"All right, Bu Fan. You"re next."Harrison didn"t hesitate to pick out his next choice for the fourth match. Bu Fan nodded and stepped forward, cracking his knuckles in antic.i.p.ation and doing some sort of weird warmup. He had embarra.s.sed himself the previous match by losing to Harold"s academy, and now he was relis.h.i.+ng the chance to prove himself, to make up for that defeat.
I wouldn"t be surprised if he scored a decisive victory here. Bu Fan was strong, by virtue of him being the stand-in protagonist of Versatile Mage. Thanks to that, he had an abundance of plot armor and Mary Sue G.o.dlikeness.
The other party was a girl, but as Bu Fan walked onto the stage, he smiled grimly.
"Even if you"re a girl, I"m not going to hold back."
"Hmph." The girl looked offended that Bu Fan was taking a poke at her gender. "As if I ever needed you to. Don"t go crying to your mom later, complaining that you got beaten by a girl."
A shadow pa.s.sed over Bu Fan"s face and he glanced down.
"I don"t have a mother."
"What?" The girl suddenly looked extremely uncomfortable when she realized that she had touched upon a sensitive subject. Fortunately, Bu Fan didn"t dwell on it for too long, and he glanced up with a shrug.
"But my father and sister are watching, and I don"t want to show them a shameful display like I did in the other match."
He waited for the commentator to signal the start of the match, and immediately drew his star maps. A ma.s.sive crimson magic circle materialized underneath his feet before he launched a devastating torrent of flames at the girl, Juliana.
"d.a.m.n it!"
Juliana ducked under the roaring torrent of fire before whipping her gun out and firing off several rounds with her hi-tech weapon. Instead of the primitive standard lasguns issued to the Imperial Guard, she was wielding a more advanced plasma rifle that fired off powerful pulses of energy without fear of it overheating and blowing up in her hands. Manufactured for the Greater Good, the pulse rifle barked, emitting a destructive stream of plasma.
"For the Greater Good!"
"You"re in the wrong universe, lady." Bu Fan tried not to sigh as he dodged another barrage of energy pulses while returning fire – literally. Juliana ran across the length of the arena, barely avoiding getting singed by the rocket-like fireb.a.l.l.s that detonated against the reinforced concrete. "You won"t be a.s.similating anyone of the Imperium…I mean Federation into your new, recently founded hi-tech Empire. We won"t become Gue"la auxiliaries like you."
"What the h.e.l.l are they talking about?" Pearl demanded, irritated.
"I have no idea." Theodore"s face was twisted in confusion. I sighed and shook my head, knowing that it would be a bad answer to explain, but I did so anyway.
"A tabletop wargaming universe that takes place in the 41st Millennium, when the Imperium of Man is beset upon by a myriad of deadly xenos and heretical traitors who turned their backs on the light of the Emperor."
Everyone stared at me blankly. I regretted ever answering them. As I expected, none of them knew what I was talking about. Whatever. I impatiently waved my hand back toward the arena, to return their attention back toward Bu Fan"s match. By now, Juliana had completed casting a more advanced spell of her own, her technomagic kicking into gear.
"Crisis Battlesuit!" she shouted. Her equipment glowed and her weapon seemed to disa.s.semble. Stuff came from inside her uniform and flowed all over her body, encasing her in a white light. The mana then solidified and transformed into a full body armor suit that protected her from head to toe. The pulse rifle disappeared, replaced by two plasma rifles mounted upon her shoulders, and a pair of fusion blasters – one on each arm.
Her jetpack flared and she soared into the air, her new flight capabilities allowing her to jump, shoot, jump and fly (I wasn"t literally meaning fly as in hovering in the air, but an ability that essentially allowed her to shoot even though she fell back from combat). Red-hot searing thermal beams that could punch through a meter-thick armored hull of a tank lanced out to incinerate Bu Fan, but the Versatile Mage threw himself to a corner, his hand raised to launch a bolt of lightning.
The thrusters ignited again and Juliana boosted over the jagged bolt of lightning while continuing to bombard Bu Fan"s position with plasma bolts from her shoulder-mounted rifles. She raised her hands and unleashed twin bolts of thermal energy, but Bu Fan met those attacks with his fire spells, the flames taking on the shapes of giant fists and hammering against the anti-tank beams before all four streams erupted in a huge explosion.
"What a truly heated battle!" the commentator raved from above, his eyes probably wide as he struggled to take in the match below. The spectators went wild, cheering until their voices went hoa.r.s.e. Two of the top fighters pitting their best spells against each other…Anuaiz Academy, despite being relatively new to the field, had been wowing and astounding many neutrals with their innovative spells, hi-tech gear and technomagic.
Screeching across the ground and leaving slight sonic booms in her wake, Juliana continued to unleash a hail of plasma and fusion blasts in Bu Fan"s direction, but he continued to dodge while firing back with fire and lightning spells. Doing a barrel in the air, Juliana punched one of the fireb.a.l.l.s, dispersing it harmlessly.
"It"s useless! Your flames are only Strength 4 AP 0, or Strength 5 AP -1 if you use a heavier version of your flames! They won"t be able to penetrate my 3+ armor save, even if you somehow roll a successful wound roll against my Toughness 5! Your Strength 4 flames only have a 1/3 chance of wounding me, and your Strength 5 heavy flamers have 50% chance of wounding me…but even then I have a 50% chance of making my armor save, and I have 5 wounds!"
"Can someone translate that for me, please?" Craig asked, frustrated. "I know she"s speaking Mandarin, but for some reason I don"t understand a single word she just said."
"Basically she"s saying that her Crisis Battlesuit is fireproof," I replied. "And that it"s too armored and tough for Bu Fan"s mediocre flames to hurt her."
"You actually understand what she"s saying?" Sheila was looking at me in awe. d.a.m.n it, stop looking at me as if I was some sort of genius. If you play tabletop wargames in sci-fi universes like I did, you would understand that esoteric language too. Actually, if you played Dungeons and Dragons and other tabletop role-playing games that involved rolling dice, you should probably have an idea of what she was talking about.
"And she"s only wearing the XV8 version instead of the Enforcer or Coldstar version, otherwise she would have 6 wounds instead of 5."
"You just lost me there," Theodore muttered with a shake of his head.
"Different battlesuits have different stats and characteristics. If Juliana had used a more expensive battlesuit, she would be tougher to kill, but I guess her academy couldn"t afford it or needed to cut costs – considering the amount of hi-tech gear and incredible firepower they are packing, they obviously can"t afford to splurge on the very best for each and every one of their students. Not if they want to maximize their trump card."
"So they have their limitations." Yue Chu looked exhausted as he rested on the bench, his eyes glued on the fight. "They don"t have a limitless budget to buy whatever advanced tech they want. And for a school like theirs who is heavily reliant on the latest technology and most advanced wargear, they need the funds more than others."
"Correct." Harrison nodded, but his expression hardened and he clenched his fists. "But that doesn"t matter. I don"t care how much they spent. Money isn"t everything. Even if we didn"t spend as much as them or don"t have as big a budget, we can prevail over them through our skills, hard work and strategies."
I was reminded of my old days in my previous life, where I supported underdog soccer teams that had a very low budget (often 1% of top elite teams such as Manchester City, Chelsea or Manchester United) and enjoyed games where they upset all odds to win against so-called t.i.tans. As an aside, I"m a fan of Blackburn Rovers, a small-town club from Lancas.h.i.+re, so you could see why I wasn"t all that hung up over budgets, ranks, t.i.tles or statuses. In the end, it was eleven men against eleven men on the pitch, it was one mage against one mage in the arena, and all the so-called rankings or family connections in the world weren"t going to help you win against your opponent. No, it was your own skill, hard work and strategies that would allow you to prevail over your opponent, whether he or she was ranked number one in the Federation or not.
Rankings were fluid. They always changed. Sometimes readers had to understand that, instead of always whining about "how can so-and-so lose to this lower-ranked guy when he defeated this higher-ranked girl earlier in the story?!" that was not how reality worked. Anyone can rise up the ranks and change his or her status. Each person"s fate was in his or her hands, and not that of the readers. Even the writer was subject to the whims and determination of his characters.
Juliana soared through an intense inferno, which singed and blackened parts of her white Crisis battlesuit, closing in on a stunned Bu Fan to fire her fusion blasters pointblank into him. She was probably trying to get within melta range so that she could increase the chances of her dealing more damage to him with the close-ranged anti-tank weapon.
"Got you!" she crowed as she squeezed the triggers inside her armored gauntlets to fire off the superheated thermal beams. At such close range, there was no way Bu Fan could dodge her attacks.
He didn"t need to.
"!!"
A gleaming s.h.i.+eld appeared between him and the soaring Crisis Battlesuit wearer, withstanding the two fierce torrents of superheated energies. They managed to melt through the poor s.h.i.+eld, leaving red-hot goblets of molten metal dripping down the now useless equipment, but it had done its job, and Bu Fan could get it repaired later (though it would take some time).
"You"re right," Bu Fan smirked as he reached out and grabbed hold of Juliana"s arm. "Caught you."
"Hah!" The Anuaiz Academy student snorted in laughter as she directed her shoulder-mounted plasma rifles to swivel around and lock onto him. The barrels of both weapons began to glow blue as plasma rushed through them to fire pointblank into Bu Fan, who was dangling helplessly from her arm as she swerved upward. "So what? None of your spells can hurt me."
"We"ll see about that. Divine Lightning!"
"?!"
A ma.s.sive purple magic circle appeared beneath his feet and several immense bolts of lightning descended from the heavens (or the ceiling of the coliseum if you really want to be pedantic about details) and struck the both of them. It wasn"t just the lightning bolts from above. Tightening his grip on the arm of the smoking battlesuit, Bu Fan channeled more of his own lightning into his opponent. The lethal electricity coursed through the Crisis battlesuit, frying systems and shorting out its circuitry. With an agonized shriek, Juliana plummeted back toward the ground.
Flipping himself up and over the cras.h.i.+ng Crisis battlesuit in an almost graceful manner, Bu Fan planted both feet onto where the spine would be, and used his weight to drive Juliana further into the ground. The two of them crashed with a huge explosion, with poor Juliana"s battle armor absorbing the vast majority of the impact.
The reinforced material used to build the battlesuit cracked and splintered from the immense impact, with significant parts of it shattering and flying off in chunks. Bouncing off the wrecked battlesuit, Bu Fan cartwheeled in the air before landing a few meters away.
"Ugh…"
Juliana tried to crawl back to her feet, but with her body armor shorted out, she found that she couldn"t even stand. As one final display of defiance, she slowly raised her arm-mounted fusion blaster to aim the currently useless weapon at Bu Fan. It didn"t matter that the weapon now lacked the power to fire its incandescent beam of molten light. Juliana was willing her own mana into it, trying to force it back into working capacity.
"Like I said…even if you"re a woman, I"m not going to show any mercy to you."
Bu Fan didn"t waste any time waiting to see if Juliana would succeed. With a raised hand, he called down purple bolts of lightning to disintegrate what was left of her battle armor and fry the wearer inside the fuming wreck.
With a final cry, Juliana fell into unconsciousness, and it didn"t take two seconds before the commentator announced Bu Fan"s victory.
"Match over! Winner…Bu Fan from Jing Tian Academy!"
Whatever the commentator said after that declaration was drowned out by the screams and cheers of the spectators.