146 Climbing The Ranks

"Ranked twelve hundred, Elizabeth Ultimatia and ranked one thousand fifty, Jorge Hernandez, please take to the arena." Naturally, as the lowest ranked competitor for the King Stage division, Elizabeth was the first to fight in the King Stage division. Originally she intended to challenge the person ranked first and move on to a "real" challenge right away, but because of the ruling, she was forced to undergo eight battles to take first place. But, the possibility of having to defend her first place position was still very real, so nine battles were the new expected minimum. Still, all was not for the worst as she would be exposed to a couple more light workouts before she confronted the real deal in the Saint Division.

Elizabeth jumped back on the arena and measured up her opponent to be a Beginner Phase King Stage Practitioner. Again, refusing to use her weapons, she easily disabled her opponent with what was thought to be an unfair speed. That base movement speed of hers, which was comparable to a Late Phase King, combined with her knowledge of cultivator anatomy made her impossible to deal with to those slower than her and a nightmare to those on the same level.

This remained the case for two more matches, which came by ridiculously close to one another. Because most of the competitive competitors were already rather high up in the rankings Elizabeth didn't have to sit through a match after her first one against Jorge. Simply staying on the arena's elevated competing platform and tossing his body to his faction as she had with Hu Zemin in the Warrior Division, her next fight against the 900th ranked King took place. Then she only waited for another round before having to confront the 750th ranked King.

Sitting through an "astounding" two more fights, when Elizabeth fought against the 600th ranked King she was finally forced to use a second move to win; it only took a Mid Phase King with Earth Qi to force her hand… Then as the number of fights began to pick up, Elizabeth could finally take a break and recover some energy through meditation. Though, given the fact that she had only used six moves total in the five fights she had fought virtually back to back, she hadn't exhausted much energy to begin with, only stamina; a negligent amount of stamina.

Upon leaving a meditation session that essentially restored her back to her peak state, Elizabeth opened her eyes to see members one and two of her Undying Loyalty Club. "Mhmm… I'm guessing you guys got a pretty high ranking." Was the only thing Elizabeth could say as that was her conclusion when comparing Sun and Jane's capabilities as extreme path cultivators to the rest of the King Stage competitors. Even if they weren't Peak Phase Kings, by virtue of their absurd extreme path abilities, they ought to be able to outperform the average Peak Phase King. Sun more so than Jane as his path of extreme physically granted him to overwhelming advantage in one on one combat. But, as a flip-side to that coin, Jane was better suited to long-range combat against multiple enemies.

Making small talk with Sun and Jane it was as Elizabeth theorized. Jane held up her badge quite proudly, in it the number 15 was boldly imprinted, while Sun sulked with his measly rank of 80.

"It's not fair! You! You could easily isolate and take on whatever enemies you want with that ridiculous Ice Domain of yours!" As someone who had fought with her to secure a gift for Elizabeth, Sun knew of that horrifying ability Jane possessed with regards to Ice manipulation. Though her Spiritual Breakthrough was most useful as an auxiliary support to cultivation, with her connection to the spiritual energy in the environment, Jane could act as like a Spirit Realm practitioner and manifest energy outside her body.

"Che! You shouldn't complain… After all, I'd do anything for a body as ridiculous as yours." Caught in the heat of the argument neither Jane nor Sun noticed but Elizabeth was quietly chuckling at the comment. Jane continued, "Forget the healing ability the entirety of your body possesses, with just your strength, speed, and defense, you're physically perfect..."

"Yeah? Well, what good is a perfect body with regeneration and all when I get overwhelmed by several enemies much stronger than myself?"

"Tsk. Tsk. The same thing anyone else would do… You run, surrender yourself, or die. But, given the nature of the Testing Formation, I guess we only had one option, didn't we?" Becoming quiet as she recalled the feeling of dying in the Testing Formation, both Jane and Sun stopped their bickering.

Though it only took a couple moments before the sour mood around them was cured as Sun suddenly asked, "So… What score'd you get?" Ears perking in anticipation as well, Jane left her slump as she too wished to know how high her friend had gone in the Testing Formation.

"Oh, I finished the test. Although I only won after a murder-suicide as a final resort, I beat the last phase of the Saint Stage." Elizabeth wasn't supposed to tell any of the other competitors, but she didn't at all care if Sun and Jane knew. Warning them to not reveal this bit of information would be all that was required to keep her score a secret. Besides... If people didn't already ascertain there was something off about her abilities, her words, everything really... They may as well be children as they possessed a capacity for deduction similar to that of a child.

Of course, hearing this bit of news would stun anyone; Sun and Jane more than most as they knew where Elizabeth came from. Three weeks was all it took for Elizabeth to become so strong? Her cultivation while ridiculous could be explained by the Dimensional Upgrade, but that transcendental combat prowess of hers was unfathomable. Rightfully dubious, Jane asked, "You killed 16 Peak Phase Saint Stage Shadows?"

In response, Elizabeth bit her lip before saying, "At the cost of my life in the Testing Formation; yes..." She knew for a fact that she could have won without dying in the end if she had wisely used her Cold Flames more effectively or if she had used the 6th Chaos Seal of Augmentation instead of the 5th, but the past couldn't be changed and neither could her results.

"..."

Not knowing what else to add, everyone kept quiet as the fights progressed. A couple fights of people unrelated to her took place before Elizabeth watched Irene defend her impressive standing at 515th place. Irene won the defensive battle and Elizabeth couldn't help but praise her in her thoughts. Knowing that Irene was at the Peak of the Warrior Stage when she alighted the yacht just yesterday, it was impressive that she not only broke through to the King Stage and consolidated her cultivation within a short 24 hours, but going on to perform at the standard for Mid Phase King Stage practitioners was ridiculous in its own right.

Then until her next battle against the person ranked 450th took place, Elizabeth silently watched on at the increasingly exciting fights that unfolded before her. Unlike the Shadows of the Testing formation that lacked the aptitude to use energy for anything aside from strengthening their bodies and attacking in coordination, real King Stage practitioners offered her a wealth of strategy and tactics to learn from and though Elizabeth could still rather easily disable and even kill most of the people around the current Mid Phase King Stage level, she had much she could learn from them as well.

Thus, even if her time to cultivate was taken as there were too many distractions to meditate for even a couple minutes without waking, Elizabeth found a way to make use of her time sitting idle. She also couldn't detract from the fact that it truly was entertaining watching two people beat each other until one came out a victor; the added effect of flashy Qi tricks was also cool…

"Ranked six hundred, Elizabeth Ultimatia and..." The announcer called Elizabeth and her next victi… opponent to the stage and after going through the courtesies and calling the match to start, Elizabeth's opponent wasted no time to get the fight going as he materialized two Tommy Guns into each of his hands and began to lay waste to everything behind Elizabeth.

Sadly the surprise Tommy Gun dual assault didn't accomplish much aside from causing the Defensive Barrier Formation to manifest for the tenth time throughout the course of the Event. With a dome-like translucent barrier lighting up every time a bullet missed Elizabeth and hit its surface, the crowd was treated to a nice little light show as Elizabeth came out unscathed from the all-out assault of her opponent. Even with Fire Qi igniting the special gunpowder in the bullets and shooting off with muzzle velocities surpassing several thousand miles per hour, Elizabeth's opponent only succeeded in causing Elizabeth's dress to wave erratically if anything…

Her Timeworn eyes and base movement speed were more than enough to dodge the hundreds of bullets that were fired at her from a distance and she even had the wherewithal to make her way closer to her opponent amidst the chaotic bullet-storm. Though, if she wished to make it all the over to reaching distance, she needed to bring out her blade and use blade arts to elevate speed even more so. Thus she did so and within the second, the shooting spree stopped as Elizabeth took a couple steps to get within killing distance with her blade hugging her opponent's jugular vein.

Cautiously blurting out, "I give up..." The owner of the Tommy Guns began nervously sweating as Elizabeth had been applying a steadily increasing pressure on his neck as neither he had called it quits, nor had the judge told her to stop. Hearing those magical words, Elizabeth dematerialized her Inferioria blade back to the space in her TransIllusionary Return Enchantment and merrily walked off the stage. She was completely unfazed by the several hundred cartridges left on the arena and the fact that this was her first time engaging another gun user didn't even cross her mind.

Returning to Jane and Suns' sides, the two became a bit more believing in the possibility that she really might have reached the Final Phase of the Saint Stage as the speed she displayed to close in on the machine-gun wielding opponent definitely transcended the King Stage.