Kain’s expectations about the practice battle were completely fulfilled.
He wouldn’t call it a thrashing due to his pride…but their lack in cooperation compared to their opponents was readily available.
Seamless move combos gave Kain the illusion that they were facing more than just five opponents.
In fact, the talent of Kain’s year was so overflowing that some of the professors secretly referred to them as a “golden generation” that may allow the college to reclaim the first ranked seat in a couple of years.
One-on-one Kain, Serena, and even Soren would likely be able to be evenly matched or even able to beat many of the second years, and possibly even weaker members of the top 5 if it were a favorable match up.
In raw strength, Serena was already similar to the top second-years since both of her revealed contracts were now at yellow-grade, and when combined with her limitless spiritual power she was an overwhelming opponent to face in battle.
Kain’s battle methods were extremely difficult to guard against in battle, and with the exception of the defensively focused Kyria, and Cressida who specialized in the mental-attribute, none of the others really had any defensive methods against Bea.
And with the powerful offensive and defensive abilities of the orange-grade Vespirae and yellow-grade Aegis, Kain wasn’t afraid of those resistant to Bea anyways.
Finally Soren, despite never having beaten Kain or Serena, wasn’t some weakling either. He was someone with a powerful and rare dragon-related affinity. Any one of his dragon contracts could probably fight many average spiritual creatures at the same level.
However, all of their individual strengths ended up greatly reduced in the face of their enemies’ careful planning and collaboration to make up for each other’s weaknesses.
Despite having limitless spiritual power, most of the attacks from the only two contracts Serena has exposed were unable to pass the defensive measures set up by Kyria.
Normally, her limitless spiritual power would have allowed her to bide her time until her enemy’s spiritual power was exhausted.
However, Alexei’s gift can send any chosen targets into a berserk-like state of increased power but reduced intelligence and consciousness, meaning that they may even attack allies indiscriminately. Unfortunately, this con was completely negated due to Cressida.
Kain noticed that all of their opponents’ contracts had a strange brand on different locations of their bodies, but was unable to deduce their purpose until they were activated. The brand was apparently applied by one of Cressida’s contracts and allowed the contract to control the bodies once they lost their intelligence due to their berserk-like state.
Although the effect is similar to what Bea can achieve, it is far inferior in flexibility since the brand takes time to apply and the target can’t resist during the application. Therefore, it’s a seemingly useless skill that would really only be able to be applied to already unconscious foes or allies rather than enemies.
However, the cons of this skill and Alexei’s gift perfectly counteracted one another.
On top of all that, the brands seemed to have a similar effect to Eve’s effects on the Vespirae and made all of the controlled targets extremely resistant to Bea’s effects. Most of the opposing contracts were yellow-grade, so Bea already had to exert more effort to try and control them one level lower, now with the increased resistance full control was almost impossible.
With much of their two strongest students’ offensive means neutralized, the first-years fell into an immediate disadvantage. Especially since all of their opponents’ spiritual creatures had their strength boosted due to Alexei, while the role of their brain was taken over by Cressida.
However, the first-years were still able to put up a fight. Even in a berserk state, the first-years only fell behind the second-years slightly in strength, mostly due to the strength of their top 3 students.
Therefore, the match for a period fell into a boring stalemate for a period with neither side being able to cause significant damage to their opponents.
At one point, Kain even tried to play dirty and control the second-year students directly, but unfortunately during the expedition to the relic Alexei and Jin must have gleaned some information since they were wearing equipment that greatly increased their mental strength and Kyria also seemed to be on guard— particularly against Kain.
A turnaround almost occurred at one point. Kain used the skill tome he’d exchanged for to greatly enhance Bea’s abilities and allow her to wrestle for control of the spiritual creatures with Cressida, causing a delay in the enemies’ collective movements.
During that brief period, most of the enemy lineup could have been eliminated if Cressida hadn’t unfortunately activated her gift. Sending the myriad of attacks sent towards the helpless spiritual creatures, instead flying towards Cressida who was safely behind the several layers of shields set up by her allies.
She did suffer some damage due to the high strength of the bombardment, but unfortunately one of Kyria’s contracts also happened to have some healing ability.
Only the attacks of Serena’s star-attribute contract and Kain’s Vespirae guards still struck the spiritual creatures controlled by Bea, since they had the most resistance to mental-attribute attacks. Resulting in 3 among the enemy lineup, the contracts of Alexei, Jin and Rhiannon, being eliminated due to the severity of their injuries.
Afterwards, all of the enemy was more on guard and despite Bea managing to slightly mess with their coordination, another opportunity so great never presented itself again.
Instead, because all of the minds of the contracts were being manipulated by either Cressida via her contract or, for brief moments, Bea, the illusion abilities of Ranya weren’t able to exert any effect. Meaning that they were essentially fighting 4 against 5. Read latest chapters at m_v-l’e|m,p| y- r
Kairos’ cursed book had almost as diverse a range of support and defensive abilities as Kyria’s contracts, but all at a much lower level.
Honestly, despite not being able to exert his full strength in this battle, he seemed to be greatly inspired by Kyria and even after the battle would continue to stare at her with sparkling eyes of admiration—she was the direction he should be heading towards when refining his future combat style!
Although Kain was gratified that Kairos will likely usher in an explosive increase in strength in the near future, it also meant that he’d also be a greater opponent in the future as well.
Soren’s contracts had some of the greatest frontal combat abilities of their side and were still able to suppress 1 to 2 of the berserk enemies alone. Similarly, Serena and Kain’s contracts were also fighting 1 against 2 or even 3 in some cases.
The real turning point came when Jin and Rhiannon likely activated their respective gifts, because suddenly the strengths of the opposing wind and fire-attribute skills of the spiritual creatures on the opposite side strengthened.
Aside from Serena, Kain and the others were already becoming exhausted and were unable to prevent being knocked out of the arena by a fierce and extremely hot gust of wind.
Serena managed to stay standing in the arena, but likely not seeing a means of turning the battle around, at least not without revealing another contract, and also since this was just a training exercise, she chose to forfeit.