Chapter 287 - 287 Those Who Fly

Chapter 287 - 287 Those Who Fly

Michael clenched his fist, watching the Hyu family go down the stairs, while the members of the other family tried stabilizing him with the use of healing magic. Noah shared a bit of understanding for Michael's anger, though he himself wasn't that angry about whatever had happened. First, he didn't know either of the people personally, so he wouldn't care about them. Secondly, this was an arena for people to fight until they passed out, killing someone was bound to happen anyways. Noah guessed this was just because of how things went, but he smiled inwardly, knowing he wouldn't have to hold back against the Hyu family if they were to fight at some point.

"So... why is it taking so long?" he asked, since he found odd that the walls of the arena hadn't gone down yet.

"When there's too much blood, they clean it before retracting the walls, to not overwhelm the cleaning system. But it also takes a while for the families to arrange the procedures to deal with deaths, which is another reason why you don't see B Rank Blessed here. Too many deaths would attract unwanted attention," contrary to expectations, the person who gave this explanation was none other than the bearded warrior. From his standing Noah had already realized he would probably have been the leader of this group, if not for Michael's backing and charisma.

"Sounds like a major pain. Good thing my blessing burns the blood too..." Noah had said this completely unironically, with his usual poker face. But somehow, this sentence had landed as a joke, making a good part of the group laugh, including both the bearded warrior and the leader.

"Yeah, so if you get rid of that guy for me, at least they won't have to worry about the cleanup," the bearded warrior said jokingly. But Noah smirked, as he hoot his words a bit at face value. Not because of the guy's intention, but for convenience.

'Someone like him will probably have way too many sins to count. My flames are gonna burn him like straw," Noah thought, delighted at the possiblility of absorbing a lot of things from him.

"Er... Noah," the healer called him, bringing him back to the real world from his delightful wishes.

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"Yeah, what is it?" he asked, turning around to face her.

"It is, kinda, see, you're making a scary face... So I wanted to ask if there was something wrong," she stuttered.

"Eh?" As always with her, Noah had no idea what she was talking about, and from the scout's face at his side, he also didn't. After all, he always had a perfect poker face. "I mean, no, there's nothing wrong, I was just thinking of someone particularly annoying," he said, not bothering to hide something so simple. But he was also extremly confused inside. 'I didn't make any expression, her body language also doesn't say that she's probing me or lying. Did she really notice what I was thinking? Can she see right through my lack of expression?' he thought, as he pondered whether Lilith would've been of help understanding what was going on with that woman. She was way better with people than he was.

"Oh, I see..." she backed down, embarassed. Noah saw this with a bit of curiosity, as to why she would feel like this every time she probed him. Maybe she was socially awkward and had just recently started socializing with people, he thought.

Either way, now that the body had been carried away, and the arena had been cleaned enough that the system could take care of the rest, the walls came down, and two families went up the staircases to their positions in the edges of the arena. Like the groups before last fight, both teams looked rather normal. As in, those were clearly C Rank Blessed parties with a healthy balance of warriors, long distance blessed and a healer at the back. This made noah realize how average his own group was, and reinforced what he'd thought when Michael had claimed they should enter the arena because Noah was now with them. This arena was an extremely level playing field most of the time. Nobody was too strong, most teams were balanced enough that the fights would most times be won from the time limit. In the end, the reason why they used essence as an entry fee and prize, and not large quantities of money, was because most times people had no idea who would win, keeping the balance between the nine families involved pretty under control. But as Noah saw it, sending slightly stronger teams or vetting those from coming was also a strategy used by the families to keep things this way, to avoid being targeted by fear of many other families at once. 'This could be a problem if we actually come every two weeks...' Noah thought, as he realized if he tipped that balance too much, the other families could start changing the unspoken rules, in order to keep the balance. 'I'll keep that in mind and avoid coming every single time. I should probably talk to the leader later...' he thought, watching how Michael stared at the screen, recognizing the blessed.

"This one's gonna be pretty interesting," against what Noah had said, the scout by his side said the very opposite of what he'd thought.

"How so?" Noah turned to him, curious.

"Those guys, both groups actually, have kinda peculiar ways to use their blessings, you'll see," he smirked, making Noah pay attention to the screen as the walls went up, in a configuration that was similar to the maze of the first battle, but with wider paths.

And Noah was surprised as, for the first time in this whole night, someone had used a spacial blessing, other than him, of course.

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Not just one person, both teams had used it as soon as they clashed.

On one family, this guy would do quick and short teleports sideways, like a rat pocket monster doing a quick attack, while on the other, this girl could... It wasn't clear, but it seemed like space was bending making her accelerate without doing so, as if the distance between two places grew shorter. It was an impressive sight, as the two, a light swordsman, with a blade that looked like a rapier, and a rogue that used twin shortswords bent space and clashed with absurd speed. At this point, Noah thought that was it, and that the battle couldn't get any more surprising, until he saw a blessed in the backline of the rogue's family grow bird-like wings.

Her flying reminded Noah of the birds he saw on books about Planet E that lived in the coast, eating fish. She slowly rose above the walls pulling the string of her bow. Noah facepalmed, as he saw how slow she was when flying, and how easy of a target she'd become to the enemy long rangers. Slowly but surely, despite the healer's best efforts and her great skill dodging the enemy blessed's attacks, she was quickly accumulating a lot of injuries. One of the blessed in the light swordsman family had a blessing that allowed him to slighly alter the trajectory of his arrows, but Noah couldn't understand the mechanism through the screen, as he cursed internally once again at the low refresh rate.

Noah watched the battle unfold, mostly focusing on these two main battles, and again, not paying much attention to what the other twenty or so average blessed were doing. Until he realized something. All of the enemy long range blessed were focusing entirely on this blessed that could fly.

He turned his attention to the series of small battles, as this fight happened in a weird way, with many small groups of blessed facing each other. Most of the battles from the flying blessed team had a gread advantage, while the other team was struggling to keep up.

"So that's their strategy... Pretty cunning," Noah said under his breath, making the scout grin while nodding.

"I see you noticed it. The first time I saw that group fighting, it took me a lot longer to realize she was just acting as a bait."

"Who's a bait?" the healer asked, confusedly, making the scout turn around. A couple other people turned, with a clear expression on their face. They also shared the same doubt as the healer.

"The woman who can fly is acting as one," the scout started, with a proud expression. He saw this as an opportunity to raise his standing in this group at least a little. After all, they were fighting together for just a few months, and some people here had joined not that long ago. "Because the enemy group sees flying blessed as a threat, since they can fight those a rank above, all their long rangers focus on dealing with her. Since she's good at dodging, and can shoot back, this keeps them busy, while her group's blessed can assist in the fights giving them a local advantage," he explained like the most complicated thing in the world.

Noah held himself from sighing, but the scout wasn't wrong. But there was more to it than just that. How the swordsman had forced the spacial blessing enemy into a fight so early on and isolated him from the rest, reducing a lot the capability of them helping other groups, and how his team spread, including the long rangers, to assist in all the battles without almost any healer support, since their healer was busy dealing with all the minor injuries the flying blessed was taking.

"Their strategy is great. And they adapted it quickly to the arena layout.. Those people are dangerous," Noah said out loud, making the blessed's attention shift from the scout to him, much to the scout's envy.