Only 32 more to go, Eo thought.
He looked back at the roster and noticed that he suddenly had insanely hard enemies. He wasn't very surprised that they were bent on letting him get a third loss.
He had 168 total wins, and only 2 defeats. It was an insane win/loss ratio. The managers were stuffing up to three, sometimes four games per day. They desperately wanted to tire him out, but were baffled by Eo's seemingly unstoppable stamina and recovery. Eo also found out that his medical break would normally be an entire month because of his burns, but they shortened it to two weeks to preemptively eliminate him.
All of Eo's cellmates could hardly believe that the newest who joined them was also suddenly the most powerful. Nestaris still couldn't get over the fact that he lost, and kept challenging Eo over and over again (to which Eo dismissed). Meanwhile, Werinston Zetterbard was just grinning while rubbing his fingers in anticipation of all the money he was getting from Eo. He wasn't blind to the fact that Eo was aiming for his freedom, so he was constantly trying to match him to even harder opponents.
By this point, Eo was fighting opponents that were in the Green Rank. That was, they had 4500E, which meant they had over twice as much raw essence than Eo's last measurement. Eo was still regularly beating them, moving his globules from tangiform to Essence River or vice versa, whichever one was more necessary at the moment. He also managed to figure out how to stabilize his emotions so that the emoticurrent won't fluctuate unpredictably. His ability to move the interment within the interphy to certain areas made parts of the tangiform more or less dextrous. The higher-ranked opponents were shocked to even see tangiform function. The audience and announcer were equally as baffled.
Because the rosters were recently updated, Eo got an enormous boost in fame and reputation. He became known as the "Newcomer with Nice Knives", which Eo thought was still a pretty dumb name. At least it was better than "a random stray boy".
Eo stepped into the arena once more. He saw a silhouetted figure emerge from the other side. It looked like a very dark and evil lady.
"Is that the 'newcomer'?" The figure said.
"Is that someone whose face isn't showing clearly?" replied Eo. "Stop trying to be intimidating and let's just get this over with."
The figure clucked her tongue disappointingly.
"No respect for the experts, I see."
"Experts?" Eo thought for a moment. The ranks were sorted into tiers, and each tier had a vast power gap separating it from other tiers. The lowest tier, Tier I, were often called "novices". It would include fighters from 1000E-1300E. Eo had left this tier a long time ago. Tier II fighters were "Intermediates", with people from 2000E to 4500E. As it could be seen, one could become a high ranked novice without reaching the intermediate stage for a very long amount of time. Eo was in this "Intermediate" ranking. Tier IIIs were called "experts", from 9000E-36000E. The range and amount of dedication required to get to here was insane, and the higher up the tier one looked, the fewer people one would find. As essence generation usually went up with age, most Tier IIIs were people in at least their mid-forties. This woman looked like she was in her mid-twenties, and to also be in the "expert" tier was an extremely rare feat. This woman had at least three times the amount of raw essence Eo had.
"Let me introduce myself," she continued.
"Hold on," Eo interrupted. "Could you please move out of the shadow? You haven't moved at all while I was internally monologuing."
The woman looked slightly irritated and then stepped forward.
"The name is Miss Jeryl. I already did my research, so I know all about you."
"Isn't that called being a child predator? Anyways, let's get started."
Eo started synthesizing dagger chains and charged forward. He wasn't trying to be suicidal, but he wanted to figure out what the enemy's moves were. So, he launched his four dagger-chains.
Miss Jeryl slyly smiled and stepped aside. With a flick of her wrist, a blast of air slapped away three of the dagger-chains. She avoided the last one.
An Air-type, Eo thought. He hadn't seen those in a while.
Eo immediately started spawning more and more dagger-chains. He was going to spam them if he had to.
The woman expertly dodged or smacked them away with blasts of wind. Only once did she take out a weapon to physically deflect one.
"Not bad, little boy."
Miss Jeryl suddenly raised her arms up and started floating.
"W-what! You can fly with that affinity?!"
Miss Jeryl laughed contemptuously and then suddenly glared.
"My playtime is over. I've had enough fun with you, Eo."
She then faced her palm towards Eo.
"Wind Blast!"
A giant blast of wind launched itself towards Eo. Eo synthesized an extremely large sheet of metal in response and launched it back towards her.
The large sheet of metal blocked her vision and also slammed right through the wind, barely slowing down. Miss Jeryl didn't seem to realize it was actually being forced forwards by Eo's tangiform, not just thrown, until it was too late.
Miss Jeryl immediately twisted her body so that her legs were solidly planted on the metal sheet.
However, this was what Eo was aiming for. He didn't want Miss Jeryl to see what he was doing, and that sheet of metal was perfect for obscuring all of his plans.
Eo threw a glob of metal extremely hard. It was thrown with his essence-infused right arm, which had the exact amount of energy to not tear itself apart.
There was a loud ding sound and the sheet of metal, along with a squishy body behind it, both got slammed by what could only be described as what seemed to be a shotgun slug.
Miss Jeryl had the wind knocked out of her mid-air, which was kind of ironic, but she wasn't about to give up. She again twisted her body to prepare a ground landing, but was faced by dozens of waiting dagger-chains.
Miss Jeryl, shocked, didn't have enough time to figure out what to do, so she and the sheet of metal slammed into the floor. Eo moved the daggers away, avoiding her vital organs. He didn't want an unnecessary death on his hands. The sheet of metal wrapped itself around her and pressed into the floor, like a very heavy sheet of paper.
Eo quickly inscribed a rune on the arena floor using 50+ dagger-chains. Moments later, blue light shot out, trapping her completely.
"GG", Eo said.