Chapter 120: Scary
Once again people had to watch Noah burn another fighter almost to death.
But the fight this time was very different from the previous fight. While in Noah"s first fight he basically went against all expectations by beating an opponent who was theoretically very powerful instantly, this time Noah beat an opponent who was very tough basically in a battle of resistance. It didn"t make any sense to anyone watching these battles. After all, Noah was apparently just a novice. How did he have such a strong strength that he was able to beat these fighters exactly in their strengths so easily?
Noah was looking at Bobby burning on the floor as if he were just an unimportant piece of meat. Bobby"s reaction to being burned and feeling the pain was different from the first man"s reaction. The first man screamed in pain and rolled across the floor just from having the flames pierce his skin, but Bobby was practically completely covered by flames that were collectively sticking to him during the match. When the protective fat that enveloped him was gone, Bobby felt the pain coming from all directions in such intensity that he couldn"t even cry out in pain.
Because of this strange reaction, even the judge was momentarily lost without knowing what to do, as he did not expect Bobby to just freeze in place, standing for a few seconds before falling motionless to the floor.
When he asked Noah to stop burning the man lying on the floor, what people saw when the flames were withdrawn was a little bit terrifying. Bobby"s body was practically black: the skin, the flesh, the organs, everything that the flame came into contact with, it burned. It was so bad, it had caused Bobby"s entire appearance not to unrecognizable. Most likely, if they put that charred body in front of his mother, even she would not be able to recognize that it was her son.
The good news was that even though he had black skin and some of his organs were charred, it was still possible to see Bobby breathing, albeit heavily. It was too difficult for him to even open his eyes, but it was possible to see his chest rising and falling, indicating that he was still alive.
"The winner of this fight is... Noah!" Once again, the delivery of results of the battle was practically useless, since everyone knew that Noah was the winner of this match. After all, his opponent this time was in a state of near death, as well as the other opponent he fought.
At that point, the viewers, who were rich and bored people, were starting to see Noah differently. Since what they were looking for in these fights was basically to end their boredom, seeing a compet.i.tor so different from the standard was refreshing, and that made their opinion of Noah better by the second.
They didn"t care if Noah"s opponents died or not; their main concern was just whether the fight would be interesting. And to see that Noah was cruel to the point of just not killing his opponents because the judge told him to stop, was something really interesting.
So, unbeknownst to him, Noah went from being a despised character to being a fighter who was gathering a good number of fans among the rich young heirs and heiresses in the city who were watching his fights.
This was also happening in Robert"s group.
Since the first battle of Noah"s, there was a mix of emotions among the young people in Robert"s group. The most notable were the boys who were feeling excited to see Robert"s fighter, Noah, who was apparently much stronger than Robert had shown.
"So you were hiding his strength from us? What is it? You don"t really trust your friends anymore, Robert?" one of the boys said with an obvious false expression of disappointment and sadness, pretending that he was very hurt by Robert for not telling them this ahead of time.
The only other kind of emotion that was being expressed came from Robert, who was starting to get worried. He thought that Noah would just be a sacrifice, that he would die in the arena because of his own greed for thinking he could win the prize money even though hetwas very weak. But different from what he imagined, Noah was truly fighting the Blessed Rank D with ease, defeating two compet.i.tors who had a chance of making it to the finals without even having a serious injury.
When Robert thought about it, the only thing that came to his mind was the hope that Noah would die before the tournament ended, or else he would account for what he has said about blah being too stupid to understand what was going on and what he said about him being a sacrifice today, which Robert definitely doubted was going to be the case after the show of strength and strategy that had once again happened on stage.
"s.h.i.t, what am I going to do if this kid wins the championship?" Robert thought worriedly, but outwardly he didn"t let it show and pretended to be completely calm in this situation. In the worst case, he would have to teach Noah a lesson himself, and as he was a peak Blessed Rank D, he thought that he would be able to teach Noah that he should not dare to have wrong thoughts towards him, especially since in the near future, Robert would reach Rank C.
Noah returned to the preparation room when he left the arena, and just like the last time, the other partic.i.p.ants did not want to approach him at all. But the last time, they had avoided approaching him for the sake of thinking that Noah was just a simple lunatic who liked to torture people, but this time they were really scared since Noah practically almost killed one of the most powerful fighters in the tournament. If he did that to one of the most powerful, the weakest were afraid of what could happen to them and started to have different thoughts about this tournament.
These fights took place almost once a week. It was better for them to give up fighting today, due to Noah"s sudden appearance. They could return again for the next week"s fight where they would have a chance of winning for real.
This week"s cash prize was pretty good, but it wasn"t worth it to put their lives in sudden jeopardy just for a cash prize that they weren"t even sure they able to receive.
Noah once again did not care about the other fighters acting toward him in this way. The only thing he wanted was for these fights to end soon so that his turn would come faster and he wouldn"t have to waste any unnecessary time.
During the last fight, he had consumed so much energy from Bobby that he would only need to catch his breath now to return to his previous peak state, as he would not need to recover any energy, and that was the longest thing for him to usually recover.
And just as he expected, the battles started to take less time, as the fighters less confident of beating Noah were giving up their fights so as not to waste energy or risk receiving a fatal injury and not being able to partic.i.p.ate in the tournament again later because of something that were to possibly happen in one of today"s battles.
And of course, Noah was very pleased with all this, after all, his next fight came up in much less time than he imagined.
Fortunately, his opponent was already someone Noah had seen in a previous battle, and dealing with him was not very difficult. Noah didn"t even have to burn the man too much. Just by feeling a little bit of Noah"s cleansing, the man already started screaming that he would give up and begged Noah to stop it.
The fight was very disappointing for Noah, as he didn"t learn anything new, unlike the other fights. But for the audience, this fight was not at all disappointing. They just wanted to be entertained, and to see such a feared fighter in the arena was something very fun for them to see.
It had never happened before that a fighter was so powerful that other fighters would become afraid of the victor completely debilitating them, but toyingly sparing their lives, as if the champion was mysteriously far above them in terms of power and enjoyed watching them suffer.
From the characteristics that Noah had shown, his flame was much more powerful than the flames of a normal Blessed Rank D, but the most notable characteristic that they noticed was primarily the pain it caused, which was far greater than his rank would indicate.
Noah, on the other hand, was very pleased because of a window that had appeared in front of his eyes during the battle against Bobby, which made him desire even more to have strong opponents in the next matches, after all, this could be a great opportunity to profit for him.
-----
Please read the author"s notes down here! he he :3 ↓↓↓