Cain was right. The following matches were incredible. Every set of Sects was well-matched, with no hard counters to another Sect's techniques visible, and the ladies of the Forbidden Treasure Sect got to watch for over an hour before the next pair of matches came to a conclusion.
"Was that enough time to get a good grasp on their techniques? There is a good chance you will face one of the winners in the finals tomorrow. There are only a few more fights after this if you're ready to stay here and watch a little longer." Cain asked his disciples.
They were all wrapped up in blankets, leaned against each other as they watched the matches, and most of the other disciples who would be competing tomorrow were taking the chance to get some sleep between rounds.
"Yep, we made good notes," Luna murmured sleepily from Cain's lap, despite clearly having done nothing of the sort.
"Fine, why don't we let you all sleep? We can return to the camp and find out about the opponents we will face once the matches are announced in the morning." Cain suggested.
"That's an even better idea. Half of the arena is asleep already or at least meditating between matches. We can't forget the 6 P's of competition." Penny agreed.
"Six peas?" The gold-robed elder leading the group beside them asked.
"Proper planning prevents piss poor performance." Penny clarified, making all the cultivators around them chuckle.
"Crude, but accurate. I think my Sect could have used that bit of advice this morning. They didn't know anything about the Sect that they were facing before the match began, and they barely lasted longer than your own match." The Elder agreed, making a few of her disciples blush in embarrassment.
"There was no way to win that. They used skills to summon biting insects on everything." One of the disciples shuddered.
"We have a Sabbat for that. Just purge everything with fire. Insect users deserve nothing else." Luna informed them resolutely while the others nodded their agreement.
The ladies of the Lotus Blossom Sect were on board with that idea. They were fire users, to begin with, and not big fans of any sort of bugs. Purging the entire arena seemed like the only reasonable course of action.
"Alright, let's head out once we get a view of the next matches beginning. Then we can at least say we have an idea of what we will be facing and that we didn't slack in our duties." Sabbat announced while the next groups took the stage.
One group was body cultivators, using raw speed and brute strength to overcome their foes, while their opponent was an assassin sect. In the next arena, two Air Element Sects faced off, using extreme speed and flight to face off against each other in a dizzying aerial battle.
The next morning began with a large crowd gathered around the Lotus Blossom Sect camp. The matches had been announced an hour before dawn, and the supporters of the Forbidden Treasure Sect had gathered to see how they planned to take on an incredibly agile Mountain Wind Sect, the winner of the duel between Air Elemental Sects.
"Do we bring them to us, or do we go to them?" Luna asked the group as she made plans to pick an appropriate Summon for the match.
Penny put down the breakfast sandwich she was working on to voice her opinion. "Sabbat has range, Luna and Tena can move through the air, but I'm stuck on the ground with Jen. I have entanglement abilities if they get close to the ground, and Jen has Smite, but that's not much."
Luna's smile immediately brightened as she came to a realization. "Spiders. We can use spider webs to bring them down. They'll get all tangled, and we can beat them while they're helpless."
The others all shared a dubious look when they heard Luna's proposition.
"I mean, it would likely work, but does it have to be spiders?" Sabbat asked.
Luna looked a bit confused but thought carefully before answering. "There are other things that use webs, but spiders are pretty much the best at it."
Sabbat gave a resigned sigh and reluctantly nodded. "Unless someone has a better idea about how to get them on the ground, I guess it is spiders."
"I will try to grab them and throw them on the ground, but since they all have an affinity to the air element, they have no problems flying using their own internal energy, so it will be hard to keep them there. Or maybe Luna could create birds and dive-bomb them until they return to the ground to take shelter?" Tena suggested.
"Oh, that sounds fun too. Do we know something that can make a lot of birds? Just birds everywhere, filling the sky?" Luna asked Cain.
"Not that I can think of. But you could summon a group of Roc. You know, the ones from the South, with the wingspan ten meters across. In the arena, they would fill the entire airspace. But they might eat a whole human in one bite, which could be an issue." Cain suggested.
"What sort of monstrous creatures did your home keep as pets?" Penny asked with a look of horror.
"Oh, they're not pets. They're wild birds. They're good for keeping the giant rats and tree snake populations under control. But when they're upset, they'll eat almost anything. They have a better temperament than the Gryphons or Hippogryphs, though." Cain explained.
"No wonder Luna isn't afraid of humans when she grew up around those sorts of Legendary Monsters." Penny chuckled ruefully, giving Luna a look of sympathy that she totally misunderstood.
"Right? They don't even taste good, and they eat the things that do. Bloody nuisance birds if you ask me."
"So are we going with spiders or giant monster birds?" Tena asked, looking excited about the second option.
"We should likely stick with the spiders. Legendary Monsters might raise questions about how we knew enough about them to summon an image of them, and that would be very awkward. Most of the people here think they're some sort of solid energy illusion." Luna decided.
"We have our working plan and our formation. The rest we can improvise as we go. These ones seemed to work together as a group better than most, so be aware of that as well. They probably won't want to duel, and they will jump in to rescue their comrades if they get trapped." Jen added, making a mental strategy for how she would deal with the flying cultivators if they weren't able to bring them down reliably.
Cain led the group among their admirers, parting the crowd with a hint of his Ancient aura. Existential Dread might be inconvenient sometimes, but in a crowd, just a hint was enough to clear a path for his disciples to make their way through.
"Tena, we love you!" Someone yelled from the crowd, making the dark-haired Dragon Monk blush.
"Shut it, you lolicon. The curve of a well-formed chest is the path to true enlightenment." Someone yelled back at the first cultivator, sparking a fight among the back ranks of admirers.
"Miss Jen, can you flex those wonderous thighs for us? So much beautiful muscle." Someone else yelled, and the Paladin gave Cain a horrified look.
"Welcome to today's episode of the two-hundred-year-old virgins. This is the real reason that members of Sects like the Lotus Blossom don't travel alone. Not because of the cultivators that have a vendetta against them, but because of the ones that like them too much." Cain informed her with a wink.
That earned him a lot of hateful glares from the crowd, who had been doing their best to forget about his enviable position in life.
The guards let them in without any hassle and escorted them to the arena so that they didn't have to push through the throngs of people trying to get to the arena in time to get good seats.
The Outer Disciple competition usually wasn't highly popular, but there had been a number of upsets this year, and it was drawing the attention of everyone in attendance, especially those who had only heard about yesterday's fights secondhand.
Most Sects took in their disciples between twelve and sixteen years of age, with some only taking them at age eighteen, so the under twenty-five group was usually fairly weak and more of a martial arts fight than an actual battle between cultivators, but not this year.
Even disregarding the strange combination of skills in the Forbidden Treasure Sect, every other finalist had shown outstanding levels of talent this year, with the majority well into their First Awakening, as this world called the Mythic Awakened.
Cain tapped a guard in the escort group on the shoulder to draw his attention. "How is the betting looking? Getting a bit closer now that we have had a few fights?"
The guard laughed. "You're the favorites in this round. One point two to one odds. It's not much of an advantage, but I don't think I've ever seen a female cultivation sect favored in the fighting tournaments before."
"I guess you ladies can't use the excuse that they would be bullying the weak to distract your opponents today. You might as well go all out right from the start. Jen, try combining [Crushing Blow] with [Smite] the second that the match starts. I bet you can catch one of them off guard." Cain suggested.
Five on four to start the match would be a huge advantage if they could manage it, but the Mountain Wind Sect surely had the same idea and wouldn't go down easily.
In the mind of the disciples, that was fine though. They didn't have to win the tournament. The quest conditions said that they only had to make Cain proud of them. So they would do their best, but in a way that they could be proud of winning.
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