CH100 (330), Final Global Competition Day (4)

Once I made it to our seat area, they all congratulated me and obviously, hugs happened as well. Since I finished my Pokemon battle nearly 20 minutes before the timeframe the organizers allocated for the semifinal battles, we had close to 30 minutes before the personal semifinals began.

Mine was the second one, so that was an additional 45 minutes until I had to step onto the battlefield once more. None of us wanted to miss the semifinal battle that would start soon, even if I was not fighting, so we did not go out for lunch and stayed in our seats.

We bought some snacks instead and spent the time until the battle talking. Horus/Xatu was a topic and the others got a kick out of talking about the faces Allister as well as everyone around them had made when Horus appeared and revealed his (high) gold stage might. Then Ace brought up the topic of the competition rewards.

"Hey, what do you think the rewards are going to be like when Mikail becomes the dual champion again," he asked and everyone began to throw out their own ideas.

"Well, the regular rewards are B and A-Class materials, so maybe some S-Class ones," Kinji said and some agreed with him.

"That would be really impressive, but maybe they will let him choose another Pokemon like with the continental reward," Yu added which earned quite a few nods.

"Oh, oh, maybe he'll get some private lessons from a real Champion," Rose said in excitement which caused the other to chuckle a bit. "It's not that Mika is a fake champion or anything," she said looking at me while waving her hands in panic, after understanding why the others were chuckling.

"Don't worry, I know what you meant," I placated her while patting her head, making her stop with a blush, which caused the others to laugh in a good-natured manner.

"Hmm, they might give him one of those precious potions that can increase the potential of a Pokemon or increase their training speed," our resident nurse apprentice proposed.

When Jessica said that the others became excited since those were seen as miracle medicines in the eyes of the general population, but to be honest they were less useful for the Utopia-spoiled me.

"I heard they can even cause variations if one is lucky enough," Ace said excitedly, causing the others to share the rumors they heard.

The rumors went from plausible, like triggering breakthroughs, to unbelievable like turning Caterpie into a dragon looking suspiciously close to Rayquaza. The discussions only died down when the semifinal battle started and the two fighters on the field began beating each other.

On one side was Eren Herb, or Groot as I liked to call him in my head, from our northern continent, while on the other side was Niko Vaugh a dual elemental from Ferrum representing the western continent. The guy was a Tier 2 First-Class Fire Elementalist, and a Tier 2 Second-Class Electric Elementalist.

Honestly, Eren was at a pretty big disadvantage element-wise, and it got only worse when it became apparent that Niko had advanced to First Class with the electrical element as well.

Niko used his fire to burn Eren's offense and defense, while he used his electricity to boost his speed and offense. I wouldn't go so far as to say that the fight was one-sided since Eren was pretty strong and he had only gotten stronger since I fought him thanks to the experience he gained during the global competition.

Still, Eren's prowess proved to be insufficient to overcome the disadvantage he had against Niko, not to mention the guy's second element, and he finally ran out of juice after struggling for nearly half an hour.

Everyone cheered for both fighters and they waved at the crowd as well. They then shook hands before leaving the field under the cheers of the audience. Well, it seemed like I would be fighting Niko in the finals if, or rather after I won against Toph Meibin.

She was a Tier 2 First-Class Ground Elementalist with exceptional ground control abilities, which meant she would have a real chance at being the champion if she managed to beat me since she had quite the advantage against Niko.

Anyway, the staff went onto the field to return it to a pristine state for my fight against Toph. I decided to make my way down since my fight would start in 15 minutes and I wanted to spend some time on my own at the gate to mentally prepare so that I would be at my best for the fight.

So once I made it there, I spent the next 10 minutes mentally going over everything I had found on Toph as well as her fighting style and determined which methods were the best to deal with her moves.

I spent the last five minutes simply meditating, without focusing on anything specific, just honing my mind and body to bring it to peak performance before the battle began. A reminder from the staff brought me out of my meditation and I made my way onto the battlefield.

I heard the host doing our introduction and saw Toph stepping through the gate on the other side. She gave me a small wave and I returned the gesture. The referee began his usual rundown of the rules once we made it to our positions 25 meters across from one another, and gave the starting signal after he was done with the rundown.

Toph directly slammed her foot onto the ground and I immediately took off into the air when she did that, knowing what to expect from that move. Her stomp caused the ground to act as if it was a body of water, and a wave of earth spread with her as the center.

The wave rose to over 2 meters by the time it arrived in my previous position, but could not reach me. I saw Toph stomp her foot a second time at that moment, and three earth bullets flew out of the wave toward me.

I dodged them pretty easily, but I had to keep an eye out on any of her earth constructs if she could shoot earth bullets out of them. The wave passed but I saw Toph stomp a third time, and I felt as well as heard some more earth bullets fly at me from behind.

Deciding to distance myself from the wave I teleported behind Toph and threw out a handful of aura-boosted senbons at her while taking control of a single one of them with my telekinesis.

She was already turning around when I threw them out and managed to raise a thin wall of earth that managed to slow the senbons enough that they failed to reach her after piercing through the earth wall. Still, I steered the senbon I controlled above the wall and pushed it at Toph's throat.

Sadly, she spotted the senbon and created a lump of earth in front of it before hardening it after the senbon entered the lump. I did not mind since it had been a long shot anyway, and creating earth was more energy-consuming than manipulating the already present one, so the more earth I forced her to create on her own, the better for me.

Anyway, she gave me a smirk after blocking my senbon before she raised the earth around her to conceal herself, and when it fell back, she was gone. She actually used her own version of Dig, just without leaving a hole behind.

I used all my senses to try to find her location, but she had spread her energy through large parts of the field and it obstructed my psychic and aura senses from locating her, at least from the distance I was maintaining right now.

I decided to lower myself to two meters above the ground from my current 8-ish meters, before spreading out my senses once more, concentrating on the first four meters of the ground, to at least get an early warning for when she tried to resurface.

I doubted that she could stay much more than 5 minutes underground without suffocating or at least opening an air channel, so I was speeding around the field at a height of 2 meters while sensing the situation below me wherever I passed. It took me around 15 seconds to scan the whole battlefield once, and I was using the snail shell pattern for my flight path.

It took nearly 3 minutes for Toph to appear on my radar, and when she did I found out why she hid so long underground. 4 pings appeared in 4 different directions on my psychic radar/sense, and all 4 objects resembled Toph's form.

If not for my aura/life sense telling me that only one of the 4 objects had a life/aura signal, she would have been able to deceive my senses. However, now I moved toward the area her real self would resurface and waited, aura-clad senbons at ready, three meters above the ground for her to show herself.

The moment something poked out of the ground, I threw my senbons at her, but apparently, she did the smart thing and send a slap of earth ahead first so my senbons failed to pierce her. I had hoped the staff would have had to intervene to save her, making me the winner, but that failed due to her foresight.

Like a mole, she vanished back underground the moment my failed ambush happened, and I thought she would hide for a few more minutes before starting a second attempt.

I was proven wrong when the ground erupted upwards less than 30 seconds later, showering the air with earth, which forced me to teleport away since I was unwilling to risk anything dangerous being hidden among all that earth.

I appeared nearly thirty meters away from my previous position and saw Toph safely slip out of the ground not far from the eruption zone. She had a cheeky smile and looked in my direction before stomping to the ground raising the earth she had previously overturned.

She then stepped forward and punched out with one of her fists. The moment she did that, a hail of earth bullets flew out of the earth she had raised, full-on machine gun style.

I teleported away, but she turned towards me and repeated the same thing as soon as I reappeared, forcing me to dodge for a few seconds before I could teleport away once more.

This shoot the Mikail game repeated for a few minutes, and 5 minutes later I had focused so much on the approaching earth bullets, that I began to vaguely feel the ground energy inside them approaching me without using any of my usual senses.

Internally shaking my head at my supreme ground talent and affinity for acting up without me even trying, I decided to switch my approach. The next time I reappeared, I did so less than 10 meters from Toph and stopped relying on my telekinesis to stay in the air.

I used aura platforms instead and began slowing down the approaching earth bullets by establishing a telekinesis field around me that acted like a swamp or jelly to the bullets, slowing them down quite a bit. After that, I ran toward Toph at top speed while dodging all the earth bullets.

She actually stopped the earth bullets and raised an earth wave. I thought she would send the wave at me, but she turned it into a wall instead. I pulled out my two swords during my sprint and slashed the earth wall she raised.

I stopped her attempt at sinking into the ground by successfully immobilizing her with my telekinesis once I was close enough. She struggled, trying to get rid of my hold on her, while simultaneously raising earth spikes at me, trying to force me to release her to dodge them.

I used one of my thought streams to keep up the telekinetic hold while using the second one to focus on the fight. I slashed/destroyed any of the spikes that managed to reach me. I was not planning to make any mistakes by acting hasty, so I walked toward Toph at a slow but steady pace on my aura platforms.

That proved to be the right decision when the earth around me erupted just as I made it within 2 meters of her. Still, I was prepared for something like this to happen, so I switched my focus purely to my telekinesis and swiftly levitated upwards while dragging the struggling Toph along with me, separating her from her beloved earth.

This took a lot of my energy, and I could feel my reserves dwindling with every second that I had to keep this up, so I quickly moved us toward one another and placed the tip of my sword at her throat.

A second later the referee declared me the winner, which made me put away my sword and move us back to the ground under the cheers of the audience. With this victory, I made it to the finals in the personal category as well.

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