Merchant Of Yliaster

Polaris glanced around the room, taking in the champions of their race in this strange era. He had never been an authoritarian man, but he was a bit bummed that not even one of the eighteen people around him was a government official.

They learned very early that any support they gave to the government officials in leveling only weakened them, and this made the whole system for power a much more balanced one than one would think. While the federation managed to create an army with a decent level in the end, the members of the said army were still picked through a similar method to the system, them coming from exceptional individuals among the public.

Almost half of the old military personnel were now doing completely unrelated things, but at least the other half was showing promising results. The classes and affinities evened the field, but previous training still mattered. This was especially true for the best of the best.

Nonetheless, reaching level 50 was not so simple. The wall between levels 49 and 50 was not as simple as an experience gap, as no matter how much experience they got, their personnel failed to reach the level.

He himself was a special case, as he reached it through the weight of a whole civilization. Even now, he could feel that his level was forcefully being limited by the tier of their universe. An interplanetary civilization apparently gave a lot of levels even when it was in shambles.

He watched as a platform formed below him, slowly turning into a proper arena, as the small platforms the contenders stood on moved towards the arena, positioning themselves equidistantly around it.

The arena was nothing simple, as it was a flat square platform. Polaris raised an eyebrow seeing the size of it though, as only a single side of the platform was almost ten kilometers in length. Even this showed how much the system thought of the anomalies around him.

Polaris himself couldn't see anything special about the people around him, apart from the weird guy who wore only a scabbard and the young man with the disturbing green eyes. The former was disquietingly calm, while the other one made you feel like he could see into your soul. Polaris was almost sure that that was exactly the case. With a sigh, he prepared himself before speaking.

"The rules are simple. Killing your opponent or making them concede is considered a win. Incapacitation is not counted as winning, as there are some skills that would give people a fighting chance even after that. If you die, you will simply appear on your platform," he spoke, taking in the reactions of the people around him.

None even blinked when he mentioned killing, but that was only expected. There was some surprise on the faces when he said that they would appear on their platforms, though. He couldn't blame them. Seamless resurrection was something that belonged to the realm of the gods, and he didn't think that would change any time soon.

Without further ado, two platforms started to move without any commotion, placing two people in the arena. One of them was the woman who talked about being dogs, while the other one was a man who wore technological armor. Polaris noted that it had an emblem of the Sunless on it, suggesting that this was a man belonging to that organization. He doubted that even the organization knew about their exceptional member.

Two contestants weighed each other, not moving for a moment, but Polaris was not surprised to see the woman launch himself toward the man with a speed no sane person would expect from a human.

Polaris could still follow the woman, though, and watched in quiet interest as blood flowed out of the woman's skin, covering her with a liquid armor. The man, on the other hand, seemed unbothered. He casually took out a gun from a spatial treasure before aiming without haste. His movements were casual, but they were still blindingly fast from a normal perspective.

The shot was not loud, and a blue beam of light was released from the gun, impacting the blood-cowled woman with a blinding flash. The floor along the beam's trajectory bubbled up, immediately turning liquid, but the relentless figure of the woman kept pushing through the beam, causing the first change of expression on the man's face.

In the last moment, the man threw himself to the side, dodging the charge of his not-so-graceful attacker. He flipped in the air once before landing and fired a couple more times, the beams impacting the slowed form of the woman, but it was still futile.

As the woman came to a stop, Polaris could see that she was not completely unharmed, as her armor was gone at the site of impact, but the revealed skin was relatively unharmed, showing only a slight burn.

"You are a ranger? Two can play that game," the woman said, and blood started to boil on her skin once more, slowly turning into projectiles around him. As she worked on them, the man kept firing at her, but all of his attacks were met with the same indifference of the woman's blood armor. His attacks were simply too weak to do anything against her.

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A moment later, she launched around a dozen spikes of blood toward the man, and he was quick to dodge to the side. Just as the man dodged the projectiles with the breadth of a hair, they slowly turned, locking once more on him.

"Fuck," the man said, as he was nicked in the arm by one of them, and his eyes went wide as he turned his gun towards the injured limb. Without a moment of hesitation, he fired, and his limb disappeared with a flash, only leaving a stump. He showed no apparent signs of weakness and turned to shoot down the spikes, taking them down one by one.

"You realized their effect that quickly? I thought you were just a weakling," the woman said, her eyes locked onto the blood spikes. As their numbers went down, their maneuverability increased, indicating that their control was manual, but they were all gone soon, consumed by bursts of blue light.

The man put away his gun, which was scalding hot after he fired it more than fifty times in a short span of time, and pulled out an interesting contraption. It was a hexagon with no apparent function, but as he let it go, it hovered in the air, and he stepped on it, slowly flying up.

So he is a tech-based fighter. Polaris thought as he watched. These people were really reliable when you faced threats you could plan against, yet, as shown, they were a bit lacking when it came to unknown threats. The man simply needed more preparation, as he was reduced to a random gunslinger against the sudden attack of the woman.

The man floated above the battlefield, his face thoughtful, and the woman below was once more busy. Blood swirled around her before it was launched like a tide over the surface of the arena, and in no time, the whole space was covered in blood.

"Since you have the air, I will claim the ground," she said, grinning, and suddenly, a pillar of blood shot up from the ground, barely missing the mercenary above.

The man smiled helplessly before throwing a couple of round objects around him, which also started to hover in the air, before starting to release a whizzing sound, making the air around him vibrate.

"It seems I will be a lot less rich after this," the man said and sighed. Another blood pillar shot up from below, this time way bigger, but he watched in apathy as it closed in.

Just as it was dangerously close, the pillar started to vibrate, losing its stability, and one of the balls in the air turned into a scalding orange. The blood pillar splashed downwards harmlessly, and the man gestured downwards, sending the guilty gadget towards the woman.

The sphere moved with blinding speed and exploded near the woman, releasing a wave of vibration visible to the naked eye. The blood rippled around them, but the woman seemed to thrust her armor's defensive capabilities.

Next moment, though the waves of vibration reached the woman, and she released a hideous scream as they penetrated seamlessly into his armor, as it splashed to the ground. The liquid looked the same, but it suddenly lost all stability, exposing the woman to the vibrations.

For a moment, her body endured, and it seemed like she would survive, yet in the next second, her eyes popped like balloons, the fluids splashing into the shallow lake below her.

As if nothing had happened, everyone materialized in their original platforms immediately, the woman immediately glaring daggers at her enemy. She seemed to get over the pain immediately, but pride burned in her eyes.

"How did you do that?" she asked, furious.

The guilty man glanced at her with apparent indecision before speaking. "I just destroyed the components inside blood. Your ability seemed to be based around the concept of blood, so I made it so that the blood around you couldn't be considered blood anymore," the man spoke, his tone devoid of emotion.

What a terrifying man, Polaris thought. He couldn't see anyone's name until the ranks were dealt, but he had no doubt that this man would be one of the greatest in the federation in the future. After all, the federation was a society based on technology, and the man knew how to use his tech pretty well, as it seemed.

The platforms moved once more, and Polaris' eyes widened with interest as he saw the man with the scabbard descend to the arena. Before him, a man in a simple black outfit stood. The outfit had no logo, but it was unmistakably an outfit for a career path not so respectable. It almost blended with the air around the man, making him harder to notice.

The man with the scabbard, on the other hand, wore everyday clothes, and it seemed like he was fortunate to have his weapon with him. Still, his uneasy calm remained as he glanced at his enemy.

There was silence in the arena for a few seconds as opponents weighed each other. And the man in black was the first one to move. He took a step forward, starting to move, but immediately stopped in wariness as the man before him grabbed the handle of his weapon.

His wariness seemed to amuse the mysterious man, as he smiled for the first time. "You have good instincts," he said, and pulled out his weapon. Under the disbelieving glances of the watchers, only a small knife appeared from the big scabbard, and the man put it away immediately as if he was embarrassed.

Even the assassin seemed to be at a loss, as he stared at his enemy, who was still wearing a calm expression. "Are you making fun of me?" he said, sounding confused and finally moved, charging forward.

There was, though, a small problem. As the man's body moved forward, a part was left behind with a shocked expression on it. The body didn't go far without the head, as it fell down a few meters ahead, twitching as neurons in it fired randomly, still not getting caught up to the sudden absence of their commanding center.