Hard Mode Awakening Challenge

"Tomorrow's match is going to either be the easiest or hardest one in the entire tournament," Jason stated while fiddling with the display controls. "Fast and Lethal is a team made up entirely of stealth users."

"Like the skill Ian uses?" Selenia asked before popping another grape in her mouth.

"Most of them use that exact skill," Vince answered. "You'll see the problem when Jason gets their matches pulled up, though. Four of them use the version of the skill Ian has, but their two leading members seem to have better versions of it."

"Inherent?" Tram asked, covering his mouth to ask while still chewing his steak.

"Either the skill itself or something that has perfect synergies," Jason grunted as the display came to life. "Here it is, this one should give you a good idea of what you will be dealing with."

Ian smiled as Lana slid into the seat next to him with her tray. She gave him one in return when their eyes met.

"Just in time," Claire stated, taking the seat on the other side of Lana. "I'm interested to see their matches. I've only caught a couple of their older highlights."

Ian turned his attention to the display as it loaded up the footage of a man in plate armor moving through a dilapidated village similar to the one they had fought in during their match. The biggest difference was that the match was taking place in the afternoon without a cloud in the sky. Where there had been shadows and darkness everywhere during his match, the man Ian was watching could see everything around him.

When the man turned, two of his teammates could be seen following him. One was a man with a bow and leather armor who was scanning the area with glowing green eyes. The second was a woman holding a staff that gave off little hints of blue from a crystal embedded in the top.

Together, the three would have taken last place at a cosplay contest. While the individual pieces of their gear looked cool by themselves, it was obvious they were dungeon drops from different dungeons and bosses. Everything was different colors and patterns, giving them an extremely distinctive look. It was an indicator they had powerful gear for their level, even if it wasn't all from the same dungeon or sets.

"Their gear must cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not millions," Ashlyn said, eyes honing in on the archer's dark blue chest piece. "I'm pretty sure that chest piece only drops from a level 4100 dungeon in Europe, and has only been seen a few times from one of the rare bosses."

"Yeah, but these aren't the guys we are fighting tomorrow," Lana commented. "Shouldn't we be watching the—"

The entire table got quiet when a man materialized out of seemingly thin air behind the woman with the staff and slammed a dagger into the base of her skull. She was at the back of the line, and the attack was carried out in complete silence. The only sounds that could be heard were the man's armor jostling as he stepped and the arrows from the second man's quiver rustling as he moved.

The assassin grabbed the woman as she fell and silently pulled her into the doorless entrance of the hollowed-out building.

"Holy shit," Ashlyn muttered into the silence as they watched it take a full ten seconds before the two men realized their third was missing.

Claire was about to make a comment when Jason just held up his hand, pointing at the screen where the two men had turned around and were trying to look for signs of what had happened to their caster. They were on edge and clearly being extremely cautious of their surroundings.

The display was still focused on the man in plate, who was slowly following the archer as they moved with their backs to the building in the obvious hope it would limit the opening for the assassins. When he looked away from his partner to scan the seemingly empty street, Ian was confused when the camera switched to the side. A confusion that only intensified when the arm of a man phased through the wall and expertly slit the archer's throat before pulling itself back into the wall.

Half the table let out a gasp when the attack occurred. It had taken less than a second, and it even took a moment for the archer to realize the blood that had sprayed out across the ground in front of him was his own. The man in plate was hit with the original spray, but seemed to freeze in horror when his friend dropped his bow to grab at his neck with both hands. The cut had been deep, far deeper than it seemed with the quick flick of the attacker's wrist, and the archer dropped to the ground with far more blood than Ian thought was possible pouring down his front.

By the time he collapsed completely to the ground, he was dead. A realization that the man in plate made at the same time two individuals suddenly appeared halfway down the road. The man in plate looked at them and let out a scream of rage in their direction. As his legs began to glow, showing the telltale sign of a skill being activated, the man who killed the archer stepped through the wall and drove a glowing dagger into the gap between the chest plate and helm at an upward angle. It went in like a hot knife through butter, and the man's shout was instantly silenced as he fell lifeless to the ground.

Ian sat there in shock as the three people on the screen all disappeared into thin air when the replay ended.

"Alright, those folks are absolutely terrifying," Tram said as a shiver ran up his back. "That's who we are fighting against tomorrow?"

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"Half of them," Jason said with a chuckle. "The second leader doesn't have good clips that showcase their abilities because they don't seem to have a time limit to their stealth. They just show up, give their victims a few well-placed stabs, then disappear again. Nothing flashy, but they are extremely effective."

Ian was watching the replay looped and didn't see any way for him to have done a better job than the team that was being strategically torn apart.

"I'll be able to feel them when they get really close, but it will probably be too late at that point," Lana said with a frown. "Maxing out my aura gave me a small amount of hostility detection, but I'm just going to know they are somewhere around me."

"This is such bullshit," Ashlyn said with a sigh before pointing her fork at the screen. "They wouldn't stand a chance if I were able to bring my pack with me. Mara would be able to smell them and be able to detect the distortions. She's literally custom-built for fighting this kind of enemy."

"She's really upset she can't be with you, too," Selenia replied. "She's been pouting for the past few days. It's adorable."

"Do we have any other ways to identify stealth users?" Ian asked, knowing he didn't have anything himself.

"I can't exactly tell where they are at," Tram said, a thoughtful look coming to his face, "but I do have an area of effect disruption skill that might work. It's only about twenty yards, but I'll try using it when Lana detects them near us."

Ian nodded as everyone turned towards Claire.

"I have nothing for this one," she said, realizing all eyes had turned to her. "Invisible enemies are something we won't deal with for a long time, so I haven't looked at getting any of the space magic skills that will allow me to feel the area around me. The skill point investment just makes it impossible at this point.

"In dungeons, we wouldn't even have anything to worry about with our local dungeons until we are in the ultra-tier, so it isn't something that I planned on us needing. We don't have the worries most parties do about ambush predators in the dungeons either, since Ash's pack can identify most enemies before we can see them."

"If you can pull them out of stealth, you will be able to lay them out pretty well," Vince said, pulling attention to a new clip he put on the screen.

The display zoomed in on a mage, standing in the middle of four of his teammates. The five of them were in a small cavern with their weapons ready, facing outwards as if the emptiness was going to attack them at any moment. Their exhaustion was evident, but there was still a calm, calculated look to the way they held themselves.

Ian's first thought was that they should have been up against the cavern wall to limit their area, but he thought back to the man who had phased through a wall in the last clip and realized that there was a reason the party on the screen only had five members. Just as he was about to ask what was going on, the mage in the middle suddenly pushed his staff into the ground, causing a ring of ice to spray out around the group, peppering the walls of the cavern with tiny ice shards. The skill wasn't very powerful, but the range was extreme, and as the six members of the opposing team suddenly materialized, Ian could only smile at the usefulness of the skill.

Instead of trying to flee, the six members charged the mage's team. The fight was brutal, but it became apparent that the team's skills were entirely based on ambush tactics. They were talented with their daggers, definitely more so than Ian was with his spear, but they didn't have any defensive or utility skills that provided the well-rounded kits needed for a normal team to be successful.

"As you can see, they do manage to win after losing four members," Jason said as the clip finished up. "However, they barely pulled it off against an exhausted team that has nowhere near the destructive power you all do. They might be more comfortable with their weapons, but Nia could kill half that team in a couple of casts, and let's not even talk about that boom stick Lana carries around."

Ian finished his meal as the conversation evolved from the skills they could use to the way they could utilize different types of terrain to cinch victory. As the place started to fill up, and Ashlyn's antics were beginning to draw attention, he excused himself and headed back to his room.

* ~ * ~ *

Ian stared at his ceiling. He wasn't sure if it had been minutes or hours, but he gazed at the dark ceiling as if it was going to provide answers to the questions he couldn't quite formulate. Over the past few months, it was rare that he had problems getting to sleep. There was something about the changes that happened to his body after getting true access to his stats that simply changed the way his body interacted with the world. However, the days events, especially the thorn covered roots, were going to haunt him for some time to come.

He wished he could believe the little voice in his head that tried to rationalize the torment he had endured as the price he needed to pay to protect his friends, but he understood that logic wasn't exactly true. The entire party could continue to grow in relative safety for a long time without taking on this tournament. Even if they didn't have their branding deals or the AO supporting them, they were more than capable of farming enough loot to live very comfortably with their current strength.

He took a deep breath when he saw the clock display tick over to one in the morning. He only needed a few hours of sleep to feel refreshed, and didn't really need to be anywhere before the match in the late afternoon. There wasn't a reason for him to get anxious.

Moving to adjust his pillows for the dozenth time, he heard the ping of an incoming text message. Taking it as a sign, he gave up on trying to sleep as he reached over and grabbed his phone from the nightstand. After putting in his code, he was surprised to find a message from the AO reception desk, letting him know there was a request to set up a meeting with him. His mind froze for a moment when he saw that the requester was the adventurer named Bramble.

Closing his eyes, he shuddered as the memory of the vines trying to tear him apart hit him, but something else came to the forefront of his mind. He could clearly see the look of terror as Bramble watched what her skill was doing to him. He could see the anguish in her eyes and realized that he wasn't the only one suffering from the things they were doing to each other during the tournament.

Making a decision, he wrote up a quick message asking the AO to allow Bramble to use her AO account to directly contact him and to send her a message that he would be open to meeting her. He wouldn't be able to control the time tables for the matches, but was more than happy to adjust his dungeon schedule to make the meeting happen.

He got an instant reply from the night crew at the reception desk, and he placed his phone back on the nightstand. He felt a little bit of the anxiety leave him, knowing that he would be able to talk with her soon about what happened during that match. It wouldn't matter what direction it took; he knew it would help him move in the right direction to put this crazy tournament behind him.

"Let's win today, then we will only have one more," he muttered to himself before closing his eyes and finally falling asleep.