first tournament battle

Thinking about the offer for a second, James noticed that some key information was missing. For him, at least the rewards he would receive were the deciding factor on if he would participate in such a tournament.

"Miss Lea, I believe you forgot to mention the rewards I will be receiving for my hard labor. O, and if you can disclose it, I wouldn't mind finding out what exactly the realm gets as a reward either."

Raising her brows slightly, Lea sighed.

"I totally forgot about that in all my excitement. You will be fairly compensated, you can be sure of that, for every match you win you will be given a single item or a set of items that are linked to each other. The value of your reward will exponentially increase with every match, and to top that all off, the reward will be hand-picked by 'him', so you can be sure that it will be something that is of great use to you. As for the rewards the realm will receive, even I don't know that yet, the only thing I know is that it will be of great help."

Hearing about the rewards James couldn't help but grow excited, the rewards would undoubtedly be extremely good, but for them to be hand-picked by the system itself. He doubted he himself could pick out better rewards if he was given the chance. Still, something still didn't sit right with James, a big opportunity like this would always come with an extremely big penalty for failure, but up until now, he hadn't heard of any kind of penalty.

"Is there a penalty for losing a match, miss Lea?"

"For you, there isn't one. Well, a kind of indirect penalty, the lower we are in the tournament the bigger the difference between our realm and the others will become. This means that you will undoubtfully have a disadvantage if we lose early on. I can see you have big ambitions that stretch beyond my little realm, and that is fine, but those ambitions will be difficult to fulfill if the other realms are too far above us. 'he' decided that this was enough of a punishment, so no direct one is needed."

James dove into deep thought when he heard what Lea was saying. He indeed had plans to visit many different realms and sanctuaries with the goal of finding unique opportunities and treasures in those places. He couldn't deny that this would become exponentially more difficult the stronger the natives of the said realm were.

"I would be more than happy to become the representative in this tournament under those conditions miss Lea."

A wide grin crept up onto Lea's face when she heard James's words, it also seemed that a huge wave of relief had come over her.

"Thank goodness, you were honestly my last hope. If you had rejected my offer then I would have had to pick some third-rate player, and due to the fact that I only have 1 slot that would have been difficult. And by the way, you can drop the miss, just call me Lea, from now on we are partners."

Setting down her teacup yet again Lea flipped her hand, making a 4 feet tall hologram appear. The figure that appeared was a young man with a lot of blond hair that was standing almost like a mane on top of his head. In addition to this, he also had cat-like ears making him look like a young lion. The armor he was wearing didn't seem too impressive, James guessed that it was epic set equipment at best. The weapon in his hand did seem to be somewhat impressive, looking to be a fragment-legendary sword with golden flames coming off it.

"This is your opponent, he is a 19-year-old berserker from the Sun Realm, a Realm 1 rank higher than our starlight realm. He is the son of an elder in one of the apex powers of the Sun Realm, coupled with his astonishing talent he is a force to be reckoned with. I can give you a lot of info on him, down to the skills he has, but honestly, you don't need it, just the difference in stats alone makes it almost impossible for that guy to win."

James found this only reasonable, even apex powers should have no way of obtaining a mystical flame as strong as his, and since the boost Legendary equipment gave was mainly in the form of percentages there was no way even a young prodigy of some apex guild could be a match for him when it came to pure stats. Even so, he was still curious as to how strong they were, to see how much leeway he had.

"I know that you are right Lea, but could you still tell me his combat standard and some of his strongest items and abilities? I just want to see where someone like that stands."

Lea just nodded, she could understand James's curiosity, and she wouldn't lose anything by telling him.

"I don't see why not. Let's start with his combat standard, he has just reached the Domain Realm a year ago and is still stuck in the first level, in the realms of Truth he hasn't made that big of an accomplishment. He is stuck in the first realm, but I presume he will be comprehending the ascended realm in the near future. His items are nothing to write home about, he has a full set of 8-piece Epic set equipment, I have to say it is quite good for epic set equipment but compared to even one of your better pieces it is nothing. His sword on the other hand is quite decent, being a Fragment-Legendary sword, it is on the lower half of the spectrum when you compare it to other swords of the same grade, but I would still look out for its skills. His race is the Golden Lion Race, a Peak race just like your high human. He doesn't have any trump cards apart from some soul-saving ones that won't be of any help in the arena anyway, so don't worry about that."

He didn't know what he had expected but James felt kind of disappointed, even whit consumables that increased his stats permanently, that this young man of the Sun Realm had undoubtfully taken. His stats couldn't be more than 5 thousand in each of them if even that, compared to James's highest stat of 59,194 in strength, he didn't stand a chance.

Lea picked up on this and sternly looked at James, she couldn't have her opportunity ruined because James lost motivation.

"Don't become complacent just because you are so far ahead at the moment, people from apex powers, especially ones like this young man get more resources the higher Tier they are. So, he is going to creep up on you if you don't constantly improve yourself. Plus, this young man is from the Lion guild, an apex guild that has a fairer approach when it comes to disturbing recourses. That means that his status as the son of one of the elders isn't helping him much, but that won't be the same with other young masters from apex guilds you meet."

James nodded, he knew what Lea was trying to prevent, but she truly didn't have to worry. Even if he was a little shocked at how far ahead he was, these players weren't his goal in the first place. The real challenge was the ancient and primordial gods, and he knew how far behind them he was just from the confrontation with the god of the blade.

"You don't have to worry about that Lea, I know there are bigger fish in the pond."

"good, good"

Lea said while whipping her forehead, if she could sweat it would look like a lake up there.

"If you are ready, we can send you to the arena any time."

James thought for a second before asking one last question.

"Will I be seeing you after the battle is over?"

Lea couldn't help but chuckle.

"Mis me already? I'm joking, yes, I will be the one handing you your prize. 'he' only personally meets the winner at Tier 5 and above. If you have nothing else to ask, I will start the battle, remember, he might not be very strong but be careful and try to end the battle as quickly as possible."

James gave her a light smile back.

"Don't worry, I'll be back here in a flash."

Once again, the same golden and white portal appeared before James, stepping through it he could see a barren wasteland. All the grass was withered away, and the only other obstacles were some dead trees and big rocks. In contrast to all of that, around 5 miles opposite of him stood a young man with a big head of golden hair, but in total contrast to the fearless man he saw on the hologram. This one seemed to be scared, really scared.

James instantly knew what was going on, his opponent may have had access to less info than he did, but he surely knew something about James. So, it was only natural that he was scared, he frankly didn't stand a chance.

Seeing this as a good opportunity to test out his new skills James rushed in. His opponent seemed to be preparing for a frontal attack after being frozen stiff for a second, but before James got into anywhere close to melee range, he activated one of his new skills.

space shattering blades

special cracks started appearing rapidly all-around James with him as their center, this continued for only a second before the space started humming and shaking, indicating that it became too unstable to stay in one piece. Space broke, and countless, purple-colored shards flew in all directions revealing an early darkness of void. The broken pieces of space didn't make it far though because they seemed to be forced to move toward James. Once they were around 5 yards away from him, they stopped attracting to him and started floating towards each other, not stopping until 10 deep purple-colored blades with bright stars littered within them were created. This whole process only took a second but by the time it was done the broken space had long rebuilt itself.

While James was taking a quick glance at his new skills performance. He felt quite disappointed, he had only managed to create 10 swords out of the maximum amount of 20. There were two explanations for why he fell short, the first one was that he simply had too little strength and the second one was that the space in this special arena was incredibly stable. It didn't matter either way, the fact of the matter was that he didn't have enough power. Even though his performance was off, he couldn't help but marvel at the skill itself, shattering space as a Tier 1 was unheard of, even whit the amount of power he had he was pretty sure that without this skill it would be close to impossible for him.

While James was in his own thought for a second the young man of the lion guild didn't dare approach him. He was already terrified of him once he heard about the stats this guy had from the administrator. But to think he could shatter space as a Tier 1 with a single skill, was insanity, what kind of legacy did you have to have to get such powerful Tier 1 skills?

Seeing that his opponent was basically standing frozen in a defensive stance James took this chance to end it and test out a theory he had been wondering about.

Jumping up, James pointed his sword downwards to perform the most advanced combat technique he could perform at the moment, the one he learned from the primordial god of the blade. Only this time he didn't only point down his own blade, but also the 10 deep purple blades that were circling him.

Looking up the young man of the Lion guild widened his eyes; he could not see James anymore. He seemed to be covered by a thousand light spots that were rapidly growing bigger, most of them being a dark purple color but he didn't have time to think about that at this moment. Before his amazement wore off the sword strikes had already landed, not only killing the youth instantaneously but also decimating the terrain around him. Once the dust settled the only thing that could be seen was a huge crater with James slowly falling from above it.

Falling down James felt the mental exhaustion kicking, it was true that thanks to his space blades he could create more images of piercing swords, but the amount of mental energy that it required was even more than the amount it would take to perform the combat technique normally 10 times. He saw himself as lucky that the kid had died instantly, otherwise, with how he was feeling now it wouldn't have been a fun time trying to fight him.

Sitting down while panting and supporting his head as a reaction to the immense headache he had at the moment, James couldn't help but question his own decision-making. That move wasn't necessary in the slightest for this fight, and if it hadn't worked for whatever reason he would've been in deep shit. But at least now he kind of knew what he was capable of.

His reflection of the fight didn't take long though as it was cut short by the all too familiar golden and white portal appearing before him.