Chapter 162 (Patreon)

Chapter 162

Melinda watched as Matt took the loss against Queen with all their friends and shouted and cheered with the rest during the match.

The fight had gone exactly like the rest of his matches had, but in a twist she hadn’t expected, he had pushed Queen much harder than she thought possible.

Thanks to her Concept, she had known from day one that Matt and Liz were swapping places with other people, whom she assumed were Luna and Kurt. But she hadn’t been able to pin who their masked identities were one hundred percent until after their wyvern rift.

She had actually discarded Quill and Torch as considerations because of Torch’s ability to use fire. But seeing the masks with identical injuries, and in both their cases, the same quasi-immortal life force she’d first seen with Matt and everyone else who had consumed the Root of Perfection, had cinched it for her.

After that, it had just been a matter of keeping her mouth shut. It wasn’t her place to question why the powerhouses were hiding their real abilities, but it didn’t take a genius to understand.

So thereafter, Melinda had started trying to see if any of the other masks had hidden alternate identities, but had so far only discovered one other team in the top ten who had true immortals replace them from time to time.

Liz, next to her, didn’t seem to be bothered as Matt was quickly teleported out, but Melinda still hooked an arm through the redhead’s and said, “He’ll be fine. He put on a better showing than anyone really would have expected.”

Before Liz could say anything, Emily whistled and said, “Matt did great, but Queen is a real monster. Fuck, I don’t think our entire team could take her down.”

Tara chewed her lip before agreeing, “Yeah. We might have a chance if you or I get a lucky hit off, but she always seemed aware of attacks around her.” Tara nodded to Annie, “You might have a chance, but I suspect she won't be surprised.”

Annie pouted but agreed.

A few months ago, the three of them had started to look at the assassin contracts that had been put out on Quill, Torch, and the other top contenders. But in the end, they decided not to attack Quill after they simulated the fight, and saw how they would always lose unless they killed them on the first exchange. They had then gone on to test that fight with all the best Pathers, to the same result. Queen had been a near impossible opponent for them. If they didn’t get a lucky five-fold spell cast from Emily, or a direct headshot from Tara, the woman just never went down.

Seeing her fight Matt today, they understood why.

She was a monster who could stand in front of a [Flamethrower] without blinking.

Conor looked at Mathew as they walked and asked, “Think you can block her? I don't think I'm good for more than a few hits with how easily Matt was cut through.”

Her husband shook his head. “She hit hard. If this was when Matt was only wearing magical armor, and wasn't wearing physical armor, I might think we have a chance. But he was wearing both, and got treated like a fish on a chopping block.”

Melinda was going to poke the goof for saying something that direct, but Liz laughed. “I'm sure Matt’s happy he forced her to show her Legacy. No one else has to this point, and Matt showed how tenacious he is. He put everything on the table. Nothing to be ashamed of after that level of fight.”

Melinda had a lightbulb go off as Liz said that. Reviewing the fight, she nodded. Matt had shown exactly the same skills he had at the vassal war, but each of them were stronger and larger than they had been back then.

Matt had shown he improved, but not everything Luna had taught them.

The fact Luna was behind them and pulling the strings explained the rest to Melinda.

When they arrived to inspect Matt, Melinda let her death vision come to the fore of her Concept and inspected Matt in greater detail.

It was an ability she had learned after figuring out how to somewhat suppress the visions.

Once again, she saw that Matt was healed with no obvious healing cooldown. He wasn’t perfectly healed, as there was a hairline crack that had been missed. She once again made a note to pester Baxter until he explained what skill he was using that was seemingly half as good as her Talent.

As the Emperor's personal healer, she knew it had to be him, but she hadn’t been able to pin him down yet.

Putting a hand on Matt’s shoulder, she let a subtle [Healing Touch] wash away any lingering injuries as she tried to make sure that he was ok with his loss.

The fact that he was at peace with it made her nod, but not pry. It only confirmed that they were trying to keep a low profile with their real identities, but she still hoped that they weren't taking the forced losses hard.

After Matt was discharged, they actually encountered Queen in the hall, who nodded to Matt and the rest of them before leaving.

She had been perfectly healed, but not with the same cooldown, less healing than Matt had gotten. It seemed that the skill was reserved for the teams with two identities.

After that, they went and got slightly drunk before calling it a night.

Melinda was just putting on her slippers to shuffle to the kitchen when Baxter pinged her. It was time for her to meet the Royals.

She quickly threw on her armor and readied herself for the unknown.

The rest of her team could sit this one out, and she didn’t do more than leave a note for them on their group chat that Baxter was pulling her away for a while.

She was the entire reason that their team was getting special interest, and they didn’t need to suffer through this, no matter what she suspected was about to happen.

Ready, she was teleported into a room with the Royals sitting off to the side, while there were hundreds of managers sitting in rows facing the group. They all wore masks of various colors.

Before she was able to inspect the masks, she heard the silver mask say something that caught her attention.

“Matthew Alexander and Elizabeth Moore. Mid Tier 10 and having a good showing in the vassal war they participated in. Matthew showed his skill in the last fight with Queen, pushing the top-ranked Pather farther than anyone else so far. Then there is Elizabeth —”

At that point, Mara stood up and coughed lightly. At that small sound, the room went dead quiet. Not a magical silence but one of fear towards a stronger monster rearing its head.

“Sorry to interrupt, but those two are off limits. Darling BethBeth is my youngest daughter. She and my future son-in-law have finally agreed to step off The Path and come home when they reach Tier 15. At that point, my hubby and I will be setting aside time to directly oversee their training and development. Needless to say, we already have our own plans and teams ready. They have no need of your services.”

Melinda looked around for Luna, but didn’t see the irascible cat among the crowd.

Well, that was one way to stop anyone from learning that they already had a management team. Personally, it felt a bit heavy-handed to her.

However, considering that no one even looked up to where Mara still glared down from, Melinda guessed it might actually be the easiest way to handle it.

Mara then leaned to the side, leaving behind a projection of herself looking at the managers, to smile and wave at Melinda.

Melinda returned the wave and grinned.

Mara and Leon were exactly as Liz described, goofballs who just wanted to enjoy life.

They had spent a few movie nights with Liz's parents and family, which had let Melinda and her team meet the two Royals.

Having the goofs already knowing her somehow helped, even if they didn’t know her Talent. It already felt like they were in her corner.

With that settled, her own team was introduced, and each of their strong points were gone over.

At that, Melinda looked to Baxter, who just watched on as he explained, “Sorry, but your manager has already been chosen for you to keep your cover. Jacob Burch is a good manager who I can work with.”

He pointed, and a shorter man was fighting for her team by saying how good he was at training people with prospective Talents like theirs. Interestingly enough, her being a healer was only passingly mentioned. Most of the time, they talked about Tara, with the rest of the team getting smaller mentions.

Baxter stood up and brushed off his coast before leading her to a nearby door.

“And now we march into the lion's den.”

His little quip didn’t help settle Melinda’s now churning stomach, but she marched on without a protest.

When they entered the room, she saw that Jacob was already sitting in the corner next to Luna, and he sprung up to walk over. His body morphed and grew slightly taller before a pen floated over and started to write a message to her.

“It's me, Kurt, if you didn’t figure that out.”

That earned him a smile, and she asked, “How are the pancakes?”

He narrowed his eyes while raising his eyebrows in a comical manner before writing. “Yes, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t continue to ask odd questions. I only have so many prerecorded answers after all. I can only say good so many times.”

Melinda just smiled at the man and nodded to Luna, “Are you our real manager then?”

Luna shook her head. “No, Kurt is a manager in his own right, and more than good enough. He’s been trained by the best, after all. He also knows your Talent already, so it makes things easier. Plus, he's better suited to you and your team’s personalities than I am.”

The Royals filed in from a second door, but not before Melinda saw that they were still sitting down in their original places.

The new Royal, Frederic, was first out, and nodded to them before taking a seat, followed by everyone else.

Baxter patted her on the back before he stepped forward and bowed slightly. “Good evening, Your Majesties. You’ve been called here today because the Emperor wishes you all to be read in on another one of our greatest assets for the upcoming wars.”

Melinda took that cue to walk forward and introduce herself. “I’m Melinda… and I have a Talent for Overhealth.”

Mara and Leon just nodded along and encouraged her to continue with waving hands.

“I can heal anyone without a healing cooldown and also remove existing healing cooldowns as well.”

Tur'stal raised an eyebrow, but only sipped at her wine while Frederic looked like he had just eaten a lemon.

Rusty looked excited and bounced over to her before holding out an arm to Luna. “Take it off, please?”

Luna’s hand glowed with purple light that screamed danger as she sheared the man's hand off and then annihilated the falling appendage.

Rusty seemed unbothered. With burning eyes, he held his stump over to her.

Melinda cast the most basic [Ranged Heal]. Despite her mana reserves not being enough to heal the higher Tier man, the stump started to regrow.

Baxter stepped forward and put his hand on Rusty and said to everyone in the room, “While it's only considered Overhealth by current definitions, Melinda’s version does more than we’ve ever seen before. So much so that I’d propose a rework what we define as Overhealth. She can heal any wound— even a Tier 47’s— perfectly. Her mana pool limits her a touch, but when paired with Matt’s mana generation, she's truly unmatched. Most importantly, her Overhealth also has the advantage of continuing to work on any other healing spell cast while it’s still active. Another healer can take over for Melinda and benefit from her Talent until her original spell wears off.”

After saying that, he pointed at the slowly growing appendage and Rusty’s hand regrew in seconds. “See? My own healing spell takes advantage of her still active spell to continue the perfect healing, all without destroying the original effect of her Talent.”

Rusty laughed as he flexed his regrown hand. “It’s perfect, and you know Matt. Even better. Can you convince him to spar with me? With you around, we can go all out. Actually, do you want a part-time job healing people I spar with? I can never get them to agree because of how long they need to recover. This is perfect!”

Melinda assumed he was putting on an act, like Mara and Leon did to make her comfortable, and was about to agree when Baxter clamped a hand over her mouth.

“She will be agreeing to no such thing. Her secrecy must be ensured until the proper time in the war. The Emperor wants to have her available to bring back some of our agents to the field faster than expected. The perfect skill has already been reserved for her.” He looked to Frederic, who now just smiled. “Thanks to King Frederic, we have a long-lasting cracked healing spell that you’ll be getting. The area of effects last for days while the healing-over-time effect it applies lingers weeks. We can shuffle people through the spell before they head into a fight, then all of the frontline healers can take advantage of your Overhealth while keeping you out of danger.”

Melinda swallowed and nodded. She wasn’t looking forward to that, but knew that she had to help if she could.

Frederic nodded. “Yes, I now know why the Emperor was so insistent on safely securing that particular skill. Young lady, would you be against sitting down and talking about your Talent and how it works in the particulars? I have a few ideas from what I’ve heard, but I also think I have a few other skills in my collection...” He must have seen her confusion, as he said, “I’m a cracked skill collector and have the skill I believe you will be getting as your reward for hitting Tier 10. But my collection is vast, and you might discover a second or third skill you may find useful in my vault. Anything that helps you will no doubt help the whole Empire.”

Melinda felt like she would be making a deal with a loan shark if she agreed, but Kurt wrote, “We can do that after the tournament, when we have some more time. Until then, Melinda and her team are under protection, and will continue keeping a low profile. I was brought before the Emperor before he left, and was made to understand that Melinda is not to be exposed early under any conditions.”

Melinda was forced to answer a few questions before she was finally allowed to leave, and Baxter sent her away.

***

Frederic cursed up a storm internally. Emmanuel hadn’t just won the lottery with Matt, but had pulled doubles with Melinda.

That would have been bad enough. But for them both to come from Lilly, at the same horrific time? This was an unmitigated disaster. Not just for his faction, but for the entire universe.

The statistics proved that traumatic experiences didn’t produce better Talents. You lose more capable people than you got out of it when you let disasters run rampant.

Two insane oddities did not make millions of years of data irrelevant, no matter how much one wished it did.

But it wouldn’t matter. Even some of the Empire’s nobles, who knew that for a fact, would still use it as an excuse to treat their subjects like cattle, much like in the Sects.

Even more people would simply refuse to believe that these twin miracles were a coincidence. With one look at the Lilly tragedies and the windfalls that shortly followed after, leaders both inside and out of the Empire would have to think twice about that. The possible rewards were just too valuable to ignore.

Reviewing the timeline only made him feel sicker. First, the disaster struck after it was already obvious that Light and Shadow would start a war. The Empire had actually been ramping up their military research and spending around that time in preparation. It fit depressingly well.

Then, the Junipers were lightly punished very close to when Melinda’s revolutionary Tier 3 Talent would have been revealed, with Matt also hitting Tier 3 not long after. To a skeptical intelligence officer, that would look like a hasty coverup. Like they shut the initial experiment down once they confirmed the results they wanted, so that no one else would catch on until it was too late.

Even worse, Frederic, the uncompromising bastion for nobles rights, publicly and suddenly helped resolve the situation quickly after a decade of quiet deadlock. Members of his own faction had fought him over the decision, but he had remained adamant despite the Baron technically going against his own people. His being named a King mere decades laters would look like he was being rewarded for his parts in the groundbreaking experiment and subsequent coverup.

The scandalous decision to give the Juniper's title to a local Pather? That would look like a distraction. Like a flashy sleight of hand to quickly make Lilly famous for something else. All the while, the mad dash to find and sponsor the next potential Baron would camouflage their own people’s efforts to scour the populace for more god-like Talents. Then, even if the Empire found more golden geese, they could have disappeared them with no one the wiser. In a poverty-riddled disaster zone, the missing persons rate for orphaned teens was plenty high to smokescreen dozens, or even hundreds of extra kids disappearing without a trace.

Possible hints of mass monitoring could be seen in the events of Melinda’s awakening too. That Pather just happened to be present and ready to step in when her Tier 1 Talent was revealed. What were the chances? The Path would make a perfect excuse to put the most promising test subjects directly under the control and eye of the Empire too. It would make sense to have potential sponsors secretly lying in wait at awakening events.

Then there was Elizabeth. Matthew randomly meeting and teaming up with the only Royal Princess anywhere near his age was a crazy fluke of fate. The boy getting an invite to the training planet would widely be viewed as suspicious as well. No, it would be far easier to believe that Elizabeth was sent there to honeypot the hormonal teenage boy, securing his loyalty to the Empire’s ruling class while slowly indoctrinating him into their views.

Every single nation, guild, and noble house in the universe would suspect that Lilly was a planet-wide military experiment that went shockingly, unbelievably right for the Empire. They would assume that the truly absurd series of failures leading up to the dungeon breaks were by design, rather than an accident. They would have to conclude that while maybe not all traumatic experiences resulted in overpowered Talents, the Empire may have found the exact right set of conditions where it could breed demigods.

All across existence, leaders would desperately try to mimic their ‘methods’ and ‘results’. Just like how Matt and Melinda were too valuable to kill, they were far too valuable to not try recreating.

Hundreds of trillions would suffer for it.

So much would be lost.

All for nothing.

It was all more than Frederic could personally ever deal with. It was more than he could bear thinking about right now. All he could do was focus on the smaller picture. Yoking his own people up would be tough enough.

He certainly knew that his job had become much harder in the upcoming war, and afterwards.

Though, maybe he could use this for the Empire’s benefit at least. So long as he and the other Royals kept aspiring copycats to a minimum in the Empire, and maybe among their allies too, then their enemies would ultimately waste dramatically more time, people, and resources on this wild golden goose chase. That sort of wastage could build up into a massive disadvantage. So, why not encourage them even more?

Frederic perused a list of unsettled frontier planets in his kingdom. Circumstances already implicated him in the ‘Lilly experiment’, so his activities would definitely be a key focus of foreign espionage when they looked into it. If one or two of his low Tier frontier worlds quietly disappeared along with their populations, anyone who eventually found out might assume he was trying to recreate Lilly’s success again, lending more credence to the wrong conclusion. He could even subtly bias the recruitment program for those planets. To a discerning enough intelligence analyst, it would suggest he was trying to covertly select for specific traits in the settlers.

In truth, he would just tuck away the planets in an isolated, uninhabited solar system outside of the teleportation networks, install a high Tier communication jammer, and then pour enough extra resources on the settlers that no one would even consider complaining about being cut off from the Empire for a few generations in return. After maybe a century, he would just as quietly shift everything to where it was. Also, a secluded, controlled population would be a prime opportunity to trial run some of the ambitious public education revamps one of his great grandchildren had been championing. No point in wasting the opportunity there either. The lad was also competent and trustworthy, making him well suited to govern one of the hidden planets too.

Frederic felt his foul mood retreat just a little. The thought of pulling one over on the other Great Powers helped slightly numb the headache of today’s revelations. Some important numbers on the other side would plunge, at the cost of only slight dips on their side. It wasn’t pretty to think about some of the details, but it would still be a major victory in its own way.

There were all sorts of devious false flags he could plant that many of the other Great Powers would immediately try to experiment with.

The supposed secrets to their success could do with more than just the populations. Maybe he could get the other nations pointlessly fighting over some exceptionally rare resources too. He just needed to act like they were needed. Around a decade before the chosen worlds disappeared, Frederic could send coded requests for different, notably unusual materials through every covert channel he had access to. Such methods were usually beyond secure, but nothing was ever truly perfect, so faking a convincing leak was just a numbers game. If he used enough of those channels, eventually one of them would be compromised and the request would leak. Coming from such a secure source, the people drinking it up on the other side would never believe it was on purpose.

Then, the mad rush to acquire that rare, highly limited material would begin, and they’d be at each other’s throats, trying to get as much as possible to run their experiments with.

Oh, this idea was fun.

But it was not an immediate concern. He’d need to run it by Emmanuel before he did anything major.

It was promising though.

Some false trails could be laid now, but the best time to fully implement the ruse would be in a century or so, a bit before Matthew and Melinda went public. It wouldn’t take more than a few decades of focused preparation to pull off the deception flawlessly.

Mitigating the more direct impacts of their Talents was a different story. Even a century was far too little time to address even for one of them, let alone two. For the sake of his faction and his nation, Frederic needed to make use of every precious second. More than any other Royal, the future promised turmoil for his plans, territory, and subordinates.

Matthew would change the economy in uncountable ways, but Melinda would change the face of war for as long as she sat below Tier 35. She could then make an army an undying and unkillable wave of bodies. Her Talent was simply staggering.

And access to it would determine which factions gradually died off in the war, and which ones came out with negligible losses to their manpower and influence.

He even agreed with Harvest Moon that with her appearance, they needed to reword how Overhealth was classified. Shamefully grabbing onto yet another distraction from the impending disaster that was his fiefdom, he started to plan how he would suggest they reshape the classifications.

Before now, everything that did more than normal healing was considered Overhealth. Some variation already existed, but not enough to warrant reclassifying an ability that was already all-but-unheard of. However, Melinda’s Overhealth was head and shoulders above the competition, and would be used en masse. They needed to clarify the labeling for the overpowered healing type before it became household knowledge.

He would propose a few subcategories. Special healing, which was cooldown-neutral and how upgraded [Regeneration] worked. It could heal a brain perfectly as long as it was the one doing the healing, but it couldn't remove the cooldown on any injuries that had already been healed by another source. Meta-healing would be cooldown-curing skills or Talents. They didn’t have any non-cracked skills that worked like that, but there were a few cracked skills that did the same.

Then there was what he was calling Superhealing. Skills that could fix exploded brains without removing memories would fall under that category. They only had two known cracked skills that could heal someone else’s exploded gray matter, but it was known to exist. Then of course, phoenix tears would be included in the same category.

He would propose that anything with the capabilities of Special and Super healing be called Overhealing. Both cooldown-neutral and the ability to fix broken brains. He only knew of one healer who could do that; they were in the Clans, and could only do so with a single spell, which implied another unique crack.

Then there was Melinda. He proposed to call her Talent ‘True Overhealth’ as it was Special, Super, and Meta healing all together.

Or perhaps True healing? True health? Absolute healing? Panacea? Hmm.

He sighed. The distraction of planning something was nice, but he knew he had issues to get ahead of involving any nobles who thought this whole situation meant a return to the ‘old ways’. He knew he’d need to preemptively remove a few of his nobles that couldn’t be reasoned with.

It hurt him to even consider it, but he couldn’t allow them to drag the entire faction down.

He’d group the Junipers in that list, but hesitated. Matthew and Melinda might want to end that enmity themselves.

Frederic sighed again. He had trillions to protect, and culling a few dozen was a small price to pay for the safety of everyone else. Some of them would represent major losses for the faction. Additionally, if not camouflaged thoroughly, their deaths would spark suspicion and infighting. A handful could simply go missing in rifts or on the battlefield. For others, he would need to get more creative.

He might not like it, but knew it was what he had to do.

The math was dead simple.

He still abhorred it.

But his father had raised him well. He understood what needed to be done.

Even the highest prices had to be paid by someone, and sometimes you needed to cut out the rot before it spread.

He had hoped that he could use the upcoming war to soften and reform some of his most adamant nobles, but he knew that it was a futile task now.

Emmanuel had him hook, line, and sinker.

First, the boy who created unlimited mana, and now the girl who could heal anything as long as she had mana.

Both would define the coming era.

His ability to make inroads with each of them would redefine the future of all of the Empire’s hereditary nobles.

Considering they came off the same wretched planet, and then simply fell into the laps of the Emperor’s faction, he wondered if the Realm had a sense of humor.

If it did, its sense of humor sucked.

***

Matt watched on as Liz fought with an earth mage who was a more refined version of Vinnie.

She was at a distinct weakness, as the man hid behind walls of stone and blocked her attempts to wash over her opponent.

She was putting on a good show, but eventually, she ran out of mana and was defeated.

It was a less flashy showing than Matt’s, but Luna had reported that this was the best answer to Liz’s skills.

There were already murmurings about her overly relying on Matt’s Concept, and they decided that was the easiest way for her to fall out of the tournament.

The group commiserated with Liz about her loss, but as more than half of them had fallen out of the solo fights, those nights were becoming a more common occurrence.

Only Annie, Emily, and Tara remained in the solo fights, with the rest of them getting knocked out in the last week.

All of them ranking in the top thousand was an accomplishment though, and they were deservingly proud. Matt and Liz, like most of the losers, voluntarily stepped out of the losers bracket after seeing how strong the remainder were. Kyle was actually the only one of them still fighting in that far more competitive bracket for a chance to rank in the top one hundred.

They wished him well, but Matt wasn’t sure he would make it much farther than that. Definitely not the top fifty, when they moved away from a bracket fighting, single elimination, and went to a points-based system.

The next weeks turned into a grind, with little to break it up.

Matt and Liz went back to delving rifts to advance their cultivation, while Quill and Torch fought in the tournament, punching higher and higher in the top one thousand until it was limited to the top five hundred.

Around that time, Matt and Liz stepped off the team fights tournament with a loss to Carlos Duo, a team with a healer named Bill. He seemed like a mini Melinda with how he threw out a ton of healing skills. The other half of the team was a fire mage named Carlos, who spat out tons of fire spells augmented by his signature fire armor.

They were a strong duo who worked well together, and forced Matt and Liz into a bad corner with a wave of attacks.

Even without a frontliner, they were able to rely on Carlos and his overly hot flame armor to keep their distance from them.

Matt and Liz noted that Bill was throwing a ton of healing spells on Carlos, which implied that his armor actually burnt him as well, which was interesting, and something they noted for their fight as Quill and Torch.

As the team was one of the strongest, it didn’t raise any eyebrows when Matt and Liz lost.

The team was proof that any Talent synergy, if strong enough, could take you far on The Path of Ascension. Even without a front line, and while just relying on endless healing spells and stupidly strong fire spells, you could burn your way through the competition.

Still, Matt and Liz got to see a few very interesting fights as they watched along with everyone else.

Teddy, a large but hairy man, had gathered attention thus far, but he exploded in popularity as his signature style of sleeping up until the moment he was lowered into the arena paid off.

He clearly had a Talent that empowered him depending on how long he slept, but when he was fighting a Masked Pather called simply, Knight, they got to see exactly how strong he could be.

Knight was a more typical sword and shield fighter who relied on heavy armor to take hits, while whittling down their opponents’ with their blade and the occasional spell.

Teddy had tried to take out his opponent with few well-placed hits, but Knight took the attacks without issue. It was only after Teddy had been left at a loss from his consistent failure to do damage that he changed tactics for the first time.

He pulled out thick, heavy gauntlets, which stood in stark contrast to his light leather armor.

With the gauntlets, he punched at Knight's shield a second time. Instead of just shrugging off the blow, the other Pather had been sent flying from the sheer force of the punch.

Matt and the crowd didn’t miss the glowing reinforcement enchantment that traced up Teddy’s arm and spread out the force of the attack.

Knight tried to get up, but now that Teddy had started to fight for real, he was a ferocious attacker who charged the heavily armored man down, and started beating him with no regard for his own defense.

His light armor proved to be just that, and was quickly shredded, but Teddy seemed unbothered by the too-small cuts appearing on his body.

When he finally got Knight down to the ground, he nearly ripped the man's arm off as he removed the shield. It was then that the referee stepped in and removed the fallen man, giving Teddy the win.

Liz whistled next to him. “That's a strong bloodline.”

Matt nodded. He might not be able to feel it like she could, but he could see the effects of it.

“Bear?” He asked. It was only a guess, but it fit the demonstrated fighting style.

Liz nodded. “Yes, but I don't recognize the Talent. Something with hibernation, but no bear bloodline I know of has a Talent like that.”

Matt chewed on his lip. “So a bloodline influenced Talent, but not a direct inheritance. Half bear, probably.”

They noted the man for being a top contender with that level of strength, but one with some serious ranged weaknesses if that was all he had.

One of the other teams that was making a name for themselves out of nowhere was a healer mage hybrid and a melee brawler duo.

A simple combination, but one that stood out.

The mage, Feri, had some sort of mana Talent, as she always lasted longer than was expected. But Matt wasn’t able to model more than a vague idea of her Talent, besides the fact that it made her spells cost less.

Zeran was a shorter man, and like Matt, enjoyed throwing himself into battle, not caring for the small wounds that accumulated during a fight. In fact, the wounds seemed to heal as they fought on.

They had an explosive fight against the numbers masked team, where they almost won.

The golden ratio team had a fairly standard team composition of a mage, an archer, a melee damage dealer in the form of a rapier wielder, and a more defensive-oriented melee frontliner.

The golden ratio team hadn’t left their bottom of the top ranks at all, but they hadn’t needed to show extraordinary abilities in their fights either. Until they fought against Feri and Zeran.

Thirteen was their rapier user, Twenty-one was the tank, while Thirty-four was the mage, and Fifty-Five was their archer.

Zeran rushed forward at the start of the fight and occupied both Thirteen and Twenty-one with a flurry of chops from his greataxe. Twenty-one, the tank, seemed unprepared for the aggressive display, and was put onto the defensive, even with Thirteen trying to land attacks on Zeran’s flank.

Feri kept her teammate alive and sent out a [Wind Spear] at Thirteen while she tried to rush the back line.

The spell near instantly appeared in Thirteen's face, and carved a line in her chest armor before she gave up on the idea.

The archer, Fifty-Five, tried to pepper Feri with simply empowered shots, but an [Earth Wall] rose up and cut their battlefield nearly in half.

Matt whistled as he saw the wall and looked at Vinnie. “Any chance you could do that?”

Vinnie nodded. “I could do it, but it would cost more mana than its worth. Better to use [Earth Manipulation], even if it's slower. There needs to be a cracked skill or a Talent at work, though. The skill was too long and fast.”

Matt set his AI to trying to figure it out, but didn’t expect much with just a visual reading, and not having his spirit to be able to feel what was going on.

Zeran and Feri were pushing their opponents back, and started to look like they would get the upper hand when Fifty-Five dropped their bow. From nowhere, the archer pulled out a pair of pistols that felt dangerous to Matt, even from the stands.

With deafening bangs, they fired the weapons at Zeran. The small projectiles punched large holes through the man, but since they didn’t hit anything vital, he was able to continue the fight.

The other masked Pathers all retreated and lowered their weapons, clearly letting their archer-turned gunman take on the other team.

Feri healed Zeran, but Fifty-Five just kept firing shot after shot at the charging axe wielder who tried to close the distance.

Fifty-Five sidestepped each of Zeran’s attacks while sending bullet after bullet into the charging bruiser.

Matt narrowed his eyes as he looked at the gunfighter.

He didn’t know a lot about guns, given how rarely they were used, but he had access to the EmpireNet, and while bullets were generally considered expensive for their single-use nature, they should have been doing more damage than that.

It took his AI a second before he got the answer. Fifty-Five was using low Tier ammunition. His AI expected them to be using Tier 8 ammo with the limited damage it was doing to a Tier 10.

As Zeran tried to cut the man down, Fifty-Five danced through each attack as if it was a choreographed fight. Matt’s AI was able to notice that they either had a Talent for flexibility and proprioception, or they had gone into those aspects of physical cultivation heavily.

It was an odd choice, but one that clearly worked. Zeran, an experienced melee fighter, was unable to even land a single blow. Even when he charged a blast of electricity in their axe, the attack and its tendrils all just missed Fifty-Five.

Zeran finally took a step back and launched their axe in an overhand throw at Fifty-Five, but the gunman sidestepped the attack while reloading his guns one at a time.

The crowd went wild when the axe stopped flying and rushed back to Zeran, but Fifty-Five easily backflipped over the weapon as it almost touched his back.

This time, when he shot Zeran, the hole in his chest was inline with a Tier 11 weapon. Even with Feri’s healing as a second, third, then fourth shot landed, Zeran was forced to be removed from the fight.

Feri put up a good fight against the gunman, but even with her walls of stone that she was able to rise out of the ground, she was still unable to dodge every attack. Fifty-Five was able to avoid her full arsenal of [Mana Bolt], [Wind Manipulation], [Jolt], and [Wind Spear]. None of them were even able to touch the man's jacket.

Zeran and Feri were cheered out of the arena despite their loss. They were the first team to force the odd number team to show what they were hiding.

A gunman hiding as an archer was interesting, but Matt and everyone else’s eyes went to the three members of the team who had just stood off to the side.

They were an unknown, each with hidden layers to their powers.

Matt was just excited at the realization. They seemed like a good fight for him and Liz. Quill and Torch were going to have an exciting time ahead of them if all their opponents still had hidden depths like the numbers.

It just meant that they could show off some of the cool ideas they had prepared. Their rain of fire was only one of their prepared trump cards.