Chapter 497: An Item Specialist

Tim was surprised by what had happened to him over the past week. Tim, or better known as Timmy, was a modest man that had been exploring for a while now and went about things rather casually for the most part. Since he was one of the earlier explorers that started with some of the first waves of people that took up the mantle and went down to the world to clear out towns and conquer dungeons, he had a lot of experience with handling rough situations. He wasn't at the top of the pack or anything being a leader of a mid-sized guild, but he was clever and friendly with most people he met giving him a good reputation.

Timmy wasn't a man of large stature so he went into the line of work of an explorer with that in mind from the start. He stood at only five foot two inches and had a thin flexible frame, so he made the wise choice of becoming a thief that specialized in speed for his career as an explorer. He had never been the strongest when it came to head on fights, but he was always extremely good at mind games. Most thieves either specialized in stealth taking the path of a pseudo assassin, or traps taking the path of a tactician. Timmy took the second path to the point where it was all he did. He wasn't particularly good with daggers and usually found himself with a crossbow in hand during combat, and his stealth skills were abysmal while on the move.

In most cases someone like Timmy would just be your average thief that wouldn't have been able to make it out of the preliminaries of the tournament. The tournament heavily favored either people that could get in close and finish matches quickly, or people who could stay far away and whittle their opponents down without letting them get close. Timmy was a mid-ranged fighter with a cross bow that couldn't hit from too far away and several traps that had to be used up close. If that was all there was to Timmy's style of combat then he wouldn't have been able to make it so far.

What Timmy has that other thieves don't usually rely on is a ridiculously large amount of different items to use at his disposal. Timmy had items for every situation and that was because his guild specialized in unearthing low grade blue prints. They weren't strong enough to go into dungeons that had high level blue prints consistently, but some of the more basic dungeons that were high enough level to have blue prints were their primary targets. Timmy had several bronze grade blue prints that his guild had been piling up of late and he enjoyed creating different items from them that could be used in and out of combat. He loved improving them after creating them from blue prints even more so.

These blue prints were the reason a level seventy-four thief was able to get far into the tournament and even get a sixteenth seed. Grenades that could explode with all sorts of mana elements, portable barriers that could guard against powerful magic spells, specialty bolts for his cross bow that had several different effects, and just about anything else you could imagine him coming up with to use to get an advantage in a fight. He loved to set the battlefield in his favor with several traps and then he'd use several different items to help damage his opponents while keeping a slight distance the entire fight. His speed as a thief helped in this regard. With these talents he was able to come far, but now he was coming up against a road block that he knew he would have to face eventually. The second he saw his place in the bracket he knew that he was going to have to face whoever had the number one seeds for his bracket in the second round.

It didn't take much for him to figure things out and after seeing the brackets he knew that he was going to have to face someone of importance. He'd have a bit of time to check out his opponent before the fight and he always used that time to figure out what types of items he had in his repertoire that would be most effective against his opponent. He'd figure out which traps would work best and the proper spacing he should have depending on the type of explorer he was up against. Any close ranged fighters he'd start off the fight setting up traps that were meant to slow them down all over his side of the arena, he'd then keep his distance while wearing them down with different items and well timed bolts from his cross bow. However when he was up against long ranged fighters he'd do the exact opposite. He'd set up traps that were meant to attack his opponent from a distance while he would charge in himself.

Fights were always a balance to Timmy and he'd grown used to walking that tight rope to the best of his ability. His first match had been such an occurrence going up against a mage that was a level higher than him and was great at keeping enemies away with his earthen walls and ground traps. He made it through such a fight by rigging some turret crossbows with explosive arrows at different points around his side of the arena. The bolts were able to take down the walls that his opponent was constantly setting up which gave Timmy a chance to get in close and use flame grenades to set off any of his opponents traps. From then on it was just a battle of attrition with the mage losing out slowly since he couldn't take out the turrets that were tearing down any defenses he put up.

The first match had gone well, but Timmy knew it was going to get a whole lot harder going into his next fight. Usually Timmy would watch fights between his matches, but he was completely focused on thinking of different plans that he could use to take on a much more powerful opponent than himself. Eventually the time came for his next match and he was teleported to the arena. He gave a short wave to the crowd before turning and looking to see how much time he had before the match would start. There was a five minute countdown and Timmy planned on using every second of it.

Now on a timer Timmy turned to look and see which opponent he would be facing and he was surprised to see a familiar face. Standing in front of him was a tall imposing figure that he had never met personally, but had seen take on a large town subjugation and have a perfect record in the battle arena. In front of Timmy was Joshua James Jr., the leader of one of the strongest upcoming guilds in the Fenrir Guild and a major part of the Alliance. Timmy knew he had little chance to take down someone like that, but the challenge brought a smile to his face. Just standing in front of the man he could feel a large amount of pressure sweep over him that nearly caused him to pull out his cross bow instantly. He could feel that if he hadn't broken through the level seventy barrier then his body might have seized up against such a pressure.

After taking a deep breath and calming himself Timmy thought of all of the matches that he had seen Joshua in where he had to take things more seriously than any of the matches he had been a part of during the preliminaries. He didn't know what Joshua's unique job was, but he did know for a fact that it somehow involved a certain energy that would surround his body and boost all of his stats greatly from what he could tell. Outside of that he couldn't specifically figure out any of Joshua's other abilities but he knew that letting him get close would be the end of the match.

After a few minutes Timmy came up with a strategy. He opted to avoid using turrets like in his previous match since he was certain that Joshua could easily avoid such obvious attacks and cut them down with an energy slash if he wanted to. Instead he went into the fight with the plan of slowing Joshua down with certain traps and throwing every powerful item at him that he could. He knew that he didn't stand much of a chance in the fight, but he wanted to be able to force Joshua to at least take the match more seriously than any of the other matches he had been in during the tournament. Doing so could bring some good fame to his guild that could end up helping them reach the next level.

Timmy set up several traps all over his side of the arena that he planned to use constantly. He doubted he'd have much time to set anymore traps during the actual fight so he needed to make sure he got the most out of the ones that he was positioning before the match. When he finished doing that there was about a minute left and he could see Joshua standing there with his scale blade resting on his shoulder guard. He ran through his mind to figure out which items he could use to actually try to do any damage to him, but in the end he decided to just use them all. There was no reason to hold back any tricks now. It was an all or nothing match that he had a ninety-nine percent chance of losing and that would only become a hundred percent if he tried to hold anything back.

The moment the match started Timmy wasn't surprised when Joshua dashed over with all of his battle intent crashing on to him like a wave. For a moment Timmy nearly stumbled in his back pedal, but he regained his footing and tossed out his first item to try to damage Joshua. It was a canister that exploded into a loud plume of green smoke that was clearly poisoned. At first Timmy expected this to force Joshua to go around, but with a heavy swing of his scale blade the air pressure cleared a path through the poisonous smoke for Joshua to dash through and close in on Timmy.

At this point Joshua had reached the first traps that Timmy set up and a slight smile spread across his face. The trap was a gravity mine that did what its name implied and greatly increased the gravity in the location. Timmy tossed a powerful grenade expecting Joshua to be stuck in place for a moment with the powerful gravity mine, but he was surprised when Joshua simply dashed around it while sprinting across the large filled of gravity minds like there was nothing there in the first place. This was something that was well out of Timmy's expectations and there was no way he was going to get away in time so he resulted to his last resort.

Timmy slapped an item to his chest armor that created a small force field around him before pulling out two powerful grenades behind his back. The moment Joshua was right in front of him preparing to cut him in half Timmy tossed the two grenades between them letting off a huge explosion far bigger than any other normal grenades could create. They were specially made for such kamikaze attempts and the force field flickered out after keeping Timmy alive through the explosion. He tried to jump back, but he couldn't move as a giant sword shot through the smoke and stabbed him through his chest. Timmy vanished from the arena seeing a smile appear from the smoke and nothing else.