Chapter 374 - So that’s why they call you... (Patreon)

Blue flames surround a young girl, not to attack but to create an area around her that is as heated as possible.

I can see Isabella staring at Tacita, most likely in an attempt to read her emotions, something I don't think she is able to do because of that field. But Tacita seems to appreciate the effort and smiles at her.

Isabella moves her hand and around her a dozen thin threads of fire like whips form, extending and slashing against Tacita.

The mute girl just takes a nimble step and dodges one, tilts her head to avoid another, and jumps playfully to dodge another one. Her movements are smooth and extremely playful while the environment around her gets burned and slashed through. Thin blue threads of fire cut through the stone, trees, and burn deep scars into the ground.

The fire intensifies, and with it, the heat around Isabella. The air flickers, and the surface of the stones nearby heats up to a glowing orange color.

Even so, it's not enough. Tacita disappears thanks to her immense speed, and when she appears again, she is standing in a different spot, a dagger in her hand with the blade having blood on it.

Slowly, Isabella reaches towards her neck where a long scratch is, the tiny bit of blood flowing.

Tacita waits until Isabella looks at her and gestures at her. The meaning of that gesture is simple, Forfeit.

Instead of that, Isabella wipes the bit of blood into her clothes, rolls her sleeves up, and slaps her palms together. On her forearms, blood veins become visible even through the skin. The veins glow in blue light that seeps through the muscles and skin. The effect extends up to her elbows and then further.

In reaction to that, the amount of heat Isabella radiates increases multiple times. The blue flames crash and move like they are under intense wind.

The ground heats up even more, the girl standing in a pool of melted stone and fire, even her shoes dissolving from the heat and edges of her clothes catching on fire. Yet there is not a single burn on her body, not a single hair touched by that heat.

Dozens of threads of fire, looking like burning ropes, spin, burn, and thrash around as she faces Tacita.

To that, the smile disappears from the mute girl's face, instead replaced by acknowledgment. The dagger in her hand visibly vibrates, affected by her skill.

Like before, Tacita disappears, and when she appears again, she dusts off her clothes, puts out the fire on her sleeve, and glances at the burn left on her forearm.

The dagger is gone, stabbed through Isabella’s eye who a split second later turns into shiny particles.

“I’m fine, Soph,” Isabella says the moment she appears outside. Even so, she lifts her arm and carefully touches her eye. Her hand is shaking and so is her voice. It’s obvious she felt a bit of pain before the system sent her out.

Curious, I look at Sophie who stays quiet but moves closer to her sister. The expression she has right now tells me that it will be interesting if she gets to face Tacita. Out of everyone from Hell difficulty who isn’t in Beyond, Sophie is the one who I think would fit in the best with the Beyond weirdoes. The only thing holding her back from going there is her little sister.

“Izzy, was that blue veins a trait?” I ask her.

“Yes, it’s called Burning Blood.”

“Damn, sounds cool. Boost to your fire-related abilities? Heat generation? Storage of heat maybe?” I try to guess.

“All of it!”

“Even cooler than I thought. Give me.”

“No! But its cool, right? But I still want to have floating blue hair like Seneca did.”

“It was a trait your disciple had?”

She shakes her head and I notice she is getting calmer, “It was something like Vega having horns.”

“Maybe you can work something out with Lily, she likes to play around with these kinds of stuff.”

“For training,” Lily corrects.

Isabella says something to Lily and they start the conversation and I turn back to the screen. Before doing so fully, I glance at Sophie who still has the same expression of cold rage, even stronger now that Izzy isn't looking at her.

On the screen, Savant faces Pumpkin, a melee attacker from WhiteWing.

The fight opens with Savant using his domain and the time starts ticking down. Without good defense, Pumpkin will get poisoned by mana radiation and I'm sure Savant is concentrating it on him.

As the gentle orange light shimmers around, two men clash against each other, Savant surprisingly experienced with melee combat.

Watching it, I judge it as a mix of things he probably saw on Earth and some lessons from either the 2nd or 4th floor which are the most likely. Even so, Savant combines these moves together really well and if he makes a mistake, he quickly realizes it and doesn’t repeat it a second time.

Even so, Pumpkin is faster and very flexible, his arms holding the two daggers moving like each of them has its own mind. His skin is coated in something like scales that seem to add to defense but do not restrict his movement. For a while, he even pushes Savant and gradually uses more of his mana and his movements become more and more aggressive.

He is clearly dominating the extremely talented but less experienced man.

Savant's eyes bear a curious expression, but they are otherwise not very lively. It’s like he is dealing with an annoying child and soon he reaches the point where he saw everything he could. Seemingly oblivious to Savant’s tricks, Pumpkin uses his trump card. Two more arms grow from his back and extend to grab Savant.

The limbs are very thin, and longer than normal arms, moving at a speed he judged his opponent wouldn’t be able to dodge. Or what I think might be more likely, he knew Savant was playing with him. The same as me, he must have seen the guy during previous events. So he just gives it his best.

In reaction to that Savant’s domain shrinks in a blink and from that domain he creates a sword with a thin blade.

That makes me focus on him with much more interest. Using a domain that way is not something I’ve seen before.

The broken Sword of Aeons in his left hand and the newly created sword made of orange light in his right. He uses more of his mana for strengthening and his movement speed increases exponentially. At the same time the sword created from his domain seems to cause an evident discomfort to Pumpkin. He has trouble breathing and even moving while burn like wounds appear all over his skin caused by the concentrated radiation of the orange sword.

Four scaly arms are sent flying before the sword made of orange light pierces through Pumpkin´s chest. These movements Savant used bear a clear similarity to the ones Pumpkin used to attack him.

Then turning to particles, his opponent disappears and with him, Savant.

There is an excited conversation going down in the common area as people also keep placing bets. Group 4 also starts commenting on that, but I filter it out and play over and over again what I just saw in my head.

While I do so, the duels continue and some of them are interesting enough for me to watch. It’s interesting to see what kinds of abilities people developed in their time in the tutorial.

Maya wins her fight against her opponent, a man with a weird combination of body armor and mental attacks who fights her in melee range. Mental attacks do not work that well against Maya who has [Focus] and her [Armament] is on a much higher level than the man's. She quickly shifts between spear, sword, and dagger, and even shoots a bow a few times. Her ability to create mana-based weapons is exceptionally fast.

Then there is Biscuit who obviously got into the top 8 of his group. He faces the lightning mage from WhiteWing, someone called Ghast. Unlike people before, Ghast attacks Biscuit without any hesitation, ignoring his cute appearance. The lightning the man creates crashes against purple tentacles that extend from Biscuit’s back. The tentacles either disrupt or absorb it.

I almost start smiling when Biscuit starts running while barking at the man. He doesn’t float, no, he just runs on his short legs, jumping over the debris on the ground. The purple tentacles elongate and swirl around, defending him and two purple orbs floating nearby.

The man has no shame or worry about his image and tries to run away and reposition when that cute dog rushes him. But before he can do so, the ground under him cracks and a single purple tentacle grabs his ankle.

Ghast creates a lightning bolt he sends through it, either to destroy it or to reach its creator, but to no avail. I know it from my experience, but Biscuit’s creations are extremely dense and instead, the tentacle holds the man there.

Looking up, Ghast sees one orb turned into a projectile shoot at him, elongated into the shape of a spear.

Ghast crosses his arms, and an image of a shield made of lightning forms in front of him blocking the blow. He then extends his arm and a rain of hundreds of small lightning projectiles shoots from him, roaring through the air like a minigun emptying its magazine in a split second.

The ground around Biscuit explodes, and the dust and the earth are sent into the air under the barrage.

When it dissipates, Biscuit is still there, with no damage at all.

A mental attack hits Ghast and with it, a purple orb turns bright white which explodes soon after defeating the man. Ghast still unable to get free from the purple tentacle holding him on the spot.

Indeed a merciful future Absolute. Even letting a lowly human show some of his skill before showing him his place.

I pet Biscuit who appears back on my lap, “Good job.”

(Food!)

“Yes.”

(Food.)

“We will see.”

(Food food.)

“It’s possible.” I boop his nose and turn back to the screen where two lucky members of Hard difficulty beat the shit out of each other. Lucky because they got so far without facing anyone from Hell difficulty.

At the same time, a notification rings about three more sold items that bring me close to two thousand shards. It looks like my rank as 1st crafter is cemented like that. What remains is to find out if the reward is worth it. Even if it’s not, I don’t think I will complain that much, just the shards are nice enough.

It takes a bit longer but the fight finally ends, the woman who won standing there, bloodied and tired, screaming towards the sky from sheer exhilaration.

“Sometimes I think it’s more fun watching people from lower difficulties fight,” Maya notes, “There is something eye-catching seeing them give it their best.”

“I agree,” Tess chimes in.

Finally, Min-jae gets summoned inside, facing someone from Hard difficulty. The huge muscular man with a hammer that is probably heavier than Min-Jae. Surprisingly, the man is calm after finding out who he faces against.

Unlike him, Min-Jae smiles brightly. He is looking around as if trying to find the “camera” that shows it all in the common area. Then he offers the man to attack first, promising to only defend once.

“That dumbass…” Maya sighs.

And as expected, the man uses up the opportunity. He lowers his stance and over one minute his body shines slightly, muscles not as bulging anymore, and the interesting amount of mana surrounding the hammer.

Even so, Min-Jae doesn’t seem to be worried and his left yellow eye shines.

The man from Hard difficulty attacks and at that moment the field around Min-Jae activates an immense pull of gravity slowing the man to a crawl after a few quick steps. But that doesn’t seem to be his intention and instead of just blindly charging, he throws his hammer.

Min-Jae reaches out with his hand towards it, mana swirling around him as he uses either [Gravity Well] or [Telekinesis]. He doesn’t even put that much effort into it, not expecting much from someone from Hard difficulty.

But surprisingly just once, the hammer flashes, for a second disrupting Min-Jae's grab and emptying the mana collected inside of it in the process.

Unable to react in time, the hammer smashes into Min-Jae's left side, breaking his bones and throwing him rolling on the ground.

From there, the boy lifts his head, groaning in pain, and the skills he was keeping out deactivate. His eyes open up in panic as he sees how close his opponent is, just two steps away.

Min-Jae clenches his teeth and his left eye glows, the man’s chest caving in, compressed by immense gravity and turning him into shiny particles.

When our teammate appears outside, no one says anything but I look at him with interest, curious what reaction Min-Jae will have.

He catches my gaze and turns away. Was it a shame that showed in his expression? Shame? Anger? Annoyance?

A few more groups fight and I finally get summoned back inside. Only 4 members remain in each group. After this fight, it will be the group finals. My opponent this time is a guy from Hard difficulty.

“Fuck man, I thought I would climb higher,” he sighs. One of Samuel’s group members. I think ex-marine or something like that.

I consider it interesting. Wouldn’t people like that with experience with real combat be more fitting for Hell difficulty?

“Are you going to forfeit?” I ask.

“I mean, probably.”

“Would you mind if I try something?”

“Your special attack or what? Will it hurt?”

“I don’t know, but if you agree I will have a bit better opinion of you. I will also remember you agreeing to this.”

“What’s my name?”

“...”

“Yeah, I thought so. I’m Matthew, remember it. And go ahead. If it’s some torture or other bullshit I will forfeit.”

“I might forget your name so talk to the Channeler or Sset. They are good at peopley stuff.”

“Man… okay, damn it, just do it.”

I nod and my [Mana Crown] forms over my head. My [Mana Domain] expands and I use black mana to strengthen my body, something I’m quite proficient at and can keep up to ten seconds with barely any aftereffects.

Then, having my body strengthened with black mana to endure it, I start releasing my mana and filling my domain with it. Like from a broken dam, it floods into it, filling the area with more and more of my mana. It floods from my reservoir and my body mana. There is no skill used, just me emptying my reserves.

I barely get started when the man stumbles, his face pale.

A few seconds later, he falls to his knees, seemingly having trouble breathing.

“So that’s why they call you a goddamn mana maniac.” Even saying so he clenches his teeth, trying to endure as much as possible.

I barely start releasing mana from my Mana Reservoir and even that seems too much and the man faints, soon turning into shiny particles.

Congratulations, you have won your 7th duel!

***

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