Pulling an all-nighter is something that many people do, but how many can enjoy doing so? Not many, because in the end they end up lacking sleep, and this is something that couldn’t be helped. It’s easy to lose track of time doing something one loved, on the other hand, it’s also easy to keep track of time if your rushing to finish something last minute.
Luon at this moment was in the same state as those sleepless zombies. Why was their next match the next day? Couldn’t they do it a day later? There was just no time to make any proper last minute adjustments without killing sleep unless those changes were minuscule enough not to matter as much.
But the changes that Luon spent the night doing weren’t so minuscule at all.
With bloodshot eyes, Luon sat down while tapping his leg relentlessly on the waiting room floor to relieve his frustration. Although he took an energy pill earlier to soothe his nerves, the last minute project he had worked on was mentally taxing, and it would take some time to settle down.
His team who noticed his state and began to prompt one another to ask Luon what was up. In the end, Gizmo walked up to Luon and asked, “Hey there buddy, you okay?”
His voice rang into Luon’s head like when someone who was hung over with a massive headache was listening to a running train nearly a few meters from him.
Not blaming or flaming Gizmo for his kind gesture, Luon replied, “I’m okay just let me rest a bit…”
After those words, Luon closed his eyes as he laid on one of the benches in the room.
Gizmo turned towards his companions who all began to shake their heads in response. Seeing how they were uninterested in waking Luon up, he decided just to let him lay there until their match started.
Consistently training, learning and working without proper sleep, although the energy pill and Vortex Container are practically omnipotent tools that help do more work there’s a limit to everything before it starts to do some harm.
Gizmo, Bendan, and Tyron began to do whatever they wanted to which left Thomas, whose existence is almost negligible, to watch the current match.
It was between Team Warbeast versus Team Constu who specialized in construction. It wasn’t typical for a real engineering team to enter the competition let alone a position in the top 16.
Usually, they would have been eliminated with a simple rush attack. However, these engineers were confident of their ability to build their defenses fast which was one of the reasons why most teams weren’t able to win against them.
Another reason why most teams failed to assault them was their mech defender that are the size of ogres. There was a limit to what one could bring with them to the competition beforehand, they could only bring objects that could fit within a particular dimensional size. This large robot was in numerous pieces which occupied 40 gear slots and took them a minute to assemble.
Thomas hoped that the match would last long enough so that Luon could settle down a bit before their match began. And from seeing the progression of the battle, his prayers were granted when Team Warbeast rushed towards their opponents base and fought the titan to a standstill. After beating the robot, the four soldiers of Team Warbeast, including Zythos, encountered a series of traps and defensive mechanisms which inhibited their progress.
Team Warbeast who had failed their quick assault were slowly storming through their opponents base. What was the most surprising factor of this match was that the unarmoured, werewolves or beastmen were wearing the same armor that Team Delta C Plus had worn.
It was no surprise that they had no injuries and were able to beat the mech. Because of the armor, all the weapons that Team Constu could do was merely delay the moving tank. They would usually walk extremely slow with the heavy armor on while under suppressive fire, but with their natural racial strength of being a beastmen, and genetic modifications they were powerful enough to operate normally without breaking a sweat.
The main reason why the match continued to be delayed was due to the walls team Contsu had. Seeing how their weapons were ineffective, they quickly built walls as a last minute attempt to stay in the tournament.
Team C Delta Plus had used mounts to overcome this quickly. However, Team Warbeast used their own strength to overcome the walls. Attached to the suit of armor hands was a claw-like weapon which easily penetrated a portion of the walls allowing to climb at a decent pace.
However, after they finished climbing one wall, there was another, and after they rise above that one, there was another. Team Warbeast was unable to go around the walls as it completely encircled the base, so the battle stood at a temporary standstill.
Lasting nearly 30 minutes of wall building and climbing did something change because Team Contsu was occupied by building walls that encircled their entire base, they had forgotten about Chester who was operating the Crypt Of Heroes command table.
Earlier as they were building walls, they attempted to assault the Crypt of Heroes by deploying units around these moving tanks, only to find that the enemy base heavily defended by metallic constructs.
After several attempts had failed they stopped attacking the base leaving only a few scouts within the region, however, this gave Team Warbeast enough time to change the progression of the match.
A shadow soared quickly over the battlefield arriving next to the four bulky attackers of Team Warbeast and picking them off of the mountain climbing region. The crowd gasps at its presence as it was the first time people have seen it in the competition in ages. It was a dragon, and not just your mixed hybrid races one, nor is it the pathetic excuse of a real dragon like the Flare Dragon was, it was an authentic fire dragon.
Aided by its arrival Team Warbeast was able to claim victory over Team Constu in 42 minutes, ending the first match of the day.
Minutes after Team Warbeast won their match, everyone on Team Ascension was teleported to the waiting room that gave them four minutes to lock in their choices of role and map, and another minute to mentally settle themselves, which they can press ready to speed up the progress.
The change of surroundings caused Luon to feel the cold floor texture change from a nice bench to a standard smooth white floor. Luon got up slowly, taking a nap for a little more than half an hour was actually helpful as he found himself refreshed upon awakening.
His party members who saw him get up waited for Luon to talk about the reason why he was so tired before their important match which Luon told them, “For the match today, I made a brand new map.”
“A new map? You don’t want to run the usual canyon or forest?” asked Gizmo.
“It’s not that I don’t want to use those fields, it’s just for this kind of opponent I thought it would be useful to do,” answered Luon.
“Alright, if you’re that confident then just do as you please, however, if it’s just a normal map how you could be so tired? Even with the pathetically not so well done map editing tools, it shouldn’t be that taxing to create a map,” said Gizmo.
Luon frowned as he said, “It’s exactly because of the map editing tools weren’t so great that I took so long to do it. Just wait for the match to start, and see the results do its work. I’m setting myself as a commander, and the rest of you as soldiers. The map is the new map I made at the last minute.”
Everyone nodded their heads in agreement of positions, Bendan, Tyron, and Thomas never cared about distributing roles, while Gizmo only did so for the majority of their matches to shroud their potential main tactics. Bendan couldn’t help but ask, “What kind of map is it?”
Even though he was a muscle freak, he still had his preference in places to fight. The ocean was a different experience for him, but it made his attacks feel a little empty inside. He preferred to fight on the ground.
Luon smiled mysteriously as he replied, “It’s a dungeon.”
…
Dungeons are a type of underground map which specialized in defense. However, dungeons are most often defeated by merely smoking and sealing the dungeon or drowning it in water. Which is why when someone created a dungeon map they would spawn multiple entrances to filter out the potential hazards.
One of the critical points of a dungeon was that the dungeon walls were extremely reinforced making it challenging to break through, there was an option between making standard walls to create more paths or the reinforced walls to inhibit movement.
Standing in front of the dungeon entrance which was in the shape of a cave that looked like a troll would pop out of it was an army of green muscular orcs. Team Pride had four orc warriors and a shaman who acted as the commander. If it were a regular match the four orc warriors with an army of summoned orcs would storm through their opponents base with overwhelming strength, however, right now they are idiotically standing in front of a signpost.
“Brother, what does it say on da board? I can’t read,” said one of the orcs.
Although Nexus University is a school for the best engineers and fighters around the solar system, it didn’t mean that everyone was equally smart, these orcs were powerful and had an amazing growth rate beyond their peers. Their bloodline was closer to Chaos orcs which by far exceeds many regular orcs. Unfortunately, the heavens were fair and made these men equally dumb. Which is why there was a shaman in the first place to teach them what to do.
Over the team chat system, the Shaman asked, “What does it say? I’m at the base right now, so I can’t see it.”
“Brother. How would I know what it says when I can’t read it?” asked an Orc.
“That’s why you’re supposed to spell it out for me!” said the Shaman.
“How do I do that?” asked another Orc.
“Go on your BMPU and pressed the letters that look like the one on the signpost!” the shaman barked.
“I don’t know how to use this toy yet,” replied one of the orcs with a sad expression, which caused the other 3 to nod in agreement.
“Ughh, just ask the human to read it out to you and tell me what it says!” said the shaman.
“OH!” replied all four orcs as they turned towards a single scrawny figure in the large group of orcs.
Grabbing the ordinary human citizen that was summoned for a minuscule amount of points they tossed him in front of the board and asked, “Puny human, what do the words say on the board?”
Scared of the face he made the human slowly stuttered, “I-It sa-says ‘He who is powerful come to test the trials of pride if thou does shameless deeds thee shall be forever shamed.’”
“Oh!” said the orcs who were thinking about how to say this set of words to the shaman.
They thought hard, but were too stupid to come up with a reply, they asked the human, “The words are complicated, make it simple stupid.”
The human repetitively nodded and said, “Ba-basically it means ‘Come in here and fight! Do you have the guts?!’”
“Oh!” the four orcs replied and began to relay the words to shaman which the latter replied, “Alright, let’s smoke the dungeon out, go look for all the available entrances and seal them up, we’re setting our troops right outside and wait for them.”
However, that remark upset the orcs who said, “WHAT? Do you not want to take the challenge?! They said to come inside to fight so why we doing a dirty thing. If a warrior was said to fight, then fighting we shall, am I, right brothers?”
“Yeah!” screamed the other orcs as they yelled out a battle cry, there were 30 orcs and one human, most of them were warriors, and very few were shamans.
The shaman commander facepalmed and said, “You dumb orcs, go do what I said I am the commander, did you forget that?”
“Bah! Commander just causes you’re a bit smart you think you can deny our honor?! No one can shame an orc! And if an orc has to prove themselves, then they should do it! Let’s go my brothers!” said the most massive orc of the four soldiers.
“Rul’tarrr!” they replied as they all entered the dungeon.
A few minutes upon entering the orcs made their way through the normal looking passage with torches alongside the wall. They walked for a minute before coming to an opening where the room was a complete circle. There were screams of orcs, humans and other race civilians all around chanting, “Fight! Fight! Fight!”
The cheer incited the orc warriors blood, they recognized this kind of setting before as it was one of their favorite past times when they were taking a day off, video and live stream arena feeds were extremely popular like wrestling and fighting matches in the virtual world. The realistic, brutal sensation brought out the inner warrior inside of them.
And the man who made this happened sat on a podium in front of the group as he said, “Welcome orc warriors, do you dare take my challenge?”
Luon sat with an arrogant smile as the orcs replied precisely how he thought they would.
