Chapter 338: Underdog Flame

———Useph———

<9: 43 am>

“Damn, who could’ve guessed that?” Gregori sarcastically said. At least he wasn’t brutalized or anything, just a bunch of pokes and smacks. He didn’t even get to valiantly struggle before he got combo’d into oblivion.

“Be nice, that guy was willing to go first.” Kenni said despite being one of the last people who should be saying stuff like that.

“I don’t think he was a known glutton, right?” I asked since I don’t think I ever heard of this guy having any kind of reputation, really.

“Maybe he didn’t eat anything yesterday, who knows?” Kenni said with a shrug. “Either way, that is gonna be something that haunts him for at least a week, right?”

“That’s your focus?” Gregori snarked back at her before checking the tablet. “Hey, they updated what the few of the prizes are.”

“Oh. That’s… nothing super impressive?” I commented as I switched to the points tab. Right now the points aren’t enough to give us anything, and the collective points reward that they are willing to show are just mission points at the moment?

“<In case you’re wondering where to use the points. There are a few places you can exchange items for them, right now it is exclusive to the mission room, but we’ll expand it in due time.>” Rico explained. So there are gonna be more places to spend those points. I’m pretty sure most students here haven’t even spent a single point after that competition.

“Aren’t only resellers gonna feel the need to get these points right now then? I think most people here can trade for a few important items in the mission room which probably doesn’t need as many points as this event would provide.” Jeff remarked. I mean we still don’t know how many points we’ll get in total, so I wouldn’t say that yet… “Speaking of which, who were the resellers anyway? They sure know how to market the product.”

“It’s multiple people and I can’t say the number of candidates is high…” Orrel pointed out. “It’s nothing worth identifying, we would’ve done the same if we felt strapped for cash.”

“I’m more mad that I didn’t get to try it first, really.” Jeff clarified. “Who would’ve thought there’d be suckers for those kinda things. We didn’t even know if it’ll work with other dungeons or not.”

“Considering that there are some of us that are more than willing to go to entirely different states just to cause a bit of trouble, they probably would’ve mentioned that kind of restriction.” Gregori makes his guess. “Also, there hasn’t been any reports of false advertisement, so it probably works. A few people have purchased it already.”

“Had to wonder how that was going to change things. I mean the skip and escape tools are gonna be priceless, right?” Jeff said.

“There’s no doubt that it would’ve helped a lot for those who are serious when it comes to dungeon diving, but… Oh, looks like someone is coming on stage.” Before Orrel could speculate on that point further, someone has risen up to the challenge.

“<Looks like we finally got our second contestant! Will everyone cheer on for our challenger?>” Rico announced as the person in question stood there with the composure the first challenger lacked. What a bold girl to go on stage so quickly before the announcers could even try to nudge someone to actually participate.

“...Not who I was expecting, honestly.” Kenni remarked. She’s not really someone we are familiar with. “Who is she again? Seems like a scrappy kinda girl.”

“Seems familiar to me…” Gregori muttered while the rest of the crowd grew louder as 

the two fighters got ready for the fight. “She’s the little sister of that brute from Glery’s class. That was Histon, and this girl is…”

“<The second match is about to begin. On one side is our champion, and the other side is the second brave contender, Uires Milent!>” Rico told us her name before Gregori could. “<Three, two, one… Begin!>”

Like the first battle, neither started the aggression. Uires takes a defensive stance, holding her spear tightly and stares down the army-destroying mouse… Is she even one, actually? Her ears honestly look more like one of those cartoon animal ears headbands. Either way, the sight of someone with ordinary black hair and brown eyes against someone with light blue hair and eyes having those cartoon ears is quite the contrast.

*Dash* *Swing* *Block* *Swing* *Parry*

Suddenly Emmie made her move and quickly closed the distance between the two. The size of the playing area is massive and they’re on opposite ends of the arena, if she was the one trying to close the gap Emmie would’ve had all the time in the world to react.

It’s hard to tell in the last match thanks to how one-sided the fight was, but with the second fight it’s much clearer that Emmie is holding back immensely in comparison to that survival game. If she was casually fighting back then, right now she’s focusing on not one-tapping all challengers coming her way. Even if this girl is stronger than she was during the raid, Emmie no doubt had widened that gap massively in a little bit over two weeks.

This Uires girl is holding herself well even though Emmie isn’t making it easy. She still hasn’t got a single good hit in or made Emmie look like she’s actually struggling.

*Swing* *Block* *Thrust* *Evade*

Even with her having an actual weapon with longer range than Emmie’s bamboo sword, her assaults went nowhere as Emmie’s much greater strength and agility means that even that setback doesn’t cause her any trouble.

*Smack* *Leap*

Emmie then smacks her with the practice weapon, causing her to noticeably begin losing her balance, but she quickly regains her footing before making some distance by jumping away.

*Sizz*

She then manifests flames in her left hand while still holding her spear forward in her right hand as if to discourage the idea of Emmie running at her to thwart the buildup of the spell.

Emmie raises her sword as she observes the girl charging up her spell.

*Swing* *Blast* *Leap*

A burst of energy appeared out of the sword as she swung it down, causing the girl to jump over it, using enough strength to jump up past a few rows of audience seating.

“[Fireball]!” She shouted out as she aimed her left hand at her while descending down.

*Sizz* *Blast* *Boom*

The giant ball of flames hit Emmie directly with her not even attempting to intercept it, causing some smoke that makes it hard to see her clearly.

*Throw* *Smack* *Thud*

From within the brief smoke cloud the bamboo sword was thrown right into Uires whose downward momentum was interrupted by the weapon being thrown at high speed and hitting her right in the chest and launching her back and causing her to crash down back-first.

She quickly got back up using her spear as support, gritting her teeth and staring down Emmie now that the smoke has cleared.

*Dash* *Thrust* *Leap*

Uires ran right towards her, probably hoping to take advantage of Emmie’s lack of even so much as a weak weapon like that bamboo sword, thrusting her spear only for Emmie to jump out of the way and right over her head to go grab the sword she threw earlier.

*Dash* *Block* *Clash* *Parry*

With her weapon reclaimed she quickly closes the distance between them as they exchange blows once more, this time with a lot more movement going around than the first round.

They slide around, jump around, and make more sudden bursts of movement to close or widen the gaps between them. With the large playing area they have, naturally they have a lot of room for error and no need to worry about suddenly slipping off the area.

“Why are they moving so slow?” Jeff muttered as they continued the struggle.

“If she goes any faster she might accidentally pulverize her, she doesn’t have much of a choice.” Orrel explained. “We’re not in that world anymore, so fatalities are obviously a concern and something that can’t happen. Even if someone could step in a millisecond before such an incident, it would’ve been a bad look for her if they had to intervene every few seconds because she slipped up. It might be the only struggle she will have in this match.”

*Swing* *Parry*

Meanwhile, Emmie easily repels the incoming attack by lazily swinging the sword in her left hand against the two-handed spear. ‘Struggle’ might be pushing it a bit.

*Smack* *Smack* *Smack* *Smack* *Smack* *Strike*

Finding an opening after Uires’ form falters from the parry, she hits her a bunch of times with weak strikes to form a combo that stuns her for a while before finishing it with a stronger blow, launching her almost to the edge of the field.

*Sizz*

She quickly recovered from that and stood back up again, this time with flames covering her spear to make it look quite menacing.

*Dash* *Clash* *Parry*

Despite the extra flare it is more akin to a visual effect. They don’t really make Emmie take pause and probably just cause minor annoyance from the visual clutter at worst. The mana injected into strengthening her strikes causes power to leak out in the forms of elements they are comfortable with, it’s more akin to smokes and mirrors than a practical thing. If it was something with substantial heat to it Emmie probably would’ve had some kind of reaction.

It’s just something that happens to even the best of us. We don’t even have anywhere near perfect mana control, so she would obviously have even worse problems when it comes to optimizing its usage.

*Swing* *Boom*

She does at least seem a bit conscious of that flaw, as she converted the energy that leaked from her attempt to further strengthen her weapon and adding more force to each swing into a minor explosion with each strike. It’s a very conscious effort on her part as whenever she adds that effect to her strike, she noticeably slows down.

For someone like Emmie that kind of technique might not even slow her down at all, but she doesn’t need to do anything fancy to still hold the advantage in the exchange, as she still hits harder and can tank everything being thrown at her.

“And here I thought my magic fists were slow.” Jeff remarked upon seeing that technique.

“Our slow is fast for everyone else.” Gregori pointed out. “She’s doing well to at least put up a struggle. Emmie is clearly amused by her efforts. More than can be said about the last guy.”

“...Huh, when did we get to order drinks already?” Nicks asked. I didn’t notice that since I was focusing on watching the fight.

“Beats me.” Gregori said as he took a glance at Nick’s drink.

*Smack* *Tumble* *Thud*

Emmie got a clean hit and sent Uires tumbling and rolling again. This time looking like it has even more effect on her with how she is struggling to stand up, but the fact that she was getting desperate and consuming more mana with each strike might also have something to do with it. It’s been a few minutes already and there is no way she has the stamina to outlast Emmie.

*Sizz* *Jump*

She jumped up high with her spear engulfed in flames with much greater intensity. She holds the spear in her right hand and holds it behind her head, ready to throw it.

*Throw* *BOOM*

And once she did and it made contact with Emmie, the burning spear caused a massive explosion that obscured a large part of the arena.

Once she lands back down and the smoke clears, Emmie is naturally unharmed by the attack despite how impressive that looks for many people.

That girl looked irritated as she held her two arms up as if to prepare for another attack. She lost her spear, sacrificing it for that spell, so now she has nothing but her fists and her magic to possibly deal damage to Emmie.

She formed a massive boulder. That’s her next attack. It’s not really a flashy spell to create rock no matter how big it is, but she doesn’t seem to have a lot of options left with how exhausted she has gotten.

*Throw* *Swing* *Crack*

She threw the conjured boulder at Emmie only for her to easily strike it down with the bamboo sword and the boulder shatters into wasted mana.

Uires knelt down in defeat, clearly at her limit. Sweat forming on her shaky body.

“<Looks like the battle has come to an end, folks! A valiant effort by our brave contender!>” Rico’s voice rang out amidst the talks between the audience. For many that was no doubt quite a valiant effort by someone who is probably not even a blip on Emmie’s radar usually. “<Now let’s see how many points she has gathered!>”

The screens then display the score rising up until it hits 557. That’s over five times of what the first guy got, ignoring the bonus points he got for going up first.

“That benchmark might not be surpassed for a while.” Orrel remarked.

“I mean, if one of us steps in, we can easily crush that.” Jeff boasted. “What is even the criteria for the score anyway?”

“Beats me.” Gregori said. I doubt they’ll show how they’re calculating it. Maybe it’s all arbitrary, or maybe there’s a complex scoring system behind the scenes. Either way, that was well-fought from that girl.

“<Oh? Looks like someone is raring to go next!>” Rico said as a new challenger has indeed appeared on stage. Looks like her performance helps to invigorate some fighting spirit among the students. It helps that Emmie is clearly not trying to kill them, but that should’ve been obvious from the start.

“Let’s see if you’re proven right or not.” Gregori said while looking at Orrel, who remained calm as he ordered a drink for himself.