Chapter 843: The first day of the evaluation trial (part 21)

"Ah, come on, I was already imagining myself bragging about this victory in front of sister Nerissa", said Amanda.

"Not to mention that equipment made from this guy’s exoskeleton should be pretty nice to use, we could be the first unit to have unique weapons made for us, sister Eris is training others besides us but we were the first", added Brenda as she tapped the lateral side of her sword against the centipede making continuous clinking sounds to echo through the battlefield.

The previous caused two different reactions, the girls from the sect couldn’t help but have sparkles in their eyes as they imagined shields reinforced with the tough but light exoskeleton of the centipede and other similar equipment.

As for the centipede in question, seeing the "strangely" scary expression on the faces of the two-legged creatures surrounding him, he... further expressed his intentions, aside of its upper body where those four were standing as of current, as well as the segment which was being pinned down by the spears, the centipede twisted its body to let his vulnerable abdomen fully in the open.

"As much as my blacksmith spirit is interested in working with this guy’s materials, I think in this situation it will be more beneficial to bring him back instead", said Blair as she sheathed her sword, giving her verdict over the situation.

"There are a lot of non-human members in our camp, but no one is as big as this guy, it would be a perfect achievement for the first unit", added Violet who saw Amanda and Brenda still look a bit unconvinced.

"Tsk, fine, we’ll look like the bad guys if we kill him right away after that, I guess", said Amanda as she also sheathed her sword.

"Oh well, even if there is no centipede material equipment, this guy will probably be more useful alive, so we can still exchange him for some nice rewards, perhaps we get to keep these swords for ourselves", added Brenda as she looked at the flawless edges of the sword she was using.

Like previously stated all the swords used by the girls participating in the match, were made by Aster, well at least when it came to the steel working part, the hilt, scabbard and similar aspects were done by the girls from the blacksmith peak who didn’t take a no for an answer when they asked to help diminish Aster’s workload, a few were even done by the little wyrm who was really good at working with non-metal materials, those special works with the little wyrm’s quality seal were given to the squad captains, and they really liked those swords.

"Remove the spears...", just as Violet was giving the order to remove the spears that were pining down the centipede and was about to tell the others to jump down from the centipede’s back, Amanda interrupted her by saying.

"Heh, I got a good idea~".

And that led us to the scene that welcomed Aster and the others, when they looked in the direction of the centipede’s battlefield, given all the ruckus that those fierce girls caused when fighting against him.

’I expected them to win without suffering any real wound but this is indeed a surprise’, amusingly thought Aster as he saw a total of twenty-six girls sitting on the back of a giant centipede, while four were sitting on its head, as it slowly made its way towards Aster’s area.

"Woaah, that looks fun, can I try it as well, big brother, mom?", exclaimed the little girl, breaking the awkward silence that such a strange scene had caused in the vicinity.

"Look senior brother, we have a mount large enough to transport our whole unit~", said a girl from the red sword as she waved her hand at Aster.

"Yeah, I bet no other unit being trained by sister Eris has their own mount!", said another girl from the black sword this time.

"Imagine if we put full armor and proper seats in this guy’s back, not to mention that he can even throw poison at the enemies, we’ll for sure be the most amazing unit!", added a girl from the purple lotus, Violet wasn’t the only one from their reduced group who joined the unit.

"Come up here little Kana, we spared this guy’s life so help us communicate with him, like it happened with the horses", said Amanda.

"Yeah, that doesn’t sound half bad", added Brenda.

"Designing armor for a giant centipede, that sounds interesting", mumbled Blair.

As you can see those three and basically all the other girls of the unit were lost in their own little world as of current, which made Violet sigh as she reported.

"Ahem, we defeated the centipede and it expressed its intention to surrender so we brought him with us, sorry for the inconveniences", said Violet, she as the leading star is the responsible one, so she couldn’t help but speak with an apologetic voice.

That being said, she also looked proud of the achievement made by their group effort, the fact that they defeated the giant centipede without suffering any wounds, meant that if they had faced the bear, they could have given him a nice beating, perhaps they couldn’t have killed it, because the bear was obviously much more agile and had more tricks up his sleeves than the centipede.

But this victory was a sign that they had taken a step ahead the goal of the battle formation unit system, which was to be able to safely deal with strong enemies without having to rely in the top fighters of the camp, those cute yet fierce girls did enjoy the feeling of being looked out and taken care of by Aster, Mira and the other notoriously strong leaders, but they also didn’t want them to have to worry about them at all times after all.

’No way, I thought only those ten were crazily strong, but those girls managed to capture the centipede instead of killing it... yeah, luckily miss Cassandra told us to not do anything besides stalling for time, I don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if we actually wounded any of them, especially that little girl’, thought the younger of the pair of brothers.

He saw all those girls calling for Kana, who after receiving a nod or approval from Aster and Sarina who still scared him by the way, happily jumped onto the centipede’s back and was warmly received by everyone.

"No problem, in fact this comes quite in handy, that being said I don’t think you’ll be able to show off this guy to others so soon, but we’ll see how things go later", said Aster as he softly laughed at Violet’s predicaments, he has to deal with a bunch of enthusiastic girls on a daily basis after all, so he found it amusing to see someone else in a similar situation.

Speaking of which there is another girl among the only two whose fights were still ongoing who usually found herself in a similar position, namely the purple lightning princess, whose opponents were actually from both Cassandra and the blond leader’s groups.

That being said, only one person from Cassandra’s "group" remained in the battlefield, it was the brown-haired woman also known as Vera, who saw Cassandra and Lauren casually having a conversation with the enemy and nearly lost it on the spot.

’What is that stupid bitch doing, where is Jen and... what the hell is that!’, she exclaimed to her insides as she noticed a corpse with a familiar blue hair color, as well as another one whose head was missing, which used to be the shield guy to whom she gave a dose of the poison she had prepared for emergencies.

But more importantly she nearly tripped when she saw the girls of the sect casually chatting and getting all comfy while sitting on the centipede’s back, while the latter was being given some medicine by Kana by the way.

As you can see, Vera was unaware of what happened after she told Jen to go and "help" Cassandra deal with the ligress girl, while looking for a change to get rid of Lauren in the process and blame it on the heat of the moment.

The reason being that while Vera was unaware of what Lauren’s lineage was, she could directly tell that the short orange haired girl would die fighting at Cassandra’s side rather than submitting to her and to take control of the group she absolutely had to remove such a dangerous variable.

But not only things went absolutely not the way they were supposed to, but it looked like everyone who wasn’t on her side was alive and well, not to mention that they looked relatively in friendly terms with the enemy.

What’s more, the giant centipede was somehow now calmly standing next to the enemies while letting those girls sit on his back too, in other words, she was royally screwed.

’There is no other way, damn it!’, she cursed to her insides, Vera might have a vicious heart but she is not stupid, Jen surely tried to fulfill her orders, so her relation with Cassandra’s group is that of deathly enemies now for sure.

And since they seemed to have reached some sort of deal with the black-haired youth, that means that just surrendering isn’t an option for her, she’ll probably be killed if she did it and she is of course aware that with the few people that are in the same boat as her, they can’t win, so that leaves her only one path to survival.

"Damn it, all those useless bastards lost", cursed one of her previously temporary but now permanent teammates, the sole remaining "squad leader" from the blond guy’s team, the fat man who used a wood club with metal nails sticking all over its surface as a weapon.

"You saw it too Connor, we need some leverage on our end, so, let’s capture her instead of trying to kill her, in any case she is too damn slippery", said Vera to the fat club wielding man, also known as Connor.

"Tsk, fine, hey you two, no more opening creating tactics, just close off her retreat paths", said the fat man.

"Okay!", said the two in question as they charged at the enemy and spread to block her path of retreat.

Something that was different about this fight from others was the number of enemies facing Valentina, from the very beginning, she fought against more enemies than others, in fact she alone was fighting against seven enemies on the beginning.

However, that number was reduced to six when Aria killed one of the two archers teaming with the blond leader, and one member from the group left to assist the blond leader, then Jen and that shield guy who were also a part of the ones fighting against Valentina, left on Vera’s orders to join Mira’s battlefield, which left a total of four.

The enemy’s formation consisted in Vera who had two spears, but only used one of course, the fat man with the club, one guy from the blond leader’s team who used to be fighting with a "staff", because it was the upper part of his spear the one Xander had taken to become his improvised dagger, but luckily got one of Vera’s spears passed to him, and the last guy used a shield.

In case you wonder why did someone with a functional brain like Vera, allowed the size of the group to be reduced when in a 1v7 situation originally, they couldn’t defeat the enemy, that’s because through the fight the girl with blond hair and purple eyes in front of them, has basically been dodging and redirecting their attacks but was unable to wound them.

So, under such conditions, having less weapons involved was actually beneficial, they also were lacking in terms of control over their weapons because they always aimed for the kill, but that was over since now the idea was to capture her instead.

’Her offense is trash but her dodging and redirecting skills are quite something, therefore she shouldn’t be a nobody in her group, given that tendency perhaps she is one of the favorites of that black haired guy, I should be able to exchange her life for my safety...’, Vera’s inner monologue was interrupted by a "gurgling" sound coming the position where the enemy was.

"Mmm, looks like things are pretty much wrapped, so I can also end this little farce", said the purple lightning princess, she had propelled herself into the air and landed behind the guy with the spear to then punch him on the back of his head, making his eyes roll backwards.

Then before he even fell to the ground, the purple lightning princess stole the enemy’s spear and casually stabbed the shield wielding guy on the back of his neck.

"Gurgle!", and that was the origin of the gurgling noise that returned Vera to the real world, it was the shield guy drowning in his own blood for a second before he died.

"Thud", all this before the former spear wielding guy landed on the ground, which was followed by the sound of the shield wielding guy’s corpse also landing on the ground.

’What the hell!!!’, inwardly screamed both Connor and Vera after seeing Valentina casually jumping a few meters into the air, knock out one enemy and killing another one in less than ten seconds, everything achieved with clean and concise movements, where there was not even a trace of wasted energy, strength or focus, her technique was basically flawless.

To answer their question, you just need to observe what used to be the bigger picture of the whole fight and to know what type of girl the purple lightning princess is.

For the first part, the situation was that ten people were facing thirty enemies, which would originally mean ten 3v1 fights, however Aster wasn’t participating, not only because that would defeat the purpose of the fights, since he could kill all thirty enemies with a single slash of his sword if he wanted to and that would ruin the fun of the others, but also because that wasn’t their goal.

From the very beginning neither Aster nor Valentina, in other words the two with the highest authority and the acting leaders of the participants of the match, planned to kill everyone, what they wanted was intel from both groups, while in the process this also involved letting those girls have some fun as well.

So, Aster’s non-participation stand was not on a whim, it was properly discussed and agreed upon by both leaders, but of course that would mean that there will be three free enemies that could aim for someone else, and that’s where Valentina in other words the other leader entered the scene.

Besides Alexandra, the one who has the easiest to deal with large groups of enemies is the purple lightning princess, because in terms of pure technique alone, she is unparalleled in the camp, if she had a slightly stronger physique like Agnes, or access to her lightning, she would be impossible to properly be classified just like Alice, Mira, Vivian and Espi.

Every little movement and action from Valentina while in a fight are perfectly executed to fulfill an end, even without weapons she can redirect enemy attacks like it is children’s play, in fact for her the vast majority of other people’s fighting skills are child’s play, they are flawed, inefficient and easy to travel through even in large quantities.

And then you know that she is the responsible older sister type right, well, she chose to simply stall a larger number of enemies to draw attention upon herself, so that the other girls could have their fun, but now she had no need to keep up with the act.

"This bitch was playing with us, Connor use the poison....", Vera whose fantasy of easily capturing Valentina was poured down a bucket of ice-cold water, had her sentence interrupted once again, this time by a whistling sound.

"Aghh...!", which was followed by a pained one which faded almost instantly, the reason being that a spear had just pierced Connor right on his neck, killing him, naturally that was because the purple lightning princess rolled that spear she stole from that fainted guy and then threw it with such a smooth motion and enough force, but more importantly efficiency that Connor died before he could react.

"That spear was yours originally right, take it back", casually said Valentina as she dismounted her own spear which was hanging from her back.

As a responsible leader she didn’t bring a sword but a spear with her, because she wasn’t planning to fight much, and a spear was more efficient to protect the group than a sword, thanks to the extra length and other functions that a spear could fulfill.

That being said and now that her priority which was to responsibly block the extra enemies was fulfilled, don’t forget that the purple lightning princess is experiencing a second maybe milder but still noticeable "rebellious phase" courtesy of that alchemic product prepared by Aster’s godmother, long story short she also wanted to show off a bit.

And despite Vera’s attitude so far, she is actually stronger than she has let others see, in a rough calculation in terms of battle prowess, she fell behind just around a third part when compared to Cassandra who though was fully aware couldn’t defeat the ligress, at least was confident enough in being able to safely stall Mira for time, with a bit of Lauren’s help.

But Vera has a trump card to make up for the difference, she needed that much to undermine Cassandra’s authority and make her own little faction within their group after all.

"Let me tell you what, if you manage to do so as much as scratch me, I won’t kill you, what will happen to you on the end won’t depend on me though", casually said Valentina as she rolled her spear, which made Vera grit her teeth.

’Fucking presumptuous bitch... but the offer is not bad, I just need to appeal to that guy then’, she thought as she took out a pinky sized container from her pocket with a familiar looking bright yellow substance, it was arsenic of course.

But giving the smaller amount and much more viscous consistency, the concentration and toxicity should be way higher than what Jen used, which is why it was a bit surprising to see Vera unplugging it and not applying it to the spears.

"We were prohibited from bringing any toxin that could kill in a short period of time, so don’t worry, as long as my safety is guaranteed by that leader of yours, I will gladly give you the antidote!", said Vera to then keep the content of the tube in her mouth, as she held both of her spears to then charge at Valentina.

"Clang!", the first spear of the enemy clashed with Valentina’s one, but that was just a distraction, the second spear which was swept at the purple lightning princess by Vera was the really dangerous one.

’Now, dodge the spearhead "efficiently" like usual!’, thought Vera as she opened her mouth to make a spitting motion, which would lead one to believe that she was going to spit the poison at Valentina.

"Clang!", but that wasn’t the case, what’s more, casually using her brigandine Valentina stopped the spear instead of dodging it and then used the butt of her spear to hit Vera’s abdomen.

"Gah!", the impact forced Vera on her knees, as you can see now that she was forced to let out a pained sound, the arsenic was nowhere to be seen in her mouth and that’s because she actually drank it earlier.

No, she wasn’t suicidal, the arsenic was to be used against enemies indeed, in fact the bright yellow stain on Valentina’s brigandine, on the area where the spear had landed earlier to be accurate, proved the previous.

What happened is that Vera’s trump card was a body constitution, a poisonous one to be more accurate, of course in front of a queen of toxins like Vivian, she is but a commoner in rags in comparison, her ability at mortal level allowed her to drink toxins and then secrete them from her hands at will.

This meant that she had resistance against toxins of course, but her limit was not even as high as Alice, let alone Vivian, but she could indeed be troublesome under the proper circumstances, like now when she feigned to keep the poison in her mouth, but instead coated her weapon with it while she charged.

Vera even only applied if to one spear and used the other to clash with Valentina’s spear, creating the fake scene of her weapons being clean, all of it was a distraction, she didn’t even aim to really land her spear’s strike, but just wanted Valentina to dodge so that the poison would splash her face and that will be enough.

But the purple lightning princess casually saw through her plan which is why she instead stopped her spear in cold with the brigandine, so no poison reached her skin, then immobilized Vera with a single hit which forced the air out of her lungs.

"What a shame that poison was your trump card, you are nowhere as dangerous as the poison user with whom I have trained to counter such situations, how boring", said Valentina as she used the shaft of her spear to hit Vera’s right temple, making her faint on the spot.

’Oh well, guess you still survived the fight, though considering how that green-haired girl was looking at you, you are dead’, thought Valentina as she stretched her body to then grab the two fainted enemies and walk towards Aster’s area.