Chapter 498: A First Glimpse of Charles's Skill

Joshua ended up finishing his second match fairly quickly, but he was surprised by some of the tricks he had seen his opponent use. This was the first time he had ever seen someone use a gravity trap and the explosives that his opponent used were more powerful than the specialty grenades that the Alliance had gained from a blue print in the past. He was sure that those items had to have been tinkered with by some type of crafter to make them work so well, but in the end they weren't the best way to go about fighting against Joshua.

The gravity mines were particularly useless against someone like Joshua who spent all of his training time using weights that were far heavier than any sudden shift in gravity on a small scale could possibly simulate. The gravity cut his speed down somewhat, but he hadn't been moving at his top speed at the start of the fight, so he had no trouble kicking things up a notch so that his opponent would think that their traps had no serious effect on Joshua. That seemed to do the trick since the small guy instantly went to a more drastic measure to take Joshua by surprise.

His opponent used some type of item that created a thin energy field around him that worked like a barrier. At first Joshua thought the man was going to try to use the barrier to block one of Joshua's attacks to create a chance to gain some space and reevaluate his battle strategy, but instead he was surprised when the little guy tossed two grenades right between them that was close enough to blow up in both of their faces. The explosion was powerful and forced Joshua to lift up his scale blade to block the brunt of the force. His scale blade was more than big enough to keep any of the flames from getting to Joshua, but without his aura Joshua would have been knocked back from the attack and given his opponent space to get away if the barrier did end up protecting him from the powerful explosion.

In the end his opponent had set himself up for failure. Although the barrier had protected him from the explosion, the gravity trap that Joshua was standing on was strong enough to keep him from being blown away while blocking the explosion on his end. This made it so that there was no space created between Joshua and his opponent allowing him to stab his blade through the smoke directly into the spot where he could sense his opponent's aura before the smoke of the explosion cleared out. The sudden strike had taken his opponent by surprise and he wasn't given any chance to react in time as the match ended in a flash.

After the match Joshua gave the crowd a wave before he vanished from the arena and was taken back to the waiting room. He was glad that the match this time around was much shorter and would allow him to sit back and watch some of the other matches to see if he could find anything interesting. With how quick the match went he was likely one of the first to finish, but he didn't think little of his opponent. After all the thief had shown some good understandings of tactics and how to combine different items to create a chance in a fight against people that were stronger than him. It explained why the guy was able to be the leader of a guild for so long.

Joshua didn't spend to long thinking about his last fight since he knew living in the past for too long was never a good thing. Going forward he would have to watch out for shrewd opponents like him in the future and he knew that Henry would probably be similar in a fight, but to an extreme degree. He started paying attention the screen to see if he could find any interesting fights to watch, but it took a while before he came across someone that he was keeping an eye on. It was a match between Shawn and a fairly experienced swordsman who surprised everyone by avoiding Shawn's first attack. When the match started Shawn disappeared and reappeared right behind his opponent as usual, but this time around his opponent started the match off flash stepping away.

This was the first time that Joshua had seen Shawn miss out on taking his opponent down at the start of the match. Even so he had forced his opponent to use a skill from the start and that put Shawn in an advantageous position. This time Shawn blinked again and his opponent was already turning to try to block the incoming attack from behind, but Shawn didn't appear there. Instead Shawn popped up in front of his opponent and stabbed him while he was twisting around and then leaped away when the swordsman tried to cut him down while he was close.

With that exchange the match was finished. The swordsman had a huge wound that would only get worse the more he moved around, and he was struggling to hold up his blade. Shawn just waited him out for a moment until his opponent vanished from the arena after it was deemed he had taken on to much damage. With that Shawn had won another match, but Joshua had found it interesting that it was possible to react to Shawn's attacking strategy and he was certain several other contenders would have locked on to that fact as well.

After watching that match Joshua kept flipping through the different matches until he finally found one that was interesting to him. It was a match between two members of the World Government Guild that Joshua had been well aware of. The number one seed in the match was Charles White who was the new face of the World Government Guild and was the person that had created the big turnaround for the guild that was leading it to grow stronger in the past couple of months. Standing on the other side of the Arena was his older brother Kyle White who used to be the leader of the World Government Guild and was the one who lead it to the brink of ruin.

The match wasn't going to be a fair one from what Joshua could tell, and the fact that it was happening in the second round of the brackets was enough evidence to prove that one brother was much better on the battlefield than the other. Charles was a number one seed that new how to lead others and had a military background that taught him how to fight well before all the supernatural fantasy stuff had occurred. His older brother however was a rich playboy that always got whatever he wanted in life until his little brother had snatched his role as leader of the biggest guild in the hub city away from him. The fact that Kyle was only a number sixteen seed showed that he did not deserve the place he previously held in the World Government Guild. The only reason he was able to get such a seed was because he was high level riding the coattails off of the actual fighters in the World Government Guild and had been level boosted to this point. His level of eighty-two was completely unfounded and pointless since he had no skill on the battlefield and most likely hadn't gotten the most potential out of his levels.

Joshua knew who was going to be the victor of the match before it even began, but watching it would give him a good idea of how Charles fought. Even though Charles didn't have all the support his older brother had early on as an explorer he was able to reach level eighty-three through his own efforts keeping pace with the highest level explorers in the hub city. Although Joshua wasn't a fan of the World Government Guild after all the stupid things they had done in the past that wasted lives of upcoming explorers, he did have to give credit to Charles who seemed to be the right guy to be put at the helm of such a powerful organization.

The first thing Joshua noticed about the two fighters were that they were both melee fighters to some degree. Kyle didn't have a unique job and decided to go with spear user as his first level combat job. The way he held his spear and positioned his body seemed off to Joshua. His body was leaning to far forward and he stood to straight in Joshua's opinion. He might be able to throw out a few thrust or a heavy swing, but with a perfectly timed parry all of his balance would be destroyed. After fighting alongside Allen for so long he knew how a spear user fought and he was incredibly disappointed in Kyle.

On the other side of things Charles had a long sword with a heavy cross guard held in front of him. He also had a short shotgun strapped to his side ready to be used at any moment. While his brother came into the arena with heavily plated golden armor to protect himself as if he was afraid of getting hurt or just wanted to look cool in front of the crowd. Charles on the other hand had light weight leather armor that was made so that it resembled military gear to a certain degree. He had combat boots on that were probably made out of high grade material in a similar manner to Joshua's. The only other obvious defensive gear he wore was a heavy vest, his entire set up was focused on quick movements and flexibility. The two brothers were the exact opposite of each other.

Joshua could tell that the two were talking to each other during the countdown. Kyle was raving and shouting from his body language and movements, but it was impossible to hear what he was actually saying. Charles however stayed calm and only said a few words before holding his sword up and lowering his stance in preparation for the clash. Charles had a couple inches of height on his older brother and his well-trained body was probably leagues above Kyle's but it was impossible to tell with all of the armor that he had on. The match itself wasn't much to see. The moment the countdown ended Kyle recklessly charged forward with his spear glowing brightly as he thrust forward. Charles simply leaned to the side avoiding the attack before slashing his blade against the gap in his brother's armor.

With one quick movement he had two deep cuts on his brother's legs forcing him to kneel in front of him. Just like the match was already over as Charles kicked the spear out of Kyles hand before aiming his shot gun down at his head. Joshua could see him say one word and from reading his lips he could tell all he said was 'Pathetic'. One loud bang later and the match was over.