49 Lance and Strings
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As soon as the signal rang for the people on the stadium, all the audience on their seats could see every active players' name and numbers being displayed on the huge main monitor above the field.
On Ravenville's side of the screen, the topmost name on the list could be seen with the text 'Renee Morgan' being written clearly in bold lettering, signifying her position as Captain of the team.
Her name was followed closely by the other starting members of Ravenville.
#1 Renee Morgan [Solver] (Captain)
...
#6 Clint Silver [Ranger]
#7 Dan Young [Fielder]
#8 Dennis Young [Fielder]
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"Oh, Ravenville's pulling out their all-stars from the start." Back on the audience seats right across the monitor, Rex observed the names carefully while making some light commentaries on the side.
He was really enjoying the tension in the air.
"No. Baron's not in the line-up is he?"
"Ah, yes."
"And furthermore..."
"--Mm? And furthermore?" Rex grinned as he found himself getting intrigued by the scout's, Rory's own observation.
"..."
"...No, nothing."
Rory felt that he had been too quick in judging the situation without even watching the match first.
'I was actually expecting someone like Greg Clayton to be put in amongst the Guards line-up. During his License Exam, he's shown more growth potential than any of the current 4th year's Guards...'
Within Ravenville's current starting line-up, except for the widely known Solver, Ranger, and Fielders, there were no exceptional Guards being put in.
Their sole Ace Guard and Vice Captain, Baron, was currently sitting quietly on the substitute's bench in their corner. Watching the game with an ever present seriousness in his eyes.
"Well, it doesn't mean anything anyway..." Seeing the thinking look on Rory's face, Rex further commented on his own,
"This is a sparring match, none of the two schools have any intentions of showing their actual starting line-up from the start."
"That's true... Still, in Ravenville's case, it probably won't matter very much one way or the other." Rory replied succinctly.
"Hoho."
In last year's Silver Crown and even the year before that, Ravenville Illusions had always been a team with the most mid-game substitutions used up throughout the tournament.
Mid-game substitutions referred to substitutions made even without any eliminations happening on the team.
Meaning that a switch between a team's players occurred without anyone actually being reduced to 0 HP.
In each match of the tournament, both teams would have a limited quota for mid-game subs being made available to them. And each time, without fail, Ravenville would almost always used up all their mid-game subs rights.
One of the traits that made them renowned for their trick plays.
In the case of today's spar, with 8 substitutes players on each sides, it went without saying that there weren't any limits imposed for mid-game substitutions in this game.
"More importantly, it's not like either of the two're planning to underestimate the other. Look at the Thorns." Rex pointed at Magnolia's list of players with his chin.
"...Yeah, they put in Sylphie Hunter first as well. Their actual starting Solver too."
This new 3rd year Captain of the Thorns was undoubtedly the current strongest players in terms of damage output from either teams.
This fact was clear even to Rex and Rory who're watching from the side.
"Hoho, this'll be very interesting indeed. Let's just watch the match shall we?"
"Mm."
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Back on the Ruined City Block themed terrain, as soon as the [MATCH START] signal was resounded, the two sides' advance group formed by both Fielders and Solvers quickly shuffled their way towards the halfway line of the field.
Contrary to how the landscape and environment of the season's field was stacked with buildings and hidden alleys, the entirety of the center line was free from any of those obstacles.
The halfway line of the Ruined City Block was designed to be an abandoned public park with barren and hardened soil laced with weeds in-between the paved stone walkways and park benches.
The view of the sky and audience seats being obstructed by run-down apartment buildings in a not-so-far distance created a very unique and picturesque feel to the Arena field when looked on from its center.
And the ones to first intrude on this unique serenity was the Ravenville's advance group with the number #7 and #8 Young brothers in front and their Captain Renee Morgan in the back.
At this point in time, there had been no sightings of their Ranger Clint Silver in the vicinity as of yet.
Of course, the people from Ravenville knew that it wouldn't be that smooth of a sailing with Magnolia as their opponent.
Following closely on the three's arrival, a team of white and green exosuits led by Magnolia's number #1 player Sylphie Hunter also appeared from behind the shadow of a ruined building on their side.
As indicated by their helmets, Magnolia's advance group was also composed of 2 Fielders and 1 Solver at the moment.
However, the appearance of one of their Fielders, that is, their one and only Captain, Sylphie Hunter, brought a different level of attractions from the watchers' eyes than any of her other teammates.
Sylphie was carrying a very unusual weapon of choice for any Battle Arena players, professional or otherwise.
Though for her, it was already a well-known fact that had become her brand to the college arena fans community and her own private fanbase.
Jogging forward, the entirety of one of her arms was occupied with clasping and wielding a slightly miniaturized version of a jousting lance!
The lance had larger width and shorter length than its normal form, but the size was nonetheless one that wouldn't make it any more convenient for walking or running purposes.
"--There she is. Get in position. Everyone."
As Sylphie ran to the halfway line, her lance pointing upwards, Renee swiftly activated her comms and communicated the start of the three people's usual formation to the rest of them.
From the available data of their last year's play in the tournament, none would dare to underestimate Magnolia or Sylphie Hunter simply from the ridiculous stance she'd display when wielding such oversized weapon.
Where most normal people would need the momentum of a running horse to utilize the heavy damage such weapon could inflict, Sylphie compensated it with her own technique in riding her [Blast] wave while charging forward.
When she utilized this move, she would be flying 1 to 2 feet above the ground, carrying the entire weight of the lance forward where almost no players would be able to stop her.
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Hearing their Captain's cue, both Dan and Dennis Young spent almost no time at all in trying to intercept this dangerous player in front of them.
They must trap her and lock her charge first before she could finish her stance and broke through.
In barely a second after the command, the two Ravenville Fielders sprinted forward to the left and right side of Sylphie to engage her.
Noticing the oncoming players, the young Captain also reacted as fast she could, twisting her body around with her huge weapon in hand.
"Everyone, do as planned! Second Fielder, engage Renee Morgan! I'll be fine here." Sylphie also relayed her commands through her comms.
Right after she finished her words, the twin Fielders of Ravenville had already arrived to her sides with nothing but their own exosuited gauntlets on hands.
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"The first battle has started." Rory didn't let his eyes wander from the halfway line for even a second as he watched the two advance groups engaged with each other.
"Guess we'll be able to see how much those twins have improved since last year, huh..."
The two representatives from Zeta City watched on from their seats.
Even though it was not intended for such use, the swing of something as large as Sylphie's jousting lance would cause too much unnecessary damage to either of the two this early in the game.
Counting also the fact that she could employ her [Blast] power with each swing, made Sylphie not really that much helpless with close combat either.
The two players, Dan and Dennis, struggled for a bit to lock-in their positions to the sides of Sylphie.
The figure of her twisting her body and weapon around obstructed them each time they're about to get a proper foothold on her.
But eventually, a couple seconds after the start of their tussle, the two brothers managed to gain enough leverage to temporarily locked Sylphie in-place.
Just as she once again performed a wide 180 swing with the main body of her lance, Sylphie suddenly felt a tugging resistance to her swinging motion that reduced the force and speed of it significantly.
"!"
At the same time, her left arm that she mainly used to balance her body also got abruptly pulled in a different directions to her weapon, breaking her solid stance momentarily!
'It's here already...!'
Sylphie herself had known that the longer she was entangled with these two brothers, the more disadvantageous it would be for her.
The Gene Mod that Dan and Dennis had gotten for themselves was called [String].
As it was aptly named, [String] was an Ability that allowed the user to discharge strings of near invisible threads from the extremities of their own bodies.
It meant not only could they release them through their hands and feet, each of their fingers could also be used to hold a thread.
At the lower proficiency levels, these almost transparent threads would need to take some time and preparations to be successfully set up or attached to an object.
Not only that, the established threads would only hold as strong a power as the user's mentality allow them to, which tend to cause its strength and durability to fluctuates randomly based on the user's control of it.
All these restrictions added up together had made [String] to be one of the most hard-to-use Abilities amongst the many on the list that're allowed for Battle Arena usage.
Limited by its potential to do damage, the benefits of [String] was hugely compensated through its control aspect where the users could set up environmental traps with them.
And with good enough proficiency in using them, this Ability carried with it a number of versatile uses depending on how one would like to excel in it.
For Dan and Dennis, their use of [String] could be boiled down to the two's Synchronized Puppetry.
As long as the two of them could successfully spin their webs around a player, few would be able to get out of them without spending a huge amount of time and effort into it.
Unlike the name, the two didn't actually had the skills to completely control a person.
However, disrupting their actions and leading them around to specific positions they wanted them to were not outside of their range of capabilities.
Just like now,
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Currently, both Dan and Dennis had successfully attached their threads on exactly the body of Sylphie's lance and also her lower left arm respectively.
This, in turn, had dissipated most of the force of her weapon swing while also broken down the solid stance she'd managed to keep all this while at the same time.
Looking at such a clean and successful attempt from their seats, both Rex and Rory marvelled at how much faster the twins were now capable of finishing their web of threads.
*click*
At some point in time, Rory was already holding a stopwatch on his hand which he'd stopped the timer on as soon as there're traces of outside influence from Sylphie's movements.
"How much faster?" To the side, Rex was already asking the result of his timekeeping activity without turning his own head.
"...So much more. To the point that their last year's performance could be seen as a joke." Rory replied.
Last year's Dan and Dennis could only trap a person after much preparations and extensive support from their different teeammates.
But as the two of them could see, right now, the twins together could single-handedly trap a player of Sylphie's caliber after spending some time.
"Granted, the two of them are not compatible opponents for her specifically." Rex observed.
"Yes. Sylphie Hunter's not at her optimal state when she got closed in on early. Maybe she thought that she could left them in the dust faster than they could finish their threads."
"Mm... I wonder though."
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It was easy to feel very much restrained when the attachments of threads from a [String] user was completed on a person's body.
Whenever she wanted to break loose, Sylphie would be spun around and rotated such that she would be facing the direction of her own team's towers.
And if she attempted to aim her lance at one of the two, the other would be pulling it away and redirected it from behind.
These treatments could easily make anyone feel that their bodies were not theirs anymore.
But Sylphie stayed patient.
Which in turn caused both Dan and Dennis to feel ominous with how there's still a surprising lack of unrest in their prey's movements.
Add to that, the regularly incoming voice on their helmet speakers...
[Hunter's still calm, don't get impatient yourselves and cause any blunder!]
This time, the voice was not from their Captain but from Clint. He had been watching the entire halfway line battles from the start to the current situation.
[We're still good. Don't do anything drastic and just make sure she's not facing the building our first tower's in!]
Clint would know that one charge from her would allow their advance group to reach their concealed tower as long as she was facing the correct direction.
'Which she shouldn't...'
"Argh, stop talking into my ears Silver! We got this!" Dan shouted while still circling around the struggling Sylphie with Dennis.
The constant reminder from this Ranger of theirs sometimes got on his nerves when he was trying to do a delicate job like right now.
But he knew that it's considered bad manners to open their comms with the team's Ranger for nothing important so he only yelled to himself under his helmet.
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On Sylphie's side.
She herself had realized that she'd missed the chance to easily break through the moment she was caught by the twins.
She knew that waiting for the two to cause a slip-up was not a reliable plan to get out of her present state.
Instead, what she'd been waiting for was the weakening of the two's control over the threads just enough for her to increase the chance of breaking the threads in one fell swoop with her [Blast].
And the timing for that came just as soon for her when she noticed that the tugging on her swinging lance was just the slightest bit weaker compared to before.
Finding the barely noticeable distraction on one of her two enemies, Sylphie didn't miss the chance and quickly lowered her stance while folding her legs.
She got into a much lower height than her normal stance would allow, almost touching the hilt of the lance to the ground.
This action, of course, didn't go unnoticed by either the twins or even their Captain Renee Morgan who'd been luring and dodging the other Magnolia's Fielder on the side.
"Shi--!" Dan exclaimed, trying to strengthen his threads as much as possible with Dennis when he saw what Sylphie was doing.
He knew that this player's next action would be something that would push the durability of their threads to the limit.
From the start, both of them didn't expect to contain someone like her for an indefinite amount of time. All they wanted to do was control to the best of their abilities the direction of her charge.
However,
"Get ready guys! Incoming!" Dennis shouted through the comms informing both his Captain and Clint of the possible breakthrough by this Fielder in front of them.
"Mm."
*swish*
Dodging another attack attempt from the Second Fielder of the Thorns, Renee Morgan also started focusing her attention more on Sylphie's eye-catching ducking movement after such warning.
"Clint. Prepare." Noticing the same thing as the twins, she whispered a command with an ice cold tone, which also prompted a reply.
[Aye aye cap'n.]
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*BOOM*
As many had expected, Sylphie broke free of the capture with her famous charge.
With one kick of her legs, along with the explosions on her feet, the propelling force was enough to first pull both Dan and Dennis for a couple paces along the way before their threads were snapped!
"!!"
And that wasn't the end of it.
*BOOM* *BOOM*
After the first dash was about to barely slow down, a second kick and explosion to the ground followed right after.
This happened a few more times, allowing Sylphie to look as if she was riding the wind itself with her jousting lance now pointing dead forward towards Ravenville's half of the field.
The result of the first halfway line battle was an exploding breakthrough led by the Magnolia's Captain!
However, except for the slightly panting Dan and Dennis, none of the current teammates who'd heard of the report from Clint was flustered at such a turn-out.
The match had just begun for them after all.
