Chapter 360: Challenging the Avatars

Chapter 360: Challenging the Avatars

Sitting on the roof, as I observe the group of poor guys who thought it was a good idea to challenge Lily's avatar.

Lily decided to go with a mere 4th floor restriction, and it's fun to watch as she tears through men who are probably thrice her weight and twice her size. She takes them on in a style similar to the one she used to fight the Fallen Hero.

Her Avatar is using its [Sacrifice] to boost its movements and it doesn't bother wasting any mana on [Disintegration]. The sheer strength of its body is enough to allow it to go berserk.

The event is fun for us and an interesting learning opportunity for those from other difficulties. For them, there’s a difference between seeing people from Hell doing all these things and then having to face them.

Sure, they got a taste during the 1st event, but they still thought they might stand a chance in a group only to fail regardless.

Each Avatar can be challenged 3 times, and 1st and 2nd challenges are mostly limited to smaller groups, hoping to get a better reward.

No one from Hell difficulty interferes, and the remaining attempts are slowly getting more organized, and bigger groups are being put together, a lot of planning and information sharing is going on. Samuel, being the annoying guy he is, is behind most of it, and he even has a few more guys to help him.

In the end, it seems like the first 2 challenges are to test the Avatar, and they are saving the last ones for their real attempts.

Tess’ Avatar is challenged as well, and the group gets wiped out before they even reach her.

Gareth is attacked by dozens of people and still takes no damage.

Even Min-Jae, the twins, Brainiac, Lootenant, Adam, Maya, and others take easy wins against the smaller groups.

The restrictions are mostly around the fourth floor, Tacita also being fourth. But there is that one annoying guy who’s restricted himself to the 3rd floor as well.

Savant.

His Avatar has five epic items and 20 thousand shards offered as additional rewards, and other than my Avatar, his seems to be the most frequently eyed one.

My Avatar still got challenged only once, and his Avatar not even once. Channeler told me that there are a few dozen people going all over the common area, trying to look for anyone who’s faced me, in an effort to gather information on my abilities.

It's entertaining to watch. They’re taking it much more seriously than I thought they would, and a big part of it probably has something to do with Samuel.

Seeing how effective he is, I guess it makes sense that Gareth’s been keeping him around and to a certain point, Tess as well. He seems like a useful guy.

What's also fun is that the murderer guy from Easy difficulty is also accepting some challenges and entering the arenas to face the Avatars.

After each attempt, they take him away, tie him up, and put the null collar back on his neck. Yet the guy seems to have a decent amount of shards and accepts nearly every challenge, joining with all challengers.

Seeing others having to keep grabbing him because the system is teleporting him away is amusing enough.

I also watch as he generally tries to take advantage of his stealth in an attempt to damage the Avatars with his poison-like attacks.

The guy clearly thinks a lot of himself and sometimes he gets into clashes with other people; in one situation, he even attacks and kills one careless guy from Hard difficulty and multiple people from Normal.

It's like he’s doing it on purpose just to make fun of us. Especially when in the challenge against BenDover's Avatar he just attacks the other challengers immediately, standing there and smiling while they scream in pain from his poisonous attacks.

He gets outside and it's Tess who pacifies him, grabbing him by his neck and pulling him away like a dog while he tries to attack her.

Then, when thirty minutes later another challenge starts, he accepts it again and this time attacks other challengers right away.

While others expected that, some people seem to have a lot of trouble dealing with his poisonous mist, not to mention how quick and hard to catch he is. Even though he's from Easy difficulty, he has to have some degree of skill to have made it to the 11th floor, so there must have been some decent rewards.

Samuel, the killjoy, takes him out with a swing of his giant sword and the murderer appears outside, laughing as Gareth approaches him with a dark expression.

"The system does allow some changes, I can probably make his heart stronger. The system might even consider it beneficial. But it will continue to get stronger and stronger and once he’s out of the tournament, it will explode in a week or two," Lily says with a surprisingly angry tone.

"We can give it a try," Sophie nods.

She, Min-Jae, and Biscuit are sitting on the roof with Lilly and I as we watch the event.

"I could give him a [Geas] that would suppress his survival instincts. Or if the system allows it, I can ensure that he decides to end it on his own. Sophie offers"

Only Min-Jae seems to have any doubts regarding the topic of our conversation. "Is he really that bad?" he asks carefully.

"Imagine the worst you can and then double it. That's what that man is. I saw hints of his memories when we were looking into whether or not he really killed all those men, women, and children. He’s the lowest of the low." Even Sophie, who usually only cares about her sister, seems determined to end him over what she saw.

I, on the other hand, watch a group of 100 people face down Biscuit.

Some of the Easy and Normal difficulties still remember him tearing them apart during the 1st event so they are careful. However, Biscuit has no restriction, and even his grayed-out version looks cute. It even moves like the original, slowly wobbling on its short legs.

Avatar Biscuit doesn't really hesitate much, and it creates two purple orbs which turn bright white, before shooting off towards a group that gets in his way.

Their attempt is good, and it even seems like they might be able to pull it off, but that's when tentacles form around Biscuit, extending to the length of a football field. They whip through the air in a blur of motion, cutting cleanly through a huge patch of trees.

When the tentacles crash into the group’s barriers, they either slice through without resistance, or shatter them with sheer force, and concentrated fire.

Biscuit also uses a mental attack to scream directly into their heads, as it turns out most of the challengers aren’t quite skilled enough to block it out.

The orbs explode, wiping out half of the group. A few mana projectiles snipe the injured members and tentacles finish off the rest.

"Good boy," I say, looking over at Biscuit and handing him a piece of deer jerky.

He tilts his head, slightly confused before he quickly noms the offered treat. The defeated challengers meanwhile group together once they’re outside and start trading notes.

"Nat," Min-Jae says, interrupting my musings, so I return my focus to the conversation they’ve been having.

"Yes?"

Then, the Avatar detonates the flame orb.

The challengers were expecting him to shoot it at them, having been warned by the more mana-sensitive among them, who surely know the amount amount of energy contained within. They are constantly aware of that and being unable to cancel it they’ve prepared for the Avatar to shoot it at them.

But nope, the Avatar detonates it right next to his own head after charging into the biggest of the surviving groups.

The flames wash over the forest, setting it ablaze, reducing the forest to ash and baking the ground. There is a hint of gold in these flames and no one is capable of stopping them as they devour most of the group.

Then from the center of the explosion, my Avatar steps out. The helmet around his face is destroyed and half of his face is burned terribly, bone showing through.

All the flames die off, pulled towards him, as he ignores the wounds. Then he attacks again.

The rest of the challengers die in a minute.

Just over five thousand shards flood into my account. Of course, that’s only after the system takes its ten percent cut.

Anyway, Avatarthaniel did a good job once again.

"Who do you think would win? 3rd Floor me or Savi guy?" I ask.

"Neither of your Avatars went all out, so it's hard to say," Sophie states while observing the group that, straight out of the lost challenge, starts brainstorming.

"I would win," I say confidently.

"Famous last words," Sophie pokes. "I'm more curious how they will challenge you in the final attempt. Channeler said they plan to go against you with probably over a thousand challengers, even people from Easy are willing to gamble 5 shards to do so. The thought of you losing almost an arcane item's worth of shards is as painful as it's funny."

"It’ll be fine," I say, waving my hand.

The challenges continue to the point where a lot of people from Hell get challenged twice with the last challenge remaining.

I also realize that within 24 hours, they do not have time to challenge every Avatar three times. Since only one Avatar can be challenged at once, and there is a 15-minute waiting period followed by the time spent facing the Avatar. So they are a bit more selective.

Every Avatar gets challenged at least once, but some of them do not get challenged a second time.

Tacita is a menace, killing the group that challenges her with such efficiency they wind up more scared of her than anyone else, Biscuit included.

Isabella gets called a crazy kid.

Even after challenging her a second time, they don’t even find Tess as she snipes them from afar.

Gareth endures combined attacks from dozens of members of Hard difficulty. His damage output isn't all that high, but just by having a stronger body than them, he slowly takes them down, in the end, he’s not even tired and he hasn’t a single wound on his body.

The twins and Min-Jae do well, winning the first two challenges. The twins use [Sensory Deception], causing their challengers to attack each other and moving at high speeds with their [Haste]. They also launch a number of mental attacks that seem to disrupt most of the casting of their opponents.

Min-Jae uses [Gravity Well] and [Telekinesis] mainly. Small stones turning into bullets, easily killing people or forcing them to waste mana on maintaining their defenses. The projectiles are much heavier than they should be, causing a surprising amount of damage.

But even without the overt use of our skills, there is a clear difference between Hell and other difficulties. People from Hell move their mana quicker, skills are activated faster and are more powerful. Their body strengthening and senses are much better. Even people from Hard difficulty can't compare.

It's interesting and I expected the difference to be smaller, but in the end, maybe people from Hard difficulty just aren't that strong. Or are people from Hell just that much stronger?

Only three out of the 31 people from Hell difficulty managed to lose in the first two challenges and none of them came from group 4.

Overambitious restrictions were probably the cause of the losses in question.

Maya's Avatar, using armor and weapons made of mana, cuts through them. Her technique with weapons shows as she restricted herself to the 4th Floor where she paid some people to give her lessons. She really looks like the knight she named herself for in the Community.

Sophie, with the same 4th Floor restriction, is also scary. Even then, she was capable of getting into the head of The First One and holding him down. So what are some challengers from the tutorial in comparison?

Her Avatar is ice cold as it takes over a group of people from Easy who start stabbing each other. Anyone who gets close to her freezes just for a moment which she uses to stab them somewhere vital. Her [Manipulation] interrupts castings, causing attacks to explode in the middle of their groups.

Those with weaker defenses die just from the pressure of her mental attacks. Then she easily manipulates the mana around her, redirecting the attacks being thrown at her or disrupting them outright. She manipulates stone as well, spikes made of the stuff impaling multiple people. The branches of trees twist and bend around people. It's not the kind of combat she prefers, but she wins nonetheless.

When about five hours remain, my Avatar gets challenged for the third time. The first Avatar out of all.

It's not because of Channeler and the disinformation campaign we did. No, the cause is exactly what we expected: simple greed.

It's like a lottery. You know you’re probably going to lose, but what if...?

I watch as the number of challengers grows until there are five seconds left until the start.

Challenge 3/3 - 5 seconds remaining until the start

Number of challengers:

Easy - 1021

Normal - 755

Hard - 212

Collected entrance fees:19,015 shards

My Avatar appears in the arena for the last time. The same empty expression as before and grayish in color. With close to two thousand people arrayed against him.

The common area becomes eerily empty, just a few remaining people remain, mostly from the lower difficulties, and us from Hell. For the first time ever since the start of the tournament, it’s grown quiet.

The following slaughter takes barely two minutes.