"Hey, it's you, right? You are the masked guy from five years ago at the experiments test" asked Shima with a shaking voice.
The masked guy turned his head to Shima for a couple second, then started running towards the buildings in the town. Shima started chasing him, but when he got behind a house, the masked guy disappeared without a trace.
Shima looked up and started to climb on the house, after he got up he looked around to see if the masked man ran on the roofs of the houses.
"This is a beautiful view from up here" said Shima amazed, "But he isn't here either"
While he was admiring the view, Ryuu and Ayako came and yelled from the bottom.
"Hey! Shima, is everything alright?" said Ayako
"Yes, what about the contest?"
"It's starting soon, we should go now, the arena is outside the town"
"Yes"
Shima came down from the roof of the house, and they went on their way. The arena is located north of the town in a large plain filled with ruins of old houses. When they arrived at the entrance, a man was standing in front of everyone preparing a speech alongside other guys in his back.
"Welcome everyone, first, I want to start by telling you why we hold this contest, and what we benefit from it"
"Our profit will be thirty percent of the prize pool, the rest is the money the winners will take, also, among us there is someone working under the king of Karea which will be examining you today, the purpose of the examination is for hiring good fighters"
"And who is t-..." shouted a guy from the participants.
"Shut up, I haven't finished, now, let me explain the rules, powers and weapons of any kind are allowed, your goal is to beat as many teams you can, every time you win a fight with someone your team is gaining one point, you got one hour to get as many points as you can
"Also, attempting to kill will result in disqualification of your team, now, shall we begin?"
Everyone got excited about the begging of the contest. The guys that are hosting it took the teams in different places inside the arena to separate them, Shima, Ryuu and Ayako starting point is inside a ruined house on a hill to the north.
A green signal have been launched in the air signaling the start of the battles. Everyone inside the arena. The first teams to encounter each other started fighting immediately, one of the teams had a disadvantage because a kid was with them, or that's what they thought. The little kid charged a fireball with his powers and scored an easy two points for his team by trowing it in the back of his enemies.
"Hey Shima, let's see who gets more points, the loser has to do five hundred push-ups with the other one on his back" said Ryuu with a grin on his face.
"Good, I can't wait to see you give all your air doing the push-ups"
"Hey you two, let's split, I think we can easily take three on one" said Ayako pulling out a sword covered in ice.
The three of them split up, Ryuu went to the west, Ayako to the east and Shima to the south. While running, Ryuu saw a team hiding behind a ruin trying to ambush him from his back, that was a perfect opportunity for him to grab some points for his team.
Right when he pass the ruin where the enemy team was hiding, Ryuu covered his leg in fire and with a turn in the back he hit the wall knocking it over them. One of them got up and threw his dagger, hitting Ryuu's leg.
"Tsk, you don't know when to give up" said Ryuu raising his finger in a pistol-shaped form, shooting a bullet made out of fire right in his enemy foot. Ryuu scored three points for his team.
Ayako felt the presence of enemies and decided to stop running. Two teams broke the rules and teamed up, six men around the age of thirty surrounded Ayako to fight her, but one of the guys came with an idea and said:
"Hey guys, even if we lose or win today, he can kidnap this girl because she has zero chance in winning a fight with all of us, then we can have fun with her and sell her, we will get more money than winning this contest, and we split up what do you say?"
Everyone got hyped up and raised their weapons in the air, screaming. Ayako stood still waiting for them to make their move, when they stopped making noise the guy with the idea went by himself to fight Ayako with high confidence in himself, while he was walking to her, he drew his sword from its scabbard.
"Not your lucky day mister" said Ayako, with a swing in the air her ice sword threw an icicle onto his enemy hand making him scream. When everyone else saw that, all of them drew out their weapons to attack her.
Ayako raised her sword in the air and said, "Ice Alert, Icicle Blizzard", in the next second she created a blizzard made out of icicle shooting everyone around her, scoring six points for knocking them out.
In the south where Shima is heading, the majority of teams are fighting, in his vision more than five teams could be seen, but he decided to ignore everyone running to a certain point. Not too far away from where everyone is fighting, Shima reached the place where he was heading.
"Io! You over there, you don't even compare to the rest here in terms of power"
"Hmpf, looks like there is someone worthy of me fighting today"
"Let's see how much I have improved in the last years, this guy looks pretty strong" said Shima in his mind.
"Hey, what is your name?" Shima asked his opponent.
"There is no need for you to know my name, what's the point of knowing someone's name if you are going to die?"
Hearing this made Shima mad, after he showed respect to his enemy he is disrespected by him. Shima begun walking forward while his right hand started to burn in black flames.
"Well, if that's how things goes, then you shall not know my name"
Chapter III: Entering the Arena - End