Chapter 96

The judge seeing that both Timothy and Cole were ready for the match, finally put out his hand and told the two to begin. Timothy began circulating all of his battle Qi while Cole was just floating only a few inches off the ground. Before Timothy could make his move, Cole actually beat him to it as his body started to multiply until there were roughly twelve different Cole type images around the arena surrounding Timothy.

From this, Timothy realized that Cole was most likely brought up in an assassin type organization that had techniques like this for their members. When he walked over to his corner earlier, Cole's steps did not make a single sound and even the earth underneath his feet was unable to allow Timothy to realize that he was present. However, after he was able to clone himself so many times, Timothy at least had some type of idea what kind of opponent he was dealing with.

Compared to the flashy type style of his last water element user opponent, Cole's was very low key and Timothy was still unable to figure out which one of the twelve clones was the real Cole. Luckily, he did not need to wait until Cole chose to make the first move against him since Timothy had the pole in his hand as he swung it downward to the closest Cole clone. Unfortunately, what happened next shocked him because like his attack on the other opponent, the clone's body was filled with the water element to the point where Timothy's attack looked to not even have an effect on it!

All of the figures of Cole now surrounding Timothy had smirks on their faces as their arms turned into long and sharp type water scissors as they launched themselves all at the same time towards Timothy. After a matter of three breaths of time, Timothy had blocked dozens of blows on his body while the others were able to slash through his skin. Not just that, but since Timothy was losing his strength just by defending, he did not have enough time to see what was going on above his and the clone's heads.

He was not used to facing opponents of the Intermediate stage of cultivation, so Timothy was unaware other than just having more energy or battle Qi on what separated the Elementary and Intermediate stage. But now he would be receiving his baptism as Cole's water element domain made its way over as rain began pouring down. However, this was not just ordinary rain, each drop seemed to be sped up by quite a bit as it caused Timothy even more damage as they continued to swiftly come down and hit his body.

Timothy could only surrender immediately, because since Cole's clones were of the water element, the rain drops did not only not negatively impact them, but due to more water, they were able to absorb them as they became both bigger and stronger. Timothy, even if he used his best equipment along with his powerful pole weapon that had destruction element inscriptions on it, would still be in a very sorry state. Seeing that he had given up, Cole pulled back his water domain as his clones dispersed while the judge officially ended the match.

Cole then walked over to help Timothy up while a smile appeared on his face that showed neither pride nor sorrow as he helped lift him up. Timothy did much better than he would have imagined and even though he was stronger than him now, Cole felt that it would be a good idea to follow Timothy in this business venture of his. As the two exited the stage together, Timothy passed over a Water Gem Stone. It did not have the best effects, but it slightly aided water elemental affinity Energy Refinement experts in their training because it helped circulate the energy in their bodies on a proper foundational type level.

Cole was surprised that Timothy would give this kind of treasure to him that would help his future endeavors. If he spent some time, Cole would be able to merge the Water Gem Stone with his soul which would also further nourish that portion of his training as well which means that it was now much more realistic that Cole would one day reach the Advance stage of cultivation as an Energy Refinement expert. Not only this, but such a treasure was worth at the very least upwards of three thousand five hundred gold pieces which was only a sum that a powerful force would be willing to pay for a future pillar of the force.

After accepting such a good treasure, Cole had already told Timothy on their way back to meet with the rest of their group, that he would be more than happy to serve Timothy as long as an Executive manager type role would exist as long as he was alive. Timothy accepted Cole's asking price and so the two were now both equally excited to make the Golden Finger Merchant Group one of the most dominant and powerful organizations that the world had ever seen! Not only that, but Master Sei told Timothy that once they found a proper place to purchase for the headquarters, that he had a special present for him.

As the two finally found their group, it turned out that it had grown to a total of twenty experts all of the Elementary stage of cultivation. After inquiring, Timothy and Cole were told that after their match, the others who were hesitant to join from earlier that chose to remain hidden, chose to accept contracts since it looked like both Timothy and Cole had very fruitful futures ahead of them. This was a common occurrence when it came to commoners who needed to band together in order to see explosive growth of the group's overall strength and fortunes, so Timothy was not very shocked, especially since there were literally hundreds of thousands of people most likely tuning into each tournament.

Therefore, even if the group had expanded to over fifty experts of a similar level, it would not have surprised Timothy. It was now clear to him that he was at least in the top one percent of the total number of Elementary stage experts who were in the coliseum and since he was openly accepting weaker experts, it would be odd for no one to at least inquire let alone openly choose to follow him. This was also even more of the case, because Timothy was not even twelve years old. All of this basic information was made public to those within the coliseum.