Rei moved.

The moment people saw that, including those fighting on stage, those who were paying close attention to Rei reacted immediately.

However, their reaction wasn’t to launch an attack towards Rei, it was to move away from him, if even just a little, while continuing to fight their current opponents.

Paying too much attention to other things while fighting someone meant not putting enough focus onto their main opponent, which risked getting caught off guard. Conversely, not paying enough attention to your surroundings meant that someone else could take the opportunity to stab you in the back. As a result, those that only watched their current opponent and those that paid too much attention to Rei were easily attacked.

Although there were several such people, there were two in particular who were most wary of Rei.

One of them was the man from the waiting room who had attacked Rei, the other was the tall man with the hammer who had taunted Rei on stage.

Given the fact that both of them had tried to mess with Rei, they couldn’t turn part of their attention away from him.

「UOOOOOOH-!」

The man who had fought Rei in the waiting room quickly jumped back to avoid the attack of a man swinging a mace at him. As soon as the mace swung past him, he leapt forward and delivered an uppercut that broke the man’s jaw and sent him flying.

Things didn’t end there though as he immediately dodged a dagger that was swung at him in an attempt to take advantage of the opportunity.

However, it seemed that the skill of the man with the daggers exceeded his expectations and his leather chest armour was sliced open by a quick series of attacks.

「Tch, exploiting that small opportunity.」

The man with the daggers just laughed at the man’s disgusted words and didn’t give a proper response.

As he avoided the repeated dagger attacks, the man glanced towards Rei again……

「What-!?」

He realised that Rei was was now nowhere to be found.

That moment of confusion was enough of an opening for the man with the daggers.

……Yes. Normally, the man would have taken the opportunity to stab his daggers into the other person’s chest.

(……This?)

However, before he could do anything, the man’s consciousness sank into darkness as he collapsed onto the stage.

He hadn’t even realised what had happened.

That said, the man was the only person who didn’t understand what had happened, everyone else around had seen how things had played out.

Before they knew it, Rei was right behind the man with the daggers.

Naturally, the first person to notice was the man skilled in unarmed combat, who had been fighting the man with the daggers.

He had briefly exchanged fists with Rei, although none of his attacks had made contact, which helped him here.

He paid no attention to the man with the daggers, who had already collapsed, as he measured his distance to Rei with a far more serious attitude than when he had been in the waiting room.

(Crimson uses a long handled weapon with overwhelmingly greater range. In other words, it’s hard to swing about. Once I get under his guard, I should be able to handle everything!)

The man thought to himself as he waited for Rei to swing his Death Scythe.

His idea wasn’t wrong at all. Rather, it was a commonly thought of plan when fighting long handled weapons such as spears, halberds, and pole axes.

……Yes, the idea wasn’t wrong, but only if it was an ordinary weapon.

He carefully observed Rei’s movements, so as to not miss any signs of the weapon being swung.

Normally, concentrating on a single person in a battle royal would never be praised. If you showed an opening, those around you would take advantage of it.

However, this case was different. The man could potentially defeat a troublesome opponent like Crimson……and even if he couldn’t, he might be able to inflict some damage or create an opening.

If that happened, everyone else might have the opportunity to take down Crimson themselves.

Those in the surroundings tacitly agreed to just keep eyes on the man challenging Rei without attacking him.

If they could defeat Crimson, they would definitely be highly sought after.

Even if they didn’t make it to the final rounds, they would still gain more than enough fame.

But, everyone in the surroundings who had the same thoughts could only be shocked the next moment.

The Death Scythe swung towards the man.

He had been confident in his own quick movements, but he hadn’t sensed any signs of the attack and collapsed to the ground before he knew what was happening.

「What……」

What happened? As he tried to whisper those words, he realised he couldn’t speak or breath as he wanted.

Pain……or rather, shock.

He felt a heavy feeling in his chest that interfered with his breathing.

(What……just, happened?)

With doubts in his mind, the man lost consciousness as the darkness swallowed him up.

『UOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH-!』

Cheers from the crowd echoed through out the arena.

Even if the one being cheered was Crimson, a mortal enemy of the Bestir Empire, seeing his strength, such small details no longer mattered.

Of course, those who had lost relatives in the war probably wanted to tell everyone else to shut up. However, the people in the audience who were cheering for Rei cared nothing for them.

「Hey, hey, did you see that movement just now!?」

「……Did his strike his chest with the shaft of the scythe?」

On the stage, two participants who knew each other stood back to back as they conversed and fended off other participants.

(I thought it was bad luck that I ended up with this guy since the qualifying groups are completely random, but when we’re up against a monster like this……maybe I am lucky.)

That was what the man with a spear thought to himself.

Rather than fighting Rei alone or with complete strangers, it was definitely more advantageous to fight with a fellow adventurer he knew.

「Shall we go?」

「Already? If possible, I’d like to see what else they can do first.」

A woman swung a long sword at the other man, but he deflected it with his battle axe.

「……However, if the number of people continue to decrease, it will become harder to catch them by surprise and they’ll be able to notice our movements……!」

The man spoke up as he held out his spear, deterring his opponent from taking advantage of the woman’s attacks to attack his partner.

「You, fighting while talking……don’t look down on me!」

The woman shouted as she made several sharp thrusts, but they were all deflected with minimal movement of the battle axe.

Exploiting an opportunity, the man with the spear thrust out, sending the woman’s long sword flying into the air as the man with the battle axe landed a knee kick into the woman’s stomach, causing her to collapse onto the stage.

Leaving the woman on the ground, the man with the spear caught Rei’s movements.

「Be careful, looks like he’s going to do something again. Be ready to take action if anything happens. If I find an opening, I’ll go all in. I don’t want to hesitate and miss this opportunity.」

「……Okay, that seems to be the better way. Everyone else watching seems to have the same idea as well.」

The man with the battle axe muttered as he quickly glanced around the stage.

It had been about 10 minutes since the fighting had started at the number of people still fighting had dropped by about half.

If they missed this opportunity, they might end up having to fight Crimson on their own.

They all watched Rei with those thoughts in mind……when Rei, holding the Death Scythe, started to speak.

『Gather, flame, gather. You are one and the same. A group and alone. Reveal yourself with my voice.』

At his words, a ball of fire, about 1m in diameter, was created at the tip of the Death Scythe.

Those who were watching Rei all twitched as they realised what is was and one of them screamed.

「It’s magic, don’t let him finish it!」

The other participants froze up for a moment at that scream before they quickly realised the situation and rushed at Rei all at once.

Up until now, they had taken a wait and see attitude, but it was a different matter if magic was being used.

A scythe had limited range, no matter how long the weapon was.

However, magic was different. It did depend on the magic being used, but its range could easily cover the entire stage.

In order to survive the qualifying rounds……and the rest of the tournament, they couldn’t lose here.

However, the fireball created by Rei was already flying through the air and, while it wasn’t that fast, it was flying straight towards its target.

……That’s right, it was flying straight for the big man with the hammer who had taunted Rei before the qualifying round had started.

A 1m diameter ball of fire was flying towards him.

The man’s face twitched for a moment when he saw it, but let out a sigh of relief when he realised the fireball wasn’t moving that fast.

Several people who had tried to stop Rei from invoking the magic stopped in their tracks when they saw its speed.

That was because they didn’t think such a slow moving fireball would have that much power.

If that was the case, then there wasn’t such a need to hurry and fight Crimson.

Regardless of his magic, they had already seen that Crimson was a formidable warrior.

 

 

「Heh, so much for Crimson. He might be called that, but in the end, he can only use this level of magic. I had even heard that he had created a fire tornado……」

『Flames, full bloom.』

He knew the man was saying something, but Rei decided it wasn’t worth listening to and just activated his magic without letting him finish.

The moment his magic was activated, the fireball exploded and turned into countless smaller fireballs that bared their fangs towards their surroundings.

Perhaps fortunately, attacks that instantly killed others were prohibited in this tournament.

In fact, even for Rei, the amount of magic power he put into his magic was surprisingly small.

It was only at the level where someone hit would only suffer burns instead of getting turned into charcoal.

Even so, being showered by countless small fireballs was bad news for the man with the hammer.

In fact, his outcome was more tragic than being knocked out in one hit due to the numerous burns he suffered.

No matter how many physical wounds you suffered, they would all recover when leaving the stage. However, wounds inflicted on the mind were different.

The man with the hammer threw away his weapon as he rolled on the ground, the pain undoubtedly engraving trauma into his mind.

He would become like the people who had seen Rei creating the fire whirl on the Selemus Plains or killing the soldiers of the Bestir Empire, resulting in his title of Crimson.

In additional, the man with the hammer wasn’t the only one to be hit by Rei’s magic. It also struck all the surrounding participants.

A total of four other people suffered the pain of burns and chose to surrender by jumping off the stage.

『Amazing, amazing, amazing! Is this essence of Crimson? The fireball he created turned into smaller fireballs that shot out, hitting several participants and knocking them out at once! Even the remaining participants can’t do much about this! Will Crimson, one of the big favourites, survive qualifying block C and who will compete for the remaining two spots?』

Rei frowned for a moment at the commentators voice, which echoed throughout the arena, as he muttered to himself.

「……Now then, there are only three people who can make it out and there are 10 left.」

Strangely, his voice carried over to everyone on stage.

Even those in the front row audience seats heard him.

Those who heard his voice felt a shiver down their spine.

「Let’s go then. My advice, anyone who doesn’t want to suffer better get off the stage.」

A few people instinctively stepped back at Rei’s words.

However, most of them were at a state where they couldn’t retreat and, as the commentator had said earlier, they were hoping of slipping into the one of the two remaining slots other than Rei. ……Their momentary lapse of focus was fatal.

『Fire, become arrows that burn everything and fall like rain.』

As Rei invoked his magic, flaming arrows appeared behind Rei. There were about 50 of them.

However, like before, the magic power contained in his magic was much less than normal.

However, those seeing his magic for the first time wouldn’t have known it.

「-!? Stop him!」

Several participants who saw the flaming arrows floating behind Rei screamed as they leapt at him……but it was already too late to stop the magic’s activation.

『Flaming arrow rain!』

The magic was activated at Rei’s words and the flaming arrows shot out.

The flaming arrows shot out at a rapid speed, striking those running towards Rei and engulfing them in flames.

That said, the arrows didn’t pierce their bodies or burn up immeidately as the amount of magic power used had been greatly reduced.

……As a result, after his magic ended, Rei was the only one standing in the vicinty. And, only two other participants were left as everyone else had rushed forward in an attempt to stop Rei.

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