his quarterstaff, and using the impact of his quarterstaff hitting his opponent square in the chest, to stop before the enemy team.

Zellin’s opponent was thrown into the air, traveling a large distance, and almost falling off the stage. But before this unfortunate person could let out a sigh of relief, multiple arrows pierced his body as he became Sasha’s only target, for her fear of accidentally hitting Zellin. The person let out a begrudged wail as he threw himself off the platform.

As this happened, the other team had realized the arrows were gone and immediately turned to attack Zellin, but Reyal and Coral joined the party and picked out their opponents while Zellin defended against the other two.

Then Liu, Leggy, Rocky, Sparky, and Sasha’s dire wolf came, and, well, you can guess the rest…

“We concede! We concede!” The other team yelled after finding themselves being beaten to the ground.

“Team Ravage concedes, Las Cucarachas wins!” The referee announced.

The sparse crowd couldn’t help but have some complaints.

“Isn’t that a little unfair? Their team has two Summoners!” One person complained.

“Half the battle was before the actual battle when they were summoning their pets and enchanting each other. They shouldn’t have been given that time.” Someone else said.

“Are those guys really Level 5?”

Zellin and his friends levels might make people assume that they’re weak, but their stats were comparable to regular Level 9s thanks to constant training, and their skill levels were possibly higher than some Level 10s. And though it might be unfortunate, the group’s style of fighting half the battle before the actual battle, was all within the rules.

“Hmm, not bad,” Zellin said, pleased. “I wonder how long we can keep this up?” He asked. Zellin usually had a negative predisposition towards the future, thus his uncaring attitude. He always expects life to fuck him somehow, especially if things were going well.

Their next battle, a couple days later…

Sasha didn’t have time for a preemptive attack. The enemy’s archer immediately targeted Sasha, with a slightly lower speed and skill than her, but nonetheless, it managed to hinder Sasha’s actions. As Sasha’s Snow Garuda was an elite beast, even considering its low level, it was able to easily dodge the incoming arrows and block whatever managed to close in, but this slowed Sasha’s rate of fire. Sasha grew annoyed, and the enemy archer unfortunately drew her focus.

The enemy mage had also began the attack with the enemy archer, she held out her staff and electricity gathered at the blue pearl staff head before releasing the skill Chain Lightning which bolted out of the staff and headed straight for Zellin.

Zellin reacted quickly, using a trick he had recently discovered, his contracted shield in his inventory was summoned out and was immediately equipped by Zellin.

Reyal wasn’t slow either, casting an earth element enchantment on Zellin, causing a layer of stone to grow on Zellin’s shield.

Zellin aimed the shield as the Chain Lightning clashed against its rocky surface; though the stone absorbed much of the lightning, Zellin still felt the shield grow hot and a shock run through his body. Zellin shrugged it off and called out to his friends. “Time it well,” he said.

Zellin, his friends, and their small army of pets, ran forward at a steady pace, unlike their previous battle’s all out sprint, straight towards the warrior in the middle.

Zellin led the charge, as he was wary of the mage, and he was also the only one with a shield. But the charge would only take a couple seconds, so it wasn’t of paramount importance unless the mage had a secret insta-spell that had some intense effects. But as the mage saw there was going to be a heated fight, she began to gather storm clouds; this spell would take longer than a couple seconds. She was hoping for the warriors to hold out for a little longer.

The other two warriors that held back at the sides grew worried as they saw the charge, and immediately rushed to help, making it to their companion’s side just as Zellin and his friends arrived. But just as they arrived, Coral and Reyal leaped high into the air with the support of Reyal’s enchantments, over the knights, and began sprinting towards the mage.

Unfortunately, the enemy warriors couldn’t be bothered with it, as they had their own fight to worry about as Zellin and the pets arrived. Fucking kids, one of them thought. You’re out of your league; this tournament wasn’t made for Level 5s!

Though this might be true for Zellin’s slightly weaker pets, Zellin and his friends had more than enough right to fight on this stage, which they immediately proved as the enemy warriors became overwhelmed seconds after they began to clash.

And by this time, Sasha had dealt with the archer, forcing him off the stage, and the enemy mage, was similarly dealt with, becoming beaten to a pulp.

“Hmm, maybe we’re better than I thought.” Zellin wondered to himself.

The third match was more challenging.

They enemy team was composed of a dark mage, a priest, a hunter, and two heavily armored knights with lances and shields.

The first thing the enemy did was distort their eyesight with the priest’s spell, while the dark mage slowed their movement, causing some irritation among Zellin and his friends.

But they responded as best as they could. Sasha’s Snow Garuda, Hail, jumped off the ground and began to take flight as Liu hopped up on its back and Coral grabbed on to its leg. With the Reyal’s enchantments basically cancelling the dark mage’s slow effect, and Hail’s natural overwhelming speed, Liu and Coral swiftly found themselves at the other side of the platform while Zellin began the charge.

The two knights hesitated for a moment, before falling back to defend against Liu and Coral. But even though they weren’t being slowed by any spell, their heavy armor, lances and shields, caused their reaction to be somewhat lacking. By the time their lances were in range, Liu had already knocked their hunter into unconsciousness and Coral had forced the dark mage off the stage, while the priest managed to run off to the side; although their eyesight was hindered, it wasn't to the point where they would mistake their targets for something else.

Liu would be able to manage the fight with the knights quite well, but Coral would have to struggle as her daggers’ range was negligible in this fight. Luckily, Zellin arrived at this time and with his help they managed to defend against the knights, while Reyal took care of the priest.

Then, in the end, like their other fights, they managed to win because of their overwhelming numbers.

Though the audience hated the way Zellin’s group won their matches, they couldn’t keep their eyes away from their overwhelming charge, which brought in even more spectators to grumble about Zellin’s team and their unfair advantage in numbers. In this way, Las Cucarachas earned some fame as ‘that horde of fucking cockroaches.’

Eventually, Las Cucarachas made it to the top 14, where they would be forced to fight in duels involving only one person from their team, along with the team match. The team match was worth 2 points, and the duals would continue until a team won 3 matches, for one point each.

When it came time for their next match, Zellin and his friends had come early to watch the other matches and see what level the top 14 was at, but Zellin wasn’t really in the mood so he went to competitor’s lounge to take a nap.

When Zellin walked in he saw that someone else in a black robe was already napping on one of the couches. Zellin ignored it and chose a couch to lay on.

Soon Zellin was in a deep sleep, dreaming about cockroaches.

“Ah… no… no… I can’t die… cockroaches are… invincible! Ugh? Ah?” Zellin exclaimed as he abruptly woke himself up. Shit, how long have I been sleeping? Zellin asked himself.

Zellin got up and saw that black robed kid staring at him from the other couch. “You’re weird.” He said dryly.

“Screw you, you’re weird.” Zellin retorted.

“You’re that summoner from that cockroach team, right?” The kid said.

“Yeah, you?” Zellin asked casually.

“Nell, necromancer.” He replied, just as casually.

“Hmm, so we’re like the same.” Zellin said, comparing their classes.

“Yeah, we both have others do our fighting for us.” Nell replied frankly, immediately causing some annoyance in Zellin. Screw you, he thought. I fight all the time.

“You’re level?” Zellin asked.

“9, you?” Nell said, continuing on in that casual tone.

“You’re level 9? But you’re like my age; how often do you level?” Zellin replied, avoiding revealing his level, as he was quite embarrassed about it.

“I don’t really level. Most of the time I’m putting together skeletons, which I send out in the wilderness to get experience for me. They die a lot, but it works.” Nell responded.

Zellin’s mouth twitched as he heard this. For some reason this kid is pissing me off, he thought.

“Hey, is that girl Coral on your team?” Nell suddenly asked.

“Yeah, what of it.” Zellin responded.

“I heard that she’s the daughter of the king.” Nell said with curiosity.

“Where’d you hear that?” Zellin said, becoming slightly defensive. “And why’d you want to know?”

“Oh, no reason.” Nell said nonchalantly. “It’s just that it’s always been my dream to get with a princess.”

Zellin’s face twitched again, and was just about to teach this kid a lesson when Liu entered the room.

“Zellin, we’re up.” Liu called out.

“Au revoir, asshole, I’m out.” Zellin said to Nell as he headed out of the room. It’s probably better if I don’t attract attention to Coral’s status anyway, lest some kidnapping situation or something occurs, Zellin thought silently, already regretting not beating this little pervert into a pulp.

Unknown to Zellin, Nell’s eyes were wide in shock. Was that French? Is there even a French language in this world? There is English… Damn, if I could only google it... Nell began to wonder.