Chapter 43: 43. Felons vs. Fellows Finale – Part 3

Anthony Ricci clutched his left arm, which dangled from his side helplessly. Why had he thought it was a good idea to go after Eloi Shatridar? As the fourth to select, he chose the icy tundra biome to be right underneath the Chaos Prince’s world of void. As soon as the match started, he hunted for a way to get up to the void, which turned out to be a bouncy slime in the middle of a frozen lake.

By the time he breached the barrier between the sections, Eloi was already engaged in battle, fighting Atavius. It looked like he wasn’t the only one with the idea to go after the favorite.

Sections 2 and 8 are now eliminated. Please vacate those sections within the next ten minutes, called a voice that filled up every aspect of space.

If Anthony remembered correctly, those were the ocean world and the gothic mansions, meaning that Kaesa Lansfeld and the Bleeder were donezo. Anyone being eliminated was news to Anthony’s ears, but he especially hated that arrogant vampire. He had planned on skinning that beast himself.

Atavius Meloi wouldn’t stop in his attacks, sending his flaming sword at Anthony, who jumped from white stone to white stone. He already got him once with the deadly weapon; just a minor cut to his left arm rendered it immobile.

The sword accelerated, growing to ten meters in length as it threatened to envelop Anthony whole. Anthony activated [Chronos Reverse], putting up his hands, which shimmered with silver and translucent energy. The autonomous sword vibrated against a faint outline of an immemorial hand. Ever since Anthony achieved Fledgling Dao III, the storied presence he used to only be able to summon invoking a large part of his Dao in [Warden of Time] became present in most of his Skills.

Anthony felt Atavius add more energy to the attack despite being nearly half a kilometer away from him, occupied by defending off Eloi. It was a testament to his experience and skill that he was able to chase Anthony with a sword that would have killed almost anyone else at the same time he battled the betting odds favorite.

In response, Anthony poured more Dao energy into his Skill. He still had around three-fourths left, but he didn’t want to overuse his most prized weapon. After the trickle of energy came flowing into his hands, he could fully stop and then reverse the path of the sword. While to an outside observer it looked like the sword was just flying back to its owner, in reality, it was a total inversion of causality—a breaking of the laws of physics at a fundamental level that involved one of the highest Daos in the organizational map of reality. In this case… it had no relevance, but Anthony was sure that it had its use cases. He just hadn’t figured it out yet.

Once he fully commandeered the sword away from Atavius’s control, it was easy flying. Anthony turned back, running from stone to stone in the seemingly infinite void of darkness. The only source of light was the glowing white stones themselves.

While Atavius was powerful, he had bitten off a little more than he could chew, trying to fight Eloi and Anthony at the same time. Eloi had summoned his bonded familiar, a Chaosbeast falcon with a ten-meter wingspan. Anthony could feel the explosions created by the clashing of their Skills even at his distance. Fire battled Chaos in a struggle of not only Mana and aura, but also of the Dao. Burning, infernal fury that threatened to smolder the world of void to ash fought against unadulterated discord and entropy. Eloi wielded two spears of black and clear energy, and each time he swung the weapon, a torrent of Chaos unleashed. Everything in its path was irrevocably warped or destroyed, a fate of uncertainty that perfectly reflected its origin.

Ever since he came to the hunk of junk known as Faxor, Anthony had been disrespected and belittled. They said everything was handed to him, as if he hadn’t killed hundreds of people with his bare hands to get to this point. A handout? How absurd. Anthony hadn’t received a single handout his entire life. And when the apocalypse hit, he capitalized. He earned everything. It took a mountain of bodies, but now he had all the power and women he always dreamed about. He knew there would be more as well. Sofia, once he got out of this goddamned prison world. George the Iceman. Carmen, if he could get to Europe. Wandering Hobo, just for taking the number one spot. Alistair, if that little prick ever betrayed him. The law of the jungle was the only law. He was glad the multiverse seemed to agree. As long as he stayed atop the mountain, he could stop the hyenas from trying to nibble at his feet.

After he crushed the two favorites, they wouldn’t be taking him lightly anymore. Anthony prepared all of his stops. [Mind Accelerato] to take his brain to the maximum processing speed. [Body Trigram Tempering] to make his body able to withstand any physical blow. [True Sense] to detect the subtlest of movements or attacks. Anthony fired bullets of [Accel Chronos] from his palms, attacks capable of rotting away organic material in a second.

Eloi recognized the attack before Atavius, positioning himself so that the Progenitor heir would take the brunt of the blow. Atavius’s aura was so powerful that he exuded a cloak of fire, and it reacted to [Accel Chronos], burning time itself like it was nothing. But Anthony expected that. With his [Body Trigram Tempering], he could withstand the heat, moving toward Atavius from behind.

The Chaos Prince, seeing that Anthony had something up his sleeve, jumped back, leaving Atavius and Anthony together. Anthony saw everything in slow motion. Atavius rotated his body in Anthony’s direction at the same time he rushed forward. At their current pace, Atavius was going to summon a shield of fire before Anthony could reach him, but Anthony used two-thirds of his remaining Dao energy to activate [Time Stop], temporarily freezing the villain in his place.

The 105 milliseconds he was able to stop local time gave Anthony the berth to close the distance. In an ironic replication of Alistair’s style, Anthony imbued his fist with an [Accel Chronos], punching Atavius directly in the chest.

Anthony’s blow shattered his opponent’s cultivation robes, sending him flying with a reverberating echo of the fugues of time. He almost skittered off the stone, but at the last second he grabbed onto the ledge, one slip away from falling into the darkness. Anthony cursed under his breath. He’d have to try again.

Section 3 has been eliminated. Please vacate this section within the next ten minutes.

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The voice’s revelation shocked Alistair. Previously, it had declared sections 2 and 8 eliminated, so Kaesa and the Bleeder. He was the one who ended Kaesa, of course, and the Bleeder was in the bottom half of the candidates. But for Atavius to be eliminated with half an hour still to go? That was surprising.

Alistair had wanted to get a piece of Atavius himself, pay him back a little for what he did to the Earth. Atavius’s genocide was the origin of the Final Frontier Empire initiating their planet, and the disappearance of his friends and mother.

Atavius’s section bordered Alistair’s original location, suggesting the fighting was taking place around there. He had Xanathar take him to the cyberspace beneath the ocean world, though the android left for other pastures right away. Alistair then moved into the gothic mansions world, though he had to move fast, since there were only two minutes left before the voice said everyone had to vacate the area, and he didn’t want to be the one to stay in an eliminated world. Based on his location, Xanathar had to be the one to eliminate the Bleeder, so Alistair thought other than the looming threat of being instantly vanished, he was pretty safe rushing through the remains of the spooky mansion, or what was left of it.

The proud, five thousand square meter manor was utterly demolished, the remains smoking to the high heavens. Alistair imagined that Xanathar used the same explosion Skill he used on himself and Kaesa to kill the Bleeder and destroy the mansion, though he didn’t understand how the man-machine was so powerful. He knew the top two especially were strong, yes, but the destructive power to nearly vaporize a huge chunk of land and a large part of an ocean? There had to be something more to Xanathar’s power.

He picked up the pace, darting from wall to wall through the charred cinders of the abode. His goal was to make it to the sector to the left of the eerie mansions, the part Shaido called a “dreamworld”. It was a cloudy and ethereal realm of pink and purples and the vibrant colors of sunset. Alistair wasn’t trying to fight Carmen, especially as he was still recovering from his last battle. He actually thought it was the safest place to be, not wanting to be in Anthony’s ice realm or Xanathar’s cyberspace.

Alistair imagined what people would think of him if he went after another woman. With just five people remaining including himself, Carmen was the one that made sense to fight, if she was still in her sector. Xanathar was off doing his own thing and Anthony and Eloi were the prime candidates for who eliminated Atavius, based on location. If Anthony and Eloi were now fighting, he didn’t want to get in their groove. His best chance of victory was for everyone else to fight it out.

At last, he reached the black barrier between sections. Instead of running through it, he tiptoed inside, careful to mask his presence as much as possible. He had gotten some pointers from Dev’rox, who as a Profound often wanted to hide his true power level among the commoners, not that being Profound made him any more than the strongest of the low.

“I don’t like this idea,” Dev’rox said through his mental link. “Why aren’t you hiding in Xanathar’s sector?”

“What if he comes back? Carmen is probably the weakest of everyone remaining, so even if she is here, it’s not that big a deal,” Alistair communicated back. They were getting better at non-verbal communication, so he could talk with the imp without giving away his position by talking or letting others think he was crazy because he was talking to himself.

“Excuses. You just want to fight the lady, don’t you?”

“What can I say,” Alistair said. “If it happens, it happens. If I defeat her, I’ll probably gain a level with my current soulcore saturation. It’s still not full yet.”

“Just one level,” Dev’rox grumbled. “You need another upgrade to your Dao Inspiration.”

“Part of my path is knowing when to not back down,” Alistair shot back. “I won’t reach the peak being a coward.”

“You won’t reach the peak by being stupid.” Dev’rox continued to complain under his metaphorical breath. Alistair wasn’t stupid. He was already injured pretty badly, and he used nearly half of his Mana in the fight against Kaesa, though that was recovering faster than his Health. He knew his chances of winning Felons vs. Fellows was small, so he wanted to go out swinging. Plus, based on Carmen’s behaviors, it was possible she could be in Alistair’s path at a later point, so fighting her would give him valuable data points.

However, he wasn’t blazing for a fight just yet. Alistair wasn’t lying in his assessment that the dreamland was one of the safest parts to be. If he could wait out the entire next half hour without getting into a fight, spending his time recuperating—of course he would take it.

It was just his luck that Carmen had the same idea.

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