Stareeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
By this point, pretty much everyone had given up on watching Scar vs Tyr. It was nigh impossible to tell whether these two were having a showdown or a stare-down because literally nothing had happened thus far. Some people in the crowd even started coming up with rumours that these two were match fixing and had agreed to remain passive on the side lines before the start of this fight. Of course this was preposterous but it''s not like the people coming up with this hog wash could really be blamed for thinking as such given the current circumstance. Most of the people that thought like this were mortals, though, and that''s because cultivators with even the bare minimum experience had been in a situation almost exactly like this at some point in their career. More often than not, moving last in a fight was a detriment but, every now and then, when the stars aligned, you and the person you were fighting had an edge over each other that couldn''t be ignored. Moving first actually made you vulnerable, at which point the opponent''s sure fire strike would put you out of commission for good. In these situations, most of the time, these cultivators just straight up walked away from the fight and silently agreed to live to fight another day. For lack of a better term, these fights were almost entirely random. No one would ever want to move first and break the stalemate so it usually boiled down to uncontrollable events that occurred outside of the fight instead of within it. If you were a cultivator standing off against an opponent in a jungle and whoever moved first lost, you wouldn''t exactly be a happy camper if a monster happened across the two of you and went for your throat instead of the other guy''s. Dying such an unfair death, completely beyond their control. wasn''t in the cards for most people so a draw was the way things went typically. Now in the higher realms, where ancient experts had time to kill, these standoffs had lasted sometimes up to a couple million years before anything of note happened. As this was a somewhat common occurrence the cold war duo in question would attract a lot of attention and spectators, in some extreme cases even having museums and exhibits built around them to earn some stardust of their unrepenting stubbornness. There was one frequently mocked incident in which a man stood up to his foe for a few hundred thousand years only to realise by the end of it that the other guy had a heart attack a couple days into the standoff. He''d stood there this whole time giving a dead man the stink eye. Still, it could be worse, sometimes people fell for devious pranks and ended up in similar situations against clones. In fact it was even a war tactic at one point to lock down stronger generals with fake clones while the army devoted its much needed attention elsewhere. So, long story short, this conundrum Scar and Tyr were having wasn''t out of the norm at all. In fact a lot of the cultivators felt somewhat sympathetic because this scenario was tiring and boring. If you stopped paying attention for even a fraction of a second your opponent would jump at the opportunity so both involved parties were kinda stuck. Comparatively, it was like two men holding up a collapsing building right now and neither could let go.
Just as the last few spectators clinging to the vain hope that anything was going to happen with these two were about to give up, someone did finally do something. Tyr pointed his Staff Of Jako towards Scar and chanted a very simple art. "Fireball." No points for guessing what this art did. Much like Flamethrower, both these conflagration aspect arts had the clue in the name. Fireball was an art as old as time itself; in fact it was rumoured and generally thought to be the first ever art created by Neanderthals looking to light a fire. If you were being obtuse then technically the pillars and Astraeus had probably used other arts before then but, if you were specifically referring to this dimension and everything within the confines of it, then it counted. As for why this was believed to be the case, there were plenty of caveman drawings that alluded to such a history... Well it alluded to a little more than that as the drawings indicated the first ever Fireball missed its original target, a clump of wood on the floor, and accidentally hit the caveman''s mate ''Dave'' in the face. If the markings were to be believed, Dave was not pleased with this development and promptly whacked the other caveman over the head with a club. Depending on how you looked at it, this could also be considered the first ever war but that was an entirely different discussion as it went into further history surrounding Dave and his pal as their prehistoric mis-adventures didn''t exactly end there. Apparently things went really unga-bunga when Dave''s cavewife cheated on him with the other guy because he could light his penis on fire. The cavewife admitted to Dave that the other guy, and I quote, ''lit a fire in me''. From there it turned into a caveman gang war and devolved rapidly but that was neither here nor there and had nothing to do with the current day casting of Fireball... Although generally speaking any guy with an affiliation for the conflagration aspect had tried the hot rod at least once.
Fireball was an extremely simple, and relatively weak, art. A ball of fire was sent flying through the air in the direction it was fired. The second it hit literally anything, be it person, wall, or magic, it would blow up and set everything in the explosion''s radius on fire. You could theoretically practice with this art until you were capable of generating and tossing actual suns at people but nobody in history ever had the willingness to go that far. It was designed to be a simple art that was quick, cheap on the mana front, and used to pester your opponent into doing something. This art could be fired in the blink of an eye and didn''t inconvenience the user in the slightest. Unfortunately this meant its strength was comparable to its ease of use and easy to ignore in most cases but, seeing as how the point of it was to probe, that didn''t really matter. The really annoying cultivators with an affinity for the pillar, or just those who spent a weirdly significant amount of time on the art, could actually turn it into a deadly nuisance that could be spammed on repeat. Tyr was not in this category of cultivator but he''d put more effort into the art than most and his Fireball seemed pretty respectable in its own right. Then again that summarised Tyr to a tee, everything was just slightly above average. He used variety cultivation and every single art he fired off was never anything less than great. Whereas someone like Onno valued the additional effects a pillar could bring, Tyr focused more on the raw power of these elements and affinities. Whereas Onno would learn Fireball to burn things and not to deal damage, Tyr learnt it because a fast ball of magic was a useful addition to his varied arsenal. If Tyr could do it, you could be sure he could do it reliably and that was what he was well regarded for; consistency. Always on time. Always completing his training regime at the exact same time every day. Always taking a shower at the exact same time every day. Always checking in on the Legion departments at the exact same time every day. Every art he fired had no variance and were always exactly the same in terms of power output. It made him predictable, yes, but also incredibly hard to deal with because of how honest he was. You knew what he was going to do, you just couldn''t always necessarily stop it because it was done so immaculately in the first place!...
... Unless you were Scar, in which case a flick of the wrist was all it took to bat away the Fireball... Just when the crowd were starting to get excited, thinking the fight was about to kick off... Nothing. Against a normal cultivator the Fireball would have warranted action but Scar was definitely not normal. He was the de-facto head of the Umbra siblings and the strongest of them too. Again ignoring Ares but he didn''t count. A mere Fireball was going to do naught to Scar other than maybe make him roll his eyes. Still, it kept him on his toes and that was the main goal. Tyr had a minor advantage here in that he had ranged attacks at his disposal. Any of the bigger and slower ones would lose him the match on the spot if he wasn''t careful but arts like Fireball? They were a-ok to just haphazardly chuck out every now and then. It put more pressure and strain on Scar to be locked into facing Tyr without diverting his attention to the rest of his family.
Part of why Tyr had worried about this matchup in the first place was because Scar could react to changes in the tide of battle quicker than he could thanks to Blink. Tyr was never going to be a quicker support than Scar, even if he was a better one overall, and that was rough. Peppering him here and there with magical attacks was important lest he give Scar a window to spectate the other fights and potentially intervene at crucial moments. This approach only complicated their pseudo prisoner''s dilemma but that was to the benefit of Tyr and, thus, he committed to it. He genuinely believed his family could pull of a surprise victory here if he bought them enough time. So although a few spectators kept their eyes glue to these two stoic soldiers the truth of the matter was that nothing was going to happen here until things started ramping up elsewhere. Then someone would be forced to move and try to intervene. What should have been the most interesting match, captain vs captain, was actually the least enjoyable to watch because they were delegating all the work to everyone else! It was good leadership undeniably but it left somewhat of a bitter taste in everyone''s mouth. This was supposed to be a showdown between titans and yet two of the biggest were idling in the centre of the arena. They may as well have signed a treaty and hosted a tea party...
Elsewhere, though, things were heating up. No really, Pele''s Feel The Heat! was seconds away from reaching max temperature and emboldening her to go a rampage. Skyzo understood that if things got to that point he wouldn''t be winning this fight by his lonesome even with his maze. ''Looking Glass'' was an art of the ice aspect that created a hall of mirrors that were hard to destroy and baffled any opponent who wasn''t scrupulous in their inspection of it. As Skyzo had only really focussed on the defensive capabilities of the hall it was an incredibly sturdy art and, really, that was all he needed. His power boost was from Spectator''s Sanction so the leeway he had when designing Looking Glass was considerable. All of that was certainly true but none of it really helped him deal with Pele who was refusing to interact with the hall by closing her eyes. She''d been standing in the hexagonal junction for the last 50 or so seconds, racking up damage while Skyzo cautiously operated on her flesh like a surgeon. Only one or two wounds he''d inflicted were serious but, even then, nothing that would kill her any time soon. She had a pretty large gash near her neck and one of her arms was almost severed near the elbow but that wasn''t enough to put down a cultivator of Pele''s calibre. She was struggling wildly for now, yes, but in what Skyzo estimated to be about ten seconds she was going to increase her strength rapidly and become a real problem. Not just a problem for Skyzo but a problem for all his family who would also have to deal with her after he fell at her hands. Skyzo crept towards her, ready to go all in and risk it all. Even he wasn''t sure where he was precisely in this maze but, as the owner, he wouldn''t get bamboozled by reflections so he was able to skirt around the edges of the hexagon and look for the perfect place to strike.
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Right as he made his move, lunging for Pele''s flank with the determination to die for this stab if need be, his gut churned and he felt his instincts screaming at him to move away from his current position. He obeyed his bodily commands and just in time too as Pele''s spear missed his heart by a fraction of a centimetre. He''d still been impaled but he was alive. As for what had gone wrong here, Skyzo was still piecing things together from the moment he first witnessed Pele''s hair start glowing a fiery orange. The embers drifting off her hair indicated she was fully in Feel The Heat!''s peak state and logically her ability to detect him made sense what with her newfound gains in the sensory enhancement realm... But how did he mistime the activation of Feel The Heat!? It wasn''t the first time he''d seen this art and he knew well enough how it worked... His mind drifted back to when he assumed the timer began, back when he''d made first contact with the Volcanic Veterans, and then his mind wandered another ten seconds back on top of that...
The lava spewing spear?
Pele''s personal treasure? Was it when she was flicking the blobs at him that Feel The Heat! first started? But that shouldn''t be the case, Pele had never known how to activate her unique art with ranged attacks... It must have been a recent acquisition to her skill set... Just as how Looking Glass was a secret he''d kept from Pele, she''d kept her own secret and now it had all come back to bite Skyzo in the ass. If he''d just been honest with Pele she would have immediately been honest with him too, she was that kind of person... Or, actually, maybe she could tell he was hiding something from her to begin with as her perception regarding people she cared about was really something. Skyzo had been outmanoeuvred on the chess board here... He''d tried to cheat and call in an ambush from off the board only for Pele to have had the exact same idea in response to his antics and now he was paying the price. Thankfully his reaction speed was off the charts and he prevented the worst case scenario but things were still not looking pretty... Well Pele was looking pretty, as evidenced by Skyzo muttering that exact word under his breath. Pele smiled and briefly opened her eyes to wink at him when he said it but the flattery wasn''t getting him off the hook.
Pele swung the spear and gave Skyzo, who was still attached to the end of it, whiplash as he was flung off it and into his mirrors. Through them would actually be more accurate as he crashed through row after row of mirror as they all shattered against his back. The mirrors themselves weren''t exactly hard to break but the walls they were resting up against was another case and the fact Skyzo was still tunnelling holes through them in a straight line seconds after he''d been thrown just went to show how much power Pele was packing presently. He hadn''t even landed yet and Pele was already bounding through the rubble and catching up to his body... "Welp, this sucks..." Skyzo grumbled as he performed a backflip to land with his feet against a wall. Rather than go forward and deal with Pele head on, as that was suicidal, he dashed further into the maze to try and shake her. This immediately proved futile when she bust through a nearby wall and almost grabbed him by the throat. He''d barely wormed his way out of her grasp but he would only be so lucky so many times before it all went wrong. He was on full alert, and that would buy him some time as he was a slippery assassin when he wanted to be, but he was also starting to run out of maze and ideas. Pele was winning right now and she didn''t even have to open her eyes. If she regained her sight this fight was all but doomed. Skyzo had one more trick up his sleeve but he needed to escape this maze first. The irony of his own art trapping him wasn''t lost on him and so he made a mental note to adapt this art in the future to accommodate for this design flaw. Either he needed to be able to know the route out, make his own by parting the walls, or have the ability to just flat out destroy the art whenever he wanted. Any of the above would do the trick.
Right now was hell on earth though as he dashed down a hallway in which the walls to his side were being pummelled into dust as he ran by them. Pele''s glowing figure was like a sun demon lurking in the walls and hunting him down as he scarpered in a desperate bid to stumble across the exit. The art would disappear on its own after some time but he wasn''t going to last that long in the slightest. Skyzo rounded a corner and immediately skidded as he tried to reverse direction after seeing Pele''s blazing eyes directly in front of him. Pele thrust out her spear and Skyzo felt like a fish in a barrel right now but still he managed to hold onto his life by giving up on his direction change. Instead he accepted the sliding motion he was already in and threw himself further forward, causing the spear to miss. This put him in an awkward position as Pele''s spear now just had to swipe left and he would be struck in the ribcage and suffer an atrociously bad injury but, actually, that was part of his plan.
Thwack!
He wasn''t in a position to be picky about his escape method and if Pele was going to unintentionally help him by blasting him through a significant chunk of the maze... Well he wasn''t going to complain even if it felt like he''d just been hit by a truck. After coughing up blood, and dyeing the front of his scarf red in his blood, he pulled himself up and started sprinting away despite the pain. His bones were cracked and he was too busy to count how many injuries he''d just suffered as a result of that last attack but he knew it was a lot. He couldn''t take these kind of hits as Pele was just way too strong right now to handle. Too hot to handle, one might say. And actually, on the subject of ''heat'', there were two things worth mentioning. Pele''s attacks now lit her opponent on fire as soon as they connected which wasn''t altogether too problematic for Skyzo who was using the surrounding ice magic to put it out instantly. This also led nicely into the second thing worth mentioning which was that Pele was passively melting the maze. Her ambient temperature had skyrocketed as she gleefully bashed this labyrinth to smithereens. No amount of Skyzo reflections were going to guilt her into hitting the mirrors any gentler, actually it probably had the opposite affect. Legion women had a funny way of showing they were smitten with someone and Ares had experienced this first hand with Bellona''s seemingly arbitrary beatdowns. Anyway, point being Pele was barely struggling to destroy the walls to begin with but, now that they were all starting to turn into water under the intensity of her presence, the process was that much simpler. Chasing Skyzo, who was having to flee in accordance with the rules of his own maze, by charging straight through everything meant she was catching up and catching up fast.
Gulp
Skyzo swallowed some saliva, mixed partially with the blood he coughed up, as he kicked off a wall and made another turn. He breathed deeply and could feel his heart working overtime. Despite the anxiety kicking in, outwardly he was still calm as a peaceful lake and looked more annoyed that he was being hassled than scared in any capacity. If it were up to him, he would just lay down and die but he knew what kind of implication that would have on the rest of his family so he kept his desire to take the easy way out in the back of his mind. It irked him to no end but he was above giving up when he had a reason not to. Around another corner he veered and to both his relief and horror, the exit was directly ahead of of him. Yes the corners were slowing him down but they were also obstructing Pele''s vision and occasionally tricking her into running down the wrong corridor that was parallel to Skyzo instead of behind him. He''d been relying on that up until now but this last hallway was long and straight meaning there would be no leeway for the rest of this escape... Skyzo bolted down it as quick as he could and dared not look back as he heard the wall behind him shatter into tiny pieces. His back was getting warmer and he was starting to sweat but he was so painfully close to succeeding. He ran at breakneck speed with fully gritted teeth and clenched fists rocking back and forth, even closing his eyes and praying that he could cross the finish line with enough time to spare for his final gambit. He was going to die here, he''d accepted that, but he was going to take this woman with him no matter how hard he needed to work!
"FATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOW!" Skyzo crossed the line to the exit, whipped out his flare gun, and cried with all his might to his tiny sister who was in on this plot from the very start. He''d asked for her assistance on this matter before the match started and the tyke was the only one could help him right now.
All of the spectators were torn between watching Pele catch Skyzo, as she was practically breathing down his neck at this point, and looking over at Fate to see what she was going to do about this problem. in the end, most people turned their attention to the Umbras youngest just as Skyzo was pierced by Pele''s spear to see what she had in store in this crucial moment to fix things... And she was raising her middle finger?! Well it was understandable, Fate seemed to be winning her fight and this was going to hamper her massively. The time she spent helping her brother would reset her own progress but she also kinda had to do it. If she didn''t aid him then Pele was going to run around uncontested... "Dumb dog Skyzo...." Fate complained under her breath as she redirected H.I.JACK over to the nearest wall and away from the struggling rear guard. As H.I.JACK became visible, his arm with the chains reforged itself and now a new weapon was in place... A jack! His namesake and arguably his most powerful tool. H.I.JACK placed the jack against the wall, and thus the runic barrier guarding it and keeping the Training Field afloat, and set off his tool. The jack was pushing against the barrier and marking it like branding iron. This mark was H.I.JACK''s way into various ''systems'' which it could then freely take control of. Tech, runemancy, barriers, treasures. Provided the jack could rest on its surface, H.I.JACK could hijack it. What was the goal of this? Well it became apparent the second H.I.JACK made its way into the runic system and altered a small part of it. Whether this was classified as cheating or not remained to be seen and would be decided by the C.O after the match but, seeing as how it was the result of a treasure, and didn''t change anything major, it would probably be allowed to fly.
WHISTLE!
Once H.I.JACK''S hijack was done and dusted, the crowd''s attention was immediately grabbed by a shrill noise that was travelling in an arc on the other side of the arena. They glanced over and were nearly blown out of their seats. Skyzo''s flare had drawn them all back over and made them look in his direction. Fate had disabled the rune that prevented outside interference meaning an entire coliseum with ten floors worth of people were all now staring at him and granting him one of the biggest Sanction boosts he''d ever received throughout his entire life. Skyzo in this state may have very well been a match for Ares with annihilation pressure and was easily the most spectacular feat anyone other than the two fundamentals had shown thus far in the tournament. Pele had already pierced his heart in full but with the last few breaths available to him, now that he was fuelled by immense power, Skyzo thrust out his fist and punched Pele through the head. Though he fainted on the spot and died shortly after, he''d taken the troublesome opponent with him and even managed to get her off to the side-lines before him despite being the underdog for the last segment of that fight. The ethics of this trick he and Fate had pulled would no doubt be brought into question but there was something everyone in this arena had seemingly forgotten about the Umbra team. They were revenants. No trick too dirty and no means too excessive. Pele thought Skyzo bringing in reinforcements from outside the chess board was his fall back plan but, little did she know, he was prepared to flip the entire board from the start.