Ning looked at the arena in front of him that was actually dug out to make space, instead of built on top of the ground. Ning was surprised to see such a site and could only imagine how much work must have gone into digging out this much land. And he couldn't help but wonder what they did with all the things that they took out from under here.
The Arena was nearly 300 meters wide and had around 50 meters of total vertical depth, although slanted down through 100 meters of horizontal distance to reach the bottom. Aside from a simple yellow wall surrounding where the arena was, everything else was built in the hole they had dug.
Ning had expected a drab nature to this place from the outside, but once entering, he could see just how extravagant it was.
Shooting geysers, water flowing from all sides of the arena, and massive screens of light in the sky, run solely using formations. He could hear cheers from all around, the sounds of the crowd barely broken through by the sounds of the fights in the arena.
From where Ning stood, he could see everything. Every person fighting. Every man, woman, and child cheering for something. He could also see beasts in the distance, fighting amongst themselves, a lion trying to leap for a vulture that flew around, sending down fire.
At a single glance, it was chaos.
His eyes flashed to the side, seeing a small indentation on the hole where rooms were created. One of the rooms had people standing out and from the sound he heard, he could tell that it was a betting house. And there weren't just one, but many. All around the place, there were multiple betting houses etched into the walls that were the ground.
Ning walked down the flight of stairs with Emma, looking for a spot to sit in. They didn't have to pay to enter here, so he didn't have a seat dedicated to him either.
A waft of food smells drifted from the side as Ning saw someone selling fried potatoes. He had just eaten but he still wanted some.
"What are you doing?" Emma asked, watching him walk away.
"Look for a place to sit. I'll get us some snacks," Ning said.
"But we just…" Emma sighed seeing that her father had no intention of stopping. She turned around and looked for an empty spot for two. Once she found one, she walked down the steps until she came close.
As she came down, she realized that the lower levels were not filled as much as the ones above. She looked back toward the upper half of the arena and understood that people liked to see everything from far away.
They had good vision thanks to the Physical improvement realm, so it didn't matter to them that they were far away. They could see very well.
She sat on the seat she found on the higher end of the lower half of the seating arena. She placed Lory right next to her and had him save the seat for her father.
She watched the battles that were happening on the stages down below.
Although they were considered stages, it was in fact a single large slab of some sort of white stone that was divided via barriers and arrays, separated into 4 groups.
From what Emma had heard, and could now see. The stage that was closer to her on the left was where humans fought each other, one duel at a time.
The one to its right on her end was the same as well, humans fighting one another. Except, she realized that the ones fighting there were just kids, barely at the age of 20, while the first one didn't seem to have the restriction.
Adjacent to the stage of the left, on the other side, was a place where two beasts fought each other. The stage was currently empty, but it was where she had seen the lion and vulture fighting each other earlier as she walked down.
Then, adjacent to that stage, and the ones where the teens fought, there was a man fighting a large boar who shot water from its snout.
Her eyes moved up to the sky where she could see the same fight but enlarged for a larger screen so everyone could watch it without any sort of obstacle.
She wondered how it was made. Her father told her there were things like arrays, but he had never told her how it worked. She was curious about that. "Watch carefully, Lory," Emma said softly. "This is where you will be fighting in a few days."
"Me?" Lory asked.
"Yes, you," Emma said. "See that? Look. That snake is going to fight that octopus soon. You will have to fight just like that too."
"Fight!" Lory shouted. "I Fight."
"Yes, you fight," she said, watching the new fight unfold. The Snake was a Light Essence Snake, its name unknown to her. The octopus was the same and instead of being a Water Essence beast as she would have assumed it to be, it was instead a Fire Essence beast.
The battle commenced and the Snake slithered forward, looping around the octopus, looking for an opportunity to strike. However, the eight tentacles of the octopus made it hard for the snake to fight an opening.
The octopus started the attacks, hitting the snake on its body, but the snake's body arched upward, letting the octopus's tentacle move beneath it. The Snake then straightened its body in a snap, striking the octopus's arm with its body, and started wrapping around the octopus.
Emma watched with an intrigued look on her face, but there was some disappointment too. She hadn't realized that neither of the beasts was in the Essence Manifestation realm at all.
They were going to be useless when it came to using Essence to—
The Snake suddenly opened its mouth, revealing two fangs that glowed bright yellow. And through its fangs, it shot the first and last Essence attack of the match, winning it easily.
