Chapter 501: Natalie gets her Revenge

After the match Joshua was teleported back to the waiting room and he still had a bit of excitement left over from the previous match. Although he wasn't able to go all out using his aura, he did have quite a bit of fun sparring against another heavy sword user that was skilled. It was a much more challenging fight than his previous ones even if his opponent had to use other means to get her strength on his level. Her talent was easy to see and she wasn't even one of the highest level members of her guild. She didn't use many skills while using the runes for some reason, but it might be because she was struggling keeping the amount of energy she was already wielding in control.

Joshua decided to avoid using his aura in the last fight so he could get accustomed to fighting someone that had the edge against him in stats. If he ended up having to go against the Iron Claw at some point he was likely to be at a disadvantage when it came to stats and raw strength. Using the last match to simulate such situation gave Joshua a few ideas of how to approach such fights, after all he was used to fighting against giant beast that were far more powerful than him. The match still left him wondering how many different runes that the leader of the Stranger's Guild had ready for her guild members. In this fight alone he saw three more new runes that he hadn't seen in any of the matches before.

These new runes had so many different effects that Joshua couldn't really tell the limits to what types of capabilities that the runes could have. They could be used as traps, explosives, and now even boosts or power ups to weapons for a brief period of time. It was clear that the versatility of these runes was going to have a huge effect during combat and if Joshua ever had to face the leader of the Stranger's Guild then he would have no clue what kind of different things she could do with her runes. He was keeping track of the things he had seen so far, but there was no way to know what other things she could do with them.

When Joshua finished reflecting on his last match he turned his attention back to the television screen to try to find a match that was of interest to him to watch while he rested after a longer match than usual. He had a little over an hour and a half before his next match so he planned to see if he could find any interesting matches that were still going on. It didn't take very long for Joshua to find a match that he knew had some past history involved with it. The match was already started and it was between Natalie who was basically the vice guild leader of the Phoenix Guild at this point against Theodore Walker from the World Government Guild.

The history between the two wasn't pleasant from what Joshua could gather from talking with Natalie from time to time. When Natalie worked at the World Government Guild and was initially moving up due to her talent and ability to coordinate and lead others during expeditions, Theodore was above her as a management member of the guild at the time and didn't allow her to rise in rank. Even with all of her talent she was constantly passed over by people walking through the backdoor and using their families or prior political powers from before the first phase to get a place in the guild that leaped frogged over her own. At one point Theodore even assigned her to help level up some of the little snot nose brats that got high up into the guild just because of their family or money. Such a situation had infuriated her to the point where she finally just quit the guild and joined the Phoenix Guild with people that she had fought alongside in the past and that she knew would have her back.

Joshua didn't have to look at the fight for long to see that Natalie had the advantage in just about every way. Joshua already knew that Natalie was a level eighty-two archer with a lot of tricks to use when needed. He knew that she was better in group fights, but she was able to get a number one seed in the tournament off of pure skill as an archer up to this point. He hadn't seen her other fights during the bracketed portion of the tournament, but Joshua doubted any of her opponents were able to push her to the point where she actually had to use her soul beast abilities or any of her specialty arrows.

Since Joshua already knew more than enough about Natalie he spent most of his first few moments of watching the fight to observe Theodore. The fact that he was still around at this point in the tournament and was even able to get the eighth seed proved that Theodore had some skill even if he was carried by his guild most of the time. He wasn't nearly as bad off as Kyle had been even though that wasn't really saying much. It came as no surprise to Joshua that Theodore was a mage with the personality he had envisioned him with from everything that he had heard about him.

Theodore was a wind mage from what Joshua could see going on in the match, and he was currently level eighty-one although he didn't seem to have the level of skill of someone that had broken through level eighty at this point. He wasn't a bad mage and was honestly fairly smart with the variety of spells that Joshua could see him using as traps, but his skills weren't on the same level as the mages in the alliance that Joshua knew, and Natalie seemed to know that as well since she seemed to be enjoying the match a little too much.

Natalie had a big grin that seemed completely unusual for her as she shot off arrows at her opponent while slowly walking alongside of her side of the arena. It was obvious to Joshua that Theodore had set up all sorts of traps on his side of the arena and had the ability to shoot out wind blades in and attempt to attack Natalie from afar, but he made a huge miscalculation at the start of the fight that showed how inexperienced he was with actual combat. The fact that he had set up any traps at all on his side of the arena was a mistake since he was fighting against an archer that would attack from a distance. In fact Natalie hadn't taken one step closer towards Theodore the entire time that Joshua was watching the match. If anything she seemed content at shooting unnecessarily unorthodox shots to make the match more entertaining for the crowd.

It was obvious to anyone that was watching the match that Natalie was playing with her food. She had already messed with Theodore by landing an arrow nearby that exploded right next to him and sent him skidding across the arena floor as some of his traps went off from the attack. She didn't let him get up as she fired off another arrow that landed right in front of him once more that blew up and sent him flying to the point where he nearly fell out of the arena. Honestly she could have ended the match right then and there if she wanted to and blown him out of the arena, but she allowed him to get up as she switched her quiver to a different set of arrows. Initially Joshua would have thought she was trying too hard to embarrass her opponent in the fight, but he knew that she needed to blow off this anger while she could, and the more she embarrassed Theodore the worse off the World Government Guild would be.

Once Theodore got back up he glared at Natalie before channeling a powerful spell that Natalie could have easily interrupted if she wanted to, which once again showed how naïve Theodore was to use such a spell without preparations. When he finished channeling the spell a large barrier of wind was formed around him that was like a mini tornado. Joshua knew that Theodore was trying to use such a spell to deal with Natalie's arrows, but if he actually thought such a simple barrier would stop someone as creative as Natalie then the match might as well have been already over. Even Natalie was chuckling a little at Theodore's destined to fail plan.

Theodore smirked before creating more wind blades that gathered around his barrier and were shot towards Natalie. She gracefully avoided them while firing a couple of arrows directly towards Theodore that got caught up in Theodore's barrier and started to be swirled around without approaching their target. Theodore was clearly laughing inside the barrier as he created more wind blades that he was going to bombard Natalie with, but the victorious grin that Natalie currently had told Joshua that there was something special about the two arrows that she fired off to try to deal with Theodore's wind barrier. She didn't even bother firing off anymore arrows and just continued to dodge Theodore's wind blades while waiting for the show to start.

After a few seconds the two arrows that were still swirling around in Theodores wind barrier suddenly burst into thick green gas that started to fill up the entire wind barrier and Joshua was certain that with the amount of gas that was suddenly appearing the barrier wouldn't be able to keep it from reaching Theodore. Soon the gas started leaking out of the barrier and into the surroundings completely blocking Theodore from sight. At first things seemed quiet, but soon enough the swirling from the wind barrier died down and from the way Natalie was smiling whatever she had been planning had succeeded.

When the cloud of poison disappeared everyone could see Theodore lying on the ground with torn up robes that looked as if they had been shredded. His skin had turned green all over and his veins were an angry flaring reddish color that made him look like he was in great pain. From one look at Theodore Joshua already knew which poison was being used. It was something that Madalyn had created that would make your opponent sluggish and nearly paralyzed if a lot of it was used. It also lowered the pain tolerance of whoever it was used against making any little injury feel like it was on fire.

It was clear that when Theodore got poisoned he lost control of his wind barrier and it cut up his robes leaving him with several small injuries. From that alone Joshua knew that the poor guy was screaming and agonizing from the pain he was feeling. Madalyn hadn't even used such a powerful poison in this tournament up to this point and she was the one who made it. Theodore tried to pick himself up when an arrow slammed into his shoulder causing him to fall back down to the ground.

Natalie just stood there watching him not ever taking the final shot to end his pain. She waited until Theodore finally passed out from screaming for so long and vanished from the arena. Watching that fight reminded Joshua to never enrage a woman to the point where something like this could come back and bite him in the ass.