Free Web NovelChapter 491: Remaining Contestants
In the stands across the kingdom, the audience erupted.
Moon’s face filled the screens for the first time in hours. He had vanished from the broadcasts almost entirely after the Cryomancer encounter, and many of his fans had been growing restless, refreshing the leaderboard to confirm he was still alive in the bracket.
The sight of him now, stepping out from the trees alone, staring down three exhausted but still-dangerous Evolvers, sent a wave of energy through the spectator sections.
"He’s back!"
"Where’s he been the whole afternoon?!"
"Three versus one. They have no idea who they’re picking a fight with."
"This is going to be good."
"My dark horse is back. Pay up, all of you who bet against him."
The camera drones swarmed toward the clearing, every angle locking onto Moon and the three Evolvers facing him down.
Moon stood at the edge of the trees, his staff in one hand, his other hand resting loosely at his side. His expression hadn’t changed.
The archer drew her bowstring fully back. The swordsman shifted his lead leg forward. The mage raised her staff, mana flaring.
Three skills, all aimed at one young man standing alone.
Whoosh!
An arrow cut through the air toward Moon. A swordsman burst from his left, blade already mid-swing. The mage’s hands glowed hot as a fireball rushed forward.
All three at once.
Water coiled around Moon’s right hand and surged forward, slamming into the fireball. Steam exploded between them, swallowing the yard in a thick white haze.
His left hand flicked outward. A wind blade screamed through the mist, straight at the charging swordsman.
The swordsman raised his blade to block, but the force behind it was far heavier than any quick wind spell had the right to be. It struck his guard and sent him skidding back, boots carving lines in the dirt.
"What was that wind blade...damn it!" The swordsman cursed.
Moon stepped forward through the steam.
Rumble!
The ground beneath the swordsman began to change. Earth rose around his ankles, locking him in place.
The swordsman looked down at the earth hands that rose around his ankles locking him in place.
In a hurry, he struck the lock on his left foot.
Whoosh!
Before he could free the second, he felt something approaching him rapidly.
He looked up, finding Moon’s fist, wrapped in what appeared to be an air bubble fast approaching.
BAM!
The punch connected clean with his jaw.
Crack!
The sound of broken bones spread across the clearing. The swordsman dropped like a sack of grain, out cold before he hit the ground.
The mage’s eyes narrowed and her hands trembled as another spell began to form between her fingers. She couldn’t believe it—what she had taken for another mage had just knocked out the swordsman she believed to be her equal, cold in an instant.
"He just—" she started.
Moon did not give her time to process and adapt. He was already moving, casting a wall of water rose between them, absorbing her half-cast fireball with a sharp hiss.
The archer who wanted to shoot, could no longer do so, her vision obscured by the steam and wall of water.
’I need highground!’ The archer leapt into a nearby branch, looking for a better angle.
Moon flicked two fingers and the wall collapsed forward, crashing into the mage like a wave. She tumbled across the ground, gasping, tried to stand.
Before she could do so, an earth pillar caught her square in the solar plexus, pinning her against a tree.
Her eyes rolled back, slumping on the pillar.
Atop the tree, the archer saw it all. She didn’t even have time to release her arrow.
Without a moment’s notice, she lowered her bow, leapt down, and ran away. freewēbnoveℓ.com
Her legs pumped hard, crashing through underbrush without looking back. She nocked an arrow over her shoulder and fired blind, hoping the attack might slow Moon down.
Moon dodged the incoming arrow with ease, landing wide on a nearby trunk.
Then she heard footsteps behind her. Closing. Fast.
’That’s impossible.’
She glanced over her shoulder.
Moon was right there. Gaining speed on her, each stride covering twice the distance it should.
’He’s a mage! How is a mage this fast?! Did he put all his stats into agility?!’
She tried to fire another arrow, but the string slipped through her fingers.
Moon closed the gap in three more steps. A gust of wind swept her legs from under her, and she hit the ground face-first, skidding through dirt and leaves.
When she rolled onto her back, Moon was standing over her, barely out of breath.
Somewhere in the crowd watching from a distance, teeth were grinding.
"He controls five elements," someone muttered. "Yet, he didn’t even bother using most of them."
"He’s toying with them. They are just that much weaker than him..." freeweɓnøvel.com
After dispatching the three Evolvers, Moon’s point total climbed dramatically.
**Score: 950 Points** **Rank: 1st**
He had overtaken Selene and reclaimed first place. She now sat at second with 800 points, and the third place held a staggering 780.
’He’s catching up. Fast.’ Moon’s eyes lingered on the third position.
Whoever this person was, they had been earning points at a sharper rate than anyone else in the bracket. While Moon had been comprehending Cryomancy and Selene had been moving through her assigned sections, the third place had been hunting aggressively.
Kael had climbed to eleventh place with 400 points. Twenty points away from breaking into the top ten. His father would be pleased if he entered the top 10.
The Zone began to contract again. The boundary lines on Moon’s holographic map shifted inward, narrowing the safe area further. He needed to move.
His watch beeped sharply.
[500 Competitors Remain!]
Moon’s brows rose. Only three hundred more eliminations and the tournament would reach its endpoint, the final two hundred who would advance to the next stage. At the current pace of attrition, he didn’t believe the tournament would last the full twenty-four hours.
"The competitors left are the strong ones. There will be a few outliers, but the majority...three star or above," Moon muttered, adjusting his grip on his staff.
"From here on, every fight is going to be tougher."
The weak had been culled in the first half of the tournament. The opportunists, the cowards, the ones relying on luck or numbers to climb.
What remained were the people who had survived twelve hours on their own merits. The bracket from this point forward would be a different story entirely.
Moon set off toward the contracting safe zone, his pace brisk but controlled.
He kept his senses sharpened, sweeping the terrain around him constantly. Every shadow, every noise, every change in the wind became something to evaluate.
With five hundred sharp predators on the same contracting zone, ambushes were no longer a possibility. They were a reality.
He moved through a stretch of dense forest, his footsteps silent against the leaf-covered ground.
~Whoosh~
In an unassuming moment like any other, Moon felt a displacement of air just inches from his face.
It happened so suddenly, even Moon had found it difficult to defend against the attack efficently.
’Shit.’
