After the intermission ended, the seventh arena match was about to begin.
“We will now generate a new Sandbox arena scene.”
As soon as the commentator finished speaking, a new environment quickly materialized under the spectators’ watchful eyes.
It was a cavern, but unlike the arena where Dragon Soul and Tucker had fought earlier, this limestone cave had numerous black crystals hanging from its ceiling.
“This arena scene is the Iron Crystal Cavern,” the commentator explained. “The competitors need to watch out for the crystals overhead. They’re quite heavy when they fall.”
At those words, the spectators all looked toward the black crystals, which resembled stalactites. Their sharp, jutting points were indeed intimidating.
Imagine the two competitors below fighting with their full attention, only for a heavy crystal to suddenly come crashing down from overhead.
Whoever it hit, even if it merely caused a distraction without striking them directly, could see the tide of battle turn.
Just then, the teleportation light pillars lit up and began selecting competitors.
In the first two matches, the human opponents had been teleported in first. This time, a human was chosen first.
The light flashed over Guan Tong, but his expression remained blank. Ever since he had realized that the selection was likely only pseudo-random, he had stopped paying attention to it.
Besides, he was more concerned with the Demon Race, which might be present at the scene.
If the demonic power within him reacted, what about the other side? Could they sense something too?
Whoosh!
The human competitor had now been selected and teleported into the cavern.
Guan Tong looked up. It was a pale-skinned woman with long hair falling over her shoulders, dressed in a red cloak.
She was none other than Gilal, the official Chief Ascendant put forward by Namelica, known as the “Blood Mage.”
“Oh!!!”
“It’s finally Gilal’s turn!”
“Come on! You have to win!”
As soon as Gilal appeared in the arena, the Ascendant spectators from Namelica cheered and urged her on.
The spectators from other countries, on the other hand, looked at her with varying degrees of doubt.
Namelica itself was an inconspicuous little country, and simply surviving until now had been no easy feat.
If Lury had survived through cutting-edge technology in niche fields, and Heilanja through its uniquely favorable geography... then Namelica had survived mostly through luck.
The country was not on the coast, but situated on a plain. It had avoided all the environmental disaster rules of the past and suffered no major losses.
Moreover, although its decision-makers played both sides among the major powers, they were willing to share the benefits with their citizens. As a result, the country was relatively united, and few people emigrated.
All these factors combined had allowed Namelica to scrape by with a population still in the millions. That was no small feat.
But this low profile also meant that people outside the country rarely knew much about it. For instance, most people had never heard of Gilal, the competitor now entering the arena.
Only a few Ascendants who frequently dealt with mercenaries and brokers knew that an Ascendant from Namelica had wiped out the notorious mercenary group known as the Black Flag Brotherhood. That Ascendant was Gilal.
“I heard this Gilal has a very unusual ability...”
“I saw someone expose it on the forum before. They said her ability has something to do with blood.”
“Blood? No wonder her nickname is the ‘Blood Mage.’”
“She’s Namelica’s Chief Ascendant, so she must have some real skills. She has to win this one. Humanity can’t afford to lose again!”
“If we lose one more match, we’ll lose all chance of succeeding in the rule challenge. But if both Guan Tong and Han Qiu win, the result will be four wins, four losses, and one draw. I wonder if that would still count as a failed challenge.”
At that moment, another teleportation light pillar appeared, and Gilal’s opponent materialized in the cavern.
It was a semitransparent, crystal-like entity, about the size of a basketball, floating several dozen centimeters above the ground.
The human spectators had never seen a life-form like this before, and they were greatly astonished.
Regardless of everything else, this tournament had shown humanity all kinds of life in the universe, greatly broadening the horizons of the people of Tianshui Star.
The commentator promptly introduced the opponent. “The opponent of the Tianshui Star Civilization’s competitor is L', a stone-crystal life-form from the Cold Star Civilization.”
A stone-crystal life-form...
The human spectators were naturally baffled. They had never imagined that rocks could become living things.
Meanwhile, the president of Namelica, who was watching the match in a Myriad Sense Net Bubble, looked deeply troubled.
“A stone-crystal life-form, something made of stone... That means it has no blood? Th-this is bad news.”
He looked at Gilal with concern. As president, he of course knew what her ability was: a special power called [Blood Manipulation].
Guided by her Mind Power, she could make the blood inside an enemy’s body boil, flow backward, or even explode, all from a great distance.
In the past, she had faced more than a hundred enemies alone and still won with ease, thanks to this powerful ability.
He had been extremely confident in Gilal, because most species had blood flowing through their bodies.
Even Tucker, the Oxes Beast Dragon Soul had faced in the match before last, had blue blood flowing through his enormous body.
Although the gaseous life-form in the previous match was a typical bloodless species, he had not thought the odds of encountering another such being would be high.
He had never expected that this match would once again pit her against a species with no blood...
The countdown ended, and the match officially began.
A large handful of darts appeared in Gilal’s palm. Each had a small contact-triggered explosive attached. She struck first, hurling them at her opponent.
These were items she had kept in her Storage Box. They were single-use consumables, not especially powerful, but their advantage was that they did not consume Mind Power.
She planned to use the darts to test this “L” first.
As the dozen or so darts neared L, its body vibrated. The vibrations seemed to interfere with the surrounding environment, and the darts all fell to the ground and exploded.
Gilal frowned, slightly raising her palm as she activated Blood Perception.
This was a secondary ability she had developed from her own unique power, [Blood Manipulation]. It allowed her to detect the flow of blood inside a target from a distance, making it easier to control them afterward.
However, when she activated the ability this time, she sensed nothing. Just as its appearance suggested, this stone-crystal life-form, L, had no blood at all.
L vibrated again, repeatedly adjusting the intensity of its vibrations.
As Gilal watched, she suddenly understood.
Unlike humans, who had facial features, this stone-crystal life-form sensed the world through vibrations!
The vibrations of its body were both its way of perceiving the physical world and its means of locating and attacking its enemies!
Sure enough, once it had used its vibrations to lock onto Gilal’s position, a stone crystal the size of a fingernail shot at high speed from a crack on its surface!
Whoosh!
The attack was so fast that most of the human spectators did not even react. The next moment, all they heard was a dull thud.
Everyone turned to look at Gilal. Her reflexes were undoubtedly much faster than the spectators’. Not only had she reacted to the enemy’s attack, she had also managed to defend herself.
A layer of dark red blood membrane promptly spread over her entire body, blocking the small shard of stone that had shot toward her face.
Only a very few people noticed the wound that had appeared on Gilal’s left thumb.
“So that’s how it is,” Guan Tong thought. “With no enemy blood to use, she can only use her own.”
For some reason, he felt that Gilal and L' really were an exceptionally well-matched pair of opponents.
One tore fragments from its own body and fired them as weapons, while the other manipulated her own blood to form a shield. Both of them fought by injuring themselves.