Coming back from their loss, Zythos and his teammate’s entered the room with their heads down.
Although Luon didn’t like Zythos, he still appreciated it if Zythos were to win the match at least, this was a team competition after all, but despite knowing this, no one in the room considered saying any comforting words to him. A loss was a loss, and there wasn’t any value in moping and whining about it.
Rather it was more important for Luon and his team to prepare for the next battle; if they were to lose, their universal debut would be over in an instant. More importantly, Arisa would never let him off.
Turning to look at her face he saw her staring at him as if she was telling him to go and win this match.
Luon gave a light sigh as he got up to his team and briefly glazed over a few strategies. This minor break period wasn’t long and 5 minutes after Zythos’ match had ended, did their team appear on stage.
During the map selection, Luon had set his terrain to his default set up of having a canyon and a singular path.
Everyone besides Thomas equipped the equipment that Luon had spent his time engineering over the summer. Right away, Luon activated his Farsight Mask to scout the enemy. He sent the phantasmal scouts in multiple different directions.
It was an elven technique, so no one in the crowd questioned its usage, they were more interested in the multitude of actions that were going on the match to pay attention to such details.
Only a very few spectators seemed to notice this particular detail.
“Hmm, it seems that Nexus University has a few more tricks this year, Basai, make sure you record that after we win the tournament to pay attention to what they have to offer,” Valerie said as she carefully observed Luon’s actions.
Basai let out a sigh as he said, “Milady, your bad habit is happening again, the master said we couldn’t continually buy into these gimmicks just for your leisure.”
“Basai… remember when father suggested to put you on my team? It wasn’t so you can bicker against my decisions rather your here to observe, protect, and commit to my orders right? If I said, I wanted something all you have to do is get it. How you do so isn’t my concerns,” said Valerie.
“As you wish milady…” said Basai as he stepped back.
Valerie looked at the other competitors and sighed, she had seen many fighters before, and every time the fought they had displayed nothing exciting or new, to her it was more fun watching people use and create weapons, which was why she found the third match to be interesting.
Valerie silently continued watching Luon interested in how his presence would be able to affect the match.
…
After sending out his scouts Luon began to operate the command table, he sent Gizmo and Bendan to watch the border while Tyron was sent over to scout out their opponents.
Unlike the previous round where the enemy was composed of 4 orcs and an elven archer, their enemies this time were a composition of dwarves and goblins.
With the weak abilities that a goblin and dwarves may have Luon figured that they were non-combatants who specialized in crafting, this meant the ideal strategy was to attack them their opponents base right now. If that was the right idea, then why is Luon setting up a factory just like how his opponents were doing? That was because although Luon was confident that a rush attack would more than likely work, it would be better proceed safely so no signs of weakness would appear.
Just as Luon and Thomas had finished their first factory, Tyron had just notified Luon that opposing team had just completed theirs as well and begun to build parts for another factory.
With more production lines the faster the production would go. Taking this chance, Luon told Tyron to start attacking the base safely. After Luon had sent the news, they began to spring into action. Setting a drone on the commander table on autopilot Luon left the back line and met up with Bendan and Gizmo, and the three of them began to launch their assault. It was currently 6 minutes in so they didn’t expect their opponents to have anything too significant compared to their armor.
Tyron continued to shoot arrows at his opponents and found them to be somewhat useful, taking out several the summoned dwarf and goblin workers. The enemies retaliated with weapons of their own, and a desperate shoot off occurred. Arrows and bullets created a field rattled with projectiles. After his first initial attack, he found the situation became more and more difficult to get any more value.
Tyron figured it was time to use his trump card, pulling out a Heliken Arrow he got from Luon and began to charge his mana into the Revolving Wind Bow. Tyron had never tried this combination so far after receiving it. According to Luon, the qualifiers weren’t the right place or the right time to test it out, so Tyron was saddened that he still had to use his simple equipment during qualifiers. But now he was no longer restricted to that rule, gathering his energy he aimed the arrow at the battalion of dwarves hiding behind an incredibly armored wall and let the arrow loose.
Like a rampaging dragon, the arrow flashed past its surroundings and gnawed its tip against the wall as an eerie screeching sound resonated for only a short instant. The arrow which was momentarily stopped regain its vigor as it decimated and shattered the barriers and continued as it vaporized anything within a meters range of it.
The dwarven soldiers were shocked by this move but were unable to express it as they vanished from the devastating attack.
Instead of an arrow, it was a beam in the shape of an arrow. The damage it had caused was equivalent to a laser rifle vaporizing everything in its path as trails of its destruction was displayed before Tyron’s eyes.
Luon, Bendan, and Gizmo who had just arrived were shocked to see this. The effects of the attack were way too effective! If only they had used it during the previous qualifiers how simple would it turn out to be? The attack power rating had reached the strength equivalent to a level 82 warrior utilizing a slash skill!
The male announcer who saw this happen exclaimed, “Wow look at that attack! According to the system calculations, he shouldn’t be able to use it if he was a normal archer!”
The female announcer responded. “It says here that the technique used was called Ikar shot which came from a mysterious tribe within the Nexus solar system, these tribe members were known to the community as the nameless archers, Hao.”
“Hao hunters? If I can recall, I think they are in the top 1000 rankings for influential families in the universe. I heard that they contributed a great amount to our war against the Inzektor race. But that attack shouldn’t be that glaringly bright?” questioned the male announcer.
“It seems to be the effect of the arrow and bow, according to the information we have about the technique the quality of the equipment can greatly affect the way the skill is used,” said the female announcer.
As they were talking about the play by play, Bendan who had seen the attack exclaimed, “Holy moly, that attack was crazy! Is that the effects of having better equipment.”
With a slightly excited look on his face, Tyron nodded in response. When they were practicing over the summer the level of the weapon they used wasn’t as powerful as this, in fact, he expected it to pierce one of the dwarven guards.
To demolish a wall! How amazing was that? If the wall weren’t made out of highly dense materials, it wouldn’t be that great, but it was so it had shocked many people.
At this moment, the dwarves situated behind the wall began to attack them with rifles, causing them to disperse behind some cover.
“Could this rifle have the same effects?” Gizmo asked as he lifted his rifle and pointed towards the dwarves who began to attack them.
The bullets came streaming accurately hitting the intended targets. The slightly exposed dwarves tightly clung to the defenses as they tried to shoot at Gizmo.
“It seems like nothing special is happening…” said Gizmo as he lowered his rifle and began to play around with it.
“Of course nothing is happening, it’s because it’s a normal rifle,” said Luon as he shrugged his shoulders.
It wasn’t a completely standard rifle, the main feature it had was that the projectiles were automatically generated with the injection of mana and dissipated upon impact. It was more like a laser rifle rather than one with physical projectiles, and the cost-efficiency was the selling point.
“Well, how about we just go win this before anything surprising happens?” said Bendan as he grabbed his sword and dashed towards their opponents.
The dwarves were powerless as Tyron arrows turned their terrain advantage against them, Luon and Bendan slaughtered the dwarves and with their NG-Arms equipped they quickly took care of most of them.
It was at this moment Luon noticed that they have yet to face any members of the opponents’ team yet. All of a sudden a wall shattered beside Bendan causing him to jump back from the force of the impact, getting a clearer view of the intruder Luon found that the goblins and dwarves on their opponents’ team were piloting a mech that was six times bigger than they were.
The group spread out, all they had to do was eliminate this titan before they can claim their victory, it usually would be challenging to do. However, Luon had a weapon just for this situation.
Dashing towards one of the mech’s legs he stabbed his sword into one of it, creating a gap within its frame. Luon quickly tossed something small within the hole and promptly ran away. As he was doing so, he yelled at his team, “Run!”
Hearing him say so, Bendan, Gizmo, and Tyron felt this scene to be relatively familiar and quickly ran away as fast as possible.
The members in Team Plana became confused and had a sudden thought, ‘Could they be stalling to summon more things out of their Crypt of Heroes?’
Their sudden realization made the five feel the urgency of the situation, with their base, devastated they needed to destroy their opponents, and at the same time defend their base from their opponents. Fortunately, because this was the national stage, the Crypt of Heroes was several times more robust compared to online matches.
Without proper equipment, it was difficult to deal with.
They decided to run and take down each soldier while they still have the chance as they chased after Gizmo who ran the slowest.
“Why me!!” yelled Gizmo as he frantically ran.
All the sudden he heard a click, and within the leg of the titan, an explosion occurred enveloping the titan and Gizmo with it.
Luon’s tendency to bomb things was as strong as ever… If only his bombs were strong enough to destroy the Crypt of Heroes.
