SS Awakening: My Monster Merging System!

Chapter 152: The Other Major Candidates

New month Guy’s, I Call Upon your support once again!

...

Less than ten minutes into the elimination phase, the rhythm of the entire simulated battlefield had already been thoroughly torn wide open.

At first, many candidates were still testing the environment, confirming their bearings, or searching for a safe spot to temporarily gain a foothold. But as the first wave of monsters appeared and encounters between candidates began to multiply, the elimination rate quickly exceeded the expectations of many in the observation hall.

The giant main screen was divided into dozens of different feeds. Battles unfolded simultaneously in the forest, ruins, swamp, rocky valley, old fortress, and wasteland. Candidates’ names continuously dimmed to gray, and the number of remaining participants dropped slowly but steadily. The representatives who had originally carried a somewhat relaxed mindset gradually fell silent over the course of this process.

Because the weak were being swiftly cleaned out, and those truly worth watching were proving, each in their own distinct way, exactly why they had been placed in this tournament.

On the human platform, Arthur stood at the very front, watching the constantly switching feeds without much discernible emotion on his face. Beside him, several guild scouts and military observers had already begun recording in low voices, for they knew very well that this kind of chaotic environment, with no preparation time, no fixed opponents, no complete map, was often far better at revealing a person’s true capabilities than an ordinary arena.

Soon, the screen cut to a shattered city block.

It was the ruined town area within the simulated battlefield. Broken walls, crumbling buildings, narrow alleyways, and a half collapsed stone bridge carved the entire area into many irregular small battlefields. Helen Magnus stood in the middle of a rubble strewn street, facing three monster constructs and one human candidate attempting to ambush her amid the chaos.

That candidate had clearly marked Helen as a priority target. After all, if he could eliminate a high profile candidate like her, even if he himself was eliminated soon after, it was still possible to enter the judges’ field of vision through performance alone.

But his judgment was wrong from the very start.

Helen didn’t unleash a wide range explosion, nor did she turn the entire street into a sea of fire. Instead, she raised her hand, letting several thin lines of fire rise from the ground, precisely sealing off the two alley entrances and the ambushing candidate’s retreat route, instantly transforming what had appeared to be a chaotic street into a chessboard of flames under her control.

When the monster constructs charged, she took only a single step back. As the fire lines crisscrossed, one construct was forced to change direction and crashed straight into another construct’s path. The third construct had just attempted to flank from the side when flames landed preemptively beneath its feet, halting its movement for half a breath.

The ambushing candidate finally realized something was wrong. When he tried to retreat, he discovered the alleyway behind him was already sealed shut by a line of fire. Helen simply turned around, a spark of flame from her fingertip stopping beside his shoulder. It didn’t wound him, but it made him understand he had no room left to continue fighting.

A few seconds later, he chose to concede.

[Candidate Eliminated]

Inside the observation hall, a military observer nodded and spoke in a low but approving tone. "She’s very stable. She didn’t waste mana, didn’t chase spectacle. Her flame control was exceptionally clean."

Arthur said nothing. He simply watched Helen’s calm expression on the screen, a hint of softness imperceptible to outsiders appearing in his eyes.

The feed quickly cut to another area.

It was an old battlefield. Shattered banners were planted in the ground, broken weapons half buried in the dirt, roaming simulated monsters and armored phantoms moving among the wreckage. Jayden Smith was fighting within this area.

His movements were very fast, and his sword was very steady. A candidate charged at him from the side, attempting to use monsters to pin him down. Yet Jayden didn’t retreat. Instead, he advanced to meet the attack, one sword forcing back a monster’s claw, then backhandedly slashing toward the candidate’s chest.

CLANG!

The candidate blocked the first sword but couldn’t block the second because Jayden’s sword momentum was too fierce and too heavy, giving his opponent almost no room to readjust their center of gravity.

After three exchanges, the candidate was forced backward and stumbled right into the attack range of a roaming monster. Jayden smoothly cleaved off the monster’s forelimb while simultaneously forcing his opponent out of a safe position, allowing the system’s judgment to fall swiftly.

[Candidate Eliminated]

Jayden’s performance was aggressive and swift. Yet in the observation hall, several representatives still frowned because they could see that while his attack power was fine and his swordsmanship foundation was sufficiently solid, what he was pursuing right now wasn’t minimal consumption but a sense of domination.

"Too impatient," one guild representative said. "His emotions are affecting him,"

...

At the forest’s edge, in an area of dense vegetation, Mira, unlike the others, didn’t actively seek combat, nor did she go around hunting candidates.

Instead, she walked quietly to the center of a half open grassland, pressed several seeds into the ground, and let the surrounding environment turn into her own territory bit by bit.

Root tendrils spread along the ground, blades of grass grew denser, and at several seemingly ordinary footholds, seeds were quietly buried by her.

When a monster pack charged out from the forest, the moment they stepped into that grassland, their charging rhythm was thrown into chaos by the roots extending from beneath the earth.

The weapon in Mira’s hand swung lightly. The trapped monsters fell one after another, the entire process so calm that one might even think she wasn’t fighting but rather tending to a disobedient plot of farmland.

Two candidates who had originally been approaching this area saw the entire monster pack handled so effortlessly and almost simultaneously changed direction, clearly unwilling to enter that grassland Mira had already arranged.

In the observation hall, the representatives’ interest in her had clearly risen.

"She doesn’t have a high elimination count, but she’s creating a safe zone," a team oriented guild scout said in a low voice. "Someone like this, put into resource battles and defensive missions, would hold very high value."

The screen turned to the rocky valley.

That place was a completely different style.