Chapter 462: First to a Hundred

Unfortunately, he wasn’t fighting that day. Given the tournament’s structure, there would be three full days that would be stretched out. This wasn’t the case for the others, though. They were already getting ready for their groups. In fact, Christina was already preparing to fight.

Much like the tournament in Heston, there was a special area for participants and their immediate families to watch from. That was where they were all right now as Christina walked onto the field.

He noticed right away that she looked a bit nervous. He had gotten to know her pretty well over these past several days. With the time spent sparring with her and eating meals together, he understood that the noble pride she sometimes displayed was more of a facade than anything else.

At the end of the day, she was a young girl with unrealistic expectations on her shoulders since she was a scion of House Zenith. He truly hoped that she would succeed and advance to the next stage.

On paper, it seemed like she might have a pretty good chance. With her abilities as a lightning mage, there was a good chance that this kind of format would benefit her. She didn’t even need to go after the stronger monsters, which were worth more points. With how dangerous her lightning was already and how easily it could spread from one target to the next, she could just target the normal monsters and get the hundred points that way.

Julius assumed that there would be a lot more competition for the higher-value targets. With that being said, it was hard to predict at the moment. He hadn’t seen what the monsters were going to be, nor what kind of people were beside her.

If there were a higher percentage of mages who had her same style, it might become difficult. He was almost sure that there would only be a specific number of monsters released. Most past tournaments cut around half of the people in the first stage. He assumed that there would be only enough monsters for roughly half of the participants to go on until there were no more.

He wished he knew more about how it would play out. It was frustrating, but there was nothing they could do at the moment. All he could do was watch it all unfold and use it to plan for his own eventual round.

***

Christina POV

She didn’t remember the last time she felt this nervous while about to fight. Usually, she loved fighting, and the excitement blocked out any nerves she might feel. However, she had never been in such a massive stadium before. Everywhere she looked, there were waves of people shouting down at her.

There were at least a hundred thousand people in here, and likely dozens of times more who were watching the tournament from outside the stadiums. The gravity of her situation was heavy and crushed the air out of her lungs. Her mana stuttered every once in a while as her nerves affected the already erratic lightning mana.

She tried her best to calm down and use her focus skill to help hone in her mind. However, there was only so much her focus skill could accomplish, since its primary responsibility was to help her control her lightning, not her emotions.

She recalled something Julius had mentioned about using her emotions to fuel her magic. But she didn’t know what he was talking about. Sometimes when he explained stuff to her, she didn’t understand what he was talking about. He was completely unaware that most people did not think or use mana in the same fashion he did.

Still, she was very glad that she had met him. She had improved quite a lot, considering that she had only known him for several days. His unnatural ability to punish her weaknesses helped shore up many of her defenses.

She might not be able to beat him yet, but she was hopeful that she would be able to beat half of the people here.

She already had a plan in mind. She would go after the group of monsters that people ignored. She was hoping that people would fight over the monsters worth more points and that she could just get close to a hundred points from killing the small fry.

She fiddled with the armband on her bicep. This little device would prevent any deaths. It wouldn’t prevent injuries, but it would detect if you were going to die and teleport you to safety. The capital couldn’t exactly let all of its young talents die in front of the spectators.

She wished she had more time to calm down, but sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. Before she knew it, she began to hear a countdown. All one hundred of them were spread apart, but she had no idea what was going to happen when the chaos started.

Once the countdown began, she sensed a massive fluctuation of mana. Across the field appeared countless monsters. They all seemed to be of the same species or, at the very least, very similar to each other.

She didn’t know what they were exactly, but they looked like some reptilian monster. However, her focus was immediately drawn to the large monster in the back. Unlike the other creatures, this one was enormous. The other monsters were still big, around the size of a human, but this boss creature was several times larger than they were. Massive dark green spikes lined its back all the way down to its tail.

And its aura was suffocating. She knew right away that this was a very powerful Tier 3 monster who was borderline Tier 4. She didn’t have to question why this monster was worth a hundred points. It was incredibly imposing.

She wasn’t the only person who was intimidated by this beast. Dozens of people around her all stepped back in fear. They were so distracted that they didn’t even hear the loud horn go off. It was only when they saw the participants dashing toward the nearest monster that they finally reacted.

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I can’t fall behind, she reprimanded herself and started to channel large amounts of mana. She immediately used [Blink] and teleported to the far side of the arena, where there weren’t many people but a large number of monsters.

Then, before she could think too hard, she started to go to work. She took out her staff and slammed it into the ground, creating a large field of lightning around her. She took Julius’s advice and made a denser layer of lightning at the center, which was to interfere with her opponents’ senses and perception.

Then she let her lightning run wild. The nearest reptiles attacked her on sight, and they entered her lightning field without any hesitation. She collapsed her lightning on these creatures the moment they stepped inside. The powerful lightning she inherited from her family washed over the reptiles like a tidal wave.