Chapter 13 - World Tournament II: Saint of Afternoon

[Hikari POV]

I was smiling internally at my teasing, looking around after naming my special ring. There weren't that many people in the stands, just the players from the Midgard tournament and some from the other realms, but I knew that in reality it was a whole stage full, thanks to the footage my friends sent me.

"I once wanted to see the feelings of others..." I ended up whispering to myself.

I knew that on other servers I was seen as someone amazing, that people stood up to clap because of my style, but on Extra Server, I was hated by the vast majority of competitors. The impressive thing was that I ended up noticing some people who were not participants in the world tournament, they were the Devs, I managed to recognize the two with whom I spoke the most, but there were others that I had only seen in simple meetings, but that never came to me to chat directly.

"Okay! So... LET THE QUARTER FINALS BEGIN!" The presenter exclaimed, not only to us, but to all the servers that this fight was being broadcast, and just as he appeared, he disappeared from the center of the arena, remaining seated in one of the closest stands to continue his work as a judge.

[SaintElvBlade] stood in front of me, with a super arrogant expression, but clearly irritated by my equipment choices. I remembered well when I met him, but only because I met Peroroncino and Bukubuku in the same situation. After he showed his true nature, I just felt disgusted by the fact that he claimed to be the "perfect paladin". There's no point in that, when the most samaritan, paladin-worthy person I know is my best insectoid friend, [Touch_Me]...

"Come on, child." He said all cocky, like he's never lost to me before. "You look pretty confident for a madman who doesn't wear armor..."

"I don't need armor against a party traitor like you." I said, putting my hand on the hilt of my katana, waiting for him to move to draw it.

"[Under Divine Flag]" He activated one of his skills and soon began to advance against me, holding that greatsword that seemed to be made of pure salt.

I drew my katana to activate one of the paralysis special effects, but he continued to move towards me. This took me a little by surprise, but even so, I had time to react to use my own katana to stop the enemy's attack, making our blades hit each other, causing a muffled but quite high-pitched sound.

"What was that little face? Didn't you know I had an anti-paralysis skill?" He said with a big smile on his face, as if his true face came out because he thought only I was seeing this.

"I thought you were an idiot who only focused on offensive skills, I'm proud." I said that with a weak smile as I pushed him back with a thrust of my katana and legs, but due to the weight of his armor, the space between us was even smaller than I expected.

"Then suffer the consequences for having low defense!" He exclaimed, trying to make another cut, this time horizontally and activating another skill. "[Attack Boost]!"

I was again able to defend myself from the attack, parrying with my blade, but the blow had still taken away some of my HP. I could see on my hud that even though I defended, I had lost 5%. Anyway, when doing my counterattack, I activated one of my skills from my newest jobclass.

"[Blood Cutter]!" With that, [Kuwoi-Muramasa]'s blade started to glow red and I started a series of attacks that increased in speed each time I managed to hit him.

Even with that paladin armor, I was still able to hit his body, due to the synergy of my katana with the [Blood Drinker] jobclass. This caused blood to start seeping through the gaps in his armor, startling him a little and making him take a few steps back. His fear was easy to understand, even equipment like that didn't stop me from inflicting the bleed effect on his character.

"[High Slasher]!" He exclaimed, taking two steps back and then doing a vertical slash from bottom to top, releasing a wave of energy in the shape of that attack in my direction.

I managed to dodge the attack by taking a side-step to the right, but I ended up falling into his trap, hearing him shouting another skill. "[Divine Disarm]!" With a lunge attack, he managed to knock not only my balance, but made my katana leave my hand and stick in the arena floor, a little away from me.

Before he took the opportunity to attack me, I managed to catch a glimpse of the people in the stands, everyone was smiling, happy that apparently I was totally finished. But they forgot that I am not completely dependent on [Kuwoi-Muramasa].

"[Bare Deflect]!" My fists started to glow as SaintElvBlade used [High Slasher] against me, the difference was that it was done at close-range this time.

Because it's so close, the defensive skill from the [Striker] jobclass was very effective. His blade slammed against the back of my right fist, causing him to lose his balance and his greatsword to go way back, with him not letting go of its handle. With that situation, I started to make some instinctive strikes, to force him to get away from me and give me more space to move.

"[Great Manaterization]!" Using that skill from the Jobclasses linked to [Wizard], I was able to materialize claws on my hands.

"[Sting Fingers]!" In combination, I used a special skill, which I only got by having the jobclasses [Assassin] and [Single Blow], both above lv.5. That way I managed to move my hands very quickly and accurately in his vital areas, which due to my claws, managed to scratch the armor a lot.

He couldn't draw the sword properly to defend himself or attack, so as expected, he took a few more steps back, thus allowing me to run towards my katana. Using yet another skill, [Agility Boost], I managed to reach and pull it off the ground, but not without being attacked again by yet another energy cut from his [High Slasher] skill.

I ended up being hit in the back, losing a lot of HP due to my lack of defense, so after falling to the ground, I jumped up, activating another skill. "[Body Strengthening]!" I exclaimed, and my body was surrounded by that aura.

"There is! Are you finally using your skills?" He chuckled, his greatsword filling with more energy.

"Of course, I needed to take my gear off to get any real challenge~" I taunted him, and it worked.

He ran to me and went back to attacking close-ranged, knowing one of his skills, we exchanged blade attacks, holding my katana with only one hand, so I could use [Bare Deflect] with the other when he tried to use [Divine Disarm] repeatedly.

"This isn't neither fun!" He exclaimed, still exchanging blows with me, but due to the bleeding effect, his HP was slowly becoming less than mine.

"That's the funny part..." I ended up giving several cuts aiming at his legs, this made him instinctively take a few steps and then try to jump at me, but I had already taken a jump.

His headshake showed he hadn't even noticed where I'd gone. Landing behind him, I used [Blood Cutter] again, but added [Attack Boost] to that, and stabbed the blade hard into his back, continuing my speech. "... fun exists for those who enjoy the fight."

"A-Argh! I-Is that all you have?" He didn't seem to be taking my attack so seriously, that even though it was accurate, it still took a little HP from him.

I grinned, and used the skill my newest JobClass is most known for. "[Blood Pool]..." The blood inside his character began to spurt out frantically from the cuts I had made underneath his armor. Not only that, but all that blood was sticking to my skin and seeping into me through my wounds. Systematically speaking, it was a lifesteal-type attack, SaintElvBlade's HP decreasing and being transferred in part to me, with his body paralyzed in the process.

When his HP reached 1%, I took the katana from his back and he ended up falling to his knees on the ground, weakened. I exclaimed, for all to hear. "You should have had more fun!" Soon giving a horizontal cut in the space of his neck, decapitating and throwing the head a little away.

"Just look! It seems that we have our winner! Ladies and Gentlemen, Hiiiraki has won another match! Now all that remains is to see who he will face in the semi-finals!" Said the Announcer, appearing in the center of the arena and speaking very animatedly. I raised my right hand as usual, as a way of acknowledging the celebrations that the viewers were having, while the extra server audience that was in the moment, looked at me with a certain curiosity, as if they were planning how to defeat me.

"I didn't even need to use the ring, I thought it would be more difficult..." I whispered to myself, watching the item on my finger, but soon I changed my equipment, to what I normally wear and left the arena.

There was, however, one person approaching me, that demi human appearance with the feline aspects were the most striking things about her. As always, I smiled at her, opening my arms.

"TrjegulFreyjaha! Good to see you! I hope that you enjoyed the fight." I spoke excitedly, after all it was one of my friends among the Devs.

"I liked it a lot... but I feel like you overdid it by taking off your armor..." She said looking around to see if anyone was listening to us or not, but there were only the two of us in that part of the building.

"I think it was little. I sacrificed my armor in order to have an item, and I didnt even use it!"

"That's the thing that scares me... I created this item myself and left it as a possible reward for two dungeons, one here in Midgard, and another in Helheim... And besides, I put a low percentage for it to spawn in only one of the dungeons' chests of the last rooms."

"Wait... really? I got it on my third try." My words made that demihuman grab me tight with her claws on my shoulders and shake me frantically.

"MAN! DID YOU MAKE IT ON YOUR THIRD DUNGEON-RUN?!?" She soon released me, seeming to gnaw on her own claws. "I put a 2% chance for this item to drop in chests! And these chests only reset when you complete 100% of the dungeons!... Wait a minute... When did you get this item?..."

"After the third elimination round, why?"

". . . . the third qualifiers lasted 1 irl day... You stayed the whole day, playing, and managed to complete that dungeon 3 times!?!" She screamed in panic.

"2... there were 2 times, after all... the chest wasn't so far from the entrance, when you discover some shortcuts." I smirked.

"Even so! A whole day and you managed to complete 100% of that dungeon twice!!!! W-Well, even so, it's too risky to use this item, you know that, right?" I just nodded in agreement.

[Wish upon a Star] is a kind of betting roulette. I was forced to put 20 items into a list that comes up when configuring the ring. The power of this accessory is simply to transform into a slightly weak copy of the item chosen in this roulette wheel. That is, if I'm very lucky, I have a chance of a weakened copy of [Kuwoi-Muramasa], thus having two in hand, but if I'm very unlucky, the ring can turn into one of my armor pieces or even an HP Potion, which wouldn't be a bad thing since potions are not allowed, except for this loophole. But clearly, this has a cooldown, so it's a good thing I didn't use it now.

"To think I found this without knowing it existed... I was simply training and taking EXP for my katana..." I ended up whispering and chuckling lightly.

"Wait... what level is this KATANA at?" She questioned hearing my whispers and I just handed the object to her. "My... wow... how did this evolve so much?"

"I used the EXP Boost tickets you guys sell in the store, I've been saving a lot of Gold and DataPoints." She looked at me strangely when I answered her. "Eh? Is there a problem?"

"EXP Boosts tickets are made for Players only... That must have been a bug..."

"Eh?! I-I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"Okay... It's good that you were the one to discover this... I think it's because your item is the only one that uses the leveling system like the players... I'll let [Njordyn] and [Siffyni] know about it..." My eyes stared at the feline a little at what she had said.

"Is my item the only one that does this?..."

"Uhum, you're being our Beta Tester, so to speak, for items with their own levels. And I better warn others about this already, so if we make items like this as a common thing, players won't start abusing this bug anymore." She said that writing it down in a kind of fluffy little card decorated with a white tiger.

We talked a little more, before saying goodbye, since I didn't want any of the other participants chasing me before the time, and, honestly, I didn't want to see the fights, I wanted to be surprised about the person I was going to fight against in the next round. Due to this and other reasons, I decided to Logout, it would be better to have some rest outside the game. After all, the next step will happen tomorrow, according to the real world time.

_______________________

And that's what happened...

During my rest period away from YGGDRASIL, Bukubuku and I chatted via voice chat while I worked out a bit in my mini gym in the apartment. She seemed quite excited for me and kept updating me on our friends' situations.

I was still sad that Ulbert lost, but to think that Peroroncino had made it to the semifinals as well was something that surprised me, unlike Touch_Me, who I was sure would win, just knowing his courage. BB looked really affectionate and incredibly cute during our conversation, even though she wasn't using any of the voices she does in her work, and honestly, I blushed at the moment when she called me "Hikari-senpai" to tease me.

After that, a few hours of sleep, and a hearty breakfast, I was back in the game. The outside part of the arena that we usually use for broadcasting the fights seemed much more decorated, with ornaments everywhere, in addition to countless NPC Pixies floating and lighting up, giving that very fantasy atmosphere to the environment. Entering, I noticed that there were already people in the stands, with something that impressed me, some were heteromorphic players that I had never seen before, carrying a big sign with my name.

Because they were on the Extra Server and I had never seen them, it meant they were participants in World Tournaments from other realms. It could be both those who went to the semi-finals, and those who lost, but decided to stay there to see everything up close. I felt my face getting slightly hot at the sight of this and I waved at them, doing a few jumps. Additionally, there appeared to be several floating screens above all the stands, showing various other arenas packed with other players.

"Apparently you loved the decoration~" Said the presenter when he noticed that I had arrived. "Very well, lad. As always, you will be the first fight of this tournament stage, do you have a problem with that?"

"No sir, but who will I fight this time?" I asked, still impressed with how many arenas were full according to the floating screens.

"Oh, it's going to be against a human player who has so many accessories that she can easily pass as a demi-human. I already wish you luck because she is extremely irritable... in the changing rooms she just screamed and beat the walls." My gaze was slightly startled by the tournament announcer himself wishing me luck.

"As some say... 'Faith in the crazy ones', huh?" He ended up laughing at my joke and pointed for me to go and position myself in the north area so that the transmission could start.

"Ladies and gentlemen! Today we will finally start the Midgard Tournament semifinals!!" The presenter said looking at the surroundings and I could not only see, but also hear, all the animation of the viewers through the large floating screens.

"On the north side, we have the vast majority's favorite competitor! The one who, when doesn't seem to be taking it seriously, is when he really wants a fantastic fight, not for himself, but for you, our viewers! Our great journalist who is off duty during this event, [Hikari]!" With his words, I entered the arena, listening to the animation of the players, which contrasted a lot with the audience I was having on ExtraServer.

"And on the south side! The fake kitsune! The girl that many of you fall in love with! The one you don't play without first activating all possible defenses! Make way for her, [Sun_of_Afternoon]!" I saw the gate swing open, revealing a 1,50m girl with huge clawed gauntlets, an adorably fluffy dress, long hair and tails, fox ears, and an exaggerated... bust.

"It's been a long time... Apparently you really deleted your old character and changed to a Human, or did you use the New Year's special item?" I ended up speaking, thus provoking her, but I feel that my very presence irritates her, as her eyes already showed a murderous instinct even before I opened my mouth.

"Okay! Choose your gear!" The presenter spoke and I simply removed my armor, staying as in the last battle, while my opponent continued with what she had, without changing anything.

"Get ready, the fight will begin!" He disappeared and a large counter starting from 10 appeared in his place, I could clearly hear the viewers counting along with the numbers that appeared.

"[Attack Boost],[Agility Boost],[Body Strengthening]!" She and I used the same skills before the fight started, with the difference that I had also activated "[Great Manaterization]!" Thus, creating very thin boots, pants and gauntlets made purely from mana, which would have been blue, but due to defense fortification, were now greenish.

When the counter reached 0, she charged at me at full speed, making a quick up and down movement with the claws of both gauntlets, which ended up creating a blast of energy. To dodge the blow and the lunge at the same time, I ran to the wall behind me, climbing on top of it with just my feet as I took a huge leap, propelling myself all the way up.

"It won't work!" She exclaimed and I could see her doing that attack again, now throwing it into the air, where I was.

Being airborn, my body continued to spin due to my jump, but that didn't stop me from drawing my katana, which unfortunately didn't affect my opponent with a paralysis effect. However, using my blade, I managed to deflect one of the energy waves, with the slight problem of being thrown further than I expected.

Landing on the complete opposite side to the one I was at the beginning, I saw her still running towards me, all the time trying to reduce the distance between the two of us, and I accepted. Standing there, she started trying to give me countless strikes with both claws, but thanks to my katana and the mana gauntlets, I managed to defend myself from both my sides.

However, I ended up being taken by surprise, by the dirtiest attack of all that I would never expect someone in a tournament like this to pull off...

"UUuuuhg!" I could hear countless viewers making that sound together for the sheer empathy of that scene.

She took advantage of my imbalance by kicking right between my legs to start a big combo of scratches on my torso and face, until she finally kicked me in the left rib, throwing me hard against the wall, which now had some flaws. I could hear her giggling as she lunged at me again, but those silly giggles of hers were enough to give me time to activate another skill.

"[Shadow Dash]!" My body went completely black and went through her body, ending up behind her. Before she could react, I hit her hard enough on the back with the hilt of my katana, to then take a small jump and rotate my entire body, thus giving a full kick in her face, throwing her away from me.

"Argh .. right in the intimate parts... you really don't have any class of a lady..." I ended up externalizing my thoughts without even realizing it, while watching my HUD. In this little time, I had lost 20% of HP, apparently she has a very high Phy.Atk...

I could see her starting to get up, slowly, and with an extremely annoyed look at me. "[Fire Enchantment]..." Her body started to catch fire, her claws gleaming as if the metal in her gauntlet was going to melt at any moment.

"By the looks of it, guys! Really the semi-finals will be interesting!!!" I could hear the announcer's narration as I just straightened my pose, holding my katana tightly with both hands.

"[Lightning Enchantment]..." Due to my fighting style, I decided to choose the electrical element, rather than something like water. Like what happened with Sun_of_Afternoon, my body began to be surrounded by the chosen element, with my red hair becoming more spiky than usual and completely upwards, while my armor made of pure mana was now turning yellow.

She ran towards me again in a very animalistic way, still attacking with both hands, while I tried to defend myself as much as possible with my katana and a few dodges. Again, I ended up being caught by surprise, receiving a big push that took me back, but without taking damage. However, she took advantage of the gained space to boost herself, as if every time she advanced on someone, her attacks became faster.

And indeed, it seemed that her arms became faster, to the point of causing an after-effect that they were cloning themselves during the blows. She wasn't only focused on Phy.Attack, but also on Agility, just like me.

"No... Even if we both focus on Agility, I have other things stronger such as Phy.Attack..." I thought, giving a big smirk and again stepping back with a [Shadow Dash], she seemed to love it, as if really my hypothesis was right, this multiple agility buff should be coming due to some of the armor pieces she has.

She again took another leap towards me, but it didn't matter much, as I had managed to have time to use one more enhancement skill. "[Greater Thunder Blade]!"

My skill seemed to fill [Kuwoi-Muramasa]'s blade with a lot of dense electrical energy, as if it wasn't something sharp anymore but made for hitting, so I swung it like it was a baseball bat. I ended up hitting my enemy under her chin, sending her flying like a ball in a home-run.

Her body ended up hitting hard against the vertical limit of the arena, and it made me laugh out loud, but I didn't finish my attack. She was in mid-air, looking helpless, so I continued to do what I had least done so far in this competition. The use of skills from my magic job classes.

"[Aim Magic: Fire Storm], [Aim Magic: Final Drop], [Aim Magic: Titanium Spike], [Aim Magic: Silver Wind]!"

A quadra elemental combo of projectiles appeared around me, starting to be projected against the human dressed as a fox, who tried to defend herself from some blows with her claws while she was falling, but it wasn't enough. After the first shots, she began to be hit in different parts of her body. Of course, each of these skills has a specific rate of shots per minute, but with the 4 being used at slightly different intervals of time, it made her always receive 2 shots every second.

This lasted until she was 3 meters from the ground, which was when I felt that that amount of mana spent had already been enough. She fell face down on the ground and didn't seem to get up, with her body forming a pool of blood below her and her HP bar appearing on top, seeming to have only 10 points.

"Apparently it's over..." I said after standing right next to her, watching her closely.

"You...why...don't you crush me...already...?" She said clearly irritated and with her character so broken that she couldn't speak normally.

"I didn't mean to be rude to a lady... But as you asked." I said, putting my foot on top of the character's head and crushing it hard, turning it into several data-crystals that evaporated in the air.

"And so, our dear Hikari wins another match!!!" The judge started to speak and I could see the large number of people on the screens getting up and cheering. "Now, we will only see him in the FINAL! And the person he faces will be decided in a fight in 6 irl hours! Take your time and get the popcorn!"

I noted where my foot was and then putted my normal gear from the inventory, walking to the changing room area of the arena so I could drink some recovery potions. I could see a slightly irritated person approaching me.

"[Great-o Doll], I didn't expect to see you here. Everything is fine?" I asked out of pure politeness, but he seemed in a rather bad mood.

"If I'm fine???? I lost a lot of gold now, you know?"

"Hm...? You lost? A dev? What the hell happened to something like that?" I raised an eyebrow.

"You are the thing that happened!" I was still confused, waiting for him to continue talking. "I had bet that [Sun_of_Afternoon] would win the tournament! And you ended up literally throwing her out!!"

"Wait a minute... you didn't even believe that I would defeat her at some point??" I made an exaggerated expression of betrayal at that point, after all I thought I was his favorite.

"It's not like that. It's just that... we made this bet 1 month ago. I would never have known that you would evolve this much between the moment we informed the competitors and the actual start of the event." He was in a bizarre state somewhere between disappointed and proud. "Anyway... Using the bullet-rate of those Aim Spells like that in the end was a good idea, I honestly never thought of using it that way."

"It's because I have a lot of mana and the damage of those spells is influenced by both Mag.Atk and Special. So since I still had enough of it all, I decided to take the opportunity not to let her get close... honestly, answer me... did she have a passive damage increase skill?" My dev friend just nodded.

"Yep, two pieces of the gear she was wearing had an effect the more lunges she gives, she'll gain a bit more agility points for a few seconds, not so good in fights that last a long time actually." He spoke, swinging his arms from side to side. "Anyway... congratulations on being a finalist, boy... I still remember well when I met you... seriously, killing a boss with stats of level 80, being below level 30... how insane.."

"I agree, that day was pretty crazy..." We ended up having a few laughs, walking through the halls inside the arena until we reached a door written 'Staff Only'.

"Well, I hope you are happy for the last battle..."

"Hm? Why this smile?" I pointed out the fact that he was smiling wider than usual.

"Well... I won't spoil it, I'll just say you're going to have a great time. There will be a unique gimmick..."

"I see... see you in the finals?" I reached out to him.

"Of course, I will hand the prize over to you." He laughed again, shaking hands with me and after that entered that room, which lost the doorknob at the exact moment the door was closed.

It didn't take long for me to log out. People would say that it would be better to relax inside the game because time passes differently there, but my anxiety called me strongly...

I looked at my watch, seeing that it was still 10 am in the real world, I had barely finished my breakfast by that logic. I knew that the second fight of the semifinals would take place in 6 hours from here, and that the finals would possibly take place around noon tomorrow, this would be enough time for me to breathe and think about the situation.

I got up from the chair in front of my computer and walked into the living room, seeing the decorative furniture that was reminiscent of an extremely old 1990s style reality indeed. I grabbed an energy drink from a nearby fridge and sat on the sofa, turning on the television to watch some anime while I ended up getting a call.

"Good morning good morning~ How are you, B.B?" I spoke softly after seeing who was calling.

"Yooo! I saw today's match, you were amazing, seriously, I couldn't have known what trick you would use, and to think it would go straight to the magic method..."

"You haven't answered me yet~" I said, trying to sound flirtatious through the phone.

"Ulala~ I'm fine yes, very fine~ so much so that I would throw myself at you if I were on the same server~" We started to laugh a little at her response, but that had given me an idea...

"But have you heard any news about the others?" I asked, taking a sip of the energy drink.

"A good one and a bad one. The good news is that I was informed that Touch_Me entered the Alfheim final without too many problems, the bad news is that my brother lost in Helheim." We were silent after she said that, but we ended up laughing at the situation.

"Maybe it's a good thing he lost, you never know what the hell he'd do with the winner's prize."

"Knowing him, I bet he would spend 80% on perverted accessories." She said that and we started laughing more and more.

"Anyway... I'll be out of the game until two or three hours before the next battle. So if you want to talk to me more..."

"Okay, that's good to know~" I could hear adorable laughter coming from the other side.

"Well... I've been thinking about how we're going to celebrate, even if we lose, touch_me and I made it to the finals anyway, that's reason enough."

"Ooh... say more~"

"Well, the celebration would be shortly after the tournament ends... I would like you to ask the others where they live, at least what region of Japan, as you are in contact with all of them and I already know Touch_Me personally."

A noise of surprise was released from her. "Wait...is this serious?"

"Uhum. Let's get ready soon and see who really has a chance to participate in an IRL party. The victory of a world tournament needs to be celebrated in the most amazing way possible!"