Limitless Path

Now that Beth's fight was over, it was time for the second fight of the day, right after a very short intermission. Beth's using only part of her strength and drawing out the fight had made it take longer and, to the audience, seem closer than it was, which didn't have the place descending into depression, though the opposing team was not in quite as bright of spirits. The wait wasn't very long as they had a small exhibition which showed an active match from a different arena, an expense to get it piped in, to be sure, but one the hosts of the competition were more than willing to pay. Perhaps they wished for a distraction for some reason?

The fight itself was pretty interesting, as it was a team battle, something Beth rarely watched and had barely participated in herself. She took an interest in such things a little more now, as with her somewhat large team and their high level of strength, the various team brackets might be something they could do well challenging, especially the ones against beasts. They had a good roster, a lot of strength, decent experience, and, perhaps most importantly, they had time on their hands. The fight they all watched, which the crowd loved, if the overwhelming noise and cries for blood and death were any kind of indication, was a five-versus-five match, which appeared to be the preferred size for teams as several different brackets used teams of five. There were, of course, duos and trios, and even a rare and limited quartet format that most people didn't run. The five person teams were just right for team battles for several reasons, including the spectacle they brought while still being easy to follow. A lot of the connoisseurs of team battles preferred duos, which was the second most popular format for group fights, but the big crowds got the biggest kick out of the five person fights. There was a very rarely used ten person format, and there were several formats for more than two teams to take a field at once, but those were often reserved for special tournaments. There was also the brawl format, which Beth and Blood had experienced in the level in the Trial of Celestial Awakening, but those were also very rare, though mainly because the prize should be very big for those free-for-all fights, which made them too expensive to host at any reasonable interval.

The fight they were watching was interesting in that it was two highly melee focused teams, to the point each team only had a single member that fought or positioned at range. Both of those members also were pulling double or triple duty, as they were dealing ranged damage, trying to coordinate the fight, and were healing or providing temporary boosts to the teams. The teams were colored for ease of recognition, assuming blue and red colors on a part of their armor, though it only appeared that way to the crowd, and it made it helpful to both track what was happening and to discuss it. The blue team had a caster, in the more traditional sense, and they were slinging spells, though they looked to have some kind of holy or healing-based skill that gave them easy access to healing spells. Their other skills appeared, to Beth's somewhat untrained eye, to be a basic elemental skill like Soph had, letting the caster throw fire, create blasts of ice, and sling lightning bolts. She did wonder, considering the two teams were around her teams level, how the person was casting so many spells without worrying about depleting their mana, but they likely had a number of ways to reduce spell costs.

The red team, by contrast, had what Beth first assumed was a ranger, but they appeared to be some kind of rogue, as they used throwing weapons and non-conventional weapons from range on top of their bow. It also looked like they specialized in poisons, as any hit they got in was leaving wounds with strange, terrible colors, purple and dark red and green not the colors of healthy flesh. The fact the colors spread along the path of the rogue's opponents' veins also went a long way towards showing that it was poison mixtures. The rogue might be some kind of hybrid with some type of alchemy bent, as they used some kind of potions and needles that were coated in strange substances to heal and buff their teammates. The rest of red team didn't seem super thrilled with the rogue's methods, but it looked like one of those old grievances that everyone had just come to accept as the way things were. Beth wasn't sure if the rogue was spending any mana on their healing, but the fight was probably going to come down to whether the blue mage ran out of mana or the red rogue alchemist ran out of consumables first.

The other eight fighters between both teams were all in melee range and they were swinging away with gusto. Beth wasn't sure if they were really experienced or if these were two teams that bore some level of familiarity, but she was leaning towards the latter, seeing as how some of the blocks, parries, and dodges were executed with such familiarity. Likely that these two teams had clashed more than once before and were more used to each other's tactics than might first be apparent. The melee fighters were mostly using swords, though Beth did grin a bit and glance over at her girlfriend when she saw the one member of blue team using a spear. The blue team spear fighter wasn't quite as good as Sera, but the familiarity she had with the enemy did make up for a bit of gap and paint her as a very skilled fighter. The four-versus-four that was happening in the middle was mostly a big scrum that was relying on their ranged members to keep pumping out the healing while the eight of them just went to town, though Beth was betting on blue team. The rogue might be at a bit of an advantage with how they were both debuffing and buffing with their poisons and potions, and they might have a metric ton of consumables, considering spatial powers and items weren't banned, but they just weren't having the kind of impact the caster was.

Speaking of the caster, he was able to multi-cast quite well, tossing out cleansing spells at the same time he slung lightning bolts and fireballs. He kept his team from growing too weak, or really any weaker at all, while also putting a lot of pressure on the enemy team. It was also all the rogue could do to keep up with the healing, debuffing, and general attacks towards the melee fight; they had no time to target the caster. Again, in Beth's mind, this was a contest to see if the caster could manage their mana properly, and if they could, then the win was all for their team. The melee teams were pretty evenly matched, though she thought blue had a very slight advantage, which proved true when one of the blue fighters dealt a crippling blow to the center fighter of red's line. The rogue wasn't able to fully heal the terrible damage to the man's arm, and that was where things unraveled. The fight went a few minutes longer after that, but the blue caster never ran out of mana or looked all that worried, and his team slowly picked apart the red team, stacking more crippling injuries before eliminating them one-by-one. Fives matches were always played to the last, that was something Beth knew after looking into the format a bit a few months before. There were plenty of examples of a team dropping to a pair or an individual and still coming back and taking the win, so it wasn't called until all five fighters on one of the team were out of the game.

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That wasn't a concern for this one, as blue team methodically took red team apart and red had no hidden ace or trump card to fight back. Beth watched the whole thing with some interest before it was time for her team's next fight. Andrea hopped up and walked down to the stage and Beth privately worried that this was going to be their first loss, though she didn't say anything about that out loud. Andrea wasn't quite as strong as the rest, though she was no slouch by any means, and the thing that also was in the short girl's favor was her experience. Both she and Adam often spent long stretches of time fighting in various arenas, much more than Beth and the other members of the team, so the two of them were much more experienced with these things. That had a great value all on its own, and such wisdom and experience could see a win out over skill and strength, provided there were no unexpected surprises, which Beth doubted were going to be popping up in this match. Still, she was expecting Andrea's fight to be tough and she was just hoping they had been lucky enough that she had drawn the worst of the enemy team to battle.

Andrea's opponent was a very tall, almost painfully thin woman that looked a bit odd to Beth, and that was saying something, considering the collection of oddballs she had on her own team. It took her a minute to realize the woman's arms and legs were a bit too long, at least in comparison to her torso; it was subtle, but it looked like her limbs had been stretched out by some process but the same process hadn't been applied to her spine. It was a disconcerting appearance, and Beth realized it likely also gave her an advantage; many opponents would likely underestimate her range, if only slightly, and that could lead to her getting some nasty hits in before they realized the issue. The woman used two short swords, too long to be daggers, that each had slightly curved blades, though it wasn't a very pronounced curve. Beth knew the fight was going to be rough when the blades glowed with a dark energy right as the ref was starting the fight, a power that made her frown a bit. Hopefully, the arena's defenses knew how to stop whatever it was from doing any lasting damage, because the energy gave her a bad feeling. Maybe the girl was a sapient monster? Such things, while extremely rare, did happen; she had one in her little private box of Ascended helpers, after all.

Beth also saw another thing that would make the woman a terrible opponent, in that the dark energy extended from her swords, which changed the properties of her attacks. Sometimes, it was like she was using a short sword, sometimes it was a long sword, and sometimes it was a whip or cutting line. That also added to the confusion, doubly so because she was so free and easy with how the energy manifested and changed. She might attack four times with short swords, then twice with long swords, then once with a whip before doing one short sword attack and one long sword attack. The changeups were very confusing and it was something that even Andrea struggled with countering, considering how much she had to work to just avoiding taking a bad hit.

The short girl wasn't without her own skills and advantages, however, and she displayed that when she got a good combination of kicks in after dodging the opponent with an afterimage skill. It was a movement skill Andrea had that boosted her speed while leaving one, or more, confusing images of her behind at the moment her speed changed. It was something opponents didn't expect, as the afterimages were very lifelike and could even continue with a different movement, such as kicking at the enemy's legs or leaping back in an artful somersault. Having multiple images moving multiple directions while Andrea herself was moving in yet another way really threw people off and often gave her the win. If she didn't just win outright from using the skill, she would still get in a strike or combination that really hurt and crippled whoever she was fighting, making her win all but inevitable. Coming back from an injury wasn't impossible, certainly, but it was very hard to do, especially in the one-on-one format. The speed of combat and exchange of attacks was just too fast for most healing to be a factor, especially when that healing had to come from oneself.

Andrea wasn't quite that lucky with her use of the skill, but she still managed to both evade an attack and get some good hits in. The kicks that she landed didn't break or destroy anything, armor or flesh, but they clearly hurt and slowed the long-limbed girl down. The damage was enough that the girl started to be a bit more cautious, perhaps having underestimated or dismissed Andrea before that exchange. She tried to take more advantage of her reach and deal damage from a slightly greater distance, especially with the whip-like attacks that had the dark energy become flexible and extend from the blades some decent distance. The attacks weren't extremely powerful, but Andrea still had to be careful of getting hit by any one of them, and over time, they would add up. Beth also noticed as the fight went on that Andrea was slowing down a bit; it wasn't easy to see at first, but clearly there was something wrong that was hurting the short girl. Her movements were just a bit slower and happening just a bit later than she would like, if Beth was any judge, and Andrea's grimaces also gave the game away a bit. Beth assumed the dark energy was either lingering and causing pain as it continued to deal damage over time, or that it was debilitating in some way, sapping Andrea's strength or attacking her mind. Maybe some combination of all of it?

Andrea really put on a great show, and not just in how hard and long she fought, but she knew how to be a crowd-pleaser, though that wasn't as important in these fights. Her last second dodges, graceful movements, and powerful attacks really did view well, and the audience approved with hearty cheers, screams of anticipation, and moans at misses or blocks. The taller girl continued play more defensive and using her greater range to her advantage, though everybody had some kind of ranged option. Andrea could create compressed jets or knots of wind and fire them at her opponent with her movements or even just by thinking about it, though the latter didn't play into her style so much. Moving to fire off ranged attacks often worked well for mostly-melee fighters, keeping their flow state going in the fight and moving their body to make them a bit harder to hit, and that was true for Andrea. The wind attacks put the lanky girl on the back foot for a while, but it appeared the enemy team really wanted the win, as she suddenly got more aggressive. Beth wasn't sure if there was some signal sent, or this was pre-arranged, or it was just the girl's personality, but it hardly mattered.

Andrea had done a beautiful job, including managing to avoid getting too injured by the dark energy, but the girl had several other tricks up her sleeve that she used all at once. A wave of much more powerful dark energy burst out of her, giving Andrea little room to dodge, if any at all. At the same time, the lanky girl created several dozen lances of the energy hovering in the air, which surely massively impacted her remaining mana, and sent them all at Andrea, timing them to arrive just when and just after the wave would hit her, blocking escape paths and giving her no more outs. Finally, she also used some kind of pure energy attack to create several slashes of energy that flew out behind the wave of dark energy. It was a masterful sequence and Beth wasn't sure, if she had still been close to Andrea's level of strength, if she could have dodged or blocked it all. Andrea nearly managed it, but three of the lances of dark energy hit her, one in a bad spot, and that was basically it. Oh, she held for a while longer, the crowd eating it up and losing their minds, especially since it looked like their hometown hero was winning and Andrea couldn't last the distance. The dark energy was too corrosive, and a series of explosive exchanges where Andrea was willing to trade damage with the lanky girl ended the match. Honestly, Beth thought it was a good strategy, as a longer battle very clearly worked in the tall girl's favor; drawing out a fight against her would make the other person weaker and weaker until it eventually became no contest at all. Just a shame it didn’t work.