As they leave the arena, Sen smiles. That match could have been much messier if they hadn’t decided to trust that their array user is better than Julie. Their melee users seemed to be a bit more skilled than his group as a whole, only Sen and Xue matching up evenly with them.

The entire group does their best to focus their mind for the upcoming semifinal match. Kang’s arrogant demeanour seems to have cracked a bit, a bit of nervousness showing in his claims that of course he’s the best and going to get first, for how could DarkBlade do any worse.

As they enter the arena for the semifinal round, the stadium is absolutely packed, and Sen is sure that he’s only seeing one instance of them, as the spectator count he can see in his menu is reading in the hundreds of millions.

The walls go down, and it’s another team with two array users. Sen’s group instantly charges in, only Julie staying a bit behind to set up her arrays. As she places down her first array, the first two arrays from the opponents go down, and Sen lets out a bit of a laugh as he feels a slow applied to him, before a surge of warmth from his bracelet completely wipes out the awkward feeling of moving through molasses.

Sen’s group impacts their opponents, and one of the array users throws together a quick array to make herself invisible and create an image of her as she goes to fight Jennifer. Sen’s opponent is using a war axe and shield, and Sen makes sure to be careful that his sword won’t be caught by the hook in the axe as he swings his blade towards him.

The blow is quite easily parried, and Sen drags his sword back in to deflect the axe blow coming towards him. They slowly exchange careful, measured blows, neither of them willing to commit to a solid strike until they have the measure of their opponent.

Eventually, Sen shows a bit of an opening in his guard to lure him in, and he bites the bait, going in for a heavy swing, but Sen simple pushes himself to the side with his footwork abilities and the wind to get some distance as he prepares his little wind ball.

Sen sends the wind ball flying, and covers his ears with a barrier of wind as it explodes. His opponent simply stumbles for a bit before regaining his balance. Apparently practicing earth body enhancement skills makes you largely immune to that type of attack if you have them at a high enough level.

Even though the attack didn’t do much, Sen laughs. It seems he’s going to have to fight a proper battle rather than cheese it. He goes back in to fight some more when a couple images come over to annoy him.

He glares at them before taking some distance from his slower opponent, and wipes out both the images with a Weight of the Mountain through both of their blades. Before going back to the fight, he gives a short glance over to where his teammates are, and sees that Julie has nearly finished off one of the array users with her own images, while Jennifer and Lynna have nearly finished off one of the people defending the other one.

Kang is getting a bit beaten up, but he’s holding on for now, and Xue is simply trading careful blows with her opponent. He gets his eyes back on his opponent, who is waiting for him to come to him rather than trying to challenge him in a battle of speed, which makes sense for a fighter using the earth element.

Sen obliges him after having a few of his throwing knives blocked, going back to trading careful blows, as with his defense, heavy blows won’t be able to get through his careful blocking with his shield. It takes some time, but eventually Sen gets first blood, an inch deep slice on his opponents leg, and Sen barely dodges the return blow, slowing it with his wind control to have enough time to dodge.

Sen is quite confident at this point, until his opponent stomps on the ground, and the earth rises over one of Sen’s feet, capturing it. Sen doesn’t panic, he’s faced CC in other games, and this isn’t much different.

He stabilizes himself with his other foot, planting it solidly on the ground as he’s forced to block a few heavy blows before using a cutting squall in between a couple of them, slicing pretty deep into his opponents chest. It would have been a fatal blow if not for the fact that his opponent was using the earth element body enhancement skills, and Sen’s surprise at not having killed him rewards him with a deep cut through nearly half of his leg.

Sen pretends to stumble from the wound, and takes advantage of his opponents heavy swing, using the air to support him as he moves to a position that should be off balance and striking back, removing his opponent’s foot.

At this point, Sen isn’t able to free his foot with his wounded leg, so he simply slams his sword over and over at his opponent with weight of the mountain, the crippled enemy forced to block with both his weapon and shield on his back. Eventually, his defense cracks, and Sen finishes him off before slamming the sandstone covering his foot with his pommel, as apparently earth users can change sand to sandstone.

Once he’s free, he tries to limp his way to where Kang is, but the match finishes before that, Julie having swept through the opposition after finishing off their array users. Sen gives a very short bow before leaving the arena, not wanting to bleed to death after the match is over.

Once outside, Sen is glad to see his leg back in a healed condition. The group all shares grins, and Kang has a terribly proud, borderline arrogant look on his face. They then focus again, getting their minds in the game for the finals.