When the flare went up, the ones who felt the most danger were the monsters wearing the A-Tier helmets. They understood that they were the most vulnerable among all of the monsters because catching them would yield the second possible highest amount of points. The bellators would be safe for a moment unless the monsters decided to band together to remove them from the game.
Those with S-Tier Helmets also understood that they were not the primary target as most of the monsters recognised how strong they were...except for the newer comrades who had yet to see or experience the unparalleled strength of bellators.
The Deep Ones, as the species that was even keener on battles than Orcs, knew better than to trifle with the bellators and yet the Mousefolks were daring enough to go against their own master.
Perhaps it was not ignorance but rather a sort of challenge to see how far the students could go against their own master.
"I won"t show mercy," Zeru stated with a smug smile as he took his wooden sword out as if to protect himself. Unfortunately, the Mousefolks did not know that defence was indeed the best offence for the Sword Saint.
Every ball that was thrown towards Zeru was directly reflected back towards them. The angle of the slashes and the amount of energy used to reflect the shots were perfect. The Mousefolks that were hit realised that Zeru was giving them mercy. And yet at the same time, it shed some light on how Zeru was able to control his attacks to such a precise degree that brute strength was seen as gross incompetence.
After a few tries, the Mousefolks accepted that merely throwing their b.a.l.l.s at Zeru would not be working and they needed to devise a plan of attack. However, they seemed to have forgotten that this particular dodgeball was a free for all. The other monsters were frantically trying to eliminate one another.
Jin was fairly amused that even when his minions were not engaging a b.l.o.o.d.y fight, the monsters were doing their best to earn as many points.
Shu ended up partic.i.p.ating even when he was aware that his size would mean he would have a hard time. The Ancient Treant did put up quite a fight despite its inability to dodge by shrinking itself to a smaller tree and grew many branches to whack the incoming b.a.l.l.s away quickly. (That was how he cheated the height and size requirement!) Sadly, his valiant effort lasted... less than ten seconds, he was ousted when a dodgeball curved and hit its torso from his blind spot.
It was none other than Ke Mi who had magically used her strings to manipulate a feint in the throw to hit him. "Ah, you ungrateful brat! After all these months of nurturing you!" Shu shouted when he saw the digital scoreboard in the Stadium instance. It clearly showed Ke Mi "killed" Shu, causing him to be teleported back to the Town Hall instance.
"But you are B-Tier! Lots of points!" Ke Mi laughed and waved goodbye to the disappearing Shu.
Afterwards, it became a major turning point for the game. For some reason, many of the monsters hadn"t even considered attacking the helmets of their own tiers but planned to get the big points by ambus.h.i.+ng those in the higher level. Suddenly the free for all turned chaotic as everyone really became everyone"s enemy.
Tsu was the first to attack his fellow brother, Kai. "What I said shall be kept as a promise," Tsu shouted as his ball flew towards Kai with a whirling cyclone of black energy surrounding it which vaguely resembles a wolf trying to attack its prey.
"Fine with me," Kai replied quickly as he decided to take the attack head on. Some of the monsters in the vicinity were just in awe by the powers of Tsu and Kai as they had never seen these foxes in their human forms at all. It was also an eye opener for Jin and the other Sub System Users as they had enjoyed preview on the might of the foxes that remained mysterious till this day.
However, not all bellators had it easy.
Similar to Zeru, Kraft was also attacked by his own underlings. Their motivation was nowhere near as n.o.ble as wanting to test themselves. The crafty fox had forced them to endure h.e.l.l, and all of them were looking forward to getting at least a little bit of revenge.
Initially, the Original Bellator had enough time to play around and even taunt the dark elves for failing to hit him thanks to his illusions, but quickly more and more monsters came over in the attempt of bringing this fox down.
Kiyu just joined for the fun of it whereas Pei, who had never hidden her contempt for the Devilman, was happy to mess with him. With the girls working together and pointing out where the real Kraft was hiding he was eventually hit by a ball.
Peppers thought her magic casting would be able to save her in all kinds of situations. Yet, within the first few seconds, she had already been annihilated by a ball from behind. The ironic thing was that it was her fellow friend, Ayse who had done so mercilessly to earn those couple hundred of System Points. (Oh, Peppers made sure her next explosion experiment would be met with some sort of accident.)
Other than that, the rest had much fun trying to escape from the attacks and dis.h.i.+ng out damage. The spectators watched them with much glee, and after three minutes of annihilation, the final ones left were Milk, Zeru and surprisingly, Dread Reaver.
The Death Knight had some manipulation with the power of fog that enabled him to slow down the dodgeb.a.l.l.s and allowed him to either escape or block them. As for the other two bellators, it boiled down to speed.
Milk was evasive enough to block every attack with her hands, and she even had some innate monk skills that gave her another extra pair of "hands" (Jin thought she was some sort of thousand arm buddha when he saw Milk using her abilities.)
But instead of continuing to see who was the ultimate dodgeball king/ queen, Jin announced that the game was up and declared the remaining three as winners. Some of the monsters jeered at the sudden stoppage of the game since they wished to know who would be the ultimate winner.
"Please continue with your Grand Feast! Qiu Yue and Lynn will be introducing more games to you all in the next hour or so. And if you wish to leave to get some rest, feel free to do so. Everyone will receive a video about today, so you can rewatch it anytime you like. Else, have a great night!" Jin said and took his leave from the stage.
He teleported back to the Dungeon Maker due to a message by the System. There, he saw Kraft for once with a very serious look on him before resuming his usual self. Noticing Jin, he showed him a half smile.
"Firstly, that was a h.e.l.l of a dodgeball game, I will love to do it again. Second, I do not know if this is an intended Christmas present…but let"s say it is." Kraft spoke as he turned on the console for Jin in the Dungeon Maker. Jin saw a couple of files being decrypted right in front of him, and subsequently, a picture with striking features was shown on the screen.
"Ryuli is real."