The First Legendary Beast Master

Chapter 2113 Make It Count

The independent Immortal put everything that he had into a brutal series of strikes, and finally managed to land a solid hit on his opponent, who staggered half a step and spun off balance.

Or so it seemed.

The spin turned into a backhand strike that was barely parried, and an offensive barrage designed to shatter an opponent who had overextended.

The warrior recovered quickly, and Lord Almeixei nodded in satisfaction.

"His style is lacking, as his Clan always was, but his skills are sharp, as is his recovery time. He's going all out without pushing himself off balance. I think that he has a chance."

Lady Nerissa nodded. "I think so as well. There's a decent chance that someone picks him up after the tournament if he can make it through the preliminary rounds."

He might fit with the New Home Merchant Clan, as they took anyone who suited their vibe, but his fighting style didn't really match what the others used.

And, he wasn't a pious member of the church suited to becoming a Paladin.

The pair's match was coming up as a highlight on nearly every screen, as the two Spirit Immortals moved right past testing defences to smashing each other with their most powerful skills. There was no moderation in that fight, they were going straight for the knockout without waiting to exhaust their opponent first.

And the crowd was loving it.

The pair were actually very well matched, and at Spirit Immortal, only those who had completed their Spirit, but had not meaningfully begun the transformation that would bring them into the Void Immortal state would compete.

So, they were all basically at the same level, as the Peak Immortals would be, but at a much lower experience level.

After all, the Spirit Immortals were all usually very young.

Then, everyone's attention was pulled away when one of the Ascended Immortals used an explosion skill that rocked his entire fighting arena.

Karl winked at Lord Eryman and whispered, "I didn't ask how big the room was, I said, I'm casting fireball."

The Legend chuckled and raised his glass in a toast.

"Your own magic won't usually hurt you, so it's a valid tactic. Though, blowing up the entire space is not a conventional way of winning a match."

That was when the other two realized that it was not a mistake.

They had been thinking of it like a fight in the outside world, where such a tactic would leave everyone tossed about and battered. But inside an arena, where it was only you and your opponent, it was a perfectly valid, if potentially risky plan.

If your opponent managed to weather the blast with a shield up, you would need time to recover from a spell that large.

Fortunately for the fire loving Elder, this one worked out for him, and when the smoke cleared, he was alone in the arena, victorious. Which gave him a chance to wave to the crowd before stepping down, so that the next match could begin.

There were nearly as many Elders here as there were juniors, which was a strange situation for most tournaments. But that meant that the preliminary rounds for them would take jut as long as the Spirit Immortal matches, and they wouldn't get their own days.

At least, not yet.

Once the actual tournament started, the juniors would go first, so the energy could build up. But before that could happen, they needed to eliminate a huge number of Immortals of all ranks, so the tournament groups could be formed.

The preliminary rounds were two single eliminations. One today, and one tomorrow.

Once that was done, they would form groups of ten from each Immortal Rank, and they would fight ten matches each, over the course of two days. It was a brutal schedule, but if you couldn't keep up, that was part of the trial as well.

Not all the matches were quite as entertaining as those two, though.

Many of the matches were simply blowouts, less serious contenders, or those who had recently changed categories and were now learning the hard way that the difference between the transition and the top was much larger than they had anticipated.

The amount of humbling that was going on in the arena was enough that even Eryman was beginning to show his amusement.

"You know, we should encourage more people to come for this.

They're learning so much about how large the world is, and how little they actually know about fighting other Immortals, that they might actually manage to pull their heads out of their asses before they make me do something drastic," he whispered to Karl.

Loud enough that the other two heard him.

Lord Almeixei looked scandalized, but Lady Nerissa had met the Legend more than a few times in the past, when members of his church had come to this world and ended up in her care, so she was less shocked by his language.

In her opinion, the man had a serious temper on him, but that could have to do with the fact that mortal clergy who made Immortality tended to be even more insufferable than the average Immortal.

At least, at first.

Once they were in the Immortal World for a few years, and realized they were still at the bottom of the food chain, often without any real progress on their Immortal Spirit, they began to change their attitude.

At least, a little.

Many became bitter and jaded as the children who had grown up in the Immortal World overtook them, and took that attitude with them everywhere that they went.

Eryman could see at least a few of them in the fighters waiting for the Spirit Immortal rounds.

Then he wondered what they would do if they knew that Karl had also come from the Mortal Realms, and that the Church's informants were absolutely certain it had been less than two years since he reached Immortality.

And he was already an Ascended Immortal, on par with Elders a century his senior.