Chapter 496: Looking in on other Matches

The moment Joshua set down in the waiting room he sent out a message to Thomas that was basically an invitation to come to the guild the day after the tournament if he wished to join. The young man had a lot of potential and he would thrive in a setting where he would be able to fight alongside a group. He didn't have the ability to use four beast at the same time like Lilly, but he seemed to have some other capability of empowering his beast companions in a way that was similar to an evolution of sorts. It was an interesting ability that Joshua was hoping to learn more about the next time they met.

It didn't take long before he got a reply back that confirmed that Thomas planned on coming by, but outside of that Joshua turned his focus back to the tournament at hand. He still had four more matches to go through for the day and unless there were a bunch of random upsets throughout the day it was likely he would be facing stronger and stronger opponents. At the moment he had tons of time before his next match. His fight with Thomas had only lasted for fifteen minutes and that was with Joshua letting him use any and all of his skills throughout the match. Since the battle arena pretty much gave them an hour for each match Joshua still had an hour and forty five minutes before his next match. In the bracketed portion of the tournament the time periods for each match were much more rigid. Joshua didn't know how the arena would deal with matches that dragged on for too long, but he didn't really want to find out.

When Joshua turned to look at the screen to see how some of the other fights were going he noticed that the match that was currently being shown was one with his sister taking on a level seventy archer. The archer didn't particularly have anything special about her, but her aim was quite good and just about every skill that she was using during the match helped her create space between herself and Amy. The archer knew that the moment she allowed Amy to get close to her the match would be over, so she used several different types of arrows to create havoc all over the battlefield.

Outside of basic arrows that she shot out occasionally the archer had several different types of arrows for multiple situations. Whenever Amy started getting close the archer would shoot off an arrow that would explode well before reaching Amy so she wouldn't get the chance to dodge them. The point of these arrows weren't to hurt Amy, but instead to knock her back with the large blast of wind that would be created whenever they exploded. Soon after firing such an arrow the archer would flash step backwards to try to create more distance, but even with all of these preparations Amy had no problem closing the distance between them once again.

The archer also used explosive arrows and arrows that turned into nets that were meant to restrain Amy, but nothing that the archer did stopped Amy from closing in on her and ending the match with a barrage of quick punches that were impossible to avoid. Amy left the arena victorious and posed for the crowd. Throughout the entire fight she didn't use a single skill and only showed off her great hand to hand combat. She even finished off her opponent with a barrage of punches instead of one powerful penetrative punch so that people wouldn't be able to speculate on her soul beast's abilities.

After watching Amy's match Joshua flipped through some of the other matches that were going on to see if he could find anything interesting. He did see a match of Adrian up against another swordsman, but it was extremely boring since Adrian just completely out skilled his opponent and easily defeated him with only one blade instead of his usual two handed style. Joshua could tell that his friend was treating it like a kendo match with the way he was fighting, but the opponent couldn't keep up and kept getting lured into leaving giant openings in his guard.

Another match that Joshua found was one with Lily going up against a gun user that seemed to prefer using a sniper based off of the way he took up position while getting as far away from Lily as possible. If you were to observe the scene just based off what you could see then it would look like a full grown man running away from a short young woman that only had a staff strapped to her back and nothing else. It looked fairly ridiculous, but the entire crowd was always excited to see Lily and her beast companions when it came to battles. She had always brought out some new and interesting beast for them to see take on whoever was her opponent and up to this point she hadn't used any of her core beast companions.

In this fight Lily just stepped back and brought out four of the large dogs that she usually used as scouts around James town. All of the dogs were well past level seventy at this point and the ones that she had brought were the more aggressive breeds that were more physically imposing. She brought a German Shepard that was the lead attacker, the Pitbull that was meant to latch onto her opponent and hold him in place while the other dogs came over to go on the attack, a massive Great Dane that was the tank of the group that could take some of her opponents attacks if needed, and lastly a Shepard dog that gave off a small aura that boosted the strengths of the other three.

The crowd was excited to see the new beast that Lilly had brought out for battle, while her opponent was freaking out at the fact that he was going to have to survive four powerful beast somehow. The moment the match started Lily was on the back of the horse sized Shepard dog, while the other three charged down her opponent. The gun user smartly tried to take Lilly out with his sniper, but the Shepard dog was fast and shifty not allowing any of the bullets come close to Lily. The match was going to be a quick one no matter which side one. In the gun users case he was either going to land a shot and hopefully take Lily out before all of her beast companions could reach him, or in Lily's case she would avoid all of his attacks while her dogs hunted him down.

It was fairly obvious how things would go with how easily the Shepard Dog was able to protect Lily and soon enough the match ended when the three dogs caught the poor gun user and took him out of the fight with a few well-placed bites. The scene would have been extremely gruesome if the fight was in the real world, but in the arena you would be forced out of battle the moment you took on lethal damage and completely healed after the fight. Even so mental fatigue could build up after several fights throughout the day, so Joshua new it was best to pace himself going into these next fights.

Joshua also found some matches of people from other guilds outside of the alliance that caught his attention. The first one he came across was one with the guild leader of the Stranger's Guild going against a wind mage that immediately backed away and started setting up traps all around her side of the arena. The Stranger's Guild leader just stoically stood there waiting for the match to start and the moment things kicked off she pulled out a couple rocks from her inventory and started scribbling on them as she formed some of her runic stones that she and most of her guild had been using up to this point. Her opponent sent a few blades of wind in her direction, but she just dodged around them while casually creating her runes.

When the masked guild leader was done she had four stones in her hands that she was ready to use. The wind user kept her distance and was even floating above the arena so that she couldn't be affected by anything that could happen on the arena below her. It was an interesting tactic, but it was one that would slowly drain away at the mages mana the longer she used it. After avoiding one last blade of wind the Stranger's Guild leader tossed out two stones that landed on each side of the mage. Since they were just stones they didn't trigger any of her traps, but instead easily landed on the arena floor. Both stones brightened up with mana before large amounts of mana cords shot out of them completely walling off the mage from moving to either side.

Joshua was a bit surprised that the cords didn't instantly go after the mage, but instead seemed to create a massive net that surrounded her and kept her from flying around the arena. The next stone that was thrown over landed in front of the mage and shined brightly before exploding with a loud bang. The powerful explosion didn't reach up to the mage that was floating further away and above the explosion, but all of her traps in the area were set off because of the explosion creating small tornado's all around the area. The Stranger's Guild leader tossed over one more stone. This one seemed to suck in all of the mana around it from the magical tornados before creating a giant one that pulled in the mage who was shocked that her own magic was being used against her.

The match ended before the tornado even stopped as the mage was tossed around and being torn up by several blades of wind. With that the Stranger's Guild leader had one the match by simply tossing over four stones and never leaving her side of the arena. It really put into perspective how versatile her abilities could be. The other match that Joshua had found of a future contender was even shorter and straighter forward. The Iron Claw who Joshua now knew as Dmitry was up against a martial artist that seemed to get by with his superior size in a similar fashion to both Dmitry and Joshua, but didn't seem to have anything special going for him.

The fact that he was a thirty second seed seemed to prove this point and the match only made it even more obvious as Dmitry let the man's punch connect and didn't even stumble. The force of the blow was empowered and the loud sound from the collision showed how strong it was, but Dmitry just simply took the hit and grinned after turning his head back to look at his opponent. The martial artist was too close at this point and was a sitting duck the moment Dmitry's arm hooked his opponents still extended arm and then grabbed him by the neck and lifted him into the air. The short strangling process went by and the match came to an end.

By the time Joshua had finished looking through all of these matches it was getting close to the time for him to go out and battle once again. He was interested in seeing what he'd be up against next.