Chapter 181: Doing some Film Study

After a nice family dinner that was filled with encouragement from his mom and several words of advice from his father, Joshua took a bit of ice cream up to his room for dessert and settled in for the night. He was happy that his father had stopped with the standoffish attitude, but now he had made a full one eighty and was pointing out mistakes that either he or Amy made and was trying to coach them up so they could both go far in the tournament. It was still annoying, but at least it was a more likeable attitude to deal with. Joshua made sure to keep all of his father's advice in mind since the man had several years more experience in one on one battles for competition. Joshua was also surprised to see how focused Amy was during the conversation as well, it was clear that she wanted to do her best in the competition.

When Joshua got up to his room he brought up the screen in his room and turned to the battle arena network so he could look through some of the previous matches that happened during the day. Although Joshua didn't know who he was going to be up against to start the day off in the morning he had no problem looking through the matches of the other thirty-one contestants. He didn't plan on watching them in full since he didn't have the time for that, but he could glance through them and see if he could find any interesting techniques that he hadn't seen before. The first thing Joshua did was look through the videos of all of the members of the alliance to see if he could see any new tricks that they used that he hadn't seen before.

All in all most of the members of the alliance got away with not showing off to much throughout the days matches. Laura didn't even use her sword at all while fighting and only took her opponents out with over powered magic. Madalyn was even worse since she just showed off her skills with her daggers, the moment she got in one cut, no matter the size, on her opponents the match was over. They didn't show off any skills that Joshua hadn't seen before and that seemed to be the case for most of the members of the alliance. The only one he saw use something interesting was Adrian with that odd attack that cut Victor down. Even watching the replay of that moment Joshua wasn't certain what happened but it seemed to be something similar to an echo strike that took effect from a distance.

When Joshua finished looking through all of the alliance members that had made it into the tournament he started looking at the other contenders to see if he could learn anything new about the ones he had already looked into in the past while watching full matches of the ones he hadn't seen fight before. While watching one of Dmitry's matches Joshua saw how Jayce had been taken out of the tournament. He was the number four seed that was unfortunate enough to have to go up against Dmitry. Jayce used several skills and proper positioning to avoid getting grabbed for a while, but none of his offensive strategies were able to get Dmitry to back off. In the end Jayce used a shield wall to try to keep Dmitry from pushing though his shield, but the Russian touched the wall and seemed to drain away all of its energy.

After that Jayce was taken out, but his loss cleared up something for Joshua. It was now obvious that Dmitry could siphon energy away from people and that likely meant that he could also siphon Joshua's aura away if given the chance. That was something that he was going to have to look out for when they got into a match. Another person that Joshua watched an interesting match of that he had been keeping tabs on going into the final couple of days of the tournament was Charles. Unlike the fight where Charles was against his own older brother this time he was actually up against a decent enemy that was also a swordsman.

The match started out with both sides testing one another and from their descriptions it was clear that they were both from the World Government Guild. Joshua smiled a bit at that since the battle arena seemed to be putting people from their own guilds or alliance's against each other fairly often in the tournament and it wasn't just something that Joshua had to deal with. While watching the match Joshua was able to confirm that Charles was just as good with his gun as he was with his sword. The way that Charles was able to transition between the two weapons during combat was seamless and was something that Joshua had tried to do in the past, but couldn't quite master. Joshua was amazing at using his body as a weapon along with his scale blade, but if he tried tin incorporate anything else then he'd start losing the flow.

Charles didn't just stop at being able to transition between weapons during combat, but he was able to use them in such interesting ways. Through the entire fight Joshua only saw Charles use one skill and it wasn't to attack his opponent. He used a knock back shot skill that gun users could use. Joshua had seen Aito using something similar a few times when trying to create space between himself and beast that were targeting him. The skill not only opened a large spray of bullets that were heavy enough to knock the opponent back while also doing damage, but they also caused the user of the skill to get knocked back in the opposite direction.

Throughout the fight Charles used this skill in an interesting way as he fired off the skill while not bracing himself for the knockback effect. This allowed him to fly around the arena by shooting off his shot gun with the skill taking his opponent by surprise. He didn't stop there and would pull out other items such as flash bangs or grenades that he'd toss out from time to time to throw his opponent off. He was up against a good swordsman, but with all of the skill that Charles was able to showcase it didn't surprise Joshua that he was the winner of the fight. The match ended with Charles using his shot gun to propel himself forward at a speed too fast for his opponent to react to properly and then dug his blade into the arena floor to prevent himself from passing right by. In that moment Charles was right next to his enemy with his shot gun directed at his chest that had light weight armor that was already struggling to hang on from all of the grenades. The match was over at that point.

Outside of those two all of the people that Joshua had been keeping tabs on before the last portion of the tournament didn't really show off anything new. The leader of the Stranger's Guild kept winning matches with her strange runes that nobody could seem to figure out and every once in a while she would use a new one with a spell that would take her opponents completely off guard showing just how versatile her ability was. Shawn continued his mad rush of finishing each match in record time with only a couple people being able to avoid his first strike. The only reason they were able to avoid such tactics was because they had a teleporting ability or an invulnerability skill that would allow them to take on the first strike without being taken down. Even so they never survived the second one.

After looking through the fights of the people Joshua already knew about in great detail he turned his attention to the ones he wasn't quite sure of that seemed to stand out based off of their auras when they were all standing in the arena together. The first two he looked into were the two members of the Raider's Guild but he didn't really see much from them. When it came to the boss of the Raider's Guild Joshua could see that he could manipulate shadows in some way from some of the skills he used, but he wasn't just a mage by any means. His skill with a large sword was just as dangerous as his abilities to manipulate shadows to either hurt his enemies or restrain them.

The other member of the Raider's Guild was far more interesting to watch since Joshua was able to learn their fighting style. He still wasn't sure if this Seven person was a girl or a guy, but one thing he did learn about her after watching one of her matches was that she was extremely fast and a near mirror image of Madalyn. The biggest difference between the two was that Madalyn could fight in a way that all she needed to do to win was get in one cut so that her poison could get to work, Seven on the other hand had to go for the kill using daggers on their own. Seven did this in an interesting way where they would use their speed to get behind their opponents and then would mirror their movements in a way that allowed them to stay behind their opponent for the entire match. A person's back was the biggest opening possible and Seven fought in a style that allowed them to stay one step ahead of their opponent the entire time.

There were two other people that Joshua looked into before getting some sleep and those were the two mercenaries that Joshua hadn't seen before. At first he looked at a couple matches of the female knight and he was shocked when he saw her do something that didn't seem like what a knight would do. Her opponent seemed just as surprised when the bladed shield that she blocked his spear with fired off a heavy shell right in the chest taking him out of the match. That wasn't the only surprise she had up her sleeve as her sword had a gun in it as well that allowed her to shoot another opponent in the shoulder once their blades were locked together. She seemed to have several modifications to her weapons that were meant to take people by surprise while they were in positions that would usually be beneficial to them.

The other mercenary had a huge surprise as well, but for the two of them to get this far they had to have something that made them stand out. This guy wore a hood that hid his face from view, but it wasn't his clothes that grabbed the attention of his opponents, but was instead the massive bow that hung off his back. The bow was longer than the man was tall and he wasn't short standing at around six feet tall. The tip of the bow hung just off the ground while the top reached a head taller than the mercenary. Once one of the matches started Joshua understood right away what type of style the mercenary used. He hung back as far away from his opponent as possible as he took out his bow.

When the countdown ended and the match started Joshua took notice that the man didn't have any quivers or arrows on his person. Instead the man simply pulled the bow string back an arrow made of energy was formed and ready to be fired. If that was all then it wouldn't have been anything special, but Joshua watched as several different arrows started forming in the air around him all pointing towards his opponent. The arrow connected to the bow string was still growing larger and the moment the match started he let the arrow lose. The tank he was up against blocked the shot with a shield wall, but it was destroyed on impact allowing all of the other arrows to fly over and turn the tank into a pincushion.

After looking through a few more matches Joshua decided it was time for him to get some rest and prepare for the big day ahead.