Chapter 25: A more hands on Interview

After the match the pair of sisters didn't leave the arena floor which showed they were planning on staying on for more. They didn't seem too tired even after the system had pitted them against a pair that was higher level than them. Watching the two sisters smiling and congratulating each other before quickly going back to composing themselves for the next match Joshua had a feeling that they were in it for more than just the money and wide spread attention.

The difference between the two's personality showed through a bit during their celebrating. The older sister was more calm and collected about things as she capitulated to her younger sister's attempts to get her to do a high five. She seemed to be preparing herself for the next match while her younger sister excitedly chatted with her about how things had gone on her side. They seemed extremely close but were in no way similar in personality.

"Well what do you think about them?" Joshua asked Henry. He wanted to know what Henry had been thinking since he was just as focused on the match as Joshua had been.

"They're abilities seem interesting, but I'll need to know more about how they work for me to have a realistic idea how they could fit in with our group. Regardless they both seem use to battle and would fit in with our guild strength wise." Henry responded.

"Well then I'd bet fighting them personally will be the best way to let us find out." Joshua said with a gleam in his eyes.

"Are you serious? I thought we were staying back to see how all of the others are doing." Henry said a little surprised, but clearly not against the idea.

"It'll only be one match since I do plan on doing some one on ones soon after, but it'll be the best way to learn more about them. Plus we'll get to talk to them and invite them to the guild during the match." Joshua explained as he was already pulling up the arena menu to register to fight in the two on two battles. He knew that if he and Henry registered soon enough they would easily be chosen to take on the priestess pair since they would be the most challenging pair for the system to pick.

"Alright sounds good to me. Just don't go too far and defeat them before they can get a chance to show off their capabilities to us." Henry said before registering with Joshua. The both of them were pulled into a waiting room where they stood alone. It was basically an empty room with a couple of chairs for them to sit in while they waited for their match to be picked. They didn't get the chance to wait for very long since they were instantly chosen and were taken to the doubles arena.

When Joshua appeared in the arena the first thing he noticed was how it felt like he was in a colosseum surrounded by a cheering crowd. He wasn't surprised that the crowd was so big since the pair of sisters had gotten fairly far in their win streak. Apparently the battle arena wasn't just one arena on the inside and linked to several different arenas via portals. It explained why all of the different fights were able to have separate crowds. After looking over the crowd for a moment Joshua turned his attention towards Natsumi and Katsumi just as the countdown began to start.

When Joshua looked in their direction he noticed that both of the girls seemed to recognize them as an excited look started to come over them. That's when the younger sister spoke up first gaining both Joshua and Henry's attention. "Finally someone we were looking for decided to show up. We've got are shot at getting recruited Natsumi."

"Yeah we'll just have to prove our worth, but I wasn't expecting the guild leader to come out himself." Natsumi coolly replied as a small smile started to grace her lips.

"Wait a minute, you guys were looking for us?" Joshua asked a bit surprised. He knew that the girls seemed to be trying to grab someone's attention by the way they were going all out in their combat, but he couldn't tell who. He was expecting it to be a large guild of some kind instead of his own.

"Yep we figured if we joined the battle arena then we could grab your guilds attention by winning all of our fights." Katsumi responded excitedly. At this point the countdown had already ended and they could all start fighting at any moment, but Joshua was more interested in the conversation they were having at the moment than starting the fight. Besides it was impossible for anyone in the crowd to hear what they were saying since there was a barrier that blocked them off.

"You do know there was a recruitment drive for our guild only a week or so ago. How come you guys didn't just go to that?" Henry asked a little confused why they would wait till now to try to get recruited instead of going the easier route and joining the recruitment drive.

"Well we kind of forgot the right day." Katsumi said with a bit of embarrassment. "We were actually out exploring a dungeon because we thought it was this week when the recruitment drive would take place not last week."

When Joshua looked to the older sister to confirm this was true he was met with a blushing girl that seemed embarrassed by their mistake making it hard to keep her composed look. "Well then I guess we can take this as an interview of some sorts, but we'll still have to have a bit of a talk afterwards to get to know you two and find out how well you'll fit in with the rest of the guild."

"Just come to our guild room for the arena after our match and we'll have a talk about things. Will send you two a message through the system after this match." Henry said causing both of the girls to look at them excitedly. The younger sister was more obvious about it, but even the older sibling seemed happy about the situation.

"Now that things are settled how about we focus on this match. We'll be testing to see just how strong you two are." Joshua said with an excited smile as he took out his scale blade and waited for them to do any preparations they would need. "You have ten seconds before we get started. Make good use of it."

The moment Joshua said this the younger sister jumped back creating some space before bringing out a few talismans to use for this fight. She created the large pyramid to protect her like the last fight, but this time she tore an extra talisman that created floating shields around her sister that seemed to be there for added protection. Joshua and Henry didn't know what kind of extra effect he shields would have, but they were looking forward to finding out.

The older sister took out her blade and went through a similar routine to her last fight, but this time she brought one more talisman that she tore causing an odd energy to flow into her eyes. Both of her eyes were now glowing brightly as she stepped forward preparing to take on Joshua with her sister for back up. On Joshua and Henry's side of things they both decided it would be best to avoid using too much of their strength otherwise the fighting would end to fast. Joshua decided to not use his aura shroud in this fight since it would negate just about all of the offensive capabilities of both sisters while Henry didn't use any support spells on Joshua.

For this fight Henry was going to act like a mage by mixing some of his weaker spells together while Joshua did most of the fighting. This would give him a good chance to observe their apparent new recruits capabilities. This fight would basically be a two versus one scenario, but with the huge level difference Joshua still had the advantage.

The moment the match started Joshua and Natsumi both charged straight forward at each other. Joshua was doing it to test her strength while Natsumi was trying to figure out his fighting style. When their swords clashed Joshua clearly had the advantage from just using his basic aura to empower his body without evoking the aura shroud. Joshua's attack sent Natsumi backwards forcing her to rely more on her speed to try to take on Joshua.

Although Natsumi was much faster than Joshua while relying on her talismans he was easily able to read her attack pattern because of how the talismans improved her movement. They didn't make her more fluid like Adrian's shadow step so whenever she changed directions it was obvious and hard to miss. It made it easier for Joshua to react to her attacks since he was used to sparring against people that were faster than her, but the talisman were impressive, especially the one that was giving her sword the lightning effect. The only reason Joshua hadn't frozen up from it was because his aura was able to counteract the effect.

Once Katsumi noticed that her older sister was having a lot of trouble trying to get in any sort of strike against Joshua she started firing off arrows to help out. Joshua knew that they would lock on to him so he wasn't going to waste time trying to dodge them and instead would just block them with his scale blade. Natsumi would try to go in for an attack whenever this occurred which showed their good team work, but Joshua didn't have any issue avoiding her strikes and kicking her aside whenever the two sister tried to attack at the same time.

When Henry noticed how things were going he decided to step in and give their opponents a hand to see just how strong the girls could be. He created a fireball and a water ball that he sent crashing into the pyramid that protected Katsumi. The two parts of the pyramid broke down, but the attacks were absorbed and transformed into arrows that she could fire at Joshua. She quickly used the water arrow in an attempt to drench Joshua so that her sister's sword would have more of an effect, but he blocked most of the water created from the arrow with his scale blade before blocking Natsumi's sword strike with one of his arm guards.

Getting a good judge of their abilities Joshua decided it was time to put an end to the fight. He used his aura to strengthen his legs before lunging straight towards Katsumi forcing Natsumi to rush into his path. The pyramid barrier around Katsumi wouldn't be able to stop his close range attack and both of the sisters seemed to know that. The moment Natsumi got into his patch Joshua blocked her blade before twisting and smashing his scale blade into one of the shields hovering around her. The shield held fairly well, but crumbled after stopping the force of Joshua's blow. He then used an energy slash to destroy another shield and an echo strike to break the last one and cut Natsumi down. He did all of this within the small amount of time that Natsumi had been knocked off balance by his initial counter.

With her sister taken out Katsumi was put in a bad spot. She knew that it was impossible for her to win this match up, but she fired off the fire arrow anyways in an attempt to take out Joshua while he was out of position, but was surprised when he suddenly dashed directly in front of her with more speed than even her sister could have done. Joshua had used an aura blast from his feet to close the gap. He wasn't surprised when his scale blade easily cut through the pyramid since that wasn't what it was meant to block. With one swing Katsumi was sent off to join her sister.