Chapter 502: Joshua versus Marcus Part 1

When Joshua finished watching the match between Natalie and Theodore he knew that several opponents would be on edge in the coming fights. Natalie just showed that the Alliance was getting to the point where they would start using some of the tricks up their sleeves for the upcoming matches. Joshua wouldn't be surprised if most of the people he fought against coming up would be going all out from the start as the tournament had narrowed things down to only the higher seeds or those that were able to upset a higher seed at this point. Joshua already knew who were likely to be his opponents in his next two matches based off of the seeding and this time around he'd be going up against alliance members.

The fourth seed that he would likely be up against in the next match was Marcus who was thief that was an expert in traps and used his speed and techniques to keep his distance from his opponent. Joshua knew that he was best with a mid-ranged fighting style that allowed him to use his specialty throwing daggers that would come back to him along with his cross bow while he maneuvered his opponent through all of the traps that he had set up beforehand. Joshua was fairly certain that the only reason he had lost a match during the preliminaries was because he refused to use one of his more secretive items early on in the tournament.

The match after that would be against Devin. That fight would be one that would end up being a lot more straightforward. Of the triplets Devin was the one that was the most tactical of the three even if he could come across as lazy a lot of the time. He was an axe wielder which was a tank based job that specialized in holding on to one opponent at a time, but they had trouble gaining the attention of several enemies at once. That's why in groups they were usually off tanks to some degree that specialized at gaining the attention of singular powerful enemies that were a threat to the group. In a one on one fight Axe user were incredibly powerful since most of their skills thrived in empowering them while having a plethora of attacks that focus on one target.

Joshua had never sparred against Devin before so he wasn't sure what type of strategy Devin would use in the upcoming fight, but he knew that he would lose in a pure contest of strength even when he used his aura since Devin's ability to boost his strength stat while fighting outweighed the all-around boost that Joshua's aura gave him. He was going to have to win the fight through the use of powerful skills or by using proper techniques that could catch Devin off guard once they clashed.

Before Joshua could dive too deep into the idea of going against Devin he focused in on his upcoming match against Marcus. He was surprised that he had actually ended up fighting against someone with a similar style of combat to Marcus earlier on in the bracketed portion of the tournament, but he highly doubted he would be able to win the match so easily. Marcus knew about Joshua's unique job and his abilities so he wouldn't underestimate Joshua in similar ways to the last item specialist that he had to go up against. Joshua on the other hand knew a lot about the blue prints that the alliance had gained, so he had a good idea of what items Marcus might use.

Even if they both knew each other fairly well they also knew that they liked to have something up their sleeves for fights against different members of the alliance. Joshua wasn't going to take his familiarity with Marcus for granted and get taken by surprise by something that Marcus got on his own time for this tournament in particular. There was no way that Marcus didn't come into this tournament with a plan to deal with some of the big hitters in the Alliance like Joshua and he was going to make sure that he watched out for something that was designed to catch him off guard. Marcus was a trap expert so he'd be best at baiting his opponent into falling for things he had set up in advanced so Joshua was going to have to be ready for such a situation.

Before Joshua knew it he was out of time after watching different matches while thinking about how he should handle the upcoming match. The countdown was coming to an end and Joshua got up and stretched briefly while waiting to be teleported to the arena. Soon he was whisked away once again before appearing in front of another massive crowd that was cheering at his entry into the arena. Joshua gave the crowd a wave before turning his attention to Marcus who had been doing the same thing. With their registration information available for everyone in the crowd to see, so they knew that Joshua and Marcus were from the same guild making things even more interesting.

Once they had both finished waving to the crowd Joshua noticed Marcus take a deep breath before he gave Joshua a quick nod and rushed away from his spot while setting up traps around his side of the arena. There was still four minutes left before the match would start and Marcus didn't even bother to say a word to Joshua as he rushed to set things up for the match. It was clear to Joshua that Marcus had a plan of action and was going all out from the start of things. Knowing this Joshua decided this would be the first match where he started to actually use some of his abilities from his unique job, and if necessary, his soul beast.

Initially Joshua was able to see where Marcus was setting up some of his traps, but he knew most of those were to bait him and weren't actually something that Marcus expected Joshua to get caught by. It was when Marcus started using smoke bombs to cover up different parts of the arena that Joshua knew that Marcus was up to something that might be a threat to Joshua. Usually smoke bombs would clear out within a short period of time, but by the time the match was about to start the smoke still stayed in those areas which was something Joshua decided to keep an eye on. If they didn't disappear soon then that meant that Marcus was using something else to keep them around outside of just using smoke bombs.

Just before the match started Joshua watched as Marcus stood in the middle of his side of the arena and took a couple of items out of his inventory that Joshua knew would be used at the start of the match. He pulled out his scale blade in preparation for the confrontation and even was ready to let loose his aura cloak at any moment knowing that it was likely he was going to need to use it. The second the countdown ended Marcus threw what looked like a grenade down towards the center of the stage where he had already set up some traps. Joshua knew that there was no way Marcus would start off with such a strategy unless he had some sort of plan and he was right on that front.

The moment that the grenade hit the ground the match started with a big bang. From the size of the explosion alone Joshua knew that Marcus had used one of the modified grenades from the blue prints that the alliance had found. That on its own wouldn't have done much more than leave a small crater in the arena, but the explosion triggered several of the traps that Marcus had left in the center of the arena. These traps reacted to the explosion and set off a chain of several more violent explosion that were tearing up the arena. All of the explosion moved in Joshua's direction and were tearing apart his side of the arena and he knew that if he didn't do anything then he'd not only get caught up in the explosions, but he'd lose the match from a technicality of being outside of the remaining portion of the arena.

Joshua immediately got on the move and rushed forward directly towards the explosions. Backing away would only delay the inevitable and make it harder for Joshua to avoid getting knocked out of the arena, so instead he raced directly towards the explosions and used an aura blast to propel himself forward through the force of the explosions and his scale blade to protect his body at the same time. Joshua ended up landing on the same side of the arena as Marcus which seemed to be his plan by the small smile that Joshua could see before Marcus pulled up his scarf so that it would cover the bottom of his face. He then tossed another item towards Joshua that exploded right away, but this time it was a giant flash of light that Joshua was met with instead of an explosion.

Before the light could create a heavy blinding effect to him Joshua closed his eyes and held his scale blade up to block most of the light from doing any damage to his eyes. He used his aura sense to figure out what Marcus was doing while his eyes were closed, but could see that his friend had just moved backwards and hadn't rushed forward to try to take advantage of the flash bang. He heard two more puffs of smoke before the flashing light finally disappeared and Joshua was able to take a look at his surroundings once more.

In front of him all Joshua could see was smoke covering most of this side of the arena outside of the area directly around himself. Joshua took a moment to glance behind himself and could see that he was now standing at the edge of a much smaller arena that had been basically cut in half. There was nothing behind him, but rubble and craters that could no longer be considered a portion of the battle arena. Now Joshua was set up fighting against a hidden foe that had set this all up from the start. The flash bang was only a diversion to set up even more traps that Joshua would have no idea about and Joshua knew that was the case. The battle was finally about to begin in earnest and Joshua was behind the eight ball.