Chapter 419 - 419: Palm Top Tiger
The first fight within this strange pit arena was between a member of the Nordic Queen's party and a member of the Japanese presidents party.
The Nordic Queen's companion was a tall man with pale blue skin with naturally turquoise lips and electric blue eyes to match. All of it combined gave him the ghastly appearance of a corpse that had been dredged from the bottom of a frozen river. His hair was completely snow white, shaved on both sides and slicked back on the top.
Instead of armour, the man was only dressed in a crisp white suit. Completely white, including the shirt and tie underneath. It was a little garish, In Corvus' humble opinion.
It reminded Corvus of a few depictions of Jack Frost. All he was missing was a nice staff or a beard made of ice to complete the look. It was also the reason that, in his head, Corvus referred to this man as Frosty.
The Japanese woman standing across from him was his complete obvious. She was dressed like a traditional ninja, meaning that naturally every part of her clothing had to be black even though such an outfit would only blend with shadows and there was very little of those in this well lit room.
A half mask covered her nose and mouth, leaving only her serious and chilling eyes visible, as well as her ink black hair that was pulled into a tight and short pony tail.
She was easily a foot shorter than Frosty, and had a much more delicate body compared to the muscular Frosty. Yet despite that she remained steadfast, summoning a Wakizashi into her hand and sinking into a stance that left her ready to pounce, like a predator staring down its prey. Only caring about size in terms of how much it would fill their stomach.
That, in Corvus' mind, earned her the name Panther.
Frosty simply smirked confidently at Panther's provocations but never summoned any weapons of his own. Instead he just rolled his neck and shook the stiffness from his limbs. When the bell rang and the match started, he quickly raised his hands as the air turned cold.
Icicles rapidly formed in the air before launching themselves towards Panther in a hail of icy spears.
She immediately moved in response, weaving her way through the hail of spears and twisting her body in ways that only a gymnast could. Even when that wasn't enough, she waved her Wakizashi in front of her, deflecting the spears away.
However before Frosty could send forth another volley, Panther leapt into a backwards and spring, launching herself into the air only to disappear before she hit the ground.
Frosty's eyes widened in surprise as she vanished into thin air before his expression twisted into one of frustration. He quickly conjured more icicles, throwing them every which way around the arena in a desperate attempt to hit anything other than the walls.
A few of the stray and desperate shots flew into the air, heading straight towards the crowd above. But before they could even reach the first line of chairs, a transparent barrier appeared in the air as the icicles shattered against it.
Corvus chuckled softly at some of the companions flinching before the barrier appeared to save them. He then went back to his folding activity, adding another crease to the paper and flipping it over, before leaning back to speak to Woe.
"I want you to pay close attention to how they fight, how they use their abilities. It's important to know when and how to use your own, and against who. This isn't just a test of skill, but also endurance.
Don't burn yourself out on the first match just because you want to impress me. If you want to impress me, learn as much as you can from this opportunity. Understood?"
Woe paused for a second, taking in the words. He could have made a comment on the irony of Corvus telling him to pay attention whilst he was using most of his attention on folding paper instead. But Woe didn't take even a single step down that line of thinking.
The Lord had earned the right not to pay attention to combats that were below him, especially just simple sparring. Woe himself had not, he was far from earning that right.
This was going to be one of his first experiences with proper combat, so he had been planning to go all out and abuse his powers from the get go. He had been seen right through completely, which just showed how simple it was for the Lord.
So instead of pointing out the irony, Woe raised his head higher and nodded,
"Yes my Lord. Thank you for the sound advice. I will do my best to be worthy of it."
"Good to hear it. Just remember to use your gift there." Corvus gestured to the pouch hanging on Woe's hip, causing him to touch it instinctively and nod again.
"Yes my Lord."
Corvus nodded again, putting the last fold on his little project and smiling to himself as he held a small, origami tiger on the palm of his hand.
In the arena, slashes appeared across Frosty's body out of no where as the invisible ninja slashed at him like a ghost. He flailed uselessly, trying to hit what he couldn't see, but with every slash he started to grow slower and weaker.
None of them were lethal attacks, but it seemed that as the number of cuts grew, Panther didn't notice the most important detail. None of his cuts were actually bleeding.
But Corvus didn't care about that, he was too focused on his palm top tiger. He connected his threads to it, making it waddle around on his hand awkwardly and causing him to let out a few chuckles.
He covered the adorable paper tiger with his other hand, cupping it between them like a baby bird, and began to focus his Divine Energy.
Astra spared him an amused glance before going back to watching the fight, waiting for the inevitable to happen. However she was not the only one who noticed Corvus' antics. A few of the other members of the audience had their attention drawn to him, wondering what he was doing, while a few narrowed their eyes at the feeling of the Divine Energy.
With all of them focused on his hands and what he was doing, no one was paying attention to the stack of papers underneath his feet. If they were, perhaps they would have seen multiple sheets lifting themselves from the stack and rapidly folding themselves into a similar pattern as the first.
When the process was finished, Corvus opened his hands to reveal the paper tiger once more. However it was no longer the awkward looking, origami style tiger. Instead it had become what appeared to be an actual, living and breathing 3D tiger that had paper instead of skin.
It even had stripes and eyes drawn onto it, despite the fact he didn't have a pen to do so. Of course, the three paper tigers underneath his chair transformed in exactly the same way.
A miracle like this was easy, mostly because he had prepared the materials before hand, but also because it was what his belief system was built around. Since he was the conduit of all the Ravenkeep churches Worship, Corvus had plenty of opportunity to experiment with Divine energy.
After a little conservative experimentation, a few obvious things became clear. Most importantly that, while Divine Energy could be used for a wide variety of miracles, it was most efficient to use it for things that aligned with what your worshippers believed, and it was most difficult to use it for the antithesis of your godly persona.
For example, a Goddess of love would have no problem performing a miracle that resulted in love or made someone fall in love, but it would be costly and strenuous for them to create on in which the outcome was hatred. The same way a God of Life would have trouble using his energy to kill something.
For Corvus, his beliefs revolved around strength, killing and giving life to that which originally didn't have it.
Creating an ominous weapon, especially one more thematically tied to death, was easy. Creating new puppets wasn't as easy but, given he had the material, it wasn't as costly as making that jug of lemonade.
It was a strange system, but the more he tried it out the more he had to admit it made sense. Worship could only stretch so far, so it had to be directed to the right things. That's why they needed church doctrine to be their forge, refining the energy into the right sources for them.
Now if only he could get them to forget about the whole undead thing...