Scarlet

The next couple of rounds go by rather quickly, with me simply eliminating the opposing team almost right away. It isn’t until the second part of the tournament begins, where the four stadiums are merged back into two instead, that our team actually has to work together to take on the opposing team.

Although I still end up overwhelming whoever I’m fighting myself.

I glance at the corpse at my feet before stepping over them and grabbing the core for our fourth round battle.

Just like that dude.

I tighten my grip on the core – which looks almost exactly like the core of a Fracture – to shatter it, making us all appear in our private booth again. And at that point, I hear the people shouting the second title they gave me.

Apex Predator.

It wasn’t until I heard them shouting it after the third round that I finally looked it up and realized that the commentator for our bracket decided to give me another title that the people immediately latched onto. Not that I’m complaining though.

Apex Predator is much more intimidating and cool than Scarlet Wolf.

“It fits you to a T as well…” Tar mutters, almost making me stick out my chest in pride.

Almost.

I was honestly expecting to be stuck with the Scarlet Wolf title forever. So this makes things a lot nicer.

“Well, you still have the Scarlet Wolf title,” Tar comments, but I ignore him as I focus on the battle going on in our bracket of the tournament.

Originally the battles were rather boring. But now they’re starting to get rather interesting.

One of the teams in particular. A team called Blaze, which has a rather good setup. Even if I don’t particularly care for one of the people in the team.

The guy I may or may not have traumatized just a little in the ranking tournament after he straight up said my opinion didn’t matter and then challenged me.

“Is he still traumatized?” Tar asks, sounding genuinely curious. And I have to hold myself back from chuckling at the question.

I almost forgot. One of the times you went off on a little trip to the Farshore, I ran into him while walking across the campus. And he immediately turned around and started walking – rather quickly I might add – in the opposite direction of me.

It was hilarious. Pure comedy gold.

And what was even better? Seeing Belle’s reaction to watching the entire thing occur.

Tar snorts in amusement at the image I no doubt just painted in his mind.

Anyways, the team he’s in has a healer, a summoner, a ranged attacker, and two close combat attacker. They don’t have any debuffer like Emily, but they do have a rather well built team.

Although they’re all only around level eighty or so. Which still isn’t very strong compared to me, and I could probably still take them all five versus one.

“Especially if that Drake guy starts running when you approach him,” Tar says, sounding extremely amused at the thought.

Although I’m vaguely surprised Tar remembers his title, I can’t help but snort in amusement at the picture he just painted in my own head.

The rest of the round doesn’t take long to finish, and we quickly find ourselves as the very first battle of the fifth round of the tournament. And as it turns out, we’re up against Blaze. Which I find rather amusing.

He apparently does not, considering the look I find him giving me as I look down the tower – our team having been put on defense this time – at him to find the guy literally shaking in place outside of the tower, seemingly too afraid to step inside.

“Girls, I think Scarlet may have broken him,” Michael mutters as he and the others look down the balcony of the tower at him as well, finding the rest of team Blaze trying and failing to push him inside.

I watch for a few seconds before casually nodding my head and saying, “I regret nothing.”

The others just snort as we begin moving around in the tower to find better positions to defend the climb at, leaving Michael’s falcon to fly around the tower and keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t try climbing the outside of the tower. But before we can even get to our positions, Michael shouts, “Back to the balcony!”

My eyes widen in surprise, since we’ve never had a team try climbing the tower while we’re on defense before.

I rush over to the balcony before sticking my head over the edge. And immediately pulling my head back before a spear of fire passes by where my head just was. Then my ears twitch as I focus on them to listen for the exact positions of the enemies instead of looking down.

Looks like one of them is on the ground still – likely Drake – while the others are either climbing the walls, or straight up flying.

I raise my hand and create several blades of blood that I send flying straight towards the one flying with what sounds like wings. And while they sound like they dodge the first two blades, the remaining five strike true judging by the sounds of flesh being parted and a woman screaming.

Then after a few seconds, I hear a thump as something hits the floor. A corpse most likely.

“Holy shit…” I hear Michael mutter to the side as his eyes finally stop glowing green and he turns to look at me. “You can locate them just from your hearing? Or is it another skill?”

“It’s my hearing,” I answer while raising my hand again and summoning more blades of blood that I send directly towards the three people climbing the wall, impaling them into the wall by the sounds of it. Then I wait a second to make sure before sticking my head over the side to find that they are indeed very much dead.

And that leaves the traumatized guy down there who freezes up the moment he looks up and sees me.

“Ya know, I’m starting to pity the guy a little,” Tar mutters, but I just shake my head.

Do you not remember what he did when we first met? He totally deserves this.

Although… I’ll just leave him be for this round. Let the timer run out instead.

“Well,” I say while looking at the others, “looks like we won.”

Michael snorts at that, and Belle just raises a brow at me.

I shrug.

Let’s hope the next round, the last part of the tournament, will be more fun.