Chapter 524: Two Epic Battles

The match between Lily and Laura was a flashy one that had gotten the crowd into it. At this point Lily had become the favorite to win the tournament in the audience's eyes with how powerful her beast companions were. Joshua knew that Lily still hadn't even brought Titus into a match and that would make things even more difficult to handle. It was no surprise that the audience was starting to get behind her as she gained more momentum throughout the tournament. Laura had put up a good fight, but her flame magic wasn't a good match against the combination of beast companions that Lily had brought out. Plus Lily would never just allow someone to get in close against her without a bunch of traps in the way.

After the match had finished the next two contestants were summoned to the arena. This time around the match was going to be between Dmitry and the Raider's Guild leader. Both men were on the larger side although Dmitry was still the bigger of the two and they were both accustomed to intimidating their opponents from the get go. In this case that wasn't going to work with both of them completely sure of themselves when it came to their ability to win the match. Before the match started both sides prepared for the fight in their own ways. The Boss of the Raider's Guild brought out his two handed sword and held it over his shoulder while the shadow beneath him started expanding outwards into what looked like a large pool of darkness. Joshua wasn't exactly sure how the man planned on going at Dmitry, but he seemed to be confident in whatever plan he had come up with.

Dmitry on the other hand had his skin turn bronze just like when he fought against Adrian. It was his defensive skill that allowed him to fight in his usual style without having to worry about getting cut down by a weapon easily since he didn't wear any heavy armor. Joshua also noticed that Dmitry's hands had turn pitch black like lead and yet from the way he was moving his fingers they didn't seem to lose any of their flexibility. Both sides were staring at each other as the countdown came to an end and the moment it did Dmitry started charging over. From the start of the battle it seemed like the Raider's Guild leader was planning to keep his distance as he backed away and had parts of his shadow stretch out to try to restrain Dmitry, but the moment his shadow shot out of the ground and tried to capture Dmitry it started to get drained away when it got in contact with him.

With that simple scene it was clear that even the shadows under the control of the Raider's Guild leader can have its mana drained away by Dmitry. Whenever they tried to restrain him they'd slow him down for a few seconds before getting absorbed completely allowing Dmitry to charge over once again. He was like an unstoppable force that couldn't be slowed down in the slightest and would have to be taken down in another way. The Boss tossed out some large throwing knives from his inventory that were more on the plain side, but were clearly there to be used as projectiles to try to break through Dmitry's defenses.

At first Joshua was expecting him to throw them with his hands as he stayed on the move to keep some distance from Dmitry, but instead he threw them down towards the pool of shadows beneath him as several hands came out of it to catch the knives. The pool kept moving around beneath its controller as he moved around the arena letting the shadow hands throw the knives towards Dmitry. The speed at which the daggers were thrown was surprising to see as Dmitry was forced to avoid some while also blocking others with his hands. Wherever the knives landed after being knocked away by Dmitry more pools would form in those locations with shadow hands coming out of them to throw the daggers back at Dmitry.

The strategy that the Raider's Guild leader used was a nonstop attack from all angles that could last for as long as he still had mana. When Joshua observed him it was clear that keeping up the small pools of shadow that were attacking with the throwing knives from all sides of the arena wasn't a hard thing for the Boss to do, it was barely draining any of his mana. While on the other side of things Dmitry was starting to take some hits from the throwing knives. It was impossible for him to block everything from so many different directions, but when the knives hit they didn't do much more than leave small cuts on his thickened bronze skin. Dmitry ignored the situation and continued charging down his opponent who now had a slight frown on his face.

Seeing that his throwing knives weren't doing enough damage the Raider's Guild boss started slinging out energy slashes as well to see if they'd do any better, but although they landed they simply ended up getting absorbed by Dmitry who smiled and kept closing the distance between them. The Raider's Guild leader seemed annoyed by the situation and finally decided to go in close as well seeing as how the only chance of him doing any fatal damage was with his two handed sword. He dashed in leaving his shadow pool behind to continue throwing knives at Dmitry who was mainly ignoring all the ones that weren't aimed at vital points.

When both sides got close to each other the Boss of the Raider's Guild swung in with his sword trying to cleave down at Dmitry. The blade moved quickly but Dmitry was able to catch it with his metallic hands locking it in place. Stuck in such close proximity the Boss was losing energy from Dmitry's abilities, but having Dmitry stuck at the same time allowed some of the knives that were being thrown to land on vital points that he was defending earlier. At this point it became clear the fight was going to come down to who faltered first. Would the Raider's Guild leader's tactic of using throwing knives from his shadows to attack Dmitry's vitals be the winning strategy, or would Dmitry absorb all of his mana beforehand?

It didn't take long before the Raider's Guild leader started to falter as he lost too much energy too quickly and Dmitry was able to take advantage of this by pulling him forward and slamming his sword into the ground. He then switched to grabbing his opponent by the throat and chocking him out like he had done to so many other contestants. No matter who he went against it seemed like he had the endurance to withstand their attacks while finishing them off. Even with several daggers plunged into different parts of his body he stood there with a maddening grin after winning the fight.

The match that followed wasn't quite as close or as confrontational as the long fight between the Raider's Guild leader and Dmitry. Instead it was a rather quick and decisive one between Madalyn and Henry. From Madalyn's point of view she needed to take Henry down quickly before he could either buff himself up to the point where he could go toe to toe with her while using his spells or debuff her to the point where she'd struggle to fight properly. On the other hand Henry had to take Madalyn down before her poison could get to him since he wasn't a tank with a great constitution to last for a long time.

Both sides came into the fight with the idea of ending it as quickly as possible and that showed within the first few seconds after the countdown had come to an end. Neither side wasted time observing the other as Madalyn threw four canisters into the air that exploded into thick poison clouds that covered the entire arena while on the other side Henry started boosting himself with several spells while creating a wind barrier around his head that kept the poison from getting into his lungs. He then created a massive ball of wind in front of him that was keeping all of the poison out of it as he formed a large hot white fire ball that was floating around inside of it.

Joshua was a little confused by both sides approach to the fight. It was clear that Madalyn wanted to make it so that she had as many ways as possible to poison Henry throughout the fight, but he figured it would be better for her to go in for close combat right away so that Henry wouldn't get the chance to constantly buff himself up. From Henry's perspective it was hard to understand why he was creating such a large dangerous spell instead of debuffing Madalyn and setting up traps to keep Madalyn away. Joshua knew that most of Madalyn's poisons were flammable and it was likely the ones she was using right now could easily catch fire with the spell that Henry had set up.

It looked like the match was going to come down to who came out better on the other side of the upcoming explosion that Joshua knew was about to happen. Madalyn spewed out a black colored poison from her mouth that thickened the poison around the arena even more before she started charging in Henry's direction, but Henry already set his spell off sending it to the center of the arena and letting it activated. The moment the wind exploded into a tornado the fire came in contact with the poisonous gas and a massive wave of flames took up the entire arena. The fire roared to life and the arena shook from the force of the explosion as a flame tornado started to form in the center of the space from Henry's spell.

It was hard to see many of the contestants in the competition surviving such an explosion, but since the match hadn't ended it was clear that both sides were still in good enough shape to keep fighting. It took a few seconds for the flames to settle down and the poisonous fumes to stop blocking Joshua's view of both contestants, but eventually he was able to spot them. They were both in horrible shape, but Joshua saw how they survived the explosion. In Madalyn's case her entire body seemed to be covered in scales that had a metallic luster to them. Even though the scales looked like they could handle blocking a bit of damage Madalyn was still in horrible shape with severe burns all over her body and blood covering half of her face. The scales were probably the only reason she hadn't been knocked out of the match.

Henry on the other hand was on his knees in pain as the explosion had destroyed the wind barrier he had created around himself to protect him from the poison. It was clear that Henry was planning for Madalyn to get taken out by the explosion, but he didn't know she had such a defensive measure ready for such a predicament. Although Henry had protected himself from most of the explosion he now was stuck on a timer with the poison in his system. He tried to create another spell quickly while he still could, but Madalyn was on him before he could channel any mana. One of her arms was out of commission, but she had no problem stabbing him through the chest with the dagger in her other hand. With that a match between two titans ended in less than a minute.