50 Beyond the Wall

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*BOOM*

With one more dashing step, Sylphie Hunter carried her towering lance towards the direction of Ravenville's half of the field.

Dan and Dennis Young who were left behind on the dust at this moment both had their mouths agaped.

"Holy-- She's way faster than her video performance...!"

"--Wait... Did she leave behind her Solver with the other Fielder?"

Before Dan could react further to the speeding human bullet that had snapped their threads in one burst, Dennis pointed out the most important thing from this breakthrough.

'Where's their Solver now?'

[Focus up idiot twins! Their Solver's still with her!]

But before this line of inquiry could yield any confirmations for Dennis, Clint's voice on the other end of their speakers gave out the unfortunate answer he'd sought.

Magnolia's Solver was still attached to the speeding Sylphie instead of their other Fielder!

'How'd she keep up with THAT speed??'

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Rewinding back time to a couple seconds before the breakthrough.

Renee who'd been engaging herself with keeping Magnolia's Second Fielder occupied, had noticed the figure of the patient Sylphie preparing to charge through even before the twins had any sort of inklings on her intention.

After noticing such scene, her eyes didn't linger for long on the young Captain's figure and instead set her sights around her as if trying to find someone within the vicinity.

Without needing to search extensively further, she quickly found that Magnolia's Solver who's supposed to be hanging around their Second Fielder had long vanished from the surroundings of her fight!

Fortunately, Renee's fast response to this revelation allowed her to quickly locate the other's figure wearing the white and green exosuit running forward stealthily towards their half of the field by herself.

The Magnolia's Solver was making her way forth in a careful manner by treading through the shadows of trees and buildings around her.

It was also worth noting that the distance between this Solver and either of her two Fielders at the time was already WAY beyond the 15 meters restriction!

'She's activated her disabler!' Renee immediately had everything clicked in her mind when she saw this.

The only possibility for such a range to not trigger the out-of-bounds alarm, of course, could only be because of her activating the disabler function on her exosuit.

The free 5 minutes of time granted to all players to temporarily ignore their positions' zone restrictions and roam freely on the field.

This 5 minutes could be turned on and off at one's own discretion at any time during a game as long as there's still time left in their system.

And presently, Magnolia's Solver had, at some point in time, activated this function on her exosuit and started running stealthily past Renee.

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[Their Solver's on the move Cap! Sorry for the late notice.]

Clint's voice resounded through her speaker just in time when she's about to contact him herself for confirmation.

"No worries, I just noticed it myself."

In his defense, the span of time between her unexpectedly noticing the other Solver's disappearance and Clint's report was just under a few seconds.

[Get ready guys! Incoming!]

Not long after, Dan's voice was also delivered to her comms as well, helping Renee to put together the enemy's plan and goal from the start.

Their plan was to distract the entire advance group of Ravenville while letting their single Solver to slip past first in the midst of battle with her disabler.

When said Solver gained enough distance, the Main Fielder, Sylphie, would then charge through following behind and catching up to her Solver with her dash.

Realizing that Magnolia had inevitably finished their preparations for this,

And also adding to it the warning from Dan that Sylphie's about to breakthrough, Renee quickly made up her mind to abandon their ground on this halfway line in favor of a more defensive approach.

"Mm." She replied to the previous warning and responded, "Clint. Prepare."

[Aye aye Cap'n.]

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Going back to the present situation.

Within a few steps of her [Blast], Sylphie had finally reached the position of her Solver who had already went ahead way before she'd made her move.

The Solver too, noticing that her Captain was almost within reach, turned off her disabler by touching the right ear part of the exosuit's helmet and flicked a certain switch off.

*click*

[DISABLER OFF]

The notification echoed within the helmet for only herself to hear.

Preserving as much disabling time as she could was key in this play of theirs.

[Good work Jade.] Sylphie's voice also resounded through her speaker not long after the notification had occurred.

This Solver was actually the friend that had initiated many conversations with Sylphie before, both regarding her obsessions and also her weirdness.

Because of the two's frequency in training together practicing this particular move and formation, the two's relationship with each other had grown naturally with time.

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Before long, the two of them reached one of the buildings pointed out by their Ranger that'd most likely house Ravenville's first tower puzzle.

Truth be told, Sylphie was rather dumbfounded at the moment.

During that whole fierce halfway line battle, their scouting Ranger had still only managed to lower the possibility of Ravenville's first tower's placement to 3 different buildings.

3!

Meaning that even after coming this far, she still had to search through the 3 buildings by herself to find the first tower.

This was one of the elements of Battle Arena that only existed with a complex terrain.

'They're really careful about this, Ravenville...!' Sylphie lightly complained in her mind.

In a multi-layered terrain such as the Ruined City Block, the easiest way in finding enemy's towers was by locating the Guard that was assigned to them.

By finding the player guarding it, one would be able to approximate the location of the tower that he/she protected.

After all, the Guard wouldn't be able to maintain staying more than 15 meters away from it without activating the disabler.

And keeping such player occupied in place for a couple minutes at a time was pretty much the job description of a Fielder.

Plus, spending 5 minutes of their disabling time only to fool the enemy a single time on their tower's position was not an efficient trade-off in any form of match.

In this aspect, Sylphie count herself truly lucky when she and her Solver could suddenly identify one black and grey figure with a helmet shape that symbolized a Guard on the 4th floor of the first building they checked through.

'--Jackpot!'

"I'll engage him. Go find the tower!" She ordered through her comms.

[Roger.]

In front of her stood one of the 4th year Guard of Ravenville carrying a baton on one hand while sporting a slightly wary fighting gesture.

*STOMP*

After her cue, Sylphie quickly began to dash towards him while splitting ways with Jade, her Solver, to let her scour the place for the tower's location!

"The first point, here goes!" She muttered.

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"Oh dear..."

Back in the audience seats, Rex who had followed closely the match from the preparation phase up to now could only smile wryly when seeing such a development.

"...So that's why their formation's like that. Must be one of Head Coach Lark's trick." Rory also added on while fixing his glasses.

Once again, the both of them were made to realize the devious side of Ravenville's Head Coach.

Through their eyes, Sylphie's attempt inside the building was indeed very amusing to see.

unbeknownst to her, she had fallen into one of Ravenville's trick regarding their tower placement.

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On the field.

Sylphie had spent a few minutes maintaining her stance while occupying the Guard's attention all this while.

And the fight was not so easy for her either.

Not only was an enclosed space like this rather detrimental to her fighting style, even the not-so-exceptional Guard of Ravenville was a VERY good player himself, as evidenced by him having a place in its 1st string.

But the most concerning thing on the current situation for her was...

[Captain, there're no traces of their tower in any floors of this building!] Jade, the Solver, commented.

"Ugh..."

The two of them had been fighting in this place for slightly more than 5 minutes, but they still couldn't find the tower!

She was sure that the Guard she'd been fighting in front of her was still in his zone all this while, which meant that the tower was truly close to them, but...

'Wait--!'

'This guy... Though he act like he was desperately trying to get through me at first, he's not chasing Jade at all right now! He's just been keeping me company all this while!'

The ominous feeling continued to grow in Sylphie's mind as the fight raged on, she had managed to deal a substantial amount of damage to this Front Guard's HP, but she didn't feel good at all.

The longer she fought, the more things she'd started noticing.

For example, like how this Guard in front of her never really let himself get too far away from the wall...

'!'

Suddenly, she caught on to something!

'The wall... It's the adjacent building!!'

As she thought of the only other possibility, Sylphie quickly opened her communication channel with her Ranger.

"Hey, are any of the 3 possible buildings you said close to each other!?"

[Why--]

"Just answer me."

[Yes, the building you're in right now is adjacent to anoth--]

As she heard the voice cut off, Sylphie knew that her Ranger had also finally caught on to the situation, especially when his Captain and the Solver had spent that much time in one building.

"Dammit, we've wasted 5 minutes!" Sylphie cursed in a low voice under her breath.

Ravenville's advance group that they'd left behind hadn't arrived yet even now.

At first, she'd thought that her Second Fielder had done a great job in holding them back, but now...

It felt more like the Illusions have already prepared other things while she and Jade were being occupied in this dummy building with the bait Guard!

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A couple distances away from where Sylphie was, Clint had at last finished his first homework for this match.

"Alright." The slit-eyed man grinned maliciously without meaning to.

He opened his comms and spoke to his Captain, Renee Morgan, who'd already been in position for a while.

"Captain~ I've finished locating their first two towers. We can begin."

[Got it.] A short reply followed his report.

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On Ravenville's team corner, Irvine was watching the game seriously and saw as one of the plans they'd come up with together with the Head Coach had come to fruition.

They had taken into account that within the long duration of this game, there would be no chance for them to always be on the offensive.

There would come a time when Magnolia would break through their halfway line and they would then need to form some defensive measures.

'Though I really didn't expect that the first halfway battle would be taken by them... And probably the coach didn't too.' Irvine analyzed the situation with a grimace.

Their plan of letting the Solver vanish and use her disabler this early in the game was outside of everyone's expectations.

Both Irvine and Lark had known that if the Solver hadn't already slip past them, even if Sylphie Hunter could break the twins' restraint, she wouldn't be able to get that far ahead because the team'd be able to intercept them through the Solver.

"Look at that! Your plan worked perfectly, Lang." Derrick excitedly announced from beside him.

"It's not REALLY me who came up with this..." Irvine replied with a wry smile.

"Oh? But without your input, this might not even occur to me though. I've underestimated you yet again haven't I?" Even Lark, who's been sitting in the center of the bench started complimenting him.

"Not at all, sir. Rather, it's me who should be impressed, really."

While it's true that he had made some input to the current defensive measure based on his experience from watching future pro matches with similarly complex terrain, he felt that the Head Coach should be credited more to the smooth execution of this plan.

Ravenville's front tower formation was constructed such that their first tower was placed in a building that was closely standing next to another one.

The actual tower had been placed in the one building further into their half of the field, while its Guard was placed on another building still within its 15-meter radius!

When the enemies saw that there weren't any towers in the Guard's close vicinity, they'd first assume that the tower was located on different floors of the same building.

The acting on the Guard's side of this was key to the whole thing.

While it's true that the next building over wouldn't be the first place that came to others' mind. This tactic also closed off his immediate path to guarding the tower should the enemy actually found out.

However, if it was successfully pulled off like now,

With the enemy's advance group getting occupied in one tower, their own advance group would be able to reorganize themselves and bring the pace of the battle back to their side.

Truthfully speaking, Irvine's suggestion was just simply telling Lark that with complex terrain such as this one, they'd be able to place a tower behind some walls while the guard stood on the other side of it.

Which was actually how pro matches with such terrains handle themselves.

Complex multi-layered terrain was still relatively new in 218 UD, but in the future, players would usually guard the towers behind walls while the Guards stood outside of it to get a better vantage point and be able to ambush early the coming enemies.

This would not only create more obstacles for enemies to get closer to their tower, but also prevent them from even being in the same room as the tower earlier than otherwise.

Because the Guard would also be standing guard on the other side.

'Coach Lark actually interpreted it into this decoy tactics for enemies to waste time... Ravenville's Head Coach's really ahead of his time.' Irvine complimented in his mind.

It's not like this kind of approach hadn't been performed at all in the future.

On the contrary, it's more like because of the popularity of urban settings in future seasons' terrains, this sort of tactics had appeared more and more, making it far too easy to see through that Irvine even forgot to consider it.

'That's right, this year probably just marked the second season with an urban settings for a terrain...'

While he contemplated further regarding the benefits and implications of himself knowing future trends and common tactics, the match below continued unobstructed from outside influence.

It was time for Ravenville's counter-attack!

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When Sylphie finally noticed the enemy's trick with their tower placement, she quickly turned her body around trying to jump out of the 4th story window to encircle the building from outside.

"Jade, get out of the building!" She relayed her command to the Solver as well.

But before she herself got the chance to, from behind the solid wall on the Ravenville's Guard's back, three figures wearing the same style of black and grey exosuit suddenly appeared!

The figures' entrance was quite bizarre.

Dan, Dennis, and Renee had their bodies phased through the solid wall that was almost connected to the building behind it and drop to the ground of the room Sylphie was in.

The twins were holding the left and right side of their Captain's hand, their bodies translucent.

But this condition didn't last for even a second before colours started filling in the transparencies of their bodies once again as they touched the ground with their feet.

*tap*

'They're here already...!' By now, cold sweat also started dripping down Sylphie's forehead behind the helmet.

She knew that getting out of this now would be far more difficult than before!