The Lone Wanderer

Chapter 640 – Monsters

Percy and his companions had to stop by a terminal first, to find out where they were supposed to go. Apparently, there were eight colossal stadiums set up specifically for the second phase of the tournament – for the Blues at least – each several times larger than the ones they had used in the preliminaries.

They weren’t partitioned into smaller rooms either, consisting of a single, massive arena that spanned several kilometres, supposedly surrounded by enough seats for over a million spectators.

While the arenas themselves were significantly larger than those Percy and Kassorith had fought on in the regional tournament, participants weren’t allowed to fly over the stadium this time, probably to avoid damaging the city. This would force them to contain their spells within a much smaller space. It was somewhat annoying, but they should still have enough room to fully display their power.

Another interesting difference from the previous event was that each stadium was assigned to a specific group for the entirety of the second round. Only a single match would be held there each day, and each participant had to fight against everyone else once, meaning that this round was expected to last for several months, with each person fighting every few weeks.

After learning that Kassorith had been placed in the fifth group along with seventeen others, Percy and his companions hopped onto one of their flying greatswords, taking off toward the designated venue.

‘It’ll take a hundred and fifty-three days for all the matches, not including the special events or any other breaks that we aren’t aware of,’ Percy calculated as they travelled over the city.

He frowned. That was a lot longer than he had expected. If he added the months Lanthaniel had spent bringing them to Marador Prime, and however long the elimination phase would last, this trip would easily take close to a full year.

Had this been any other destination, Percy would have been annoyed to spend so much time on a single planet, but he wasn’t going to complain about staying in the capital of a peak faction. He just hoped that his main body wouldn’t get into serious trouble before he was done.

‘Look at the bright side. It’ll give us a chance to learn a lot about the Void Hand, and to scout out our opponents before every fight,’ Micky said.

‘That’s exactly what I had in mind,’ Percy agreed.

Back on Thess’kala, he and Kassorith hadn’t been able to watch every match, mostly because they had taken place back-to-back, with the whole event concluding within a few weeks. They had been too tired from their own fights, and too busy claiming rewards from the treasury to care about anyone else – at least during the earlier rounds.

This time, they couldn’t afford to do things half-assedly, however. Many of their opponents were objectively stronger than them, so they had to at least try to prepare properly for each fight.

Sadly, following the other groups as well wouldn’t be feasible, as there should be over a hundred and forty participants left in the tournament. However, they didn’t need to do that, due to how the group phase was structured.

Percy and his companions would have plenty of opportunities to observe the others in their own group, watching each one anywhere between zero and sixteen times, depending on how early in the competition they met.

Hopefully, their enhanced senses would let them learn more about their rivals than anyone else, and the malleability of their enchantments would allow them to develop specialized formations for each match.

As for what came after?

Well… unfortunately, they wouldn’t have nearly as much information about their opponents in the elimination phase – assuming they made it that far. Their final match before entering the top eight would be the toughest one. That said, there was no use in worrying about that when it was half a year away.

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Other than studying their rivals, Percy would be able to use the downtime between fights to learn as much as possible about the Void Hand – their Decrees, Elemental Sources, Rings of Sacrilege, and every other location worth a damn.

He could only claim so many rewards from the tournament, but it would be a waste if he didn’t do everything in his power to prepare for some future trips to the alliance’s worlds. After all, wandering blindly across the stars in search of greater springs clearly wasn’t working very well.

Percy was broken out of his thoughts when they reached the stadium.

Discarding the construct, his host slithered through a smaller entrance that they guessed was meant for the participants. The fact that they were required to scan their badge to proceed only served to confirm their suspicion.

Entering the arena, they found a vast, metallic floor unfolding before them, its smooth surface adorned with glowing runes like those they had seen in the preliminaries.

None of Kassorith’s spells – not even the formations that had bordered on Seventh Circle power – had come close to scratching the enchanted floor, and Percy doubted that the Violets and Whites had had a much easier time doing that.

Obviously, the equipment in the void tournament was even more potent than what they used on Thess’kala, the organizers having gone above and beyond to ensure the safety of the participants and spectators.

Speaking of spectators, Percy was surprised to see that less than a third of the seats were full, despite the first match in his group scheduled to start in about half an hour. Kassorith wouldn’t compete until two days later, though they still wanted to examine their opponents and familiarize themselves with the venue.

‘Void tournament or not, I suppose that a million seats are too many to fill during the earlier stages of the competition,’ Percy guessed, shifting his attention to more pressing matters.

Right next to the entrance they had just emerged from, Percy spotted most of the other Blues – fourteen of them – though three had yet to arrive. To no one’s surprise, almost everyone had come from the founding factions, except for Kassorith and one other person.

He was a tall man with a green, mossy beard, wearing loose-fitting robes woven out of thick vines. The first time Percy had seen an Aflegian, he had mistakenly thought that they were humanoid plants, though he had lost interest when Kassorith explained that they were just flesh and blood outside of their facial hair.

Interestingly, the female Denyte that had caught his eye after the evaluations was also in his group. A wave of excitement surged through his borrowed chest as he realized that he would get his chance to compete against the talented woman with the time affinity a lot sooner than he had expected.

‘Hmmm… other than her, there’s also that Maradorian who has a Green second core,’ Kassorith pointed out. ‘Assuming that we can overcome everyone else – which is admittedly a big assumption – these two should be the most troublesome by far.’

Percy nodded internally. Judging from their badges, most of the others hadn’t performed much better than his host in the preliminaries. The short Denyte that he had singled out before and the man with the Void Decree were the only ones that really stood out from the rest.

Leaving the woman’s time affinity and blessing aside, the male frog-person’s mana types were also readily apparent to Percy. He possessed a dust affinity in his first core and a – thankfully weaker – life affinity in his second.

Funnily enough, his silver skin would suggest that he possessed a secondary soul affinity as well due to his ancestral Decree, granting him a higher resistance against Percy’s primary element.

‘Joke’s on you… I can’t use it anyway,’ Percy thought, the corners of his host’s lips curling up.

Of course, that didn’t mean that this person would be easy to defeat. Most of the Maradorian’s opponents probably lacked the soul affinity, yet he had still made it to the top eight despite rarely being able to make use of his secondary affinity. And he had done all of that with a single core. Right now, he had the Void Decree and probably all the other free-type Decrees as well, on top of a powerful bloodline or something.

This was a bit of a problem, since Percy and his companions needed to reach the top two in their group to qualify for the next round. That meant they would have to defeat either the female Denyte or the male Maradorian, on top of not making any mistake against anyone else in the group.

‘It could have been worse,’ Micky consoled. ‘At least there’s nobody with two Blue cores.’

‘I feel like you shouldn’t have said that,’ Percy replied, his smile turning bitter.

Before his friend had a chance to respond, one of the missing participants entered the boundary of their Sage’s Pond. It was a male Inimit with a steam affinity in his sternum… and a space affinity – of all things – in his abdomen. Both at Blue.

‘Well… shit,’ the Huehuan spat as their host’s face twisted into a grimace. ‘I guess that one’s on me.’

Percy remained extremely tense over the next twenty minutes or so, fully aware that their odds of securing the Void Decree had just fallen off a cliff. Thankfully, the remaining two contestants eventually arrived, and neither possessed a second core.

Even so, there were three monsters in their group, and only two spots to the next round…