Life Hunter

The first thing that Arima"s students did was using the custom telepathic link Arima gave them. It allowed them to communicate together without having the multiple thoughts clashing against each other.

The principle was simple. If someone sees it as a program, it"s even easier to comprehend. A telepathic network usually fails because people"s thoughts clash against each other and can cause a backlash. But with Arima"s theory, it filters every thought and sends it toward it"s set receiver. And the one who is given "administrator"s rights, the leader, has the possibility to send a thought to everyone, bypa.s.sing every other without clashes.

This kind of theory is only possible when you think of a human thought as a simple signal that you can deviate or control. That"s why Arima could create this kind of theory easily.

Cla.s.s A"s strategy was quite simple and was the one that Arima came up with first. Five students stayed behind and simultaneously used the fifth white art to gather as much mana as they could. Mana is as important for humans as electricity is for machines. So, of course, having an energy tank charging behind you was useful.

At first, Velvet"s students failed to understand until they finally noticed that most of the mana in the air was gathering in the rears of their other side. It was also an evidence that the la.s.s mana there is around you, the less you can gather yourself in your mana pool. But the thing that was even scarier with the fifth art is that it could even steal mana directly from the pool if the mana in the air was insufficient.

The one who realized all of this first was Gile. For Velvet"s cla.s.s, he was basically the equivalent of Irian. Velvet could have put him in the following fights but she decided to put him in the large-scale battle. Cla.s.s B"s organization for their communication was a "chain". A student was connected to another who was connected to the third one and so on.

Gile was at the top of the "chain" end everyone received the information in no time. He then nodded to everyone and kicked the ground to be the head of the spear. His figure started changing as he was running. He soon transformed into a four-legged animal. His resonance was a bit special as he completely changed into an animal.

"Ooh" Arima exclaimed in surprise as this was the kind of resonance he wanted to reach with Night, although a lot more complex and stronger.

The end result of that resonance was a huge black rhinoceros who was charging alone at the full team of forty. His own comrades soon followed him.

The reaction on the other side was almost instantaneous, they all moved synchronously and went out of the way of the rhinoceros. Like they had planned this beforehand.

Gile had now a clear path toward the rear and that fact greatly perturbed him. He decided to bury his legs on the ground and forcefully stopped his charge. He knew that once he would be still in the middle of everyone, they would encircle him and attack. But he preferred that than going straight into a trap.

Instead, he immediately activated his magic when he was immobile and raised his two front legs before slamming them down in the next motion. The stone arena cracked and the ground started trembling.

The stone started moving like a living creature and attacked the students in all kinds of way. The rest of cla.s.s B then joined the fray and a quite messy fight started from that point. Magic flew in all directions and the arena was lit up in a rave of different colors.

Arima watched with dead eyes at the sky where fireb.a.l.l.s, water jets, and stone were flying in all directions.

"Maybe I should have taught them how to fight a big number of enemies" He muttered and looked back at the fight with an expressionless face "I forgot"

"Hey…" Night stared at him and shook his head.

In the end, although Gile"s performance was quite beautiful. His cla.s.s was beaten by the perfect coordination of cla.s.s A and their mana gathering strategy. They were pushed back and at some point, the judges attributed the victory to Arima"s cla.s.s, adding two points.

After that, it was the tags teams. The first fight involved Ofia and Lena. Even if the other side did what they could, the winners were quite obvious as cla.s.s A won one more time. They continued on a win streak until Irian fell on Mila in a one vs one.

He wasn"t really advantaged and lost against her. In the end, cla.s.s A won six times and cla.s.s B won one time. Velvet could only smile bitterly in face of such a result.

She understood that Arima"s students were above hers in every aspect. Even experience. She felt like the main reason her cla.s.s lost so much was that Arima"s students seemed to be more experienced to fight.

"Fine, it"s time for the next combats" Raal announced "This time, cla.s.s A, please leave and free the place for cla.s.s C. The students will be healed and the first fight will happen in thirty minutes to let them rest their minds"

After he said that, Arima led his cla.s.s out of the closed s.p.a.ce and then came back in a minute later. His students were confused at his behavior but when they saw that the fights were over, they were shocked.

Since Arima had slowed down time inside the closed s.p.a.ce, when one leaves it, the time inside the closed s.p.a.ce would be faster.

Actually, earlier, when cla.s.s C left the arena, Arima had to sneakily set a time array around them for them to not realize what was going on.

When Arima came back inside, he didn"t even need to check as he already knew what happened. Someone like him couldn"t be stopped by just a small compression of s.p.a.ce, he could still watch from outside. In the end, cla.s.s B only won the first and lost all of the others. And also, when Mila was about to face Yrion, Velvet decided to step down from the fight.

Arima thought that it was a good choice. He glanced at Velvet and she shrugged at him with a smile. She went to sit on the benches with her students since it was almost the end of the tournament and that she was basically sure to be third.

Raal silently looked as Arima"s students stepped on the arena "This final round will decide the winner of the compet.i.tion. Cla.s.s A with Arimane Blade as its teacher and cla.s.s B led by Olien Urian" He then announced and the forty versus forty started at the same moment.

Olien"s students attacked instantly and fiercely. Most of them didn"t even hesitate and directly went on the offensive. They worked together in separating their opponents into different groups. And they then went for the group gathering mana.

Arima snickered when he saw that. It felt like they knew about his cla.s.s"s strategy. He looked at Olien and shrugged. He didn"t care either way. He was quite confident that his students would win the next fights. The only problem was Yrion. But it wasn"t enough to threaten them in their victory.

In the end, cla.s.s A lost the first battle because their opponents acted really quickly and controlled the flow of the fight all the way from the start until the end. After that, as Arima expected, the two following tags fights were easily won by his cla.s.s. The victory for his cla.s.s was basically a.s.sured.

But the compet.i.tion continued and it was Ferzia who had to fight Yrion. She would absolutely refuse to abandon or step down so Arima didn"t even try. He wanted to see what Yrion could do anyway.

When Karia gave the signal, Yrion kicked the ground and attacked Ferzia barehanded. He seemed to be a martial master as he only used close combat techniques.

Ferzia was quite annoyed by that since her weapon was a two-handed sword. She decided to plant her sword on the ground and fully use her main attribute, speed. Lightning surrounded her and she resonated thanks to her soul contract with the lightning wolf.

At that moment, Yrion and her were at the same level of life force. When her resonance kicked in, she left an after image in front of Yrion and circled around him to kick him on the back.

He seemed to be totally unperturbed as he revolved in mid-air and casually landed. Meanwhile, Ferzia grabbed her sword back and used her speed to instantly strike his opponent. Yrion reacted quickly and caught the blade with his two palms.

The lightning went through his body and the ground below cracked for hundreds of meters. Ferzia didn"t stay on that and then let go of her sword. She instead gathered lightning in her hand and thunder rumbled. Her eyes glowed and the clouds" shadows darkened the arena.

"[Izanagi]" Ferzia placed her palm on Yrion chest and lightning fell down from the sky to engulf his figure. The stone arena broke and the sound of thunder penetrated everyone"s eardrums. Even the light coming from the lightning bolt could hurt the eyes of the other students.

In the middle of the lightning, Yrion used his magic and the earth below the stone arena changed into a huge dome that protected him from the following lightning.

At that point, Ferzia grabbed her sword and jumped back as her magic faded away. A second after, the dome made of earth crumbled and became dust. But there was no one under it.

Ferzia frowned and then she felt it, the same feeling she had with Arister"s training. Her wolf ears trembled and she instantly crouched. She looked up from the corner of her eyes and saw Yrion"s hand which was clearly aiming at her neck.

She slammed her hand on the ground and span her body to kick him. He then jumped back and silently looked at her.

Ferzia stood up and squinted her eyes. She asked herself if that strike could have killed her if she was too late.

"It would have" Arima muttered while looking.

Arister"s expression twitched and he clenched his fists. Arima had already stopped him from going there the moment Yrion sneaked behind Ferzia.

"Don"t worry. I can revive her" Arima calmed him down. His could sound cold but they were true but that didn"t calm Arister at all. They were still talking about her death after all.

"But," Arima looked at the stage "I don"t give third chances" He said with a cold voice and Arister had to comply in face of Arima"s words.

Lanya glanced at Arima and then focused on the fight again. Night and Karma knew though, if that kid does something like that again, Arima will definitely act to defend his student.

Since that moment, Ferzia decided to fight safely and started to use her magic more while always being sure that Yrion was in her sight. The latter also changed to a defensive tactic as he used more his earth magic.

But after ten minutes, he finally decided to end this. His appearance slowly changed and he changed into a small dragon. He flapped his wings and charged through the lightning to directly strike Ferzia.

Ferzia"s eyes narrowed and she decided to bet everything in her speed. With her at maximum speed, she could barely escape Yrion chase. And like that, in that single fight, in less than ten seconds, the entirety of the arena became destroyed by their game of tag.

Ferzia finally stopped after a few seconds and the ground below her started glowing in a blue light. Yrion suddenly stopped and looked at the ground. He realized that she had drawn an entire rune on the ground.

"[Azure Flash]" Ferzia chanted and the whole arena was covered in a blue light as the sound of thunder spread across the entire place.