Chapter 73 – Lena's Performance
Lena's turn arrived and she got on stage, facing a mage named Zach from one of the five kingdoms. He was 45 this year and advanced when he was 32, making him a genius worthy of participating in the tournament.
Those who advanced after 35 were just there to fill the spots, and nobody expected much from them.
Lena and Zach stood in their spots and the referee signaled them to start fighting.
Zach started with a barrage of stones, which Lena countered by forming a sphere of water around her.
"Woho! Lena is already on the defensive in her first fight! Will she be ok?"
Steve shouted only to get a mental slap to his face right after. Zach wasn't a newbie and maintained minimal control of his stones. The control was meant to prevent them from being sent back in a water sphere spell, and only allow them to be deflected.
However, to his horror, the pull was so strong that he was forced to spend enormous amounts of mana, or otherwise, the stones would circle around Lena instead of being ejected behind her.
Wasting large amounts of his mana, he forced the stones out of the sphere and Lena clicked her tongue in annoyance that she failed to send them back at him.
Multiple snakes appeared in the air and launched at Zach who created a large cage to trap them inside. The problem with snakes was that they could slither around shields, and with Lena's precision, she could make them hit the same place if he used a wall.
His only option to stop them was to hit them directly without giving them the option to dodge.
The stone cage shrank on the snakes and tried to put the fire out by allowing no air inside, yet a few of the snakes exploded simultaneously and the cages broke from the explosion, leaving half of the snakes free.
They quickly attacked Zach who caged himself in desperation with his available casting slot and they exploded on the cage, making it crumble. Before he could cast another spell, an orb of fire appeared through a newly formed gap in the cage and exploded inside.
The referee hurriedly raised defenses, but it was too late to block that explosion. Luckily for Zach, Lena didn't compress the fire to the maximum to avoid killing him, but unluckily for him, she wasn't kind enough to spare him from third-degree burns and broken bones, so he had plenty of those now.
"Amazing! She overwhelmed her opponent in under a minute! She fights two brackets above her age yet makes it feel like she was fighting two brackets under her age!"
Steve wasn't miserly when it came to complimenting Lena. He felt it was an opportunity to hype the crowd since she could be easily considered the most interesting participant in the bracket.
She was strong, beautiful, young, domineering, and fought older mages without a problem. Additionally, she was the older sister of another bracket's champion.
pαпdα`noνɐ1`сoМ "You need to be careful in your next fight. Seems like you aren't going to get a free win against a newbie as we thought at first."
Jaina warned Lareth next to her. She was nervous about facing him in the semifinals since their strengths were equal, and the winner would get more prizes later. However, she'd pick fighting someone from the empire over someone equally strong from the kingdoms any day.
If they can't take first place in this bracket too, the imperial family will probably give no rewards at all since they lost their lands.
"Go check Lena's updated ratio of winning this bracket."
Jay told Dion who went to check out of curiosity.
"Haha, it's 1:5 and it's still plummeting!"
With every second plenty of customers came to bet on Lena, making the prize ratio of those who placed their bets on her victory after the draws were revealed reduce with every moment.
"Now to the second round, we have plenty of juicy fights! Two of the five geniuses will fight to check which kingdom's genius is superior! The young heroine against a top contender from the empire! Each of those fights would be worthy to take place in the semifinals!"
As always, Steve hyped the crowd toward the next round. The crowd cheered and screamed, unable to wait patiently for the matches promised.
Soon, the second round started and the winner between the two geniuses of the five geniuses was settled. Prince Florian would face him in the quarterfinals in the next round.
As for Lareth and Lena, they stood in front of each other and waited for the signal to start. Although they both looked composed, Lareth was on the edge the whole time; if he lost to a far younger mage from a kingdom, he'd turn into a joke!
"Fight!"
Lena didn't wait long to start bombarding Lareth with powerful spells. The most frustrating part for Lareth was that the spells kept changing elements to counter his spells, always putting him at a disadvantage.
"It feels like Lareth is facing a whole squad meant specifically to counter him! Whatever he tries to do, Lena's next spell counters!"
Lareth was cursing under his breath while he was taking hit after hit, unable to stop the attacks. When he used his water affinity, countering spells from the earth and wind elements landed. When he used his earth affinity, Lena countered it with fire and wind.
Switching defense spells felt like switching lines when waiting for a service; the other line always seemed to be moving faster, and each defense he raised felt like Lena had an even better counter for it.
If it wasn't enough, each of Lena's spells felt like a huge beast running him over because of her higher affinity and stronger connection.
Lareth was running all over the arena, dodging fire snakes, air blades, water snakes, and stones desperately without a chance to catch his breath. He gave up on offense long ago and was just concentrating on surviving and trying to outlast Lena's mana capacity.
His wounds piled up only slower than his frustration, and he was soon leaving behind a trail of blood wherever he went.
A few more minutes passed and Lareth collapsed on the ground, unable to take another step.
------
AN: Sorry, had time to publish only one chapter today.
