Tournament (3)

The twenty winners of the group stage made their way up to the stage.

Ivan knew three of them, while the others were new faces. Unsurprisingly Miss Tang was one of the winners as well as the other two's he met during his first dungeon run. Besides them there was the woman from his group.

From Miss Tang groups the second place was an muscular man, which hadn't even shown his pet yet, since his fights were easy and he had forfeited the fight against Miss. Tang. Besides these two the other winners had to show their strengths during the group stage. At least Ivan thought so.

"Great, now lets begin with the winner of group one.", the head referee announced.

The winner of group one which was a skinny young man, that used his superb archer skills as well as his surprisingly tanky pig pet, to win his fights. After the announcement he stepped forward and pulled out a slip of paper with the slot he would get.

He started of on the lower left bracket.

After that the drawing proceeded until finally everyone had his slot in the bracket. Ivan didn't have much luck since he would meet Miss Tang in the second fight. As such he didn't have much hope in making the top five.

"Then lets get the first fight started. The contestants are Ivan Hope and Dennis Lerou.", the referee announced the first fight. "Everyone else, please leave the stage."

He then waited for the rest of the contestants to leave the stage, so that only the two fighters were left on stage.

"Are the both of you ready?", he then asked Ivan and the other young man Dennis. After both of them nodded he then announced, "Let the fight begin."

Once again Ivan summoned his pet Vlada, but he knew that this wasn't enough to win against his opponent.

As most of the contestants his opponent used his pet as the main force, while he stood back and supported it. He was a caster, which used fire balls to interrupt his opponents rhythm and enable his pet bear to do damage to him.

Even though Vlada would be able to fight on equal footing or even surpass the bear, she would be unable to do so if the young man fired fireballs at her. As such it was necessary for Ivan to attack too.

Something he had realized during the duration of the tournament was, that his fighting style seemed to be quite unusual. As such he hoped to surprise his opponent. Of course this would only work during the first fight, since he hadn't shown his fighting style before.

His opponent pulled out his staff and got ready to cast his fireball spells, while his bear rushed towards Vlada.

While Vlada pounced towards the incoming bear, Ivan didn't hesitate to sprint towards his opponent.

Seeing him coming the young man became flustered, since he hadn't expected him to rush towards him. Sadly he wasn't interrupted, but still finished his chant to fire a fireball towards Ivan.

Ivan quickly pulled out his sword while creating a sturdy but small fire shield in the trajectory of the incoming fireball. Even though fire shields weren't really the best way, to block fireballs his strengthened shield was up to the tast, and the incoming attack vanished harmlessly.

His opponent tried to increase the distance while starting his next chant, but Ivan was much faster than him and he easily reached him before he could finish his next attempt. At the same time his pet was tied down by Vlada and was unable to come to his aid.

Ivan used his flame enchantment and then slashed with his sword, while letting the enchantment drift away from the blade.

This was something he had learned during his fights and it was a great way to cast a flaming blade in a short distance from him. It was a short ranged attack, but since it moved faster than he himself it was of great use in situations like this.

As soon as the flaming sword blade appeared a murmur went through the mass of spectators. One of the elders turned towards Van Bergen and said, "I didn't expect your student to be a magical swordsman. This is quite unusual."

Van Bergen too looked surprised at the display on stage. He hadn't seen his student fight since he started to teach him. And he had only thought him how to train, but no fighting skills, as such he too had no idea that his student had chosen the way of a magical swordsman.

"I too didn't know he has chosen this path. To be honest I haven't thought him any fighting skills."

"You didn't?", the other elder looked surprised, "You are saying that he has developed this fighting style by himself?"

"I think so. I don't think that he has learned this at school, since they only teach basic fighting skills."

"Then I'll have to congratulate you for having such a capable student."

Van Bergen smiled proudly, "Thank you, thank you. Sadly it will be impossible for him to reach further than the top ten."

The elder nodded, "Yeah, Miss. Tang is just to much of a monster. Still I hope he will seriously fight her. It should be a good fight to see."

"Well considering that he was not even level 50 two days ago, I think top ten will already be good."

"He was not even level 50 two days ago? That means that he has broken through in the last two days?"

Van Bergen grunted in confirmation.

"I guess it will be hard for him then. He shouldn't have had the time to get adjusted to his new strength yet."

The two of them focused back on the stage, where the fight was just about to finish.

Even though the skinny man had managed to dodge the first flame blade, he couldn't do the same with the second. Which hit him exactly at his central axis.