The mantis and the fox fought for a few minutes longer until Ning was sure it was enough time for the match to be full of bets.
Then, he ordered the mantis to defeat the wolf.
In the most uninteresting fashion, the mantis swiped its claws at the wolf and defeated it.
Even then, many people jumped up and down as they clapped at the end of his match.
"Evacuate the stage," the referee ordered, and Ning walked out of the stage.
Along the way, one of the staff handed him a piece of paper that looked exclusive to the arena and had two numbers written on it.
106 and 33.
"What is this?" Ning asked the girl.
"Your earning," the girl said.
"I earned… 106?" Ning asked, unbelievingly.
"No, no, that's the match number. You earned 33 Pearls. You can go get it cashed in if you are going to leave," the girl said.
"Oh no, I still want to fight," Ning said, slightly surprised at how much he had earned.
He would have to do at least 2 different tasks of the Rank 2 variant to earn this much in the Summoning Circle. Somehow, the Arena was a much better place to earn in.
Ning went back to the waiting area with his mantis and got his next number, 265.
'That's not very far off,' he thought as he looked at the 50 or so people in the room. 'I guess most of them are repeat fighters. No wonder the number didn't increase much.'
"Hey bro, how did it go?" the man who informed him before asked.
"Great, thanks for the tips. I managed to earn quite a lot more than I would probably have thanks to you," Ning said.
"No problem," the man said.
Ning sat down somewhere with his mantis staying guard for him and waited for his turn to come.
'Uhh… this is so slow,' as even after half an hour, they were barely at 250. He was still 2 sets of fighters away from it being his turn.
As he waited, a man came next to him and sat down.
"Your mantis looks quite strong," the man said.
"Thanks," Ning said, not sure why the man started a conversation with him.
"Did you already fight before this?" the man asked.
"Yes," Ning said. "This guy here helped me win it."
"How long did the match take?" the man asked.
Ning started getting suspicious after the man's relentless question.
"It took a while. About 10 minutes," he said.
"That's quite a long time," the man said.
'What's this man's number?' Ning asked the system.
<266>
'No wonder,' Ning thought.
"It is a long time," Ning said. "That girl's fox was strong and kept defending my mantis' attacks. It took me a lot of hits to defeat that thing."
"Wow, that beast must be strong as well then," the man said.
"Yeah, it was Rank 2, just like my Mantis here," Ning said.
"I see," the man said. "I should go now."
Ning watched the man leave and soon a smirk appeared on his face.
Half an hour later, it was his turn to fight.
When Ning stood up to leave, the man appeared from the other side and looked at Ning with surprise.
"What a coincidence, I didn't think I would have to fight you," the man said.
"Oh that is a coincidence, isn't it?" Ning said.
"Well, good luck," the man said and walked ahead of him.
'Where's this guy's beast?' Ning wondered as he looked around, but it didn't look like there was one.
Ning went up to the stage and waited for the referee to ask them to prepare their beasts.
Ning's mantis was already out, so he sent the mantis forward. At the same time, the man ahead summoned a beast as well.
A massive bear that was near twice the man's size in all dimensions appeared on the stage.
It was a black bear, furred from top to bottom. Ning checked the bear and was surprised when he realized the bear was still at Rank 2.
'It must be one of the strongest beasts in rank 2 if that guy is so confident then,' he thought.
His eyes zoomed in his vision as he turned toward Saphandra to see her excited look.
'Looks like she had bet her money on me then,' Ning thought and turned back to the match.
"Start!" the referee said and the both of them ordered their beasts.
Ning ordered his mantis to mostly dodge for now while the man ordered the bear to destroy the mantis in front of them.
In his eyes, Ning's beast was a weakling in front of him which could barely even win against a fox.
In front of the bear he had summoned, there was no way for it to defeat them. It wasn't just him that saw it, but the whole audience. So, there wouldn't be much bet on Ning anyway.
As such, the man wanted to end the match and go on to the next one.
The bear slammed its paws at the mantis, or at least where it was. With the mantis jumping around, it had a hard time catching up to the mantis.
Ning had the mantis take a couple of close calls and even a hit to the side. However, no matter how many times the bear tried to hit it, the mantis never really took any damage.
Ning understood that slowly the betting would start to shift for the other side, so he decided to end the match.
The mantis suddenly stopped dodging and dashed straight toward the bear. The bear was caught off-guard and tried to hit the mantis back, but it was too slow.
The mantis' attacks hit the bear so hard that a summoning circle appeared below the bear to immediately summon it back to where it came from.
Very few people cheered for Ning's victory this time. 'That's weird,' he thought. 'Wait, did they not bet on me?'
Ning quickly returned to the lady that handed him his slips and saw two numbers written on them.
For match 133, he had won exactly 79 pearls.
