Living Life As A Game: Through And Through

After a couple moments, Elizabeth"s attention shifted to Sun as he was called to the stage to defend his current standing at rank 80. Sun jumped onto the competing arena, unlike Jane, his only weapon was his body. His only preparation was equipping a thin pair of gauntlets that covered everything from his fingers to his elbows before the match was announced to begin.

Looking at his stats, Elizabeth wasn"t surprised to see him burst forth with speeds surpa.s.sing Peak Phase Kings and utterly dominating his opponent. Whether it be his strength, endurance, defense, or speed everything was at around the standard of the Early Phase Saint Stage.

[Status

Name: Sun

Level: 21

Rank: Beginner-Phase Martial King [Pure Yang Martial King]

Affection Rating: Forever Loyal

s.e.x: Male

Strength 461

Endurance 480

Speed 475

Defense 463

Intelligence 202

Luck 9

Inner Strength: ~1.4 Million]

It seemed absurd that his physical stats had almost increased by a factor of 2.5, but that was the name of the game for pract.i.tioners of the path of extreme physicality. Moreover, the absurdity of his physical parameters were still rather tame, as it was not uncommon for pract.i.tioners like Sun to be three, four, and even five times as strong as they should be. In the Spirit Realm, pract.i.tioners of the path of extreme physicality would cause average cultivators to question how their bodies were cultivated as the standard would rise to tens or dozens of times stronger than normal and if Sun made it past the Spirit Realm… it wouldn"t even be possible for mortals to conceive of how strong his body was.

Thus, even if Sun"s opponent wished to resort to using pills, enchantments, or other forms of external support to win the fight, since he lost so badly in terms of speed, he wasn"t even given the chance as Sun directly punched him unconscious; using about 70% of his full strength. His opponent"s body caught unprepared suffered both from Sun"s fist and the impact of colliding with the Defensive Barrier Formation that covered the arena.

Of course, Sun wasn"t like Elizabeth and he couldn"t tell from a glance whether the fight was over, so the moment his opponent"s body touched the ground, he was already before the disabled body, ready to restrain it into a chokehold. Fortunately for Sun"s opponent, the supervising judge knew a thing or two about medicine, so before Sun laid his hands on his opponent, his win was quickly announced.

Amidst the danger that sprung up due to the sudden overuse of Enchantments and Pills, the judge supervising the battles became hyperaware. The Martial Society truly hated losing their young talents, more so the ones that made it this high up the divisions and rankings, so it became a common sight to see a match end with the supervisor intervening.

For Sun"s battle, since the win was so obvious with Sun outcla.s.sing his opponent so badly, the judge didn"t have to do much as the simple action as giving Sun the win was enough for him to back off. But, not all fights would end so succinctly…

Take for instance the very next fight, where the compet.i.tor ranked 72nd defended his position from his challenger who was ranked 75th. With both compet.i.tors being so close to one another, and more importantly, with both compet.i.tors coming from rivaling factions which possessed a relationship similar to Atid and Jhan"s, even after a lengthy brawl, where both compet.i.tors. .h.i.t their opponents with everything they had: their bodies, their Qi skills, their minor external support items like pills and enchantments. Their fight only ended after both compet.i.tors resolved to use up their greatest trump cards which resulted in both being horrifically wounded. With one taking a Pill that temporarily increased his combat prowess by 50% and the other tossing out an Enchantment with the equivalent firepower of a military-grade explosive, it was hard to say who won as both parties almost died.

In the end, the compet.i.tor ranked 72nd defended his position after taking his pill and dealing a serious injury to his opponent as he managed to dodge the majority of his opponent"s trump card, only suffering mild burn wounds with his cultivated body and Qi tanking most of the explosion"s damage. Though he was also it horrible shape moments after the bomb rocked the tournament arena, he was judged to be the winner as he stood standing and conscious while his opponent was bleeding out, unconscious, and down on his stomach.

This being the most explosive battle thus far, it definitely caught Elizabeth attention, thought what attracted her more than the fighting was the current state both the compet.i.tors sustained after coming out of the battle. Watching from the sidelines as some medics rushed to treat the two compet.i.tors she shook her head in contempt. "I guess both of them will be permanently scarred from this battle."

On one side, the cultivator who had come out as a winner was being treated in such a way where the outside of his body looked to be regenerated with an odd white-ish clear energy that tickled Elizabeth uncomfortably, but his ruptured meridians were not only being neglected but also drained and chipped at. While the other compet.i.tor who looked to be much worse of seemed to have his vital energy be spurred by Yang energy, which looked to Elizabeth to be draining on the poor sap"s lifespan. If things kept going as they were, by the time this compet.i.tor was brought back from death"s door, he would only be a few years away from dying of old age; before he even turned 30...

Still, since these people had nothing to do with her and there wasn"t really anything that pulled on her to act — like compa.s.sion for the young, or money, resources, and equipment for herself or those closest to her — Elizabeth just kept shaking her head in contempt as she watched the primitive methods of healing Earth"s Martial Society possessed. She had already seen what the Martial Medics of Earth could do from her time competing alongside those in the Medical Event, but thought it was sad for her to acknowledge, the seemingly terrible healing skills being displayed before her were, in fact, amount the very best she had seen thus far. She didn"t know if it was because of a lack of knowledge or what, but virtually all the healing techniques she had seen lacked in at least one target area; nothing was all-encompa.s.sing like her acupoint. Turning her head to continue watching the entertainment on the stage, Elizabeth forgot about this incident as many more up close and in your face fights stole the limelight.

By the time Jane"s fight to defend her standing as current 8th ranked King came around, the long summer day came to a close as the sun sat behind the earth and the full moon came to light up the night sky. Only Elizabeth and Sun expected Jane to win, as it seemed ridiculous for a Mid Phase King to hold one of the coveted top ten rankings for the King Stage. More ridiculous than the fact that she won however, was the manner in which she secured her ranking; through her fabled Ice Domain.

It was totally unfair for a Mortal Realm pract.i.tioner to have to deal with an opponent who controlled the environment, Martial Pract.i.tioners even more so than mages as they barely had a defense against such combat; Earth"s Martial Pract.i.tioners had it the worst as they didn"t even know of mages, who fought somewhat similarly.

Jane used her power over Ice in the environment by materializing a dense sheet of frost atop her opponent"s legs and feet the moment the start of the match was announced. Then in the moment where her opponent was staggard, not in a million years expecting to deal with this kind of attack, Jane struck while the iron was hot and made a mad dash to disable her opponent as soon as possible.

Of course, even if he didn"t expect it, Jane"s opponent didn"t get cold feet because of her extraordinary ability to simulate Spirit Realm attacks. Instead, like the seasoned pract.i.tioner he was, after feeling that he wouldn"t have time to properly defend by testing the durability of the frost covering her lower body and barely making it budge with body strength alone, Jane"s opponent didn"t hesitate to pull out an Enchantment and throw it at Jane to buy himself the time to break the ice covering his body with his sword.

Again, shock struck both the crowd and Jane"s opponent silly as Jane materialized a large speartip of ice and shot it to intercept the Enchantment midway. Already expecting it to be either a Fire or Thunder-type Enchantment of some sort from the aggressive and hot energy emanating from the flying talisman, Jane was covered from head to toe in thin ice armor as her speartip of ice activated her opponent"s Enchantment, resulting in a mid-size explosion galvanizing a couple dozen meters away from her.

Braving the explosion with her ice armor, Jane only slowed down a bit from the repulsive force as she came out the other side of the dust with parts of her body soaked from her armor melting as fragmentary pieces of her armor were still clinging to her body. When she finally came within striking distance her opponent was ready for her and succeeded in blocking the swipe of her sword. Only… because she was wielding the Evergreen Copper Sword Elizabeth had gifted her before the Martial Event began, even if her physical strength was around two or so phases below his, she still managed to thoroughly damage his sword to the point where it even chipped where she hit it. It would only take two or three more hits like that near the first hit to destroy her opponent"s weapon; if only for the remainder of their current battle.

Fortunately for the sword, Jane didn"t need more than another move to end the match as she used what really looked to be an Ice Domain to materialize a small wall of ice to block her opponent"s retreat and corner him off as she used her sword to slightly cut through her opponent"s neck and draw blood. Proving her strength with that hit, she back off and was successfully called the victor as everyone, her opponent, and the judge included, could tell that with the slightest exertion during her last move, Jane easily could have killed her opponent. Thus, even though her opponent was regretful to have lost, he was still thanking his lucky stars for facing someone as fair as Jane. After all, in the world of martial pract.i.tioners, it was uncommon for someone to stop after just winning. Instead, it was common for pract.i.tioners to flaunt their superiority by beating their opponents with all that they had, regardless of if they were being unnecessarily cruel.