Vanguard of the Eternal Night

Chapter Ch143 - National Competition – Priest End

translator: xiin

editor: kara

At this moment, the ground in front of Jiuzhou suddenly lit up with a spell and exploded instantaneously. The two people, who were less than 1 meter away from each other, flew up into the air at the same time––

“A trap!” The commentator yelled, “Jiuzhou had set up a trap before they had started fighting, and at this time, he had just been waiting for the rabbit to arrive!”

After Odin had gone into stealth and before they started fighting again, Jiuzhou had had a full four seconds of valuable time that he could use to make arrangements in the arena.

Jiuzhou’s moves had been so fast and decisive that nobody had paid attention or even noticed when he’d set up the trap.

The explosion took effect, and both players flew up into the air.

There was another exchange of attacks in that spark-charged instant!

––The speed of the attacks was too fast, and the commentators had to switch to a slow-motion replay.

They saw Jiuzhou cast another Condemnation in the air.

Then, the seals finished their cooldown, and he immediately used the Seal of Justice to increase his attack power!

“Jiuzhou has used his seals to launch a decisive counterattack! Odin is still in the air, and this situation is deadly for close-combat players!”

But soon, the commentator would definitely regret having said so much...

Because he hadn’t finished his words yet when he suddenly saw Odin, who had no place to use for leverage, suddenly slow down. It was as though he’d landed somewhere invisible.

The other commentator gaped for half a second and was first to react, “A wire!”

There was a translucent, silver steel wire looming in mid-air; Odin reached out for it and took advantage of its presence to get his body under control.

“It wasn’t Jiuzhou waiting for a rabbit to enter the trap, it was all Odin’s plans!” The commentators were left with their mouths open in shock.

“What kind of players are these!? How are they able to scheme so far ahead?!”

The steel wire was too soft, and Odin had to waste an extra second in mid-air. Jiuzhou was very clear on the fact that he still had a window of opportunity in front of him.

‘Sacrifice’ and ‘Justice’ were the two major offensive seals he had on hand. Jiuzhou used Flash to land, then continued his combo––

Condemnation, Dignity (stores the next three attacks to be released together), Holy Light!

He opened up the ‘Seal of Mercy’, Holy Light, Condemnation, and Surge!

There were ways for caster professions to achieve combos. Other than increasing their attack and chanting speed to the theoretical limits, they could also save and release several spells at the same time!

Time passed by like a flash of light. The dazzling halos combined to form a torrent of light that surged forward and encircled Odin in the blink of an eye!

Everything happened in a flash.

“Nine...” The commentator had just managed one word when he immediately changed his sentence, “Odin has broken out!”

All of this had happened too fast, and it had been too dazzling. Odin’s break-out from Jiuzhou’s combo wasn’t fully analyzed until after the game during the slow-motion, shot-by-shot replay and commentary.

When faced with combined, multi-directional magic attacks, Odin’s left hand had flexed slightly in mid-air, and he had instantly changed his hold on Song of Triumph into a backhanded grip before crossing his wrists to allow the blades to overlap––

He then twisted away abruptly!

The light had suddenly split with a cross-shaped crack. Odin had stepped out of it like a god, and countless tiny lights burst out in an instant, pouring down from the sky like rain.

––Shadow Jump!

Jiuzhou’s shield had been ready. He had still wanted to continue fighting back, but there was already no way for him to turn the tables.

His Flash, Dignity, Summoning, and other skills were all on cooldown, and Odin still had a fatal silence that he hadn’t yet used!

As long as the close-combat assassin had silence on hand, using any of the priest’s skills that required casting time would be tantamount to suicide.

Jiuzhou had tried to stall for time, hoping that after the next seal cooldown had ended, he could use the Seal of Valor and provide himself with another chance––unfortunately, when the Seal of Sacrifice had ended, there had still been 1 second of cooldown time remaining.

It had been just one second!

But, Odin’s dagger had already slashed gently across his throat.

The master assassin’s last strike always seemed so understated, and there seemed to be an unfathomable pity contained within.

The commentator clenched his wrist and said, “Just one second away! What a pity! Although Jiuzhou was defeated, it was still a glorious fight!”

Having said that, the system had already made its judgement.

Odin won!

The arena map closed down, showing the last scene where the assassin stood still and retrieved his blades.

From his steady figure, it was difficult to tell that he could be as fast as lightning and attack as fiercely as thunder to the point where the audience felt that it was all incredible.

From the start to the end of the game, both players had been fighting constantly, and neither side had wasted even a second of time.

The priest had used a Summoning at the start and moved to find opportunities, setting traps while the opponent had been in stealth, and that last, crucial volley––all his moves had been impeccable.

Unfortunately, the master assassin contestant in front of him seemed to be ten feet tall.

Odin had started off with a Shadow Jump to test the waters, then had resolutely given up on pursuit and instead laid out the steel wire while in stealth, completing his ambush and finally cracking apart Jiuzhou’s combo. He’d then used the Shadow Jump that had just finished cooling down again to execute a perfect counterattack––it was equally incomparable.

“In this game, Jiuzhou lost at this one second of seal cooldown time.” The commentators said, “They had both used their core techniques, but Odin’s calculation of the cooldown for his shadow attacks had been accurate to the millisecond. Jiuzhou had finally ended up one second short, because his trap had been cracked, and one less second in the air meant one less Condemnation, and each Condemnation reduced his cooldown time for the seals by one second with the Seal of Sacrifice. When he had died, he had still been staring at a seal that could be used in one second, but this one second was ten thousand miles away.”

Although Jiuzhou had been defeated, he still looked proud and calm on the stage.

When both players shook hands, screams and cheers could be heard across the entire audience.

Jiuzhou gently pushed the microphone aside and asked Tyron in a low whisper, “What is the name of the technique you used to break through my ‘Dignity’?”

Tyron glanced at him and said lightly, “Spellbreak Blade.”

The two contestants had a tacit understanding and only shared such a brief exchange.

At this time, out of everyone from the commentators to the audience, almost nobody had been able to see this one point: Tyron hadn’t used just any ordinary move in order to break through Jiuzhou’s combo in mid-air––there were no ordinary moves that could be used to defeat magic combos at Jiuzhou’s level!

In general, when the Holy Light at the core collapsed after being broken, it would cause a smaller explosion damage. However, Jiuzhou’s Dignity allowed him to chain together three spells. The compactness of this combo combination was equivalent to a complete, high-level spell.

High-level spells required three chant segments, and each small segment had at least one core.

That was to say––it wasn’t something that a blade attack could normally break apart!

Jiuzhou had understood almost instantly: This was a technique, and it was a top-level technique that would shock the world! And, it was definitely a weapon that the great demon king could use to deal with the mage, Crimson.

At this point, there were only two contenders left for the National Championships: Odin and Crimson.

After these two players determined who came first and second, all that the remaining players would need to do was to compete for the rest of the rankings and determine their final placements.

For top ranking masters like Odin, Crimson, Jiuzhou, Vantico, and so on, the only thing left to do was to wait for the system’s match arrangements, because the matching would only pair them up with players within three ranks. That meant that the champion would at most only be able to match up with the fourth place.

If the players beneath the champion were all people he’d fought and won against, then he would skip a turn and only have to wait until the championship night to play again.

The Chaoyang Alliance had a population of 100 billion, and all the masters who could enter the National Championships were already the best amongst the best. However, the saying, ‘There is no first in literature and no second in martial arts’, was very true, and only one person could win the championship at the very end.

The honor of being a national champion was equivalent to having a player be listed in the e-sports Hall of Fame forever.

At this most critical time, not to mention the players, even the audience was filled with an aura of abnormal tension and anxiety.

Every time it came to this point in time, robot patrol teams would appear on the National Championships’s planet. They were afraid that the interstellar people would be unhappy when they saw that their idol had lost the game... or, two teams of fans, who had different ‘beliefs’, might start playing tricks on each other.

This had happened before. At the start, the fans had just thrown banners and tags at each other. Later, the audience had noticed that the fight between both sides’ idols had heated up further, and they had begun to throw bottles at each other and got riled up. Later on, by the time the winner and loser had become clear for the game that had been taking place in the arena, the audience had already been in full swing and about to break out into a civil war.

The most rogue fans would always come from the North Coronation Star District. This Star District was often the closest to the National Championships’s artificial planet, and over the years, its citizens had slowly been transformed into the staunchest of e-sports fans. The ‘Rogue Star District’ kicked up several waves of big news every year.

There was another force at the National Championships that attracted people’s attention this year––

The rainy day cult had recently begun to organize offline activities. After their staff had expanded their recruitment practices, a large number of fans didn’t actually know why they should pray for ‘rainy days’. They simply thought it was a necessary ceremony for Odin’s fans, and their expressions were dazed as they clutched onto their rainy day dolls and went on the news together.

The congregation: Ah? Who is the rain god? I don’t know! Why worship him? I don’t know! What do we pray for? I don’t know! ... What do I know? I know that the great demon king is very handsome (⊙V⊙)!

In short, the artificial planet was full of festivities in the last two days.

On the other hand, Tyron’s side was very quiet.

He went back and went over the magic formulas that Victor had sorted out. Since he was going to fight against a mage, the more familiar he was with magic formulas, the better.

However, Victor had a nervous feeling of ‘Oh no, there’s a college entrance examination student in our family’ over the past two days. He was busy every day, and when he would see his old antique, he would rush over to him like a frightened rabbit, “Darling! How are you!?”

Tyron: “... I think you’re too nervous. Come here.”

He opened his arms, and Victor rushed straight into his warm embrace.

Victor: “You’re, you’re about to fight Crimson. What, what, what do you want to eat tonight? Black bone chicken? Turtle? Old duck soup?”

“......”

The master assassin hugged his Vic and felt that Victor was just like a little frightened bird that had nested, shivering, in his arms. His appearance made him seem like he would explode at any time and any place.

A while later, Tyron said, “Relax, don’t you believe in your man?”

Victor was silent for a moment, then suddenly choked out a sentence, “... The wife of the national college entrance examination student can also be nervous, okay!?”