After the formation walls opened, Flavia returned to her seat.
Dalton smiled seeing her kill shadow killer and mumbled "She really hates every assassin now." He knew that her father was assasinated a few years ago and there has been many attempts to assasinate her and she had almost died many times. So it was natural that she would harbour a grudge against them.
However, Seeing her fierceness, the lust in his eyes was became even stronger. 'You'll soon be mine. I'll make sure to tame you well.' He smiled at this thought.
As usual, Max was called when there were only a few groups were left to fight. He stood up and walked towards the arena. As he passed by Flavia, he congratulated her for winning stunningly.
Flavia nodded and a smile appeared on her fairy like face, unfortunately Max didn't see it. She watched him enter his mini arena where his opponent was already waiting.
Many among the audience expected a good fight and wanted to witness his exploding fireball once again.
Max saw that his opponent this time was a normal looking girl around his age. She was in gray robes. She looked at him with narrowed eyes for a bit and then bowed slightly in greeting "Hello, my name Haory. Tell me when you are ready."
Max also returned the greeting with a smile "Hi, I'm Max. I'm ready wherever you are."
"Oh, if that's the case I'll start the fight." Mana around Haory swirled. She chanted a spell and the area around her became a sandy area.
"Oh, so you have sand element." Max looked surprised. It was his first time seeing someone with sand element.
People say that sand element is another aspect of Earth element. However, because how difficult it is to control, it's usually not strong enough to fear but if one can have enough control over it, it would be among the most powerful elements.
Haory didn't reply. After there was enough sand around her. She looked at him and said "Careful as I'll go all out."
Swish–
The sand swirled and then took the form of a giant hand that grabbed toward him. Max easily dodged it and just as he wanted to run toward her to attack, a few sand spikes shot out from the hand.
Bang!
Max forcefully stomped the ground and jumped backwards however in the next moment his face changed and he realised that it wasn't a wise decision.
Swish! swish! swish!
Because at the moment three more sand spikes shot out from the giant hand toward him. But because he was in the air, he couldn't dodge them.
He forcefully twisted his body in order to dodge the ones that targeted his head and chest however, the last one still pierced his thigh.
He landed on the ground, feeling intense pain in his thigh. He then grabbed and took out the one feet long spike. Although it was conjured up from brittle sand, it was hard as a rock. Blood splurged out from the wound.
This was the second time he was injured and felt such pain. The first time was when that bear bit his neck off but as he died right after, the feeling of pain didn't last.
However, he was surprised noticing that the pain wasn't too unbearable and the wound had stopped bleeding right after. His wound was started to feel itchy now.
This meant that it was already starting to heal albeit slowly. He quickly understood why this was so. It was because his vitality was five times a normal human. If it was before, this type of injury would have taken at least a few weeks to heal but now this duration was reduced completely.
'It's good that I've also increased my vitality stat or I would've lost more blood and wouldn't have been so clear headed.' He nodded to himself. Just then he heard the noise of a projectile flying toward him.
Without thinking he dodged to the side. He looked ahead and saw that the girl was controlling the large sandy hand and shooting spikes at him.
'It seems I've no choice but to use my fireballs.' he sighed. He didn't want to use them because he was afraid of killing her but seeing that the girl didn't mind killing him as she was targeting his head, he was angered and stopped holding back.
He stimulated his elemental mana and two twenty mana point fireballs materialised. He threw them at the incoming spikes, after colliding with the spikes in mid air, the fireballs exploded along with the spikes.
He didn't stop and conjured a one hundred mana point fireball and fired it at the sandy hand.
The girl however, didn't want it near the hand and a meter long sand spike shot toward the fireball in order to explode it in the air. However, Max expended some more mana and controlled the fireball and it shot past the spike and collided with the sandy hand.
Boom!
The fireball exploded, turning the large sandy hand into red pile of sand. The spike which she shot to stop the fireball was easily dodged by him.
After destroying the hand, Max didn't gave her any time to recover and ran at his full speed and reached in front of her in a few moments. His fist shot out at her abdomen and struck hard. He didn't use his mana to strengthen his punch as he didn't want to kill her but still, his physical strength was at fifty point and it wasn't something that a body of any two star mage could withstand who wasn't defense focused.
Bang!
His punch landed and she was shot backwards like a cannonball. Max looked at the girl in surprise, this girl's reaction speed was commendable. Knowing that she couldn't dodge the punch she formed a sand barrier just before her abdomen to reduce the force of the attack.
Although that sand barrier couldn't stop his punch, it still reduced the power of his punch by one third. She crashed ten meter back on the ground, spitting out blood.
Max didn't move from his place, instead he asked "Do we continue?"
The girl in gray clothes shook her head as she wiped the blood from her lips and stood up "No need, I can't beat you. It's your win." She then glanced at the referee and told him that she was forfeiting.
After that Both sat down silently. Max ate one healing and one mana recovery pill and just as he was about to start his meditation, he noticed that the girl was clutching her stomach while sitting. She hadn't eaten any healing pill.
"Do you not have any healing pills on you?" Max asked.
The girl shook her head and looked away. She didn't want to be mocked because she was poor or make anyone pity her.
Max smiled, he took out another healing pill from the spatial pouch and flicked it toward her "Here eat this. Your injuries will heal faster."
She caught the pill and stared at the pill and then him. She then shook her head and said "Thank you. But I can't accept this."
"It's okay. You don't need to think much about it." Max insisted. Seeing that her injuries were hurting and Max insisted, she nodded and ate the pill. Although Max was angered previously because of her ruthlessness, he knew that she was doing it in order to win.
....
After a while, the formation walls opened and they exited. Noticing that Dalton was still glaring at him with murderous look. He didn't return to his seat and walked toward Flavia and smiled "Hey beautiful Miss, can I sit beside you?"
Flavia looked back reflexively and noticed that Dalton was looking in their direction. Her eyes became resolute. She nodded and said "Yes you can."
Seeing Max sat down beside her, many other males stared at him with jealousy while Dalton gritted his teeth, his face became threateningly grim. "I'll give you the most painful death." He spoke through his clenched teeth.
After half an hour the second round of Elimination round was finished.
Elder Zhan stepped forward and said, his voice resounding through the Colosseum "The Elimination round finally concludes. There were a total of seventy thousand candidates that participated and only seventeen thousand plus candidates are eligible to advance to the selection phase."
