Chapter 483: The final day of Preliminaries

Sitting in his waiting room for the last day of boring matches Joshua waited for the timer until his match to begin had finished counting down. He was watching the battle arena network as they showed different match ups for the first rounds of the day along with the records for the different participants in those match ups. Joshua didn't bother looking to see who he was going to be up against to try and make the match a little bit more exciting even if he knew he wouldn't be going up against any of the truly high level contenders yet.

The battle arena truly knew how to hype things up for the audience with all of the cool replays they were showing from matches of the previous day. They did a great job of showing off some of the closer matches with all of the absurd skills that the combatants were using to try to one up each other. They also showed off some of the quicker matches from the stronger contestants that were able to finish off their opponents within seconds. It was all to hype up the crowd and gain more attention to the tournament. Although the preliminaries were exciting to watch in some regards the bracketed portion of the tournament would grab a lot more attention later on and the battle arena made sure to feed off this fact by showing off the contestants that were easily going to be able to make it into that portion of the tournament.

When it started getting close to the time for Joshua to face his first opponent for the day he got up and stretched a bit before making sure all his gear was ready for the first match of the day. Soon enough he was teleported to the battle arena in front of a large crowd that cheered loudly at his appearance. The crowds seemed to be getting larger with each day of the tournament and their excitement seemed to be growing alongside the amount of people that were showing up to see these matches personally. Joshua could imagine that it depended on who was fighting, but the crowds did seem to be coming out in full force.

After looking over the crowd for a brief moment Joshua turned his attention to his first opponent for the day. Even with all of the low level opponents Joshua had fought up to this point this was the first time he was going to face someone that had barely reached level fifty. Joshua was surprised that someone of such a level had made it this far through the preliminaries, after all if you lose eight matches then you're kicked out of the preliminaries. The fact that this short guy was still around even now meant that he had to have at least three of his first ten matches during the last two days.

Wondering about the odd predicament Joshua took notice of the fact that a new detail was now shown about his opponent. A record of their matches so far in the tournament was placed on their observation display just below their level. His current opponent had a record of three wins and seven losses so far and one more loss would knock him out of the tournament. Even with that information Joshua found it extremely hard to believe that the slightly cowering figure in front of him could win three matches in the tournament with the way that the system had set up the matches.

Joshua cracked his neck as he looked as his opponent and started to concentrate the moment the countdown got close to ending. The man must have had something up his sleeve for him to still be around in the tournament but Joshua planned on making sure this would be the man's last match. The second the countdown ended Joshua started charging for his opponents knowing full well that his opponent would try to keep his distance. From what Joshua could tell the man was a thief from his gear and it was likely that he focused on traps otherwise there was no way he could make it this far.

The thief quickly proved Joshua right as he tossed down a smoke screen that Joshua charged straight through without a care. On the other side of the smoke screen Joshua could see the man smiling as he tossed a grenade directly at Joshua. This seemed to be how the thief had three surprising upsets up to this point, but that was something that wouldn't phase Joshua in the slightest. He had already seen some stronger versions of similar grenades that Madalyn was able to strengthen with her poisons and some of the blue prints they had found on their expeditions. Joshua didn't even bother knocking the grenade aside as it exploded in front of him. The power of the explosion wasn't enough to stop his progress as he rushed through the flames without a care.

Since Joshua didn't try to knock aside the grenade it didn't get nearly close enough to his body to do any actual damage. The thief tried to throw some more grenades, but Joshua was just too fast for him as he blitz passed them and slammed his fist into the man's face. The power of the punch sent him flying out of the arena. The poor man vanished before he even slammed into the arena wall. It was clear that he was knocked out with the punch alone. Joshua waved to the crowd once the match had come to an end and was teleported back to his waiting room.

Joshua decided to watch some more matches to pass the time to his next match and from some of the things he was seeing he was able to see why a level fifty was still around in the tournament up to this point. It was clear some higher level contestants were losing on purpose in some preliminary rounds. Joshua watched a replay of one match where a level seventy-five martial artist somehow slipped into the spell of a level sixty-three mage that ended up letting the mage unleash all of his strongest spells on him to win the match. Joshua couldn't stand the poor acting by the martial artist, of all jobs it was unlikely that a martial artist would lose their footing in a match.

At first Joshua didn't understand why people were purposely losing matches until he realized it was shifting their positions in the final brackets. Most of the people that were tanking matches were trying to avoid fighting people that they knew. Even if they didn't know exactly where there seeding would be in the end it was advantageous for as many members of the same guild to get as far as they could in the tournament as possible. Joshua just shrugged at these actions and decided to ignore them since they wouldn't really affect him. It only meant that in his last day of preliminaries Joshua was likely to deal with several more low level individuals than he was expecting.

Outside the annoying matches of people trying their best to get upset by far weaker competition most of the other matches went just about how Joshua was expecting. There were several more people left in the tournament that were like the thief that Joshua had just taken out of the tournament. They were desperate for a win with their loss totals being higher than their wins. At the rate they were going it was clear that they would be taken out of the tournament and they were pulling out all of their trump cards in an attempt to upset their opponents and make it into the brackets. Sadly most of them were being taken down in a similar vain to the thief Joshua was up against.

After watching some of these fights for a while it was time for Joshua to go up for his second match so he waited for the system to teleport him into the arena. For the rest of the day Joshua kept running into similar matches. His second match was against a level fifty-eight mage that specialized in water magic. It was clear from the start of the match that the man was going all out with everything he could in an attempt to win the match. From the start he rushed away from Joshua and set up several traps before the countdown to the match ended. He then formed a rather strong spell that created a large bubble of water around him that was supposed to protect him.

Joshua ended the match quickly as he moved to fast for the traps to even touch him and when he got close to the large water bubble that was attempting to protect its caster Joshua simply punched the ground and ripped up a large slap of the arena floor that he slammed into the bubble destroying it. The mage didn't get enough time to channel his next spell before Joshua charged in and ended the fight with a quick punch to the gut. After another short wait Joshua came out again for his third fight.

In his third match Joshua was up against a female archer that was level sixty-three with six wins and six losses. If she could win two out of her last three matches then she would be able to make the bracketed portion of the tournament, but she was unlucky enough to get put up against Joshua. The match was finished quickly as Joshua just avoided her arrows and didn't allow her to get away from him as he closed in and kicked her out of the arena with enough strength to knock her out.

The fourth match was against another knight which instantly annoyed Joshua. The amount of knights and mages he had faced throughout the preliminaries was ridiculous. Even if he had to go up against a tank he would have liked some variety in the tanks that he was going up against at the least. He finished off the knight extremely quickly as they both charged each other and Joshua easily kicked aside his shield before dancing around his blade and restricting his arm after his off balance swing. With the man caught up in Joshua's grapple the match was already over.

The last match of the preliminaries saw Joshua up against the most unlucky man in the tournament. The person was a level sixty-five martial artist that had fought and scrapped through three tough days of challenging matches. The last match the man was actually up against one of the leaders of the world government guild that was out of his league and now he had to go against Joshua. His record was seven and seven so the last match would decide if he would make it into the last portion of the tournament.

The martial artist seemed to deflate as he saw Joshua casually standing in front of him. Throughout the entire tournament Joshua finally heard one of his opponents say something. The martial artist got into a fighting stance even with the defeated look on his face and simply said "Why me?"