Chapter 15 16 Remain
"I'll be stepping out for a little while." Yuna said while bowing.
"You sure you want to miss your son's next match?" Duke Reinhardt said confusedly. The tournament was in full swing with good matches and she was just up and leaving all of a sudden.
"I have a matter that needs my attention very quickly, I'll be back before the semifinals." Yuna said before walking out of the stadium. Usually she would just use her spatial magic and enter a portal, but only a handful of people know of the existence of spatial magic.
As Dante was making his way out of the arena, he noticed Ariel and Reiner had finished their matches before him which was impressive. Both were seated in a designated area for tournament placers, it had a row of seats much like a stadium and was in an area carved inside the wall of the coliseum providing a lot of shade.
"Get away from me." Ariel was filled with disgust looking at Reiner.
"Come on! I just want to know the girl who fancies my best friend." Reiner was practically begging Ariel to just chat with him.
"Who even said I fancied him? I barely know him!" Ariel said with a slight blush on her face, but it quickly turned into surprise when she saw Dante walking towards them.
"Oh please, you elves make everything so complicated. Maybe that's why your population grows so slow compared to others." Reiner said while laughing, he wasn't racist but was very blunt sometimes. Elves were long lived species which makes it harder to make babies, but since they were they took matters of mating incredibly seriously.
"Do you ever mind your own business?" Dante asked curiously.
"Never, I like to be informed." Reiner said while crossing his arms with a confident smile.
"No wonder you're so annoying." Dante laughed before sitting between the two quarrelsome individuals.
"Have you seen the first seed?" Reiner said seriously to Dante.
"Is he enough to make you nervous?" Dante was surprised to see Reiner actually serious.
"I don't think I could take him honestly. I'll pass that on to you, my best friend." Reiner patted Dante's back, then turned his head towards Ariel. "I'd suggest you avoid the man as much as possible also, I hear he's merciless."
"I'll figure that out for myself." Ariel said confidently.
"Don't worry, my best friend will avenge you." Reiner said as he patted Dante's back once again.
"Fucking quit." Dante had never been touched by someone so casually before, it takes time to adapt to it. Especially since Reiner is a special type of guy, the one who sees personal boundaries as nothing.
"Here he comes." Reiner said as he pointed towards Carter making his way off the stage, completely ignoring Dante telling him to quit.
Dante stared at Carter but immediately sensed something off about the guy, he reeked of something disgusting but he couldn't put his finger on it.
"What the fuck are you looking at?" Carter asked Dante with his voice filled with disdain.
"Something fucking disgusting." Dante replied casually.
Carter was thrown off by Dante's apathetic nature, but he composed himself quickly.
"Just wait, you filthy pieces of shit." Carter said to Dante's group before walking off to the end of the row to sit alone.
"Nice guy, right?" Reiner said as he chuckled at the interaction they just had.
"Go be best friends with him." Dante suggested seriously.
"Nobody could ever replace you." Reiner replied with a giant grin before patting Dante's back again.
Suddenly Aaron made another announcement.
"The final sixteen, make your way to your designated arena."
"Good luck guys." Reiner said but he got no reply from Dante or Ariel.
"Good luck Riener." Reiner muttered sadly to himself.
As Dante made his way to the arena he gazed at his opponent. It was Aiko who had a serious look on her face, then it slowly changed to a smile.
"Of course I'd get stuck with you." Aiko muttered.
"Bad luck, you could've placed much higher so don't doubt yourself." Dante had personally seen how much she had grown over the years, he had unknowingly found himself to be Aiko's biggest fan.
"I won't go easy on you." Dante said as lightning began to course throughout his body.
"I'd be sad if you did." Aiko said as she began preparing a spell.
"Begin." As Dante bolted straight towards Aiko, she blasted off a huge wave of air that blew him back to the outskirts of the arena. As he regained his balance he let out a big sigh, across the arena he saw Aiko behind multiple elementals.
"You really used all your mana for this." He thought to himself, she knew she had no chance of beating him but she still didn't make it easier on him.
In front of him were four elementals which were Wind, Fire, Earth and Water. All four of them were Rank two monsters which would put almost everyone in the tournament in dire straits, but this was just a mild warmup for Dante.
"I thought I'd give you a warm up before you fight that parasite of a human." Aiko smiled before sitting down and waiting for her elimination.
Right after Aiko sat down all her elementals wasted no time and began to assault Dante.
The fire elemental rapidly fired multiple wide ranged attacks while the earth elemental began shooting pillars of earth, while they were doing that the wind elemental was hovering above the arena constantly shooting off wind spears. Only the water elemental wasn't immediately attacking, it just stood still with its eyes glued on Dante.
Dante was forced onto the defensive for a short period before he finally saw the Wind Elemental get a little too close and immediately lunged at it, but right before he could reach it a long tendril of water wrapped around his ankle and slammed him back into the ground.
A giant crater formed from the sheer power of the slam and weight of Dante, slowly he got back up and wiped a small amount of blood that trickled down from his nose.
"So it's like that huh?" Dante thought with a smile.
Three of the elementals would focus solely on attack while the water elemental would intercept or block Dante.
Dante wasn't a fan of taking a beating for no reason so he did what he does best, brute force. He started channeling more lightning into his body and immediately vanished from sight, the more lightning he imbued his body with the more damage his internal organs would take. Thankfully he had pretty much trained his body to be mostly resistant to lightning so the only downside was the huge amount of mana it consumed.
He appeared before the water elemental and sliced it right across its midsection, but during this one slash over fifty had actually landed. The water elemental was basically erased from existence, right after that he appeared before the wind elemental. The only one of the last three elementals that could feasibly keep up with his speed was this one, just like the water elemental it too was erased.
As he made his way to the earth elemental it did something that surprised him, it used its life to fuel a spell that shot spikes out of the entire arena they were in.
Dante jumped into the air but immediately realized his mistake when he saw a giant ball of fire only a few feet from his face.
"Fuck." A giant explosion took place over fifty feet in the air and right after it exploded you could see Dante's body fly straight into the ground.
A huge crater formed once again that went over ten feet into the ground, slowly Dante walked out and surprised the crowd. He had nothing more than a few burns on his forearms and a little blood flowing from his head, other teens would've been vaporized from the heat of the fireball alone.
"Imagine if I was stronger." Aiko said with a giggle before putting her hands up in defeat.
"You even surprised me there." Dante laughed before pointing his war glaive at her neck which made the blue barrier appear once again.
Dante held his hand out to help Aiko up, but instead of just getting help up she threw herself into him and hugged him.
As she pulled away she kissed his cheek and walked away very quickly.
Ryota at first clenched his fists super tightly before slowly releasing them.
"I can always kill him if he breaks her heart." Ryota thought to himself.