Elizabeth returned to her spot next to Sun and Jane, utilizing less than a minute to recover from all the running she did in the fight against the Tommy Gun wielding compet.i.tor. Curiously, she decided to call the Inferoria blade to her right hand. As she had thought, the moment she called for the blade"s status an exciting prompt filled her sight.[Status
Name: Inferioria Blood Armament
Grade: C (Maxed)
Speed: +7
Description: A Blood Armament that has been fully nurtured to the peak of its Primary State. Possessing all the requirements to enter its Secondary State with a fully maxed out potential Grade, this Blood Armament can evolve whenever it"s master so wishes.
Special Effect: Speed increases by 10% at the cost of 100,000 units of Inner Strength per minute.
The Conditions To Evolve Your Blood Armaments Have Been Fulfilled
-Reach Level 14
-Master A Gun/Blade Art To Grade B or above
-Defeat The Equivalent To 100 Kings Stage Beings
-Reach The State Where Your Weapons Become An Extension Of The Body
Evolve Inferioria? Y/N]
With eyes glowing in expectation, Elizabeth stared at the blade in her hand for a couple moments before she painfully put the blade back in her Enchantment"s s.p.a.ce. Now was not the ideal time to have her weapon evolve as she didn"t want to deal with any potential greedy people that may or may not be around her.
She had been wondering when her Blood Armaments would evolve as she had been using them so much and at such a high level compared to there grades, even to the point of becoming worried of if she should continue using them when she could easily forge much better weapons herself. To think that the reason she had yet to evolve them was because of these ridiculous prerequisites…
Apparently, she was only missing the requirement of having to defeat 100 King Stage beings and her last opponent was the straw that broke the camel"s back. Everything else had already been fulfilled since she alighted the yacht upon arriving on Sharktop Island. Now, She quickly drew both her pistols and realized she could evolve them as well. But, for the same reason, she didn"t evolve her blade, she refused to evolve her pistols.
Reluctantly, all her toys were put away until her next match came up. When that time came up and she fought against the King Stage compet.i.tor ranked 300th, since she had already brought out her blade to deal with her previous opponent, she held little reservations to bring it out once more. Moreover, since the person ranked 300th was a Late Stage King — one of the weaker Late Stage Kings with a shaky foundation — she needed the blade anyways, lest she wanted to make her life needlessly difficult.
Since even Late-Phase Saint would cry when having to confront Elizabeth"s speed whilst handling her blade, the blade"s appearance made not only the compet.i.tor ranked 300th depressed, but the one ranked 150th as well. Neither of the two compet.i.tors possessed neither the skills nor strength to ward off Elizabeth"s speed and strength, thus they were both near instantaneously defeated. Still, every cloud had a silver lining, and on the cloud that the two unfortunate saps that faced Elizabeth sat on, the silver lining was the ease with which they lost. At least they were spared from injuries, and could at least fight for a chance to take a rank around the one Elizabeth took from them.
"You know you pretty f.u.c.king insane, right?" Jane couldn"t help but comment as she watched Elizabeth dispatch a Peak Phase King during her last battle.
"Mhmm…" What could Elizabeth even say? She understood it was slang for, "You are amazing," but in all honesty, to get to her level, one truly had to be insane. What sane person would risk life and limb to hold back their cultivation to the point just before implosion and then go back to see if they could push their limits even more so?
"Next time we spar… I want to do so with weapons." Jane commented, though she knew she would lose miserably if she had to confront Elizabeth"s speed without help from her Ice powers, she knew that only fighting against someone more proficient than her would her own skills in swordplay advance the fastest.
"Mhmm..." This "Mhmm" was one of confirmation…
…
Time pa.s.sed by rather quickly when one was having fun and virtually everyone was entertained by the "festivities" of the Martial Event. However, not everything was fun and games as the highest ranking members of the Martial Society were discussing the arrangement for the third and Final Stage of the Martial Event; the Factions Stage.
Whereas the First and Second Stage took form like a tournament for individual pract.i.tioners, the Factions Stage became like a tournament for the groups that came to represent their factions. But, unlike a standard tournament, there was a special way in which the tournament would progress. The Faction"s Tournament would be arranged in such a way where each "fight" would follow the same rules as the makeshift battle that Jhan and Atid created where they put Elizabeth and Irene up as betting chips, only the betting chips in Factions Tournament would be the number of seats a Faction had in the Inner Circle of the Martial Society; in other words, the number of representatives and influence a faction had over the decisions made by the Martial Society as a whole.
"You want YOUR faction to be placed at 50th place right off the bat? On what f.u.c.king grounds? Last year you placed outside the top 200!" A disgruntled Spirit Realm elder was practically spitting as he cursed Atid to his face.
Sarcastically Atid smirked as he said, "On what grounds? Oh I don"t know, maybe because MY faction has taken first place in five Events so far."
"Your faction? You mean that one girl, right?! The rest of your faction is the same trash it was last year and after that girl leaves you, it will remain that way, so cut the bulls.h.i.t!" The elder that was so displeased with Atid was naturally the leader of what was last year"s 50th ranked Faction, Simon of Simon"s Dojo. However, no matter how angry or displeased he was, it was clear to all in the room that he was in a losing debate, as no one spoke up in his defense, not even the leader of the strongest and smallest secret faction, Sir Keter. He was essentially the one who called the shots, especially when it came down to the Martial Event as he was the undisputed strongest person around.
"Simon, since Elizabeth is still a part of his group, he is well within his right to ask for his faction to enter in the top five. She currently represents his faction as Champion of Forging, Enchanting, Beast Taming, Cooking, and Warriors, so technically he could ask to be put in third place to start the Faction"s Stage of the Martial Event and the rules would favor his request..." Though he didn"t mention it, everyone in the room knew that if she came out as the King Stage Division"s Champion as well, Atid would be well within his right to request asking to be placed in 2nd place from the start.
However, Atid had yet to go senile so he made no effort to request challenging the much stronger martial-focused factions. Instead, he gauged his faction"s strength to be capable of handling themselves in the top 50 and would be more than happy to stay at that ranking for this year. It would be both stupid and pointless to offend a faction he couldn"t take on, as the end result would end in a loss to his reputation and by proxy his faction"s reputation.
"Thank you, Sir Keter." With a bow and a word of thanks, Atid"s request was fulfilled. This left Simon"s close friends feeling sorry for him as even if their friend"s faction was booted to the 213th place temporarily, this would definitely be a stain on his reputation. For decades, Simon"s Faction had never dipped below the top 70 Factions worldwide, so for him to be kicked all the way down to 213th place even if for a second…
"My ancestors would be rolling in their graves if they knew!" Simon was absolutely furious! The wicked thoughts of revenge had formed from the second Atid made his proposition aware to the rest of the Spirit Realm Elders representing their factions. But only after the results came out and he lost out in the end, did any serious malice come to taint his intentions… Before, he at most resolved to teach Atid a lesson to not mess with him or his faction. But now? Now he wouldn"t be satisfied until Atid was regretful to the extreme! He had eyes that didn"t care if the earth had to be scorched or the skies sundered; this meant war!
…
Returning to the exciting Martial Tournament that was inching its way towards its climax, some truly mesmerizing Qi abilities began appearing. Needless to say, Elizabeth was hooked as she began wondering to herself if her battles would ever be so flashy. Little did she know that compared to the petty sparks of the Peak Phase Kings, the outcome of just one wisp of her Cold Flames would make the words "flashy" and "gaudy" severe underestimations.
As the fights increased in intensity and more hardcore compet.i.tors showed off not only their skills, but their wealth as well, the ridiculousness of the battles taking place within the arena increased exponentially. Before, Enchantments and Alchemical Pills that the compet.i.tors used barely showed their effects, but by the time the fights between compet.i.tors ranked less than 100 took place, they almost became the deciding factor.
The seriousness of the injuries compet.i.tors sustained also rose with the overabundance of pills and talismans being used and a very small minority of compet.i.tors were maimed or even killed… Confused by the sudden switch to supplementary warfare, Elizabeth turned to Jane and asked, "Is this normal, or..." She didn"t plan on finishing her sentence as she hadn"t really thought things through be talking.
Fortunately, Jane was ready with a response as her she helplessly smiled and said, "This… This is unfortunately normal… Albeit exaggerated, since this is the first Wushi Tournament since the Celestial Phenomenon changed the world and granted those who practice secondary occupations so many more skills and items to practice with, it"s normal for the last two divisions of the Second Stage to be fought with wealth more so than money.
In the times before the Celestial Phenomenon, the Divisions went only up to the Warrior Stage as Kings and Saints made up most of the higher ranking members in the Martial Society. So the Soldier and Warrior Stage Divisions were decided by which factions were both the strongest cultivation-wise, and financially and resourcefully well off as well.
After the Celestial Phenomenon, martial pract.i.tioners who were previously in the Soldier Stage easily made to the King Stage and those in the Warrior Stage easily made it to the Saint Stage. With the way the Second Stage of the Martial Event is set up where the Champions of each Division are given the right to start in the top five places for the Third Stage of the Martial Event, the Factions Stage, it"s no wonder things get a little dangerous when the opportunity to start off in first and second place of the third event come along."