Everyone's eyes were focused on the green vortex in the center of the field, waiting on the edge of their seats for something to happen. As a hand reached its way out of the vortex, people gasped, because it was soon followed by Jason carrying Grace over his shoulder.
"The winner is Jason Hilst!" Vict shouts, causing a mix of emotions to be felt throughout the stands. There is a wide variety of people attending, and while most of the commoners in attendance are cheering for Jason, those of noble blood are sneering instead.
"We don't even know what he did in there, and the battle was so boring," a noble shouts, "He would never be able to beat a real warrior,"
Indra clenches his fist when he hears that, getting ready to go teach that man a lesson. However, before he can storm over, Sydra grabs his arm and pulls him back down, "Wait, I don't think you'll be needed, don't you see all those people?"
The people Sydra was talking about were the commoners glaring at the noble. Feeling so many eyes on him, the noble turns around to mock the commoners, but that's when he notices that the King is also looking in his direction in disgust. Shutting his mouth, the noble goes back to watching the arena silently.
"I would have still liked to punch that guy," Indra says, still glaring in the man's direction. By now, Grace and Jason had left the arena, and Jason was already finished healing. As he sits down next to Sydra and Indra, Vict calls the next two contestants.
This time it was a boy named Greg, who had the ability to summon low-level creatures and enhance them with lightning, and he was going against another boy named Flint, who had the ability to shoot blue lasers from his hands. Whenever the lasers would touch something, it would teleport several meters in a random direction.
This led to a hilarious battle in a woody terrain, where Greg would summon a creature, and it would be teleported into the branches of a tree, or its body would be stuck into the ground. The only downside about Flint's aura was that he couldn't control where something would teleport, which led to him losing the battle by teleporting a Rhoinel above his head, which then landed on him and trapped him beneath its flat stomach.
The next few battles went by quickly until it was finally time for Sydra to go in. Although he was supposed to fight Percy, the first person Sydra had to beat wasn't him but one of his friends, who was named Ret.
"You won't even get the honor of losing to Percy, because I'm going to stop you here," Ret says, flexing his arms in an attempt to show off his non-existent muscles, "Scared? Don't be, this will be over quicker than you realize,"
"Thanks, that will make things easier for me," Sydra says, stretching out his arms, 'I guess he wants to make this fast?'
"This battle will be inside a terrain I barely use, but I thought it would be nice to change things up," Vict shouts, pulling back his aura from the jungle terrain and sending it into a rune that resembled the gears of a clock.
Looking at the rune, Sydra wasn't able to figure out the type of terrain that it could form, but his question was soon answered when the terrain transformed into large gears. Each gear was connected to one another, and as they moved so did the entire terrain.
'This doesn't seem to be a difficult map to get a hang of, I just need to...' Sydra's thoughts were cut off as the gear he was standing on made a clicking sound, and he was teleported back to the space he was standing in a few seconds ago.
"It's the Time Terrain!" Jason shouted out, alerting Sydra to what was going on, "Every few seconds, the time around you will change, and you will either move to a spot you were standing in before or a future spot you will end up stepping into!"
'Time Terrain? Does such a terrain really exist?' Sydra thinks, listening as the gears tick again and he is teleported several meters into the air. Sydra drops back to the ground, bending his knees to brace his fall, 'Okay, maybe this won't be as easy as I thought,'
Before Sydra could get a hang of his surroundings, Vict started the battle, and Sydra found himself being charged at by Ret, "Coming straight at me won't help you!"
Sydra forms a lightning spear in his hand and throws it at Ret, the spear whistling through the air with enough force to down even an S-rank. However, just as the air is about to pierce through ret's chest, Sydra finds something odd in Ret's behavior. Instead of trying to dodge the attack, Ret runs straight at it, even smiling a bit as he gets closer.
'What does he know that I don't?' Sydra wonders, watching Ret's movements carefully. Suddenly, the sound of the gears ticking rings out again, and both Ret and the lightning spear are teleported in different directions. The lightning spear is now on the other side of the arena, exploding against the protective barrier keeping attacks from hitting the crowd, and Ret is right in front of Sydra, slamming a lightning mace into Sydra's chest.
"Told you it would be over quickly," Ret says, smirking as Sydra flies across the arena. Turning his body in the air, Sydra braces himself to slam into a gear going straight up, but the second before he does, Sydra hears the echo of the gears ticking.
'Not again...' Sydra thinks, finding his body teleporting right back in front of Ret, who slams his mace into Sydra again, this time sending him towards the sky. Pissed off, Sydra spins his body in the air and fires off several spears of lightning towards the spot where Ret is standing, but they all stop in the air right above his head.
"Come on! Is this terrain protecting him or something?" Sydra shouts, watching as Ret takes a few steps to the side before the spears frozen in time resume their trajectory past him.
When the spears slam into the gears, a layer of dust is sent into the air, making it difficult for people to see what is going on. Even Sydra's sight is blocked off when he lands back on the ground, but instead of being worried, Sydra smiles and raises his hand.
"I guess it would be fine to use this now," Sydra says, creating an amber portal above his head. As the portal spins, several amber chains shoot out of it, and into the dust around them. A few seconds pass with nothing happening, and Sydra begins to worry that the chains were affected by the terrain, but his worries fade away as soon as he hears a yelp.
The yelp is coming from none other than Ret, who is currently being dragged across the arena by several chains that have latched onto his wrists and ankles. Uncertain of where he is headed, Ret creates a pickaxe of lightning and slams it into a few cracks in the gears, hoping that it will keep him from being dragged off.
'Damn it, Vict told me that as long as I read the aura of the Time Terrain, I would be able to easily defeat this bastard, but how am I supposed to read anything when I can't see anything!?' Ret thinks, gripping onto the pickaxe until his knuckles turn white.
"I was wondering what was keeping you from coming to me," a voice says from behind Ret. Looking back, fear enters Ret's eyes as he sees Sydra swinging two amber daggers back and forth through the air.
"Hey! You can't bring weapons into the arena, that's against the rules!" Ret squeaks, his eyes widening as Sydra smirks and squats down next to his side, holding the daggers above his shoulder blades.
"These? Their not weapons, just my lightning aura condensed to such a point that it has become more solid than most things in this world," Sydra explains, one of his daggers flashing in and out of existence above Ret.
Seeing this, Ret knows that Sydra is telling the truth, but he isn't able to do anything about it because he is still being pulled by the chains. By now the dust has cleared a little bit, allowing the audience to see a bit of what is happening.
'Better hurry this up,' Sydra thinks, raising both of the daggers into the air. Swinging down his arms, Sydra attempts to pierce through Ret's shoulders and force him to release his grip on the pickaxe, so he could be pulled into the vortex.
"Ahh!" Ret screams, his hands releasing the pickaxe as he flips over to guard himself against the attack. However, before Ret can finish his roll, he feels his body stop moving, and the sound of something ticking beneath him.
Ret had rolled directly into a section of the terrain that was frozen in time, and now his upper body was stuck in place, giving Sydra all the time he needs to slam the daggers into Ret's shoulders.
"There, now I don't need that anymore," Sydra says, the chains latching onto Ret disappearing as Sydra snaps his fingers. Standing up, Sydra creates an amber trident in his hands and slams it down between Ret's legs, "You should give up, I don't think you'll be able to fight in this condition,"
'This condition? What does he mean by that, I can still kick this guy's ass, even without my arms working properly,' Ret thinks, sitting up as soon as the time around his upper body unfreezes. However, that was when he noticed that the area around his lap was wet, and the audience was laughing loudly.