After his own battle, Kain stayed to watch the remaining ones.
Among the matches to decide the rankings of the top 8, Soren unsurprisingly defeated Dwayne. While the close match between Ranya and Kairos ended in Kairos’ victory.
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However, Kairos’ contracts are definitely an unfavourable matchup for Ranya.
The evenly matched and familiar with one another Addison and Aiden, were undoubtedly the longest battle of the day. However, it ended in Aiden’s narrow victory over his sister, meaning that there would be a reversal in the order of their current rankings.
Leonara’s matchup against the rank 9 Camille was unfavorable and ended in defeat.
However, both Finn and Bridge were successful in their respective first matches.
Finally, Elias also caught a break and managed to defeat his first ever opponent—Aria.
After a night of rest and some time in the Training Arena’s battlefield to practice against prospective opponents, Kain was ready for the next day’s battle. His opponent today was Kairos.
Kairos was also an opponent Kain had been particularly wary of, particularly before Bea evolved. Kain had never faced anything similar to a cursed construct before in his life. Would the “brain eating” effects of a brain-eating amoeba be effective against a book?
However, after Bea’s evolution, Bea no longer kills in the same manner as before, she kills by erasing all of a spiritual creatures “mindshards” –an embodiment of their memories, emotions, knowledge, and more. Essentially she erases their sense of self—their consciousness.
Since even cursed constructs are living creatures with a consciousness, then Bea should be effective against both of Kairos’s contracts.
And the simulations Kain ran in the Battlefield also supports this point. However, from the simulations, Kain could tell that it takes several times as long to achieve full control over them than most other spiritual creatures.
Therefore, Kain had adjusted his strategy for this battle in preparation for a drawn out fight.
Today, Kain was arranged to be in the last match in group 1.
In the three matches before him, Serena defeated the current rank 6 Dwayne, Ranya defeated the current rank 8 Hailey, and Soren narrowly defeated the dark-horse Lucas.
Meanwhile, Addison, Aiden, Finn, Bridge, and Elias all defeated their respective opponents in earlier matches and were sitting together to cheer on Kain who was currently on stage.
While both of Kairos’ contracts, the cursed doll and magic book, were already released, Kain was again starting alone on the stage equipped with an enchanted armor and spear.
However, everyone knew that this was just to conceal as much of his information as possible and that he’d release his contracts soon enough. In fact, Bea was already on the stage invisible to the naked eye.
At the signal to start, Kain began his familiar operation of covering the field in mist. Not that Kairos particularly cared. Neither of his contracts had eyes in the traditional sense, so neither sensed their opponents relying on sight.
Of course, Kain already knew this based on the simulation in the Battlefield, where one time the cursed book had even managed to strike his body directly through the mist.
Therefore, at the same time Kain produced the mist, he also released all 18 of his Vespirae guards. Kain had discovered during the simulations that having as many creatures present as possible was the most effective strategy for confusing the opponent. Especially since the cursed doll was extremely powerful in 1 to 1 combat, but had no area of effect skills.
While the cursed book was much more balanced, most of its skills also favoured attacks directed at a single target, defense and control.
At the same time the Vespirae guards were moving around rapidly to distract and confuse their senses, Bea’s threads were creeping towards both of Kairos’ contracts.
When the threads were almost upon them, both of the sensitive spiritual creatures sensed that something was amiss and tried to move from the area. However, Bea could produce hundreds of threads, each capped with a split, and it was impossible to dodge all of them.
The moment even one of the threads made contact and a split was added, the threads were retracted.
Bea’s split got to work with trying to exert control over its new host, and even Kain began to use the spiritual skill to boost Bea’s all-round stats that he’d traded from the System. He’d been learning it during his free time since the beast-tide and his current proficiency with the skill allowed him to boost Bea by 30%, as long as he sacrificed 100% of his spiritual power.
Finally, the Bea was able to make some headway in controlling both of the cursed constructs. Within all of the time it took to see some effects, the cursed book had mounted a defence around itself, Kairos and the doll. Meanwhile, the doll was taking the time to launch targeted attacks one by one against the Vespirae in the mist.
So far, one of the guards had actually died, and another two were seriously injured.
However, with Bea beginning to exert more control, there was finally a gap in the cursed book’s defence. Kain directed all of the Vespirae flying around as a distraction to launch attacks at the three the second that the shield went down.
Unfortunately, that brief moment of weakness in the shield only allowed for three stingers to penetrate the shield. Of which only 2 actually hit their target—the doll.
However, that was enough to knock it out of commission. Now Kairos was only left with the book.
But this confirmed one thing for Kain. In all that time that the book was maintaining the shield, it had not launched any attacks whatsoever. Meaning that the book must be opened to the page in order to use the skill. It was limited to using only one skill at a time.
However, since it was no longer limited to the one page for the shield, it turned to a new page that Kain was unfamiliar with.
A glowing black circle of sigils appeared on the ground beneath the book, from which three large shadowy entities crawled out.
‘Well he didn’t do that during the beast tide…is it a new skill or was he holding back even during the most tense moments.’
Each of the figures moved as fast as the Vespirae, and one that didn’t start moving quickly enough had a massive torso punched through its abdomen by the shadow. A nearby wasp to the one just murdered sent a fierce attack in the shadow’s direction, but it went straight through it to strike the ground. It appeared to be able to control whether it was a solid entitity or not.
Now Kain only had 14 guards left, 2 dead and 2 injured. Two of the remaining shadows continued to chase after the Vespirae darting around, while one of them went searching the mist for something—Kain? Whatever was, to this moment, impacting its mind? Or maybe both?
All the while, Kain was channeling his spiritual power into Bea to continue wearing down its mind. They were now in a battle of attrition.
However, finally Bea broke the balance. The book began to fall gently to the floor. Its pages slowly fluttered closed and then all three shadows faded into nothingness.
He had won.