Limitless Path

Beth wasn't at all disappointed with the result, though it would have been nice to win every single match and show their dominance with a sweep. Still, Andrea losing was a bit of a good thing, in Beth's opinion, as it made them look just a bit weaker than they really were, which could prove useful, both now and into the future. Andrea had still put on a very strong showing, which the crowd had loved, and she had shown that even members of her team that were technically weaker were able to fight like hell. Andrea's fight wrapped up the second day of the competition on a positive note for the home team and they were, while not exactly happy, in a much better mood now that they had a point on the board versus just a handful of minutes earlier. Andrea returned to the team as the other team congratulated their member and the audience cheered, apologetic at her loss.

"It doesn't matter. That was one of their strongest members and they barely beat you after a very long and difficult fight. I doubt Adam will lose, it's almost impossible for Sera to lose, and as long as we can manage to get to five wins before Veren, it's guaranteed, so there's no need to worry," Beth replied blasély as they moved to return to their quarters.

The festivities weren't done for the day, but the team wasn't all that interested in sticking around in a slightly hostile environment for a little foolery targeted at the masses. Beth did take some time to walk through some of the station with Sera, wanting to give the place a bit of a fair shake and to spend more time with her girlfriend. They didn't really find much, as the large and well-stocked arena was really the high point of the place, which was saying something on its own, and they only wandered a couple hours before returning to the suite. The next day was going to be both Adam's and Sera's matches, though they weren't really worried about Sera being too tired, considering she was the one on the team, even more than Bjorn, who literally never got tired. A Diamond Mana Physique that was centered around Endurance and resisting negative effects to the body lent oneself to never getting tired, even mentally.

The next day took forever to arrive, in Beth's humble opinion, but it was eventually time for them to head to the arena and get the fights over with. If Beth's hopes proved true, they would be up four fights, at five-to-one, but the end of the day, but she wasn't sure about Adam's fight. The man was probably the second quietest of the group next to Bjorn and didn't display his skill readily, but at the same time he had an immense amount of experience in the arena. After all the time with them fighting in Beth's gate and across Tide-infested worlds, he was very well-rounded and a powerhouse in his own right. She wasn't sure who his opponent would be, or rather, what their relative power scale would be, but if they weren't absolutely top of the enemy team, then she felt Adam had a very good chance.

The day started with a bit of pomp and fanfare, something to whet the appetite and even feed the desires of the masses, but it was clear both teams were beyond some paltry shows. Small fights against a few beasts by lower-level fighters or simple shows displaying a few tricks and mis directions weren’t as entertaining when one was far stronger and also able to see through all the tricks. The teams simply sat across the floor from each other and spent the half hour block eyeing each other up, likely trying to figure out who was next and what their odds were, as well as trying to gauge overall strength. If Beth were in the opposing team leader's head, she would be madly hoping that Bjorn, Blood, and Beth were their strongest fighters and by a long shot, giving her team a much easier time. Sadly, it wasn't to be, as Sera and Veren were both head-and-shoulder above anybody on the opposing team, if Beth's estimates were right, and Kris, Val, and Adam were all strong enough that the odds were much more in favor of them winning than anything else happening.

When it was time for the first match, Andrea had to prod Adam to get up on the stage; sometimes, the boy got lost in his own head a bit more than might seem, but he was still a reliable teammate when needed. The opposing team sent out a short, muscular man with dark reddish skin and long tusks that jutted out of his lower jaws. Beth wasn't sure exactly what species he was, though a quick use of her eye power cleared that up, and he wielded a greatsword, which was much more in her wheelhouse. Not that Adam would have trouble fighting against such a weapon, and the tall, lanky man readied his weapons and waited for the ref to start them off. The man from the opposing team took a high stance and waited for the ref to finish the countdown and signal the start before advancing slowly. Both fighters were the more cautious type, it seemed, and Beth grinned a little bit at watching them slowly and carefully approach each other, gauging even the tiniest movement to try to read the other's intentions and openings.

The man from the opposing team, a sapient beast of the Rend Boar family, made the first move once they had closed with each other, slashing down at a slightly oblique angle to try to cleave Adam apart from the shoulder down. Adam very deftly parried the attack while launching his counter at the same time, a thrust the opponent sidestepped and leaned out of the way of, returning a horizontal chop at Adam's waist as his own counter. The two went back and forth with just their weapons for a time, a display of greater skill than the audience probably realized, as the two of them were both attacking and countering at the same time, which took a high degree of skill to execute with such precise timings. Even unaware as most of the audience was, though there were likely a few connoisseurs in the mix, they could tell already that this fight was a great display of skill. Beth privately gauged the sapient boar's skill level as in Master, and a few levels through the rank, as well; she assumed, though it was just a guess and could absolutely be wrong, that they had thought a middle-rank Master would be enough to push Beth's next fighter too hard and win the match.

Their hopes were bound to be dashed, however, as Adam was a Master himself, and no worse than the opponent. He was, in point of fact, just a bit better, and the boar started using other skills and abilities when that fact had become clear. Even there, he was outmatched by the lanky swordsman, whose own skills and abilities were no weaker nor less developed. On top of that, there was a definite art to weaving together skills in battle; having a Platinum skill or two was fine, but being able to seamlessly work those skills into a series of attacks in the middle of a fight was a much tougher proposition. Adam was quite good at such things, especially against thinking opponents, and that edge really showed as the fight dragged on. The boar realized it after a minute or so himself, which was obvious when he started going all-out to win the round. Beth gauged that he was just a little weaker than Adam but that his skills weren't nearly as developed overall and she turned her attention to watching the other team's reactions for a moment.

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She saw that the other team was a bit mixed, but it looked to her, unless they were very good actors, that they hadn't all realized that their teammate was losing. Not unless the man had even greater hidden depths than what he had already displayed during the match, but Beth was pretty sure she had accurately taken his measure. She was most curious about the enemy team leader, and it looked like he was having a dawning realization, along with the woman that had beat Andrea, who Beth was betting was his second, that they had bitten off a bit more than they could chew. The sponsor or owner or backer or whatever he was, the curt elf, was also having that same realization from his private box as his expression was as if he had just taken a swig of lemon juice instead of the expected fine wine. Beth didn't really feel any pity for the man; Baelvyr was well-known enough that the elf had to know who he was challenging and for what. Did he really expect a team the man known as the Adamantine Colossus would field would be bad?

Well, regardless of the enemy team's expectations or wants, Adam was not just holding his own, even when the opponent was using every trick up his sleeve, Adam was still pushing him back and overwhelming him. The conclusion wasn't really in question at that point, but the two fighters didn't pull back at all, fighting up to their limit. The only problem was that Adam's limit, and his overall skill level, was a lot higher than the opponent's, and he slowly and thoroughly dismantled the man. He wasn't being mean or gloating about it, he was being thorough and tactical with his combat, slowly winning the match. There wasn't a big finale moment like some of the other fights here, as Adam simply wore the opponent down, overwhelming the man much more with his skill and experience than with any kind of brute power. The ring eventually made the decision, though the ref was watching closely, the health monitoring system deciding the boar was too injured to continue competently defending himself.

The opposing team did not look happy at all with the loss, but they were a little mollified by how the fight had been rather closer than the first three. Still, they were down by three fights, with Beth's team needing only two victories to claim overall victory. There were secondary options on the fights and the odds, her team had been informed, that meant they were fighting out all ten, but she wasn't really surprised by that. Sera was going to be up next, which would likely put them up four and one away from victory. Even if Neph, Val, and Kris all lost, they would still be at five over four with Veren left to go, and Beth was pretty sure one of the aforementioned three was going to win. They had some halftime entertainment that they sat through, which wasn't the worst thing in the world, but they were just interested in getting the fights finished, and it appeared that the opposing team felt the same way.

It was eventually Sera's turn to move up onto the stage, and her opponent was the largest of the members of the opposing team, in terms of height and width. He was a massive beast of a man, though he showed up as human to Beth's eye power, with a huge, shaggy mane of black hair, arms like steel pillars, and legs like the trunks of great oak trees. It was pretty clear, even before the match started, that he had gone hard into Strength, and that he was going to attack aggressively and with staggering power. Well, his size and power would be something that would throw other people off, but a mountain could fall on Sera at this point and she would remain unphased, so he was going to have his work cut out for him. To basically no one's surprise, he equipped a set of massive gauntlets that looked like they weighed a couple tons each as the ref started the countdown and exploded out of the gate when the ref started the match.

Sera didn't move, spear held in one hand with the butt planted against the floor of the arena and the point straight up, back straight and tail stretching out a dozen feet behind her. She held her weapon loosely and hand her other hand on her hip, watching the mountain of a man, a few inches taller than even her, explode forward in a straight line, smashing towards her face. She lazily raised her off hand and caught his right fist as he lashed out, an explosion of sound and force blasting across the dueling field from the impact. Sera didn't even sway, casually blocking his follow-up with the haft of her spear, allowing him to strike as he pleased, punching and kicking and throwing in more oblique attacks like elbows and knees. Sera blocked or deflected most strikes, but the man occasionally got a hit in, though what would have been devastating to most in their level bracket barely caused Sera to sway, and it certainly wasn't because her armor was so good that it was absorbing all the damage. The fight, even in the initial handful of seconds, was a real square off of unstoppable force meeting an immovable object, but Beth thought that force was about to learn how to stop, and real quick-like, too.

Sera wasn't playing games, despite appearances, she was simply measuring both his power and her current level of toughness, and she was finding the opponent lacking. His immensely destructive strikes and terrible hammer blows that ripped the air around them to shreds barely left any impression on her, and she wasn't even going all out, unlike the huge bear of a man. It looked like the man had two speeds; barely above sleep, and running all-out at a hundred and ten percent capacity. He was currently engaging in the second mode and it was still less than impressive to the dragon. She caught his fists with her own after a sequence of attacks and twisted him around by the arms, her spear floating behind her for that fraction of a second before she kicked him across the arena, spinning her spear back around her body with her tail as she charged forward. She didn't bother using Spatial Step and, despite her stats not quite equaling the prodigy of humanization of the group, Blood, she still had more than anybody at their level should have any right to have. She tore across the arena, arriving in front of the man just as he caught himself against the wall, not slamming into the barrier around the dueling field but stopping just short.

Sera led with her spear, combining different skill usages at the same time to create dozens of extremely powerful thrusts of unpredictable nature that the man had a very difficult time blocking. He didn't bother with several of the blows, showing that he wasn't just one hundred percent strength and nothing else; he had a certain level of toughness to him that indicated both high Endurance coupled with powerful defensive skills. Still, if one was talking about toughness, his was nothing compared to Sera's, and the dragon girl's damage wasn't all that far behind the man's, if it was lacking in comparison at all. Her attacks didn't kill or cripple, but they hurt, the look of pain and the snarl on the man's big, blocky face an indication that he was not appreciative of Sera's demonstration of power and skillful combination of skills and abilities. He retaliated with several powerful skills, but Sera surprised him greatly, if the sudden widening of his eyes and the slightly slack-jawed expression were any indication, as she just powered straight through the attacks without even attempting to block anything. Some of his strongest strikes struggling to even cause light bruising was clearly something that he was not used to in any way, shape, or form, and the surprise was almost as powerful a blow as Sera's combination of strikes.

The match lasted for just a bit longer after Sera really started getting serious, showing both the massive man's toughness and willpower, but his inability to do more than mar Sera's skin with even his best attacks told the tale. Even activating his Presence, something that really gave a sense of tremendous power and strength bursting forth, he just wasn't able to really deal any kind of serious damage. Sera just shrugged off everything he threw at her and hit back just as hard, if not even harder. Despite his massive size and clearly powerful skills, the man just wasn't as tough, even with a hard bitten tenacity that had him holding on past the point many would have surrendered, and he was eventually pulled out of the fight after sustaining a continuously worsening series of injuries that even his enormous frame and resilience couldn't handle.