"Hehe, what are these little flames for? To better light the stage? I suppose I agree with you, it's still darker than it should be. Unfortunately that's all that your flames will do, since I very much doubt that it'll cause me any kind of damage," Bobby said in a boastful and confident way while looking at the flames that Noah was summoning as if they was nothing much, trying to look like he was just being arrogant. But in fact, he was doing it just for the purpose of making Noah waste even more energy.
Better than anyone else, Bobby had clearly realized how dangerous Noah's dagger was, but he didn't know how much energy Noah had expended to make that dagger, so he couldn't tell if he was at the advantage or the disadvantage if things were to become a struggle of wear and tear. But to his happiness, Noah volunteered to apparently "waste energy" by creating these useless little flames around the field, probably trying to get those little flames to burn Bobby's body until it drained all the fat he had.
But in Bobby's view, that was the stupidest choice Noah could have made, since even that well condensed dagger of flames had only wiped out some of his fat. How much really could those little flames reduce from him? At most 5 kg? But for someone like Bobby who weighed more than 180 kg, the 5 kg that these small flames would reduce would not be greatly missed. Now, on the other hand, for Noah to create these small flames, he was probably spending much more energy than that to create those dangerous flame daggers that he was holding in his hands. If these flames meant that Noah would use less daggers, Bobby was more than happy to wait for Noah to waste more and more energy on those flames to light up the arena.
The judge was getting worried, since unlike Bobby, he was still in pain. Just staying inside that arena with those dozens of flames floating around was already making him sweat like a pig. If something happened between the two fighters that forced him to intervene, he wouldn't know what to do, since the last thing he wanted to do then was touch those flames and feel as much pain as Noah's previous opponent.
At that point, the arena had so many small flames that even people in the audience were starting to feel hot. It wasn't enough that they were in a closed metal shed, now because of the flames it started to make things seem like they were in a pan being cooked as food.
"Damn... This is getting too hot..." said a fat man from the audience while swinging his shirt trying to cool off.
"Yes, damn, it looks like those flames are directed at us," said a woman as she picked up a small electric fan and pointed it at herself, attracting the jealous looks of many people around, to which she just replied with a smile and a look that said, 'If you want one, buy your own.'
"I wonder, how are such small flames managing to produce so much heat?" another man said, while using a tablet as a fan to ventilate himself.
"I don't know… but I think... if it's hot even for us who are a few meters from the stage, just imagine how hot... it must be for the three of them inside? Look at the judge's clothes," a thin man said as he perspired and pointed to the judge's outfit that was getting scorched slightly.
Among the audience there were even people using their own Blessings to cool off, which made people with Blessings of ice and wind receive looks of envy from those who were not refreshed, and looks of gratitude from close friends who were receiving part of the lowered temperature because of the proximity.
But those Blessed with fire Blessings felt that something here was strange. It was common sense that when someone had a Blessing related to fire, they would become a little immune to fire, to the point of not feeling any more heat regardless of the temperature it was at as long as it was not so high, but different from what they were used to, in this situation they were feeling as much heat as all the others, even though the cause of this was clearly the small fireballs which they would normally just ignore.
"From the reaction of the people nearby, this skill doesn't seem to be that simple," one of the old VIPs in the dark room said.
"Yes, but still, I doubt that this flame is enough to put an end to the more than 180 kg of fat that Bobby has. At most, I believe he is wasting energy on it," said an old woman in an arrogant voice as if she knew everything.
At that moment, Noah's mysterious backer once again spoke up, again contrary to the common sense of others, "Bobby shouldn't have let the boy do that. He'll lose this match for sure."
When they heard that, they couldn't help but turn to look at the person who just spoke. Every other time that person said something in favor of this boy, although being a little different than they imagined, it was still understandable, but this time they understood Bobby's Blessing very well; there was no way these little flames, as hot as they were, would be able to get rid of Bobby's fat so easily.
The person with the mysterious insight did not explain and just continued watching the fight calmly, causing the indignant old men to look at the fight again, wanting to see what this boy could do to counter their expectations.
Bobby was also starting to feel the temperature rise, but he felt no pain from staying there. For him it was more like being in a sauna, a sauna that burned his body fat little by little, but the amount of fat he burned was so low that he didn't even care about it. Although the rapid rise in temperature was really starting to scare him, which meant he didn't have time to let Noah produce more small fireballs and ran towards him, now with his leg muscles and arms strengthened, increasing his speed even more and also the strength he had, reducing Noah's room for maneuver to deflect this attack to almost nothing.
But unlike what the vast majority had imagined, Noah was not making these flames to end Bobby's fats. What he was really trying to compensate for was the difference in energy supply. Bobby had a lot of fat to turn into energy to use during the battle, and Noah had a good amount of energy in store, but not as good as Bobby's big amount of fat, so Noah just had the idea of taking that fat of Bobby's and turning it into energy for himself.
The biggest strength of [Hell Flames] was not even the ability to make the opponent feel pain and purify them, but the ability to turn the opponent into fuel to produce even more energy, burning their body and converting it into energy for the user.
So Bobby, who had a big heap of energy converted to fat and thought that was his biggest advantage, now running and touching so many floating flames in front of him, was handing part of that energy to Noah on a tray, making his biggest advantage also become Noah's greatest advantage. This had made this battle return from being a battle of resistance to a battle of technique and skill, since they would share energy. Whoever would win was whoever managed to make the other person more incapacitated before their energy ran out, although Noah had an advantage in the energy issue, since if his energy ran out, he could still take Bobby's and never run out. Bobby couldn't do the same; if his fat stores ran out, he would run out of energy and lose the match almost instantly.
To ensure infinite energy leeching, in addition to the flames that had already touched Bobby and started to burn him, Noah also controlled the rest of the flames to go towards Bobby and hit him from all sides.
If it weren't for Bobby's large size, which made the flames unable to burn him everywhere, people in the audience would have seen him as a human torch.
But Bobby wasn't feeling any of this, because the flames were burning his fat energy directly instead of burning his organs and things like that. He was just feeling less energetic over time, but he had no idea how many flames were burning him at that moment.
He had made a mistake in thinking that these flames would only consume 5 kg of his fat during the battle, but even more than that, Bobby still didn't see it as substantial, as he believed he would beat Noah before those flames had consumed the enough.
Unfortunately for him, even though the speed was now higher because of the leg muscles being strengthened, Noah was still able to dodge his attack, causing Bobby to become frustrated and spend even more energy on strengthening his legs to try to catch Noah.
Whenever Noah dodged an attack, he used the dagger to cut Bobby and leave flames to consume his energy even faster, which was becoming more and more effective, as Bobby was becoming noticeably thinner with the course of the match. He had started out as a big, fat man of over 180 kg, but now he didn't seem to weigh more than 120 kg.
Unfortunately for Noah, Bobby's weight loss also increased his speed, which made Noah unable to dodge his attacks as easily and have to fight Bobby head-on.
Despite having a high strength, Noah could not compete with Bobby who had a Blessing that directly increased Bobby's strength far more than Noah could handle.
Gradually, the fight that a moment ago seemed one-sided for Noah was changing sides and becoming advantageous for Bobby, who managed to land a few punches on Noah that made the boy back up a few steps due to having less strength than the big man.
Every punch Noah felt made him gasp and think about using [Hell Tunneling] to dodge these attacks, but he wanted to keep it as an asset, since he didn't know who he would face in the next battles, and if there were a person with a more troublesome ability, it would be a useful surprise in battle.
But for Noah, it was getting harder and harder to avoid using that skill in this battle...