Soul Art Online
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Chapter 23: Tournament- 3
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- Arthas -
I looked at the group gathered in front of me.
I was the only one who had qualified for the Semi Finals from the Knight's Academy.
The last representative of the Magic Tower was eliminated in the previous round in a very close match against an unrepresented guy. Tyrone was a Mad Brawler, an advanced Class of Brawler. They were basically hand to hand combatants who were high on attack and defence and yet this guy was quite good at what he did.
They even had a Skill called Outrage which significantly increased their physical attributes, removed any debuffs on them as well as made them resistant to any physical debuffs at the cost of their mental attributes getting reduced.
Apart from this, this particular guy had learned another skill which was the reason for the defeat of the Magic Knight.
This Skill was called the Injured Beast. It was a Skill which increased the physical attributes of the user by a certain percentage the more negative status effects they had on themselves.
It was a very bad matchup against a Magic Knight who always took advantage of this thing and the Mad Brawler guy was not stupid. He didn't reveal this skill in any of the matches and even allowed the Magic Knight to apply more status effects on him and then directly used Injured Beast followed by Outrage.
The increase in attributes was enough to make his stats through the roof, rivalling those of veteran T6 people. Safe to say the Magic Knight didn't handle it well… he was shot across the stage and was half embedded in a wall… and the Mad Brawler won the match.
The third guy to qualify was a Templar named Doug. Nothing to be said about him. He was the textbook definition of a Knight in a Shining Armour… quite literally. That silver armour of his shined so bright when he used any Holy or Light based Skill that it was hard to even look at him. This made fighting him extremely hard.
This guy had used his equipment masterfully and while some might say it was not honourable or something like that. The armour's effect was actually something which caused damage to the Undead and Dark creatures and something many Templars used during raids. That was not to say he was weak or anything.
As said earlier, the guy himself was a total Knight in a shining armour. His fighting style was almost perfect without any flaws and comparable to Lord Knights. In fact, from what I had heard about him, he had qualified for both Lord Knight and Templar and he chose to become a Templar instead. It showed as he won against another Lord Knight from the Knight's Academy in a fair fight.
The last guy was the guy from the Order of the Black Hand, the same guy Arnold had warned me about. He fought against a Templar from the Church. It was a very surprising match as the guy was supposed to win but lost in the last moments. Perhaps the reason why I felt it was strange was because the entire time I had a feeling that the guy was holding back for one reason or the other.
My next match was against the Mad Brawler guy which Doug was going to fight against the Black Hand guy.
And that's why so many people were here.
"You must win the next match, Arthas."
"Knight's Academy's victory depends on you, Arthas."
The knights from the academy surrounded me after the match.
"Alright everyone. Give the man a break. He needs rest and recuperation to face the next opponent with all his strength." My salvation came in the form of Arnold who separated the group and told them to disperse.
"Arnold." I let out a mental sigh of relief as I saw him.
"That was a wonderful performance, Arthas. The audience is going wild out there in your matches."
"Are they? I took a lot of time to complete the fights compared to other players." I replied, not really falling for his words.
"Hahahaha I am not talking about the civilians. The ones I am talking about are the other warriors as well as other organisations. While other people were fighting to win with all their strengths, you fought them, made them use all their moves and then defeated them with brutal strength and efficiency utterly defeating them. Your performance was inspiring for the young knights in the Academy as it showed them exactly what to expect from a Lord Knight's Path and how strong they can be as long as they worked hard on their paths." He explained. "I am pretty sure you will be getting visits from many higher ups to recruit you after this match."
We talked about a few more things and had lunch and I took a break.
Soon enough, it was time for me to go back for the match and I needed to be checked to see if I wasn't using any illegal drugs before the match.
With all the tests done, I was ready for the next fight and I could hear the announcer call out the names.
"And now… we have the first round of the semi-finals…, the man who has very quickly become a well known face in these games, the man who has crushed every opponent so far with his bare fists…. Tyrone, the Mad Beast!"
The audience cheered loudly at the name.
"And against him… we have the Ace of the Knight's Academy, the lowest level player in the tournament and yet the biggest dark horse, the man whose shield is an impregnable wall and sword is an unstoppable force, the man who has broken every record in the tournament… Arthas, the Undefeated."
…undefeated… isn't that guy raising flags here?
I shook my head and stepped forward, through the tunnel and towards the stadium. Just before I was about to enter however, the guard who stood at the entrance of the tunnel told me something and my eyes widened.
Fucking flags…
- Kuroka -
She quietly followed the npc who had suddenly kidnapped the white haired girl from a distance.
Since when did NPCs kidnap other players?
But then again, the NPCs did try to kill her and even organised traps to lure her in specifically, so thinking of this world as a game world… or at least a normal game world wasn't something that worked.
Still, this was probably the first time she had seen something like this happening.
Gasper returned back to the Blacksmith he was apprenticing under among the audience. He wasn't good in a fight or any such situation so she asked him to keep a distance lest he get caught in this mess too.
The npc had taken the girl to a nearby room, probably to avoid the crowd and security around the place. She watched from a high enough distance from a vantage point where she could see everything inside the room.
It was a small room with three people inside.
A quick look told her about the three people.
There were two T4's and one T5, the npc who brought the girl there being the T5 member. It also explained how he could so quickly subdue the girl.
She leaned against the wall and used one of the Thief Skills to listen in to their talks.
"Who is she? Why bring her here?" One of them asked.
"There were complications in the plan. This girl turned out to be a slave so I had to separate her. Who knows if they can track the slaves with their Slave Mark." The man replied. "Anyways, just keep her here till the work is done. We already have another woman with us. Lock the room. By the time she wakes up, our work will be done either way."
"Why don't we just kill her and be done with it?" Another one asked.
"No. The deaths of the slaves can be found out by their masters. We don't know who the master of this girl is. If it's the guy himself or the woman we captured then it won't matter but if someone else is notified, they might raise an alarm and things could go awry. It's better not to take any chances. Either way, they don't know our real faces or even who or what we are after and neither will they ever be able to connect us to anyone either. The man he is going to lose against isn't ours after all. Our work will be done in an hour. Let's go."
The two nodded and followed the man after a while.
Kuroka silently listened to their words and suddenly understood what was happening here. These bastards had kidnapped the girl to blackmail Arthas to throw the match.
Damn… npcs are pulling these kinds of stunts too?
She waited quietly for a while for them to leave. Once that was done, she quietly entered the building through the window and checked on the girl.
The girl was still under a Status effect.
Wasn't attacking a player in a safe zone supposed to be impossibl… oh… and that's when she realised that the current place wasn't exactly a safe zone.
The stadium was built outside the main city. That's why the entire place was a danger zone for players… and they could be attacked.
She quickly brought out antidotes for the Sleep effect and fed the girl… however while she was doing that, the door to the room opened with a bang.
On the other side stood the three men, the same npcs who had been in the room a while ago. This time however their faces were covered with masks.
"I told you I could feel someone staring at us and this was the best way to bring the rats out from their hiding places… now, how should we take care of this little rat…?
Kuroka quickly drew her weapon and took on a defensive stance.
Dammit… she was sensed…
Tch… the lowered stats were a pain in the ass to handle…
There was no way she could fight all three of these people, especially with a T5 among them…
Kuroka looked around to look for any way out.
Suddenly there was a sound and the girl behind her woke up, the potion acting.
Kuroka, thinking on her feet, directly used her feet to kick the girl and awakened her.
To her surprise, the girl jumped into a defensive stance very quickly. Almost at the same time, the assassins attacked.
Kuroka threw a pepper bomb towards them, to interrupt them.
One of them dodged while the other guy actually cut the pouch, scattering the contents into the air, making them pause for a moment.
She closed her eyes and moved to the side quickly and shouted at the other girl. "Make as much noise as you can. These people are hiding. We need to attract the attention of others."
There was no way even the two of them would stand a chance.
As expected the T5 easily blew the pepper bomb's contents to the side with a single swing of his dagger. "That plan is quite good… unfortunately it is not going to work." The T5 npc said. "Fifteen meters radius around this room is under the effect of my Item. For the next fifteen minutes, no one will be able to hear you and no communication skills will work either… and I won't need a total of fifteen minutes to finish this fight. You two cannot leave this room… so why don't you two be good little girls and give up quietly." The other two took this chance to attack them.
Kuroka defended against one of them while trying to keep an eye on the T5. That still left the last one but to her surprise, the other assassin was actually blown away.
She looked from the corner of her eyes and saw the girl was now donning full armour and had a spear drawn as she stood in a fighting stance.
The npc who was blown away, made two somersaults in the air and landed on his feet in a defensive stance with his dagger in front of him.
"Fifteen meters right… that means, we just need to make a lot of noise outside the fifteen metres radius, right?" The white haired girl spoke with a cold tone.
Kuroka blinked for a moment and then a cat-like smile came on her face.
"Great Plan."