Chapter 513: The rest of the First Round Matches Part 1

When Shawn had been taken down Joshua was met with a roar of cheering from the audience after witnessing the fairly short but high paced fight. From their perspective it looked like there were two fighters blinking all over the arena and clashing with all sorts of crazy abilities. Even if Joshua had clearly won there were several times when it looked like Shawn had the advantage from their perspective. Joshua was given a little time to wave to the crowd and then he was taken out of the arena so other matches could get started.

The battle arena was trying to make sure that the tournament would come to an end today, but it would be a long day with the number of matches they were going to have to get through. With the five matches that already occurred there were still eleven matches left just for the first round. Of course the amount of matches between each round would grow less and less as the tournament moved closer to its conclusion, but it was still a lot of fights to get through. Luckily the matches were all trending towards the shorter side with not a single match lasting over ten minutes up to this point.

Joshua wasn't very surprised that the matches were ending so quickly. At this point the matches were all between people that had powerful abilities that could be used to take out their opponents in one strike if necessary, unless it was a bad match up most matches would be finished rather quickly. Tanks could no longer rely on their gear to defend them when they're up against mages that can tear through their armor with one spell. On the other hand mages and ranged fighters can't rely on dragging out fights by keeping their distance when just about every close ranged fighter at this point had some sort of teleportation ability to close the distance between them instantly. All of these circumstances were making the matches go by much faster than some of the preliminaries where two people without major abilities would end up fighting each other for an entire hour.

When Joshua got back to the waiting room he knew he'd be sitting in there for a little while watching the rest of the first round matches like a spectator. Joshua didn't plan on wasting time looking back on his match with Shawn since he was still very much in the middle of a tournament that demanded his attention and he didn't plan on missing out on any of the matches because he was too busy thinking of his own. The next match was between a person of the alliance that Joshua knew could go far in the tournament and one of the mercenaries that had made it to this point. Natalie was now about to face off against the mercenary that carried the large bow that Joshua had taken notice of earlier on.

Watching the match between two bow specialists was interesting. Joshua knew that Natalie had the edge in the fight before it even started with her ability to use her soul beast to control her arrows if needed along with the ability to use telekinesis to help her block attacks from her opponents if it came down to that. Joshua didn't know all of the tricks that the bow mercenary was holding back up to this point, but he had a good feeling that Natalie had the match in the bag. In the end Joshua wasn't wrong as the match started. The bow mercenary had the advantage in the amount of arrows that he could shoot off thanks to his ability. Each time he pulled back his bow and created an arrow out of mana, several more would be created in the air around him that would be fired off the moment he let the string lose. These type of attacks were great at keeping an opponent at bay. The amount of damage each arrow caused on impact was similar to a rail shot that had been slightly charged. But Natalie had no problem avoiding the attacks.

Natalie didn't have to do anything special since she was up against an opponent that wasn't very mobile in the first place. The mercenary took up a more stationary approach with his style of attack while Natalie preferred to fight on the move. This ended up being what made the match an easy one for Natalie. Her quick movement allowed her to dance around her opponents arrows while her skill at shooting on the move allowed her to keep up the attack as well. Since the mercenary was a primarily stationary fighter Natalie had no trouble hitting her target while running, she didn't even have to use any of her soul beast abilities as she fired off arrow after arrow. Natalie used a few explosive arrows to create chaos around her target before hitting him with a poisoned arrow. From that point on the match was pretty much over with Natalie spending a couple of minutes avoiding her opponent's poor attempts at getting in a hit before he passed out and lost the match.

After Natalie had won her match she got a chance to wave at the crowd before the battle arena teleported her out so that the next match could get started as quickly as possible. The seventh match of the day ended up being between Laura and Ivan. From this match Joshua could see that the battle arena was completely random and wasn't avoiding putting alliance members against each other early on. The match was an interesting one, but it was clear right away that Laura had a huge advantage in the fight.

Ivan was a great fighter and was one of if not the best heavy swordsman in the entire hub city, but in the end he had a regular combat job and he was going up against a unique job holder that was of higher level and had been the leader of one of the first guilds to be made in the hub city. The match started out with both sides charging towards each other going on the offensive. Laura's blade was glowing as it gave off large amounts of heat, it was clearly a spell of some sort that was designed to allow her blade to create flames of its own at any given time. As they struck at each other Laura had no problem avoiding Ivan's well aimed large swings as she would strike out with her searing hot blade in return.

At first it was hard to tell who would win. Ivan's attacks weren't landing, but they were keeping Laura from getting time to land any fatal strikes. The pace of the fight changed when Ivan started sending out energy waves with each swing of his massive sword, but given the fact that Laura maintained her close range she just as easily dodged around those attacks as well. Eventually Laura won the match after creating a glyph on the ground that had been carved into the arena by her searing hot blade. She used the glyph to power up a fire pyre spell that trapped Ivan and forced him out of the match after not being able to hold on from the flames.

After that match the next one was between Henry and one of the lucky contestants that had upset some one on their way to the final day of the tournament. This person was the earthen mage that had been able to upset a large guild leader. Going up against a rather basic predictable tank was nothing like going up against Henry. Before the match even started the mage was setting up several traps and creating a wall of protection around herself. None of this matter as Henry quickly mixed two spells together that created balls of wind that swirled around what looked like even smaller fireballs that were almost white in color. Henry sent dozens of these spells to his opponent's side of the arena and just watched the fireworks happen.

When the wind balls knocked into anything they'd ignite the fireball inside of them letting off massive explosions that triggered all of the mage's traps. Even the wall of earth that she had created to defend herself was useless against Henry's onslaught. Henry didn't have to use any other spells and avoided using any support abilities as he watched his enemy get knocked out of the battle from the chain of explosions that his little spell created on her side of the arena. It was a match that didn't even take a minute to come to a conclusion and nobody in the alliance was surprised by it. Some of the crowd was a bit disappointed since they were looking for another upset by the earthen mage, but her Cinderella story came to an end.

After that match was one between Charles and the other Stranger's Guild member that had made it into the final day of the tournament outside of their leader. The interesting thing about this stranger's guild member was that she was a mage. This meant she had loads of mana to put the runes that their leader used into perfect effect. Charles ended up seeing this first hand as he not only had to deal with the mages powerful fire magic that she seemed to relentlessly send out, but also the runes she was using to protect herself at the same time. The runes that the mage used were the mana cords that had far greater range and speed than any of the other ones Joshua had seen up to this point and a rune that created a barrier around herself giving her time to barrage Charles without worrying about him shooting her down.

The fight might have dragged on for a while, but Charles didn't hold back on the skills that he used in the match. He used his shotgun to glide around the mana cords without getting shot then closed in on the stones that the runes were carved on. Charles blasted the rocks destroying the mana cords before turning his attention to the barrier. He used a combination of several grenades at the same time along with a charged shot from his shotgun to shatter the barrier before diving in and taking out the mage not allowing her to get away and set up defenses once more.

The tenth match was between Vince and Isabella. This was a match that Joshua wasn't exactly sure who would win, but after a couple of minutes he had a good idea of who had the advantage between the two. Since Isabella had no chance of targeting Vince in the normal way with his illusions being used to keep her from being able to tell what was really in front of her and what wasn't, she used large scale spells that targeted the entire arena. This tactic made it so the match would be a quick one. Either Vince would take Isabella down quickly or he'd eventually get frozen by the large scale blizzard hounding the entire arena along with other massive blast of ice that were randomly getting fired off.

Isabella tried to protect herself with walls of ice, but Vince had no problem using illusions to hide explosives that were planted to destroy her barriers. Isabella wasn't good when it came to close ranged fighting and that was why she ended up losing the match. Although her spells were slowly freezing Vince she wasn't able to protect herself once Vince broke through her ice barriers. Eventually he was able to strike her down before his body froze up completely bringing an end to the match. With that there were six matches left to go for the first round.