20 Fire Away!

Audicello merely scoffed, paying the human boy's words no heed. Although humans didn't wander into the valley often, from their previous experiences as well as of their old worlds before they found themselves in the chasm, humans had always been one of the weakest races. Back then, Audicello delighted in terrorizing civilizations, including human ones.

Lenodryv, of course, knew better than to underestimate Rialyne. He was curious about what she was going to do and how far she would make it into the competition. He also hadn't seen much of Kyferne's abilities either. But seeing as the body was his, he must have high fire resistance or some other type of immunity. Otherwise, he would've smoldered a bit by standing so close to Audicello.

"Don't mind Audicello," Leno whispered to them after the fire dragon sauntered off while casting them a side glance. "She's always like that."

They nodded, and Rialyne internally snickered. For some reason, she had a feeling that Audicello had a thing for Leno, but she wasn't sure at the time if Audicello was a girl or if dragon relationships weren't strict on heterogeneity.

After the punishment decision for the herzoldinne raiders was made, the masses smoothly assembled into various rings. Lines were drawn for the stage inside each group. A dragon or some other monster of prominence on the Peace Tourney Board stood by each ring as referee and organizer.

Kyferne and Rialyne were placed in the lowest ranking ring and rung of the weakest fighting species of the valley. Thus, they were set up to battle first. The crowd around this inferior-ranked ring was larger than ever previously before due to rumors of a human participating in the contest.

Seeing the mocking stares of the gathering monsters, Rialyne just smirked to herself. 'Let me show you plant battling at its finest, heheh!' Audicello putting her in the weakest group didn't affect Rialyne's plans in the slightest. As it was, she wouldn't be able to kill anyone yet in this competition, so she could just use this as training and accumulating skill mastery proficiency points.

Their first battle was with blue-skinned orcs that were larger than what average orcs were typically. Based on their HP bars, they weren't strong enough opponents for Rialyne, so she asked Kyferne if he wanted a shot at them.

Of course, he was more than willing to get some benefit out of this plan that the girl had hatched. Since they had smartly swapped out Rialyne's HP bar for his own before the competition started, no one would be suspicious if they happened to view his health.

Little did they know, since Kyferne was merely hosting Rialyne, he could easily swap out and display either of their health bars. That also included Rialyne's domain HP number and her own personal tree's health.

As soon as the referee shouted for the multi-monster knockout battle to begin, Kyferne kicked off from his starting position and launched a fiery fist at the closest orc who had actually meant to fight him as well. For every creature that they defeated in the ring, they would get points. After three monsters received five points, the round would end.

[ Cobaltin Orc ]

Lv. 44 [ Silver ]

HP: 12,913

MP: 322

The orc met his attack with a crude, metal bat. Weapons were allowed in the fight as long as the user could wield them. Since Kyferne had started out as a fire mage, he didn't bring any weapons with him from his home when he fled Arvon. The large sword given to him in the military was unsuitable for lugging around while escaping too.

But that didn't stop him from meeting the bat with a resounding bang that turned to sizzles as the metal melted. The surprised orc didn't think that the tiny human's fire would liquefy its weapon, so it was caught off guard when the fist continued forward and scorched a hole into its stomach.

"Blargghh!!" The orc bellowed in pain and stumbled back. Kyferne swung his other flaming fist into the same spot, eliciting another roar from the orc. Its knees buckled, and it toppled over onto its behind.

"Human, one point! Get out orc!" The dragon referee ordered. Killing wasn't allowed in the competition, so as long as one bested another opponent, that was considered a win.

Peering at the fallen orc who grimaced while getting up to leave, Kyferne lightly shook his wrist. [ Flame Fist ] was one of the first skills he created as a hybrid class. He had combined a basic punch from a warrior with fire magic.

'Hm, this is pretty easy?' Despite the fearsome look of the beasts, they weren't as strong as he initially thought. 'Did I grow that much stronger from training before? Or as these orcs more susceptible to my fire magic?' But unable to ponder it any longer, he jumped out of the way as another orc came crashing over to him with a spiked bat. He definitely wouldn't be punching this one.

As he leapt back a few times toward the edge of the ring, he surveyed the ongoing battle. The largest orc was routing the numerous challengers that tried to attack him in a group. But most others were engaged in one on one or two challenges. It seemed that some tactics were in play to team up and get rid of some stronger ones while sweeping out the weaker ones.

Since only the top three could move on, everyone tried to limit anyone from getting too many points. In a sense, this made the fight seem unfair, but considering that the species champion would become the indisputable leader, some politics were in play too.

None of this matter to Kyferne. He was more nimble than the whole lot of them, so he might as well complete the five points and be safe and done with the battle. He would be competing in more battles, so he decided to conserve his energy for them.

Thus, he aimed for the three orcs teaming up on the largest orc. It was the perfect knockout group number. He swiftly ducked an incoming swing from another orc and sprinted toward them. A sphere of fire ballooned in his hand, making all those nearby flinch from the blistering heat.

[ Igneous Implosion ].

This was another hybrid skill that he had tweaked from the well known fireball skill of a mage. Instead of sending out the fireball from afar, it had to be delivered in a short distance from the area of impact. And instead of exploding, the fire caved in and imploded. Thus, the larger the fireball, the greater the area of implosion. It would bathe the opponents in fire and then shred them as it collapsed violently inwards.

Nearing the group, Kyferne leapt into the air above them and hurtled the massive fireball much larger than himself onto the orcs. The flames engulfed the monsters entirely, and when the skill imploded, their blue skin was ripped to red.

It was at this point that the dragon referee blew a gust of cool air onto the charred monsters. "Four points for the human, five total. One finalist, two more spots left." The dragon didn't seem at all fazed by the violent attack. Likely, the dragon had seen even more powerful skills.

But to the onlookers and the remaining orcs, they were all stunned. The human had actually been the first to move onto the next round. Kyferne grinned at the successful strike and strutted out of the ring.

Rialyne giggled inside and congratulated him. "Nice work! That was a really cool skill there!"

"Of course, I created it myself!" Kyferne responded proudly in his head.

"You made it?! What?! That's not fair, I want to be able to make skills too!" Rialyne pouted. She was stuck with gaining skills from other plants and couldn't form or receive any others from leveling or evolution.

"Let me guess, this is another perk of being human?"

Kyferne stifled the actual laugh that almost escaped from his mouth. "Yes, we can create skills, but it's not easy. I was just able to combine or tweak skills which is much easier."

Rialyne huffed, still unsatisfied. She'd take tweaking skills over not being able to gain any skills at all. Although her four gained skills had been very useful to her so far, it wasn't enough.

The boy could tell from her sour silence that Ria was unhappy. But he just shrugged and waited for the preliminary rounds to end. Soon enough, they did, and he was matched with one of the orc finalists from another ring.

But just like the one-sided battle from the previous round, he smoked his competition out. Kyferne was now the victor of the orc competition. Once this news quickly spread to Audicello's ears, she lifted her brows in mild regard of his accomplishment. Perhaps the human hadn't been bluffing about his strength after all.

"Kyyyy~~" Rialyne whined. "This whole competition thing is taking longer than I expected, do you think we can just ask to be placed in a higher rank, so we can be finished quicker?"

As much as she enjoyed watching the fights, she want to wrap this up in order to become stronger as soon as possible and discover a way to join Ky to Arvon.

"What? You're getting bored by doing nothing?" Kyferne smirked at the girl's petulance.

"Yes yes, now let's go appeal to Audicello or maybe one of the other dragons. Let's ask the referee."

"Nope!" Kyferne was having fun and gaining some good stats from all the battles. Unlike Rialyne, he could increase his stats by merely fighting rather than killing. If they jumped to a much tougher opponent, he knew he wouldn't be able to participate anymore.

"Fine fine, do whatever you want," Rialyne acquiesced. 'It's okay. An hour or two won't hurt you. I still have plenty of time to search for a way to tag along.' Rialyne resolved to not be so selfish. She had been dragging him around, so she thought she might as well let him do something.

At the very least, she was learning quite a bit from his combat abilities. He was definitely well trained for a seventeen year old. She wondered if it was due to being in the military or having good teachers in a rich household.

A little surprised, Kyferne gratefully thanked her and moved to the next stage of competition. His next opponents were jackal-like creatures the size of large horses. To Rialyne, they reminded her of the Egyptian ones painted on the tomb walls. They weren't furry and had black heads with blue and gold coloring along their spines and sides.

[ Phiran Jackal ]

Lv. 39 [ Gold ]

HP: 25,115

MP: 967

Seeing the simple stats display of this monster, Rialyne instantly knew that Kyferne would be able to beat it. And as expected, he bested the species champion after a minute.

"Hmm, it seems like this is a little too easy for you," commented Audicello suddenly from above them. Startled, they watched as she landed next to their right.

"I actually had you placed two ranks up just so I could see you get squashed, but it looks like you did better than expected." Audicello had managed to compliment them while insulting them at the same time.

"In that case, why don't you chose a monster species champion that you think you can beat?" She hoped the human would overshoot and chose someone out of his league.

At this phase of the competition, the victors from each species would battle one another to determine this month's winner. And each month's winner would then compete in the final yearly tournament along with a few other runner-ups or late, qualified challengers.

The human mostly likely wouldn't return for the yearly tournaments, but Audicello didn't want him to place high and receive any share of the herzoldinne prizes. That would be too humiliating after her speech, and the fire dragon was beginning to crave the taste of the unique energy that the human had given her.

"Then…" Rialyne observed each of the champions. She couldn't be too overconfident and ask for the strongest. Somehow, she had a feeling that the fire dragon wanted them to lose. So after a couple minutes of deliberation to Audicello's disgruntlement, Rialyne decided on the third largest monster.

At her choice, the fire dragon's mouth curved up. Bingo. The human had chosen the most powerful opponent.