Path to Transcendence

Chapter 462: First to a Hundred

Unfortunately, he wasn’t fighting that day. Given the tournamentʼs structure, there would be three full days that would be stretched out. This wasn’t the case for the others, though. They were already getting ready for their groups. In fact, Christina was already preparing to fight.

Much like the tournament in Heston, there was a special area for participants and their immediate families to watch from. That was where they were all right now as Christina walked onto the field.

He noticed right away that she looked a bit nervous. He had gotten to know her pretty well over these past several days. With the time spent sparring with her and eating meals together, he understood that the noble pride she sometimes displayed was more of a facade than anything else.

At the end of the day, she was a young girl with unrealistic expectations on her shoulders since she was a scion of House Zenith. He truly hoped that she would succeed and advance to the next stage.

On paper, it seemed like she might have a pretty good chance. With her abilities as a lightning mage, there was a good chance that this kind of format would benefit her. She didn’t even need to go after the stronger monsters, which were worth more points. With how dangerous her lightning was already and how easily it could spread from one target to the next, she could just target the normal monsters and get the hundred points that way.

Julius assumed that there would be a lot more competition for the higher-value targets. With that being said, it was hard to predict at the moment. He hadn’t seen what the monsters were going to be, nor what kind of people were beside her.

If there were a higher percentage of mages who had her same style, it might become difficult. He was almost sure that there would only be a specific number of monsters released. Most past tournaments cut around half of the people in the first stage. He assumed that there would be only enough monsters for roughly half of the participants to go on until there were no more.

He wished he knew more about how it would play out. It was frustrating, but there was nothing they could do at the moment. All he could do was watch it all unfold and use it to plan for his own eventual round.

***

Christina POV

She didn’t remember the last time she felt this nervous while about to fight. Usually, she loved fighting, and the excitement blocked out any nerves she might feel. However, she had never been in such a massive stadium before. Everywhere she looked, there were waves of people shouting down at her.

There were at least a hundred thousand people in here, and likely dozens of times more who were watching the tournament from outside the stadiums. The gravity of her situation was heavy and crushed the air out of her lungs. Her mana stuttered every once in a while as her nerves affected the already erratic lightning mana.

She tried her best to calm down and use her focus skill to help hone in her mind. However, there was only so much her focus skill could accomplish, since its primary responsibility was to help her control her lightning, not her emotions.

She recalled something Julius had mentioned about using her emotions to fuel her magic. But she didn’t know what he was talking about. Sometimes when he explained stuff to her, she didn’t understand what he was talking about. He was completely unaware that most people did not think or use mana in the same fashion he did.

Still, she was very glad that she had met him. She had improved quite a lot, considering that she had only known him for several days. His unnatural ability to punish her weaknesses helped shore up many of her defenses.

She might not be able to beat him yet, but she was hopeful that she would be able to beat half of the people here.

She already had a plan in mind. She would go after the group of monsters that people ignored. She was hoping that people would fight over the monsters worth more points and that she could just get close to a hundred points from killing the small fry.

She fiddled with the armband on her bicep. This little device would prevent any deaths. It wouldn’t prevent injuries, but it would detect if you were going to die and teleport you to safety. The capital couldn’t exactly let all of its young talents die in front of the spectators.

She wished she had more time to calm down, but sadly, it wasn’t meant to be. Before she knew it, she began to hear a countdown. All one hundred of them were spread apart, but she had no idea what was going to happen when the chaos started.

Once the countdown began, she sensed a massive fluctuation of mana. Across the field appeared countless monsters. They all seemed to be of the same species or, at the very least, very similar to each other.

She didn’t know what they were exactly, but they looked like some reptilian monster. However, her focus was immediately drawn to the large monster in the back. Unlike the other creatures, this one was enormous. The other monsters were still big, around the size of a human, but this boss creature was several times larger than they were. Massive dark green spikes lined its back all the way down to its tail.

And its aura was suffocating. She knew right away that this was a very powerful Tier 3 monster who was borderline Tier 4. She didn’t have to question why this monster was worth a hundred points. It was incredibly imposing.

She wasn’t the only person who was intimidated by this beast. Dozens of people around her all stepped back in fear. They were so distracted that they didn’t even hear the loud horn go off. It was only when they saw the participants dashing toward the nearest monster that they finally reacted.

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I can’t fall behind, she reprimanded herself and started to channel large amounts of mana. She immediately used [Blink] and teleported to the far side of the arena, where there weren’t many people but a large number of monsters.

Then, before she could think too hard, she started to go to work. She took out her staff and slammed it into the ground, creating a large field of lightning around her. She took Julius’s advice and made a denser layer of lightning at the center, which was to interfere with her opponentsʼ senses and perception.

Then she let her lightning run wild. The nearest reptiles attacked her on sight, and they entered her lightning field without any hesitation. She collapsed her lightning on these creatures the moment they stepped inside. The powerful lightning she inherited from her family washed over the reptiles like a tidal wave.

Despite this, she frowned slightly when she noticed they resisted her lightning quite well. These monsters were covered in hard protective scales that likely had a good level of mana resistance. She held back a groan; she had been hoping that these normal monsters would be really weak. However, she had clearly miscalculated. These monsters wouldn’t be taken care of so easily.

There wasn’t any going back, though. So she gritted her teeth and pushed harder. More mana flowed through her channels into her skills. Large arcs of lightning blasted into the incoming monsters.

It was only when she went all out that they began to fall to her attacks. Her lightning penetrated their defenses and destroyed them from the inside out. She could practically hear their insides burning from the power of the lightning.

The ones who were stunned and injured were finished off with a spear of lightning through their skulls. She heard Julius’s annoying voice in the background as this was going on. He had been telling her that she had been wasting perfectly good lightning mana.

Something she didn’t even realize until he pointed it out. That was the reason she quickly repurposed these spears of lightning before they could dissipate and used them to stun the nearby monsters. She took care of them with another swarm of spears.

Then she spotted a slightly different variant. Right away, she knew that this monster was worth more points than the others she had just dealt with. It had large horns on its head that glowed with an ominous green haze. Her curiosity sparked, and she instantly attacked this creature. The spear of lightning slammed toward the monster, shrieking as it pierced through the air.

Unfortunately, this monster was clearly stronger, and it activated some kind of defensive skill over its scales. This skill was enough to block the spear from penetrating, but it must not have predicted the stun effect of the lightning.

She grinned when she saw it halt in place, unable to move. She was forced to use [Blink] as several other monsters started to close in on her despite the field of lightning she set up. Their sharp claws tore through the area she had previously been in. She made sure to use the teleport to reposition behind the reptile.

It wasn’t able to track her, and a spear of lightning was already blitzing toward the back of its skull. Still, it must have sensed that it was in some kind of danger and moved slightly out of the way, slashing backwards with its sharp claws. They were shining bright green, and she had to dodge to the side as a crescent of mana flew by her head.

Still, it wasn’t as prepared for the attack, and the spear actually managed to penetrate several inches deep into its flesh.

It let loose a high-pitched cry as it was wounded, turning toward her with rage in its eyes. Too bad, she had already sent another spear of lightning at the monster. It tried to activate that same defensive skill again, but she was prepared.

She had preemptively sent out a disruptive pulse of mana at the beast and was shocked at the results. Compared to fighting Julius, this thing’s will and control of mana were weak, and she scoffed in surprise when she was able to rip through the skill without much issue.

The spear lanced right through its chest, digging very deep. Blood poured out of the injury like a fountain onto the stone floor as the lightning continued to damage its body from the inside out.

She was about to finish the beast off when she suddenly sensed someone appear directly above the monster. Before she could react or do anything, they had already rammed their dagger through the beastʼs eye, killing it instantly.

Christina felt a surge of anger when she saw them steal her kill and instinctively used the spear that was still lodged in the monster’s chest to attack the person. However, she grumbled in disappointment when the armband around the other person activated and protected them from her attack.

She knew that would happen, but she still wanted to give it a try. She didn’t think it was fair for people to stay back and hide while people did all of the work, only to swoop in and take credit. However, she was also frustrated with herself for not predicting it sooner. She knew that people would try to steal, but she was still shocked when someone actually did it to her.

She saw that the number of the kill stealer’s armband increased from zero to five.

So that monster was worth five points, she muttered to herself. She had basically wasted all of that mana and effort for nothing.

She glanced down at her own bracelet and saw the number twelve. That meant she had taken care of twelve monsters since the beginning of the contest. Then she looked around at other people. She was worried that they were already running out of monsters for them to fight. To her relief, she spotted more monsters getting spawned in. This was good because she still needed almost ninety points.

She also took this time to look at the boss monster, where she spotted a large number of people, each trying to take the beast down. She didn’t expect to see so many people trying to fight the monster. Maybe they thought they would get lucky, or were just better than their competitors, but she thought it was a risky gamble to waste all of that time fighting one monster.

Plus, it was chaos. They were actually hindering each other more than being a threat to the massive monster. Already, several people had fallen to the beastʼs powerful attacks.

It also didn’t help that this beast had some impressive endurance. Most of the attacks didn’t even faze it. If that wasn’t bad enough, then the regeneration it showed was scary as well. Its wounds slowly healed over into pale scars.

Her attention was drawn when she sensed ten more reptiles entering her field. She didn’t waste any energy and stunned them slightly. She realized that while their scales were resilient, there were spots on their bodies that weren’t covered in scales. She targeted these areas and thus used much less mana to stun them.

Once they were stunned, she sent smaller spears of lightning to pierce their bodies. She looked down at the bracelet once she was done and saw that she had twenty-two points in total. She panted slightly at the exertion required to kill them that quickly before she glanced at the other competitors who were also quickly amassing their own number of points. While she had more than most of the other participants, she reminded herself that there was no time to waste.

So with another use of [Blink], she teleported over to another lone pack of monsters to take them out. It would be a little challenging to get the complete one hundred points, but she believed that as she pushed herself, it would be possible.

More importantly, she wouldn’t allow herself to fall this early in the tournament.