Thanks to what occurred during the third round and whatever events it unfolded behind the scenes, the fourth round of matches was far more interesting than most of the previous ones. While none measured up to the same heights as Stella’s or Aegis’s battle, they were certainly a step ahead in terms of power and capability.

  These matches served to quickly rid the remaining contestants of the rubble that had survived up until now due to sheer luck and proper match ups. A certain bar was established, and many were found wanting. Though, to be fair, it wasn’t entirely their fault. The world was vast, and the sheer numbers were against them.

  The fourth match was actually a great revelation to all of those that were involved. Even before the tournament began it was clear that some factions and people within those factions were special, even at a global level, yet now, they appeared to get lost in the crowd that was slowly revealing itself.

  “I told you guys it wouldn’t be like in the novels,” Stella said, not turning her gaze from the arena where interesting battles were still ongoing. “It just couldn’t be. I mean, there were billions of humans, who knows how many elves and sovaryn, it was simply impossible for only a few people to be special.”

  “Ok, fine, I’ll give you that, but did you expect it to be at this level?” Alex asked, his attention fixed on another match.

  “Shut it,” Anna said, firmly. “You’re distracting me.”

  Neither Stella nor Alex responded because they too knew that they needed to focus on what they were watching if they wanted to grasp everything with as much accuracy as possible.

  Most matches were overwhelmingly one sided, most fighters either not wanting to hold back anymore, or simply having found a reason to participate earnestly. Some matches were so quick that as soon as the countdown reached zero, the match was already over.

  ----------

  Stella was currently watching as what appeared to be a Mexican woman summoned snakes through the use of various feathers, each of which was beautiful. With each serpent that she summoned, the more her arms transformed, growing rainbow-colored feathers of their own.

  Lifting her open palm up, a rainbow-colored feather floated for a second than shot toward its target. The speed at which it traveled defied conventional understanding of how a feather should travel, as did everything since the integration.

  It wasn’t as fast as a bullet, but it was fast enough that if you blinked, a serpent would be before you, its mouth open and ready to bite.

  Their opponent, a sovaryn that resembled a red cheetah, quickly dispatched the serpent mid-air using dual daggers that were fashioned out of bone. With each serpent that came her way, she would advance one step further, not willing to risk getting caught off guard.

  The fight appeared to be at a stalemate, until the serpent user began to advance with rhythmic fashion. It was methodical, every step calculated so that she would hit the correct beats of a nonexistent music exactly where and when she wanted to. It was a dance that with each step slowly turned into a trance that was difficult to escape.

  Everyone who was watching, including Stella, had been engrossed in the rhythmic advance. They blinked, and were barely able to see when the giant serpent made out of feathers had appeared to bite off the sovaryn’s entire torso, head and all.

  “Shit,” Stella muttered. “And that was with no divinity.”

  Stella cursed both because she had been caught in a trance and because the attack that she had barely glimpsed held no divinity within it. There was no problem with it having no divinity, it just meant that the lead she thought that she and her friends had wasn’t as big as she had hoped.

  “The skills they are using are even capable of effecting me,” she muttered, pensive. “I could probably deal with the attack by increasing the temperature in the arena and burning the feathers before she can even think about launching them, but what if I get caught in a trance without knowing it?”

  Turning to look at another match, she continued to consider how she would have dealt with the feathered serpent’s attack.

  ----------

  Anna watched as Ed, the one person from Solace—maybe even the world—who was making the greatest effort to get close to the azar, was getting ready to fight an azar who finally felt that it was the moment to reveal what was underneath their robes.

  Standing imposing at more than 2 meters in height, the azar was a blue skinned man, full of muscles. He had no hair to speak of, and his face was rough, yet it conveyed an extreme serenity that was difficult to ignore. Along their body were various markings that were interconnected and the pattern they followed was familiar.

  “Magic circles,” Anna muttered, her eyes fixed on the match. “Mages then? But with that body? Maybe Stella was right and that’s just how they are.”

  The worn robe that the azar wore was tied at his waist, still keeping his lower half hidden, but that didn’t last long. With a practiced motion, the azar got into position and revealed bare feet and pants made of the same material as their robe.

  “Ann’na shar Vasha an,” the azar said, clenching his fists toward Ed, as if he were about to brawl it out.

  “Annashar Vashaan,” Ed answered, gripping his staff firmly and getting into position.

  Ed had failed to get close enough to the azar to see what was underneath their robes, or even catch a glimpse of what the obvious secret behind them was, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t get close to them at all. Because he did in fact make a connection with some of the azar. This connection is what allowed him to know that “Annashar Vashaan” was a greeting given before a worthy fight.

  Stella had already communicated to everyone from Solace who was still participating that it was very likely that the azar used magic when they fought for real. So, Ed considered it for his fight.

  Ed had never fought against a magic user, not even in the tournament. Here, melee fighters, like him, still made up about 90% of the contestants, if not more. So, he advanced with caution, keeping his eyes peeled.

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  Here we go!! Ed shouted to himself mentally.

  “Ter,” the azar said, flicking his finger.

  The azar had barely begun to swing his arm forward and Ed was already moving to intercept whatever came his way, whether it was the arm itself or something else that he hadn’t accounted for like a powerful gust of wind that prevent him from raising his staff the entire way.

  While Ed wrestled with the wind, the azar advanced with steady and heavy steps. Steps so heavy that everyone in the arena felt them, like mini earthquakes.

  Unwilling to lose before being able to do anything, Ed flooded his entire body with mana, activating Body Reinforcement, a skill that, according to Anna and Alex, could never hurt to have.

  Feeling his body surge with power, Ed managed to power through the stationary wind that assaulted his staff, and he even managed to find his footing amidst the trembling. Finally entering his own advancing stance, Ed responded, finally using his own fighting style. A style that he himself had adjusted from a spear manual.

  Straight stab!! he yelled internally.

  His staff, lacking a pointy end, obviously couldn’t stab, but that wasn’t what Ed was after at all. What he wanted were the piercing capabilities that the technique allowed him to imbue onto his weapon.

  His instincts were telling him that the gust of wind he had just overcome wasn’t the only one, and he was right. His staff, like a hot knife through butter, not only pierced a wall of wind that he hadn’t seen, but it also dispersed it completely, allowing him to advance further.

  “Umar,” the azar said, his voice deep and echoing.

  Suddenly, the markings on his back shone a brilliant white and the air shook in response.

  Rolling log.

  Stopping on his heel and using Body Reinforcement to do what he normally wouldn’t be able to, Ed made a powerful 360-degree turn, hoping for his staff to connect with his opponent’s side. And it did connect, except that the feedback that he got in return was like that of hitting iron. Before he could even process what had happened, the azar spoke once more.

  “Darza,” he said, his voice calm as the markings on his arms began to shine.

  Ed tried to pull back his staff, using Body Reinforcement to its limits, but it felt like his spear had fallen into wet cement that hardened in an instant, refusing to even budge. Then, he felt as the staff was pulling inward, yanking him along.

  The force with which the staff was pulled was so great that even if Ed had reacted fast enough to let go of his staff, the sheer momentum would still have pulled him in somewhat.

  But “what ifs” didn’t matter, what he could’ve done was irrelevant when he was flying backward, into the dividing wall after receiving a punch from his opponent.

  “Satyo,” the azar said, his voice closer than Ed expected.

  Ed had barely collided against the dividing wall when the azar was before him, a flaming knee heading toward his face.

  Two of his teammates stepped in, trying to stop the azar, but instead, they were sent hurling to the sides, a powerful punch more than enough to remove them from the board.

  Barely able to dodge to the side and forward, Ed tried to elbow the azar’s leg in desperation, only to once again feel like he had hit iron. Remembering the heavy feeling that followed after, he quickly retrieved his arm and backed away as fast as he could, trying to create distance between his opponent and himself.

  “Tur,” the azar said, his voice was calm, but it somehow resonated with their small arena.

  Ed was barely getting to his feet when he felt an undeniable pull toward where he had just been. He could tell that it was the air itself doing something, but it wasn’t what he had expected. Instead of the air pushing him back to where he was, it was like the very air was yanking him back to his original position, somehow grabbing a hold of his very being.

  Not even a second passed between Ed feeling his feet leave the ground and the world going dark for him.

  “Well… yeah I can cut those,” Anna said, analyzing Ed’s match that had just ended.

  Anna was completely unaffected by the match. As someone who actually trained with spellcasters, she knew a thing or two about what to do to deal with their spells.

  “Wonder how hard they punch though,” she said, massaging her chin. “And their speed, that was something.” She nodded. “I want to fight one of them.”

  ----------

  Anna was watching the matches of those they knew and looking for people she was hoping to fight herself. Stella was analyzing the general level of skill that was present now that everyone seemed to have removed whatever was keeping them shackled.

  Alex on the other hand was watching something else, the movements of the factions.

  He had noticed how worried his friend, Stella, had been at the fact that they were basically isolated while every other power belonged to a faction, and worse, that the biggest faction that they were aware of was after them.

  So, determined to find methods of alleviating that problem for his friend, Alex came to this match determined to find weaknesses and areas of opportunity that he could exploit. Whether that was by weakening others, or strengthening themselves, he didn’t know, but his determination was like steel.

  Yet not even he could have expected what he was seeing now.

  First, the reason that the Third Jackal was called the Third Jackal and not the First or the Second Jackal was revealed. The other one that had come, true to their name, absolutely dominated their opponents in a way that the Third couldn’t.

  The Second Jackal even faced off against an azar that for all intents and purposes was far stronger than the one Ed faced, and yet, the Jackal’s victory was absolute, and she didn’t even transform into a jackal at all.

  That wasn’t all, where before the biggest faction, the one allied to the god of Abundance, was forfeiting matches and making strategic moves, now everything changed. The fracture in their alliance had already made its presence known in the previous round, but now it was clearer than ever, and impossible to ignore.

  That wasn’t to say that the faction was greatly weakened, “If anything, this just proves how huge they were to begin with,” Alex said, making a mental note of everything he was seeing.

  What happened was, where before they put all their hopes on the faction as a whole, basically making it so that only the direct believers of the god of Abundance, the Vatican, would win, they now turned their attention inwards.

  It started with the Greeks, who after losing Aegis, had to choose someone else to lead them. And it was clear that whoever they chose had no intentions of cooperating with the Vatican in any capacity.

  Japan followed suit. They, unlike the Greeks, didn’t sever relations completely, but made it clear that their belief in their allies was shaken and that they would ensure their own success by their own efforts. And, according to information that had been brought back, this effort had to do with Lightning Child, Anna’s cousin.

  “And more of those chosen by gods have started to pop up, making the separation easier,” Alex said, looking at various individuals. “Poseidon, Shiva, Thor, and those are only the ones I recognize. I need to find someone back at Solace that knows more about this. For now, I just have to keep an accurate description of what they can do.”

  “Though, the main problem still remains,” he continued, looking at the crowd in general. “The main supporters of the Vatican are normal people. Still, at least there are others they have to worry about now,” he added, turning to look at every other stand.

  The elves had also begun to increase their efforts. Something of note was that none of them used divine energy, but in turn, the magic that they wielded was incredibly powerful. It also wasn’t limited to magicians, but also with their average melee fighters. The elves had a fundamentally greater understanding of mana in general and it showed.

  Their level of mastery was so great that it was enough to completely shut down mediocre to average divine usage and even make the azar consider their actions with care.

  The sovaryn were definitely the worst off. It was becoming increasingly clear that they had nothing to fall back on, or anything that really made them stand out. Their numbers were getting decimated on the matches. It was so bad that by the end of the fourth round, only three sovaryns had made it, a blue frog, a white tiger and a yellow serpent humanoid.

  “There’s something wrong with those three,” Alex said, observing their vacant eyes. “It’s like they’re done with everything. They have no interest in anything that’s going on. Why are they even still participating?”

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