We arrived on the stage and stunned the audience with our matching white uniforms and uniformly towering heights that waswere greater than a 180 centimeters. From the other side of the elevated stage came the sounds of heavy footsteps. Bang, bang! Damn! They were’re exaggerating too much.
The Steel God Soldiers Squad appeared. They really are overbearing! All five were fully equipped with heavy black infantry armor and an average height of more than 2 meters. Armed Combined with their two-handed greatswords, it seems they aren’t lightweights after all!
Xiu Si whispered into my ear, “Ah, they’re really calculating. The space on the stage is very limited, so they plan to charge us in an attempt to knock us over and win!”
I answered, “It’s a pity that they encountered us.” We laughed with our hearts brimming with confidence.
Naturally I had to go forward to negotiate with them as the team captain. They happily agreed to a team fight as it was advantageous to them.
The judge announced the start of the battle with a whistle. Immediately, all five Steel God Soldiers brandished their greatswords and rushed us together. While their vigor really was incredible, their speed simply was too slow. Dong Ri, Xiu Si and I didn’t move at all. We just stood at the edge of the stage with Gao De and Xing Ao holding their greatswords in front of us. Xiu Si had told me before the battle, that if it’s possible, we should win with the least amount of people.
When the five opponents reached us, Xing Ao welcomed them with a roar as a faint yellow battle spirit enveloped his greatsword. The two swords crossed and the originally bold and vigorous opponent was blown away by Xing Ao’s slash. Xing Ao had also cracked greatly nicked his opponent’s greatsword in their exchange.
The rest of them were all beaten by Xing Ao. After clashing with him a few times, all of the opponents were unsteadily swaying from side to side. Gao De grumbled, “You didn’t leave any for me and took care of them all by yourself.” All of the other competitors in the audience stared at us foolishly. Many of them were annoyed that we had only used one person.
I walked to the front and stopped Xing Ao from continuing his assault. I said to the opponents, “I advise you all to surrender. Surely you realize how great the gap is between the strengths of our squads.”
The opponent’s boss propped himself up with his sword and heavily said, “Brother, just now was your teammate using Earth Battle Spirit?”
I nodded my head. “That’s right.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at what followed.
The five opponents went up to Xing Ao and knelt before him while their boss spoke. “Big brother, please accept us as your disciples. We participated in this tournament in the hopes of finding a master proficient in battle spirit.”
Xing Ao’s face turned red. He had practiced martial arts his whole life but had never before encountered such a situation. Xiu Si came to his rescue and told our five opponents to find us once the tournament was over and gave them our contact details.
It wasn’t easy for us to escape leave the Steel God Soldiers Squad. On the road back to the academy after finishing our first battle, Gao De kept prodding Xing Ao by saying, “Ah, not bad. Brother already received five disciples on the first day of the tournament. Haha. If all the battles in the future are like this, we’ll be able to form our own legion!”
Xing Ao ignored him and asked Xiu Si, “Boss, do you think I should ’ll be able to accept them?”
Xiu Si smiled. “From what I’ve seen, they’re simple and frank men. There shouldn’t be any problems with accepting them as your disciples. As for whether you should accept them or not, that’s up to you.”
Carrying on, each day we participated in one group battle. All of the battles proceeded smoothly for us with Xing Ao, Gao De and Dong Ri defeating all of them. Xiu Si and I just watched them with the detached manner view of bystanders. In 10 battles, we had 10 victories, allowing us to proceed from the 198th group into the semi-finals.
In between each of our battles, we would go watch Bi Qi’s Wind Dragon Squad’s battles. All of their battles were unexpectedly won by just one person at the rank of Earth Knight, letting them effortlessly enter the semi-finals. From beginning to end, we didn’t see any other members of their squad. Teacher Wen said that he feared this person was the weakest of Bi Qi’s team. Our situation wasn’t looking too hopeful.
After concluding the preliminary battles, we were given two rest days before we were to draw lots again. The first round of the knockout competition would take place over four days with us participating on the third day. In other words, we had four days to rest. We were quite pleased with this arrangement. We didn’t go scout out our opponents’ strengths, but instead we unceasingly practiced building up our skills as a team. While Dong Ri’s battle spirit didn’t progress much, he undoubtedly saw the most progress. He was already able to use some elementary light magic by relying on his natural elven affinity with the elements and my guidance with magic power. Furthermore, he was able to greatly increase his strength by fusing the elementary light magic, Light Arrow, with his own arrows.
68
Volume 3: Chapter 24 – A Display of Strength
Our first match for the semifinals was held today. We didn’t know how powerful our opponents were, but we knew they wouldn’t be able to stop us from advancing. After we arrived at Xiuda Plaza, we saw that the spectator stands were already completely filled.
After everyone got on to the stage, the judge introduced both sides. “Advancing from stage 384 from the 512 of the original 1024 groups, is the Royal Knight Academy’s Radiant Battle Squad and the squad composed of people of various nationalities, the Devil Battle Squad.” After their introduction, the audience began booing them. It was only later that I found out that in all of their preliminary matches they had seriously injured all of their opponents. They had even beaten some to their last breaths.
The Devil Squad consisted of three warriors and two mages. I felt a refined strength from our opponents. I said to Xiu Si, “It seems that today we must all appear on stage.”
Our opponents were evidently experts in team combat. After stepping onto the stage, both teams assumed a fighting stance, waiting for the judge to signal the start of the battle.
The Devil Squad’s three warriors hadn’t attacked impatiently, but rather had their mages cast defensive enchantments on them. This greatly surprised me, as the two opposing mages had the strength of a grand mage. Although their powers were far inferior to me, the defensive enchantments they used were exceptionally brilliant.
I stopped Xing Ao and Cao De, who were both eager to attack, “Let me. Since our opponents have mages, let them experience what true magic is.” Up until now in the competition, I still hadn’t participated and had been itching to act. Seeing that opponents have mages made me eager to display my skill.
Xiu Si indifferently said, “Don’t give our opponents an opportunity. Finish them in one move.”
Xing Ao clearly knew that he could not handle the opponents well. He whispered to me, “If you finish them by yourself, I’ll admire you.”
I threw a glance at him and replied, “Ah, so it turns out you still weren’t convinced of me. Fine, today I will let you see my attack magic. You should all go down.” I directed the last sentence to my squad.
Xing Ao and Gao De still appeared a bit uneased. Xiu Si said, “Go. There is a fundamental gap between them and Zhang Gong.” Everyone walked off the stage. When the opponents had nearly finished casting, they discovered I was the only warrior there. They were stunned. A mage asked, “Are you going to fight alone? Can it be that you are representing your entire squad?”