Chapter 509: Final Day's Introduction Ceremony

Joshua woke up and felt like he was just going through the paces all throughout the morning. His mind wasn't on breakfast or the news crew that was discussing new events that were happening in the entertainment district at the moment. In that moment Joshua mind was only on the last portion of the battle arena tournament and nothing else. It had been a long time since Joshua had this feeling, but he was definitely in the zone and was having flashbacks to when he used to prepare for professional matches during his time as a martial artist. He hadn't really felt the need to take things so seriously earlier on in the tournament, but now he was up against the best of the best.

This time around the system didn't give them much longer than the time it took them to finish breakfast before a message was sent out that told them that the tournament would be starting earlier in the morning. It was clear that the battle arena wanted to cram every single match into one day in a way that the crowd would be able to watch them all instead of having to pick between several matches going on at the same time. Although there were only thirty-two participants left, if they were going to fight each match one at a time then it was going to end up taking most of the day to get through.

After breakfast there was only an hour of time left before all participants would be teleported to the battle arena. Joshua wasn't exactly sure how things would work for the matchmaking of the day, but he was looking forward to seeing how things would turn out. From how much flare was used to show off the last group of contenders the previous day Joshua was expecting the battle arena to set something flashy up. The amount of attention that was being put into this tournament was far more than anything else in the hub city which just showed the system was really good at building things up with all its advertising.

During the hour long wait Joshua made sure to check all of his gear for any issues, but it was mostly out of habit since any damage to gear in the arena wasn't permanent. The entire time his father was walking back and forth in the living room giving him and his sister tips on what to do. It was funny seeing him go from stoic to not being able to stop talking at this point. When there was about twenty minutes left before the tournament would start up again Joshua and Amy's mother dragged their father out of the house so that they could get some good seats to watch all of the matches. It was going to be an all-day event so they both made sure they weren't busy with anything else for the day.

Soon enough both Joshua and Amy were teleported out of their house and into the battle arena where they were put in waiting rooms again. This time around there wasn't a countdown timer of any kind so Joshua assumed there was something else that was supposed to happen to let him know what exactly was going on. It didn't take very long for him to find out what that was as the screen in the room activated on its own and turned directly to the battle arena network. At the moment the network was doing a montage of all the battles that had taken place up to this point in the competition and that wasn't only taking place on the screen, but was also being shown off in the battle arena itself with the massive crowd there to watch it. It was clearly building up to something big and that's when a member of the news crew started to make the introductions for the day.

"Hello to all that have come to watch the conclusion of this tournament. I'll be the voice of the system for the day so you don't have to worry about reading random pop up messages. My cast and I will be giving the background on participants that will be fighting in the matches to see who will be the overall Victor." The news caster said. Joshua was a bit surprised to see a familiar face doing the broadcast, but he was happy to see Sarah get such an opportunity. They had worked well alongside the alliance during the large town subjugation and they wouldn't form any sort of biased remarks during the fights.

"Today's events will be a little special. This time around the crowd will be able to hear everything that is said between the contestants so feel free to give badass speeches if you want to, just try not to say something you don't want to be heard throughout the entire hub city." Sarah said with a smile before she turned around and pointed to the view behind her that showed off the arena for everyone to see. "Another change will be that the arena will reach all the way out to the crowd so that there can be no disqualifications for people getting knocked out of bounds in these heavy weight fights. The crowd will be separated with a powerful barrier so just enjoy the show."

Joshua understood that this little shift in the rules would have a pretty big effect on how matches would turn out. It was now impossible to rely on destroying parts of the arena to knock people out of bounds anymore which was going to be a huge shift. It would force the contestants into defeating their opponents straight up from now on. Even the fact that the crowd could now hear what you were saying could have an effect on the battle, after all getting the crowd on your side could always be a good thing.

"Now that the new rules have been explained it's time to get things started. Now let's welcome the participants that will fight for the chance to be the number one explorer of our hub city." She said as the screen turned away from her and turned to the arena. Before Joshua could see anything else he was suddenly teleported from his waiting room into the arena where he appeared standing next to all of the other contenders that were also a bit surprised. Joshua ended up standing right next Dmitry as they were all lined up across the arena and he wasn't surprised that the both of them stood out since they towered over everyone else.

Dmitry turned to look at Joshua for a moment and had a bit of a vicious grin as he held out his hand for a hand shake. "You must be Josh's kid right? You two look alike that's for sure but it seems you got a little more size than him."

"Yeah I've heard a lot about you from dad. He still complains about dealing with you every now and then and he's been in a grumpy mood ever since he saw you joining the tournament." Joshua said shaking the man's hand. He noticed that Dmitry didn't have much of an accent since he had grown up living in America even if his parents were from Russia.

"Well that's no fun. I hope that he didn't give away all of my tricks." Dmitry replied.

"Nah, just told me to watch out for your grappling, but that's something I can see after watching a couple of your matches. Although I am looking forward to having a contest of strength with you."

"Good, I'm getting tired of everyone trying to use every little trick they can to stay away from me while fighting. Let's make our fight one to remember. I'll be waiting for you at the end." Dmitry said before roaring with laughter grabbing a lot of the other contestant attention. Joshua wasn't surprised that Dmitry along with himself would be the ones getting a lot of looks from the other contestants. Dmitry was the one with the highest level of everyone in the tournament which was hard not to take notice of. Joshua on the other hand was the leader of a guild that had the most participants that made it to this point in the tournament.

Before Joshua could look at any of the other participants fireworks started going off around the arena as Sarah's voice once again sounded throughout the entire battle arena. "Now we shall begin deciding who will be facing who for the final round of the tournament." After she said that a number popped up on the heads of every contender. The numbers went from one on the far left all the way to thirty-two on the far right. Right now Dmitry had the number sixteen over his head while Joshua had the number seventeen. "The number of each participants head will be randomized to decide who will be fighting who for the first round. This will be done for each round going forward until we get down to the last two participants. The participants with the numbers one and two will face each other, three and four will face each other, and so on."

The crowd started cheering when some of the contestants would wave in their direction and Joshua wasn't surprised some of the more exciting participants like Amy and Lily were getting a lot of fans throughout the competition. While the cheering seemed to be getting louder Joshua noticed a ten second count down start up well above the arena for all to see. When the countdown started the number above Joshua's head began randomly changing at a freakishly fast pace. He could see that it was rotating between one and thirty-two and he guessed that it would stop at the end of the countdown. The same thing was happening for all of the other contestants that were looking up at their numbers to see who exactly they'd end up getting faced against.

When the countdown finally came to an end Joshua saw the number ten over his head which told him that he'd be fighting against whoever had the number nine. He didn't have to look around to figure out who that was as all of the people that had odd numbers were teleported by the arena to stand in front of the people that had the even number that matched up with theirs. Joshua found himself looking straight at the number nine and he had to look down to see the appearance of the shorter man standing in front of him and was surprised to see Shawn looking up at him. When Joshua saw who he was going to be going up against he couldn't help the smile that filled his face, but to anyone else it would look just as frightening as the one Dmitry had on earlier. Joshua was going to enjoy this match.