The Traveler Initiative [A Monster Evolution LitRPG]

Pentera vs. Garreth

We wished Pentera good luck as he left the waiting room, and I couldn't help but think that he'd need it. With Garreth, the leader of Kurra, as his opponent, his chances at victory were pretty slim. Sure, Pentera's lightning magic packed a powerful punch, but Garreth was a defensive expert, and breaching his defenses was easier said than done.

When the horn blared, Pentera started casting while trying to get some distance from Garreth, who opted for a wait-and-see approach while turtling behind his shield. It seemed like an odd choice to give a mage room to cast his spells, but I'm sure Garreth had his reasons. The first spell activated, and Pentera summoned a slowly moving cloud that crackled with lightning, quickly followed by four more. The clouds floated around the arena in a lazy pattern, seemingly there for area denial.

Pentera quickly realized that Garreth still hadn't attacked, merely inching closer behind his raised shield. Taking the opportunity for what it was, Pentera started casting again, this time something more complicated. I watched intently as the spell matrix was formed, even now practicing my spell recognition abilities. The matrix was completed and I got excited to see what the spell was gonna be like. All I could tell from the matrix was that it was a lightning spell and that there was some sort of delay involved.

Pentera smashed the butt of his staff into the ground with a shout and… nothing happened. He didn't seem perturbed by this and carried on casting a new spell, so I assumed the spell had activated properly. This went on for a while with Pentera casting spell after spell, mostly area denial and traps, while Garreth continued inching closer seemingly uncaring about his increasingly hostile surroundings. All manners of spells surrounded Pentera, so many that it may be impossible to approach him at this point without getting blasted to high hell.

One would think that Garreth would be nervous at this point, instead, it was Pentera that got increasingly antsy. He started to fidget, probably unsure about how to proceed in this odd situation. Garreth had done nothing except approach menacingly, but he didn't seem the least bit intimidated. Eventually, Pentera decided to go big or go home, starting to weave a spell matrix that looked magnitudes more difficult than anything he'd cast so far, and I perked up with interest. Looks like I'll get to see another high-level spell!

Except, this was exactly what Garreth had been waiting for, apparently. Casting big spells took more concentration and discarding the spell mid-casting would present a huge opening. Garreth shouted with conviction and his entire body started glowing.

"Fate Reversal…" Nimma sighed next to me. "Pentera is gonna lose."

I shot her a questioning look but had to redirect my attention back to the battle as all hell broke loose. Garreth charged right at Pentera with crazy speed, ignoring every trap along the way as thunder and lightning pelted his body. He seemed to intentionally trigger as many traps as possible.

"It's a high-level sword and shield skill," Nimma explained after seeing my look. "You're completely protected for three seconds, and then retaliate with a strike proportionate to the damage you defended. It's Garreth's trump card."

True to her word, the lightning seemed to follow Garreth's path, being dragged along by his sword like violent spaghetti. He was only one step away from Pentera when a truly massive bolt of lightning exploded from the ground, the spell that did nothing earlier finally revealing itself. I was blinded for a second, but couldn't help feeling bad for Pentera. Apparently Garreth knew about Pentera and his skills, but Pentera wasn't aware of Fate Reversal. Garreth emerged from the lightning, completely unharmed. His sword had collected a massive amount of power and was glowing brightly, all the lightning absorbed.

I saw Pentera attempt to cast something in a last-ditch effort, but it was pointless. The sword flashed forward and with a violent explosion, Pentera was sent flying into the arena's wall. There was no uncertainty about what just happened, as the system's horn immediately declared Garreth the winner. I would need to be careful of this skill, when I met Garreth in the semi-finals.

Pentera was carried back into the waiting room, barely clinging to life, but as usual, he was completely healed as soon as he crossed the threshold. A few words I recognized as swears escaped his mouth and he seemed generally pissed, so we gave him some room. Lord knows I'd be a bit miffed too if I had been so completely shut down. Unfortunately, there was no time to discuss the match, as I was being called to the stage. Eager to fight, I sprinted out the door and to my designated circle.

From the opposite room emerged Pirsa, Kurra's berserker. Her signature weapon, the gloves resembling a monster's claws, glinted in the red sun as she approached her starting position. I had seen how a prolonged fight massively favored her, getting stronger the more damage she took and dealt, so it was in my best interest to end the fight as fast as possible. I had seen quite a bit of her skill in her previous fight, her kit mostly revolving around infighting. So keeping my distance and using my range to my advantage was the name of the game.

Not that this differed from my usual approach, mind you.

Pirsa vs. Gary

The system kicked off the fight and we both sprang into action. Pirsa rushed towards me while I set up a spell I rarely used, poison caltrops. As the shimmering green caltrops spread in a decently wide area around me, I remembered a short conversation I had with Nimma after my first fight. She had called me an idiot for sealing away an entire array of my skills just because there was a tiny chance of an instant kill. Everybody had stepped into the ring, accepting the chance of death. The system's healing was a nice lifeline, for sure, but it was almost insulting to not go all out. So for now, I decided to use all of my skills in order to win, while keeping some of them as a trump card for later, such as void rend.

Unsurprisingly Pirsa was extremely fast and my time to prepare was running out. I managed to activate both poison aura and void pressure before she reached me, the claws already descending on me. I activated my physical defense skills, taking the attack head-on to measure how much damage she did. Her claws cut into me my defenses lowering the damage less than I'd liked. I guess that's what happens when a tier seven goes up against a tier nine. A decent chunk of my health vanished and I decided that it was a really bad idea to take any more hits, a void jump portal opened behind me, allowing me to teleport away from her.

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By making the portal barely big enough to fit me, I foolishly assumed that I would escape without a hitch since Asphons were quite a bit taller than me, but Pirsa jumped headlong into my portal to pursue. I tried collapsing the portal on her, but she was too fast, completely passing through before I did so. I swore and activated my shield spell, completely blocking out a combination of skill-enhanced swipes.

I lost three times as much MP as I would've lost HP by blocking with this spell, so I was losing thousands of mana with every swipe. Of course, my MP pool was rather massive and I could continue to tank in this way, but even my MP would run out if I let her continue like this. Eager to put some distance between us, I detonated a poison bomb point-blank and sent three of them after her for good measure.

I activated my rush skill and the grass walk/ghost walk spell combo to get a speed boost and leaped away from her, an array of ten void javelins appearing over my head. I didn't fire them yet, keeping them at the ready to use as needed, while desperately running from Pirsa. Even with all of my speed boni, Pirsa was still faster than me, by now having activated her own speed buffs. Realizing I couldn't keep my javelins as backup, I started a barrage of the spells, watching in horror as Pirsa dodged almost all of them, nimble as a cat.

And I could've sworn she got hit by a few of them on purpose.

It quickly became clear why, as the damage she took buffed her even further. Two lightning-quick swings sent ten energy blades my way, one blade from each claw on her gloves. Out of options, I used the massively more expensive void teleport to reappear at my starting point, also known as, the other side of the arena. Not wasting any time, I cast void laser, sending the devastating beam after Pirsa, who somehow avoided it by using another skill.

"What the fuck?" I couldn't help but shout angrily as Pirsa seemed to dance around the destruction of my laser.

The only damage I'd done so far was from my poison debuffs and some hits she took on purpose. This was bad, really bad. I had seen this exact scenario play out in her last fight. She carefully calculated the damage she was taking to maximize the effect from her berserking skill and then rushed down her opponent, whittling down their health while dodging everything they threw at her. Not wanting to let her get close, I teleported once again, this time into the air, snapping open my wings to glide around.

A plan quickly forming, I cast lava torrent, another spell I rarely used. As the name implies, a torrent of red-hot lava spews forth, similar to void laser, but with more lava. Of course, Pirsa dodges this quite easily as well, but contrary to void laser, the lava of this spell remains after the spell is over. So I cast the spell again and again, each time getting three seconds of torrential lava, slowly but surely covering the entire arena. With some clever lava placement, I manage to keep Pirsa away from me for an entire ten seconds, but she finally gets close enough for whatever she has planned. Unfortunately, there was a height limit to the arena, so I was barely twenty meters in the air. That was quite high, of course, but definitely not out of range for a tier nine warrior.

Pirsa's legs start glowing and she jumps, shooting at me like a rocket, a barrage of energy blades flying ahead of her. Undeterred, I teleported away once again, letting her hit nothing but air. Using void teleport felt unfair, and was most certainly frustrating to deal with, but so what? Pirsa had been toying with me so far, frustrating me to no end with her uncanny ability to dodge.

I reappeared on the other side of the arena once again, immediately firing off another lava torrent while carefully watching my opponent who was still in mid-air. Her whole body shone brightly, similar to Garreth's activation of fate reversal earlier and I braced myself for some kind of trump card. Any and all defensive skills activated and I teleported once again for good measure, not wanting to provide her with an opportunity.

It was all in vain.

I reappeared behind a pillar, cutting the line of sight and activated stealth. Then, almost as if she teleported herself, Pirsa appeared right in front of me. I could tell that it wasn't a teleport, but her simply moving so fast that my eyes weren't able to keep up. I locked up from the shocking display of speed and got hit twice before managing to recast shield. I had dropped the defensive spell in favor of stealth since it gave off a visible glow, which turned out to be a mistake. With Pirsa buffed as she was, the two hits brought my health dangerously low and there was some odd debuff at work that increased the pain I felt.

I cursed and teleported once more, cursing even harder as Pirsa appeared before me a split second later. Whatever buff she'd used made her speed shoot through the roof, and I could only hope that it didn't last too long. I teleported again, this time right into a big glob of lava. My plan was to cover the arena in lava, leveraging my heat immunity passive to put Pirsa on the back foot. Ideally, I would've liked to have spread even more lava, but it would have to do.

As expected, Pirsa relentlessly pursued me, which turned out to be a mistake this time around. She stood in the lava, her feet immediately sizzling, no doubt damaging her quite a bit. Much to my surprise, she didn't seem to care. Due to her berserking nature, she simply opted to take the damage, content in the knowledge that it would only make her stronger. Either that or she was too far gone to care. It was hard to tell since berserking skills affected your mental state quite a bit.

Recognizing my only option left, I mentally shrugged and entered a good old-fashioned slugfest with Pirsa. Either my MP would run out first, or Pirsa's HP. The thought made me hesitate for a split second. Wouldn't that mean Pirsa losing would mean she'd die? I couldn't see her stopping before zeroing out, even if the system declared me the winner. Remembering Nimma's words, I had no choice but to continue, trusting that Pirsa had enough control to stop at the appropriate time.

I fired off a barrage of void spells, purely burning through my VMP so that all of my MP could go towards keeping up the shield. Pirsa, of course, dodged a lot of my spells, but the explosions still chipped away at her health. I cursed the fact that Pirsa wasn't big enough to use giant spike on, but then again, she'd probably dodge the spell anyway.

On and on we went, and I started to sweat as I watched my MP slowly but surely bottoming out. I was frantically trying to come up with another plan when things finally changed. Pirsa's super buff finally ran out, her movements slowing down significantly. Wanting to capitalize on the opening, I redoubled my efforts, but Pirsa jumped away with an impressive leap, landing in a lava-free area.

Happy to finally have some distance again, I got ready for the final clash, when Pirsa turned her back and simply started to walk away from me. Confused, I looked around, eventually spotting the system message declaring me the winner. Apparently, I shouldn't have worried about Pirsas' cognitive functionality but my own. In the heat of battle I'd somehow completely missed the system horn ending the match. I breathed a sigh of relief as the system removed the lava from below me and made my way back to the waiting room.

I'd won, but Pirsa had pushed me hard, almost eking out a win. It made me excited for my next matches, but a worrying thought snaked its way into my head. Pirsa and Rollo had a similar fighting style, being both brawling infighters. If Pirsa could push me that hard…

Did I even stand a chance against Rollo?