Chapter 21: GC2, And Welcome To The Jam. (edited)

Chapter 21: GC2, And Welcome To The Jam. (edited)

(Changing Group competition to GC for simplicity)

Original word count = 1137 on 6/28/2023 (no more 6/27 dates. We are finally in new content after moving the book)

New word count = 1371 on 8/20/2023

After properly recovering from the abuse he took the day prior, Xue Tie makes his way to the stadium once more. Once he arrives, he and the other team leaders are assigned a number like usual. This time Xue Tie is 5th and has to face one of his own hired teams. As a result, the hired team decided to drop out and that allowed Xue Tie to progress a round with no hassle. This earned them the ire of the crowd who hated their 'cowardice' as they did not know that Xue Tie had hired them. As such, with a longer break and a tournament guideline. He knows who his possible opponents are next. His team subordinates strategize with what they know and show in the fights and select plan H.

Xue Tie nods in response and begins making his own plan on top of that to fight his next set of opponents. A bit later, he finds out who it is precisely and they find that this plan is indeed the best one for the group as it would be plan F for the other team which belongs to another all female team other than bibi Dongs. In fact, Bibi Dong's team was selected to fight that one which means the plan is scrapped unless a situation where it's usage provides benefits arises.. After the scheduled hour of rest between rounds it is Xue Tie's turn to fight.

This teams step forward but the enemy only has their eyes on Xue Tie after his showing yesterday of being able to handle a whole team by himself. As martial spirits rise, so does the pressure on them. They realize that Xue Tie is not off to the side like it was before. It's now an 'I' formation (3,1,2), Their positions are also changed up.

Once the match starts, Xue Tie jumps as high as he can when the teammate behind him activates his bat martial spirit and with a powerful sound wave, blasts him further up. He is as high as the audience seating now, roughly 50 ft high into the air. Xue Tie's ears are buzzing but he already plugged his ears beforehand, to take them out now that he is in the air. Xue Tie swings his spear and quickly gains a spinning motion in the air. Once he begins dropping, he activates his 3rd spirit skill and adds weight to his rotation. He yells out with a smile on his face.

"Come on and...." his words are cut off by the impact he creates as he lands straight in the middle of his opponents formation, a wave of fire passing to the left of Xue Tie's impact location. "SLAM, and Welcome to the JAM" Xue Tie continues by getting up from his hole, quickly retracting and summoning his armor and he synchronizes the word jam as he smacks someone with his weighted spear.

With a buffalo charge from Du Lie (one of his teammates. I go over who everyone part of his team is next chapter since it was then that I decided what to do with them for the foreseeable future of the story), another enemy is sent off the arena, a wave of fire splits the enemy team in half, the 3 on the other half are being controlled by fire and sound waves while the other half only has 1 person left, but with the combination of a water buffalo and Xue Tie's spear, they are knocked unconscious quickly enough and tossed out of the ring.

Xue Tie sees his team bullying the enemy and claps then provides his own fun of burning blood spilling around. The enemy team loses the group quickly and one was even forced off by an explosion to his face after being hit by a banana of all things.

On the other side, Xue Tie is holding the good part of a banana in hand after tossing out its skin at the enemy through his 1st skill. He gets a sudden thought from his hunger and the fire. The audience is stunned and shocked by the nature of Xue Tie's casualness in regards to eating the banana in the middle of combat.

'I should introduce the concept of s'mores to this world' he thinks to himself jokingly

Soon the enemy loses all groups and are forced off the arena after experiencing the burning blood themselves. Not even the regular fire hurts as, once they are touched by burning blood, their own blood begins burning in sync with it as it builds up Blood Loss procs.

Xue Tie finishes his banana and walks his team off the stage as the 2nd round for the day finishes uneventfully.

The only team to match Xue Tie's is Bibi Dongs, as she is the primary control user for her team. Either providing poison fog to reduce arena area and then set traps while her team of assault style spirit masters wreck havoc on their enemies.

She was actually approached by her team and thus is not the real captain but the poster girl of their team and the one who takes on the public leadership role when she is actually considered the 2nd in command if anything happens due to her outside perspective while controlling. Her team is fully female as compared to Xue Tie who has 5 males and 1 girl.

The girl in question in his team is the one who Bibi Dong beat in the semi finals. the one who got the fast pass through all the fights, she is a pure supporter who had just been clinging to the edge of the arena in the individual selections battle royal that neither he nor bibi dong had participated in. He hasn't had her do anything just yet as her abilities are a bit unique. Granted she was not fully aware of her own abilities since it was pure luck and the help of her father that she even was able to get her first ring. He has a plan for her in the finals or a difficult fight.

In fact, he has gone so far as to provide Xia Wei (girls name) a scholarship due to her spirit skills and what he assumes to be the nature of her martial spirit. A siphon. She had initially passed the battle royal by extracting the power of the other girls and bargained to give that power to others as long as she passed. Which she did then her luck carried her to the semi finals. A beauty in group fights but weaker by herself since she can't take the extracted power for herself. But according to Xue Tie, Wei's martial spirit could be considered the antithesis of the 7 glazed tile pagoda clan martial spirit. Since her abilities also work on percentages but she only has 1 spirit skill so far and so she can only take 1 stat at a time. There is a small delay between siphoning the power and being able to activate it again but it's very short. This delay is mostly a sense of nausea that follows each siphon. Xue Tie has been testing to see if certain foods and other factors decide the severity of her nausea. If she can overcome this flaw then her supportive power would greatly rise.

The third day of the group competition was even less interesting due to Xue Tie facing off against one of his teams. and another forfeit. while his second opponent was just a mess. They were amongst the weakest of the new group and due to the variety of things they have been shown through the explosive poison ball, and the slam jam performance. Their own brains had melted and were taken down easily. thus ending the 3rd day.

Original title = Chapter 21: Junior Spirit Master Competition, Group Competition 2, And Welcome To The Jam. (way too wordy)