Limitless Path

Sera's victory marked the team's fifth, which put them one away from an overall win, though the betting pools on various fights and the ten total fights meant all ten were going to happen. Beth was sort of expecting Neph to lose, which would likely give the other team a bit of a hope, and then she expected Val to secure the sixth win with her match. If not, it might be quite exciting at the end of the fourth day, to go into the fifth and final day at a standing of five-to-three. Right now, however, they were four matches up at the end of day three and rather pleased with that, though it wasn't an entirely unexpected outcome. Things were pretty much playing out exactly as Beth thought, which wasn't that unusual as, even though she didn't know the exact strength of the enemy team, she certainly knew how strong her team was.

They passed another night mostly talking and drinking, though they did get to witness a little bit of whatever crazy mindspace training arc Baelvyr was putting Veren through. Beth wasn't sure how to gauge that exactly, not just because breaking through to Sage couldn't be easy or fast even for a prodigy, but because she genuinely had no idea what the hell they were on about. The only thing the rest of the group could really get from it was a feeling of blades and obscure attacks, and that was just a strange feeling, not something really manifesting in the room. She was also pretty sure Baelvyr was shielding the suite from being observed as it would be pretty obvious to anybody experienced, like the elf in charge of the opposing team, what Veren was working on. That would sort of give the entire game away right there.

Day four couldn't start soon enough, but the day's festivities had to start with a lot of exhibitions and amusements for the crowd. It was all because the opposing team, that they were currently handily trouncing, were some of the local favorites, and so the whole big fight series had to be a spectacle. Beth herself didn't really mind playing into the fervor of fans in the arena, but when it went on and on with no signs of stopping was where she put her foot down, or wanted to, at any rate. The pre-show taking over an hour and leading to Neph's fight was already bad enough, but the intermission between her fight and Val's fight was scheduled to be even longer, likely to last two hours today. If she was being a bit mean, she would say the hosts were compensating for just how badly her team was beating their asses, but that would be rather unkind of her to say. She would certainly think it, though.

The morning entertainment did finally conclude, a performance that was some combination of some kind of dance and a skills exhibition. It was pretty weird, and Beth wasn't sure what the whole point of it was, other than as art, which was valid itself, but the crowd really liked that exhibition in particular, so there must really be something to it. The other parts of the show had been either remote fights or some kind of performances, which gave it more of a circus feel than anything, not something Beth entirely approved of herself. The other shows were fine, if somebody was into that kind of stuff, but she wasn't sure it should be given a place of prominence on the arena floor. Then again, that was usually how the CRA operated and this wasn't a CRA arena so they could really do whatever they damn well pleased, and she could just keep her opinions to herself.

The first fight of the day was called after the floor was cleared, the matches a big enough thing that there wasn't anything else going on in the arena during their time slot. It should seem obvious, but she had seen other tournaments where the arena floor also continued some kind of operations at the same time. Neph and her opponent took to the central dueling field and, other than the ref, they were the only people on the main floor. The ref went through the standard procedures while Beth took a measure of Neph's opponent, trying to get a feel for the woman. She was…not great, but at twelve rebirths and with some decent experience in fighting, she would still prove a challenge for Neph. It was likely that experience and long years of training for arena fights would be the biggest factor that could see the bee woman lose, and Beth was just hoping the whole thing would be a valuable experience.

Neph's opponent was also a bit of a bad matchup in that she used some kind of polearm while Neph was a knife-wielder. The range and reach disadvantage was going to be a big factor in the fight, and that put further weighting on Beth's opinion this might be a hard-fought loss for Neph. When the opening move from the opponent was a very concentrated blast of lightning that caught Neph off guard and almost clipped her, Beth grew more worried about the outcome. Lightning was a pretty big counter, really to much of her team, as Neph, Val, and Blood all used liquids as part of their skills. Andrea and Adam could handle it fine, if a bit of an annoyance, Kris could manipulate a strong form of the element herself, and Sera and Bjorn could simply walk through the damage without noticing. Beth was both tough enough and had enough spatial control that she could take some damage while redirecting most of the element. Finally, there was Veren, who Beth was pretty sure would find some way to cut the lightning apart and have it all just disappear, even though that really didn't make any sense.

Neph wasn't that strong, unfortunately, and she had to try to dodge the lightning blasts as best as she could, the whole time trying to get up close and personal while avoiding the polearm. It was a tough matchup for the bee, who was only able to stay ahead in the fight, if barely, due to her slightly higher stats and just barely better skills. Beth wasn't even sure about the skills part, as it seemed the woman with the polearm had some pretty powerful skills that she had managed to get to a rather high level, likely mixing between the peak of Gold and the lower end of Platinum. Neph herself was still mostly in Gold with her skills, meaning it was really all due to a small advantage in stats that she was able to stay in the fight and put a little pressure on the opponent. Just getting the other woman to play defensive was a pretty big win, even if that only lasted for a minute or just under. The woman was not only using a very long weapon, but she was tall and lanky with rather long arms and was able to utilize that advantage to create and control space in a very efficient manner.

Neph fell into the woman's pace, getting pushed back and having to contend with the wide, thick blade of the polearm. Beth wasn't sure exactly what the weapon was called, but it looked like some kind of halberd with a broader, heavier blade than what she would normally think of for that weapon. It wasn't exactly like a guandao or something similar, but it was a serious piece of metal to contend with swinging at one's head, or worse yet, swinging at a knee or elbow. Beth was pretty sure something like that could chop through most armor joints with ease, especially if it was brought up to an appreciable speed before the strike landed. Against somebody like Bjorn or Sera, the weapon wouldn't have been that intimidating, but Neph was lightly armored and her body was fairly soft, at least by comparison. Neph was by no means weak, she just wasn't a walking battleship like Sera, or dreadnaught, in Bjorn's case, and getting hit in one of her joints would be a crippling blow at best, a limb-severer at worst.

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And Neph wasn't all on the back foot, either, for she did get in several powerful blows of her own, though the second strike failed to penetrate the other woman's armor. It was also a case of showing the difference in experience, as the woman had a good grasp of when a strike was going to be blocked with her armor or be non-critical even if it made it through. She would accept some of the bad-looking strikes, counting on her much greater arena experience to let her know the blow wasn't particularly dangerous. She would counter, at the same time as Neph was delivering the hit, either pushing Neph off before she could really take advantage of the strike, or striking out with the intent to injure Neph in some crippling way. Beth would be a little pissed that she was only going for crippling strikes, but both the way the woman fought and the way she moved and reacted told Beth a story of someone who was cautious and methodical, not sadistic. Her attack patterns looked for openings, prioritizing keeping any opponent well out of arm's reach and back from her body. Combine that with targeted blasts of lightning to stun, and eventually cripple if enough landed, and one had the picture of a more precise and exacting arena duelist.

Beth was even guessing, and a little searching through what records were public backed it up, that this woman was the opposing team's version of Andrea or Adam. While not the strongest on the team in any one area, they were still well-rounded and they greatly enjoyed spending tons of time on the arena floor. Considering Neph only had a tiny advantage in overall strength and was way behind in her experience fighting other people, there was only one way the fight was going to end. The bee held on longer than many might have predicted, however, displaying a remarkable tenacity and even scoring a very troublesome hit to a gap in the opponent's armor, taking a lesson out of the polearm wielder's own playbook. Still, it was not to be, as Neph was eventually brought down with a beautiful and, quite literally, stunning combo from the other woman, boxing Neph in with very precise thrusts, blasting her with two different lightning skills in tandem, and then dealing the finishing blow in a smooth, graceful motion. Beth was honestly impressed and made a note to look at the woman's full arena record later and study some of her fights.

The crowd had gone nuts at the win, the win for their fighter, that is, and had really pumped the place up. That was dovetailed into the intermission show, which had them all sitting around waiting for hours while exhibitions, remote matches, and a long ceremony honoring a second team that had done something else noteworthy proceeded apace. Beth tried not to fall asleep during the whole thing, which was tougher than it sounded, even with her nearly twenty thousand Endurance. The ceremony was in particular boring, though the MC appealed to the crowd multiple times to great cheering, keeping the audience invested for what was, overall, a very boring ceremony to give each of the seven members of the random team a little medal and a few diamond coins. The thing that was far more interesting was to note the greed in the eyes of not just the audience, but some of the others that were on the floor that weren't direct participants in their little series. She made a note to not go flashing around, or discussing, anything beyond gold coins in this place. Far too much risk.

After a long and tedious intermission, it was Val's turn, and she was the one member of the team that didn't need to be woken up. All her time as a political figure head for the hottest young team in the galaxy, or whatever they were still being hyped up as, had led to her being much more put together in public than the rest of the team. Bjorn didn't bother with others outside the team, Blood didn't care, Beth hoped for some excitement, Andrea and Adam were entirely neutral, Neph was still too young to really care, Kris was quiet and reserved at the best of times, and Veren was likely to kill somebody just by looking at them, which might not be an exaggeration for too much longer, if he really did make Sage soon. Fortunately, they had Val's fight to distract them, and it looked like it was going to be a real doozy, too. Her opponent was a sapient beast of some kind, that was very clear from the horns and long tail, and a quick check from Beth's eye power showed he was some kind of behemoth, a mythical beast of immense strength and toughness. Even Val's new burst-type skill might not do a whole lot to somebody like that; it looked like they hadn't been lucky and gotten through all of the ringers on the other team quite yet.

When the man also specialized in Unarmed, Beth was getting a bit of a sense of a theme with the opposing team. Bit of a strange combination on the weapons, but they had a mix of a few fighters that could work at long range, and then a block that was very up-close-and-personal that was anchored by multiple hand-to-hand specialists. The behemoth just walked through most of Val's attacks, which was a bit disconcerting to watch, though the kresnik wasn't go all-out at the start. In particular, she waited for quite some time, gauging her opponent's strength and resistance, before she broke out her new skill, trying to get the timing just right. It was a good thing she had waited, as well, as even with the insane speed that her Burst Transcendence gave her, the behemoth managed to dodge most of the strike. If she had been careless with her very first usage, he might have dodged the whole thing, not taking any damage and then also knowing about what was, ostensibly, Val's trump card. Even so, she wasn't in a great position, and that wasn't just because she had only lightly injured him while showing off her best skill.

No, the behemoth was, well, he was a real beast of a man, with both insane tenacity and enough strength that it made Beth question exactly what his stats were like. She was, in fact, questioning a lot of things as she watched Val struggle mightily against the man, mainly if he was either the real team leader or just their genuine best fighter. He was displaying a level of strength that only Beth and Sera were likely to be able to overwhelm, though Bjorn could likely outlast the man. Well, there was also Veren, but he was both a real prodigy and not a fully integrated member of her team, so she didn't often count him in her estimates. Val was, by this point, throwing out everything she could to try to injure the man, and only a bit of it was sticking. A few good strikes with her claws, one using Burst Transcendence, did land some damage, but even heavy cuts and bleeding didn't slow the behemoth. He didn't transform into his true form, something that didn't often happen in the arena, but he really gave the impression of a massive, dominant presence on the floor, even in his human form.

Try as she might, Val couldn't deal a fatal blow, nor even a crippling one, and she was sustaining injuries herself. The behemoth was just the kind of person that had all their stats in Strength, though Beth was still privately convinced this guy was the real top powerhouse of the enemy team, and even getting clipped by him deal Val some serious damage. At a certain point, Val's extra joints just meant she had more bones to crack, which was not a pleasant prospect, neither to watch, or for the woman herself. Beth was sure quite a few of those bones were at least fractured by the five minute mark, which was a match length that seemed to surprise not just the behemoth, but the other team in particular. That just lent even more credence to her theory that this fighter stood head-and-shoulders above the rest of their team, both literally and figuratively, and the way his wounds rapidly healed during the match while he was punching away at Val only added to that further. Even if he had a very good regeneration skill, it was a level of self-healing that was pretty insane, and that was also factoring in his behemoth bloodline, which had a very good baseline regeneration.

Val's end, at least in terms of the fight, came when she was duped into her burst skill by a tricky feint. The behemoth countered the burst, spinning around and smashing Val with a backfist as she just barely clipped him, a move that made even Beth's jaw drop. That wasn't just raw strength, that was both a high degree of skill and a lot of combat experience speaking. It made her nervous, if only in that they might have underestimated the enemy team, and by quite a lot. If Kris also got knocked out tomorrow morning, it really would all be on Veren, but that was still a very strong backup. Even the immensely overpowered behemoth would have still fallen to Veren; the big lad was crazy strong, but Grandmasters, especially peak Grandmasters, were on an entirely different level.