Short summary of the last chapter:

Spoiler :

Voice had a (failed) diplomatic meeting with EDITOR. After that he called out Davros to nerf Johnny, and framed him in the process.

Also, let me know if anything is wrong with the chapter! Be sure to comment and rate!

When I got back to the colosseum, I spoke to Evan for a moment.

After speaking to him, I went to the gladiator, and had a brief discussion with him as well. He was pretty talkative. I was going to go talk to the arrow guy to, to get a feel for both of my opponents, but the battle came up too quickly.

Someone came to us right before the battle. We were given a choice stage names. I had already come up with mine, as had EDI. Ours would be a bit more thought out that way.

We were announced at the arena. The ‘king’ stood up proudly to call us out. His voice was magnified by a small wind enchantment.

“Now ladies and gentlemen! It is the time you’ve all been waiting for! The final battle! This will decide who shall be the victor of our battles! What’s more, there is a special prize for the first place winner!

“The winner will be offered a position of my Gladiatorial Champion! What that means will be explained later, for now… Let’s introduce our fighters!”

One gate lifted up. Out of it strode the gladiator.

“First up we have the quintessential gladiator. The powerhouse of any good entertainment system, someone that brings fun without death. He who can destroy with only one attack. One-Strike HonorBound!”

A cheer flew up from the crowd. HonorBound had his two-handed double bladed war axe strung across his back. He was wearing only some tight leather armor. It gave him a very gladiator-ish look.

He imposingly walked into the center of the arena. He put his left hand in the air, and waved it a few times, before going back to the area in front of his gate.

The applause from the crowd was deafening. I told Evan to do this to up the hype, but I didn’t expect it to work this well.

After the applause quieted down a bit, Evan continued.

“Next up we have the winner of the fifth round of the semifinals. He who defies the strong, to empower the weak! He who takes from those that have, to give to those that have not! The Honorable Thief, Robin’sHood!”

A ranger dressed in deep green and dark colors came out of the second gate. The roar of the crowd was not nearly as loud as for HonorBound, but it was still overwhelming.

Robin’sHood had a bow strapped to his back. It wasn’t just any bow, though. It had three clear areas for arrows. The only logical conclusion was that it shot multiple arrows at once. Coupled with the ranger’s quick shooting abilities, or multiple arrow shooting… That was a lot of arrows.

Robin’sHood shot three arrows into the air. They had round tips, the tips looked almost identical to my bombs.

Once they reached a high altitude, they exploded. The explosion contained many colors, that spewed forth. Much like a firework.

The crowd definitely went wild after that. Well looks like I’ll be ordering some of those for myself.

Something good always come if you wait eventually.

He went back to his gate, after having enticed the crowd adequately.

Next came Johnny. Hehe.

“Next up is Johnny. He did not give us an introduction to work with, so we will just introduce him at his name.”

When he came out he looked a little confused, and then glared at my direction. He, presumably, couldn’t see my face, but I could see his thanks to my eyesight buff.

Whoops. Guess mentioning to Evan that I wish Johnny would appear stupid wasn’t a good idea. Nah, I was happy though.

Make the asshole look a little stupid before I crush him.

He waved at the crowd, but got a very underwhelming response. He went back to his gate, after only a light applause.

Evan made sure to stand there a few more moments to drive the point home. Most of the crowd wouldn’t know what was going on, but Johnny would.

“Next up is the warrior who is unparalleled in two weapon fighting. She has the ability to take on several opponents ‘of the same strength’ at once. Please give a HUGE hand for EDI! The Gifted Assassin!”

EDI walked out of the gate and showed off a few of her moves. She was acting like an acrobat. I gave her a deadpan look, but she didn’t seem to mind it. Whatever.

After Evan gave her a bit more hype, he moved to me.

“Now for the black sheep of the battles. It has been said that this individual has wormed his way into the finals. He certainly used some despicable methods of getting into the finals. Will he be the winner? Will everyone team up against him? Let’s see! Welcome the Magi: ChilledFlame!”

As I came out everyone began to boo. That was fine. I told Evan to introduce me a little badly. That way everyone would be focusing on me when the battle was going.

I didn’t do anything special. I just stood by my gate. I didn’t even wave at the crowd.

Evan seemed a little hesitant about what to do. After a moment he declared the battle’s start. “Victors of the Semi-Finals! Fight!”

Right away Johnny came at me. It was obvious he was going to, but it was still cute. Cute like when a baby tries to stand up and ends up landing on a pair of scissors.

I began to buff myself. I fused Eli to my armor, and Golem to my swords. My heavy armor and twin blades worked well together.

I used Super Dash to double my speed for a second. Using twice the normal amount of mana to increase my speed by 1.5x wasn’t ideal, but it worked for what I wanted.

At the same moment as I jumped, Johnny shot a fire ball in my direction. I jumped in the air, and used another 100 stamina to double jump. The speed boost, and the double jump propelled me further than any normal jump should have been able to.

The fact that the wind seemed to perfectly blow me where I needed to go was just a bonus.

The resulting arc put me only a few yards in front of Johnny. I twirled my swords and began running at him. I glanced briefly around to get a sense of the other competitors. While I did recon, I began activating one of my favorite skills. Favorite since it leveled itself up automatically.

EDI was watching everyone, while Gladiator and the guy I didn’t actually watch were fighting. I wish I could watch that guy, he would give me some great techniques.

I inwardly sighed as I continued to run. I had no choice but to take Johnny out first. Whatever Davros did wasn’t obvious. I had to think of what Davros would have done.

He wouldn’t make it easy on my to figure out, but it’d be big enough to still take credit for following through our contract.

I quickly got close enough to attack the musician man. Johnny seemed to be taking lessons from the Voice fighting book.

He dodged at the last moment by humming and shifting the wind.

I used several earth spikes to stop his movements and damage him. As soon as the spikes approached him, they began to warp and break.

My face momentarily scowled. No, it’s ok. Even if he has some small control over elemental mana I am still the king. I am still better

I renewed my efforts. I increased the amount of spikes I sent at him. I made sure it was enough to overwhelm him.

He was indeed being overwhelmed, but then his face changed. He suddenly looked ancient and powerful. For a moment anyway.

The dozens of earth spikes I was sending at him were slowly getting destroyed, but as soon as he changed appearance a crater formed beneath him. Obviously the earth spikes were wiped away.

I had never seen it before, but I knew that face. You know when you hear someone’s voice so much they begin to form a face in your mind? Well maybe not. I do though. That face screamed: Ancestor.

All of his features were more archaic, less refined with generations of time.

My breath caught for a second. He can posses his host? Is he some sort of parasite? Did that ever happen to me?

“YOU WILL NOT BEAT ME!”

I screamed at Ancestor. He might have found some new plaything to mess with, but I was still more powerful. In this world, power was the only thing that mattered.

I ripped up an earth spike, and threw it at Ancestor. With a sneer he flicked it away. His face flared with something, then changed back to Johnny.

I went to attack again, but felt an intense pain shoot through my left leg. I looked down. My knee was bleeding profusely.

An arrowhead sprouted from me knee. Would I have to give up being an adventurer? I gritted my teeth and pulled it out. I did it as quickly and smoothly as possible, coating the area in light/water mana to dull the pain.

Thanks to my trait of pain resistance, and the 25% pain level, it didn’t feel terrible. It definitely wasn’t pleasant though.

I lost a grand total of 75 hp, and that was with the damage reduction that ELI gave me. I had Sol on standby to heal me as soon as I took damage, so the wound began to heal as soon as it formed. I probably would have died if I hadn’t taken that precaution.

I glared at the only person who could have shot me. It was the only person I hadn’t watched before. The archer with the three arrow slots on his bow.

As I glared at him I felt a massive amount of wind mana bubbling up from behind me. I started dissembling it before it even reached me.

My trait of Mana Absorption was exceedingly helpful in that endeavor. 50% mana absorption proved very useful.

I turned on my inspection to the max. EDI was still staying back, and the gladiator guy was laying on the ground breathing heavily. Just what did that arrow guy do!?

With my full inspection turned on, it would be very hard to actually land a hit on me. I knew exactly where everything was going to come from.

I decided to deal with Johnny in a moment. I forced several earth spears up from the ground, all making a large circle surrounding him, and had them all shoot at him. Some intentionally shot above him, some shot parallel to the ground.

It looked like he was going to get hit by Sin waves. By the time they were all going to impale him, there would be stacks of three all right next to each other.

At the same moment as I launched the spears, I began running towards the arrow guy. Taking him out was my first priority.

I threw a heal spell at the gladiator. A bright white light covered his body as his health came back. He locked eyes with me, sensing my intent. With a nod he got up, and attacked the archer from behind.

It was better to make a temporary alliance with me, than to try to do the entire battle alone. I’m glad he understood that.

I used my super dash in combination with a wind speed boost, to get to the archer as fast as possible. I began to swing my swords before I got close enough to actually hit him.

He laughed as he strung three arrows. In one quick motion he drew the arrows, knocked them and drew back the string, and shot them all into the air.

I noticed that only two arrows were coming towards me. The last was heading right where HonorBound was going to be in a moment.

Without paying the third arrow any thought, I began to raise a whirlwind from my swords. I made it seem as if the swords themselves were causing currents in the wind. With every slash, a small amount of wind was propelled.

As my slashes grew faster, and less predictable, the wind the gave off grew more powerful. By the time the arrows were approaching my I had a full on wind devil (tiny tornado) around me.

Although it looked impressive, it didn’t have any actual power behind it. It was just visual mostly. It did have enough power to actually blow a few arrows off course though.

The arrows met with the tornado that surrounded my body. At first it seemed like it was going to work, but as the arrows bent, they began to right themselves. The more power I put into the tornado to stop the arrows, the more powerful the arrows became.

After a half second of stalemate, I realized my mana was going to drop too quickly to keep this up for much longer.

I threw myself past the arrows, after wrapping them in the wind from the wind devil. They were only stalled for a second, but that second let me get up close and personal to the archer.

I dodged past the last few feet of distance, and placed myself perfectly behind him. I intended on using him as a shield since the arrows obviously were locked on to me.

Instead of piercing through the archer, inspect showed me that the arrows abruptly dropped to the ground.

I could hear the smile in his voice. “You thought to pierce me with my own arrows? It doesn’t work like that.”

I whipped my swords around one more time. “Sure it does.”

I sheathed both swords into the back of the archer’s stomach. I stopped when I noticed them coming out from the other side. “Sorry mate.” I said with a smile. “Looks like I broke th’ rules a bit, eh?”

I pulled both of my swords out, intentionally letting them cause him pain. A pain much more intense than what I suffered from the arrow. I healed him just as quickly though. He fell to his knees, but didn’t die.

Since I had healed him while I withdrew the swords, he had hp left. He actually had over 60% left. That is about 1200 points. Why do people always have more hp than me?

He got up as a small storm of sand and dirt blew up from the ground. His face was beet red in anger. He turned towards me and shot back several yards. He pulled back his bow, and three arrows made out of light and wind mana formed on the three notches.

He took aim, and aimed all three for me. As he began to release the string, a dagger flew at him, and perfectly sliced the string of his weapon.

EDI who had been watching at the sidelines, decided to make her move. I could only assume she noticed a powerful attack coming at me. The wind/light mana wasn’t worrying to me at all. The odd way the were formed together might have been a problem, but it wouldn’t be anything big.

He turned his head to glare at her. I took that moment to toss one of the bombs I had ‘bought’ from Susan at him. It was one of my enchanted bombs.

I threw it at him while he was distracted. The bomb was obviously guided by a funnel of wind I created. Before he could notice the bomb coming at him, it had already hit the ground. In a fiery explosion, the bomb tore itself apart.

The fire mana created from the bombs was instantly absorbed by the seedling waiting inside it. The thorn vine quickly grew, and constricted around the shooter.

He was quickly losing health, but it didn’t seem to make him panic.

His body suddenly flared up in flames, obviously wanting to burn the vines away. Unfortunately those particular vines had my special enchantment on them.

The more fire he poured on them, the stronger they got. It didn’t seem to be under his control though. He kept burning them, even when his face showed horror.

Of course I had a minuscule amount of healing applied to him at the same time. That way he wouldn’t die or be maimed at least.

After a second the flames stopped coming from his body. After another few seconds, I only used the low grade bomb, the plant withered and died. What was left was withered vines, and a man in tattered armor, with blood oozing from dozens of small wounds.

The battle medics quickly took him away. He had not moved the entire time, so was ranked 5th in the tournament.

I looked over at Johnny. He was having some serious trouble by the looks of it. It no doubt had to do with whatever Davros did, but also had a bit to do with my own skills.

You know? The one that levels itself up? No? Well then, let me tell you.

Since the start of the battle I had been using one skill on Johnny. My range had gotten quite far thanks to the efforts of having it toggled on for months now.

Group skill: Task Master. Sub skill: Mental Domination Connection. My very own mind control skill.