"Everyone, get into the formation," roared Julius as he tightly gripped the staff and pointed at their carefree opponents.
With Julius as vanguard and Susie in the center, they went into an inverted 'T' shaped formation. The ones at the backline released their Arcana and equipped themselves with bows; all of them are soul beasts.
The three soul beasts rushed forward and stood before Julius just like they did for the past couple of matches. The formation suddenly became an 'I' with horizontal lines on top and bottom.
"Hmpf, we have seen this trick before," snorted Daniel as he tilted his head to the side. "Archie… Break it. I give you permission to go all out."
The six-foot student, who looked quite buffed for a high school student, stepped forward with his katana and raised it.
"Soul skill: The lightning cutter"
Lightning energy gushed out of his body and enveloped the katana. Just as he was about to swing his katana, Julius shouted, "Now."
Two of the three Arcana beasts, which have earth attribute, acted at the same time.
Taking a bit of soul energy from their masters, the beasts controlled the ground beneath them. Instead of creating a rocky wall and wasting a tremendous amount of soul energy, they controlled the real ground beneath them and raised it up using attribute energy.
It is a proven theory that Arcana spirits have the potential to use attribute energy just like the monsters in the wild as long as they spent more time connecting with nature.
But due to the fact that they live in their mindscape most of the time, using attribute energy no longer comes naturally to them. The lesser their grade, the harder it becomes to learn it.
Azzy merely advised them to leave them in the real world atleast during the sleeping time and his classes.
Julius and others followed it and while they could only achieve too little due to the time constraints, they were satisfied with their improvement.
Coming to the present, with the combined efforts of two beasts type Arcana, a huge block of ground was abruptly raised as high as 50 meters while Archie swung the katana.
The arc of lightning energy missed its target and made a deep cut into the rocky wall, taking everyone from Team-DA by surprise.
Meanwhile, the Arcana beasts rushed back to their owners and stood beside them while the wind attribute user Susie slowly rise into the sky with a bow as her Arcana.
Except for the captain, all the remaining four proceeded as per their plan, pushing out their soul energy towards each other, forming a pyramid-shaped barrier of high-rank-5.
Once it was formed, Julius walked toward the edge of the cliff and looked down at the opponents who were taking out their flying cards.
Raising his staff toward the sky, he shouted, "Susie, proceed."
The girl nodded and conjured an energy arrow, unleashing her soul skill.
As the energy arrow flew above Julius and fell toward the ground, it generated violent wind from its tip before transforming into a tornado.
The tornado wasn't big at first but as it was descending to the ground, the existing wind helped it become bigger and stronger.
Daniel and the others were just boarding the flying cards to fly to their enemies.
As they saw the tornado descending toward them while getting stronger bit by bit, although not to the extent that can worry them, Daniel's girlfriend, Serena volunteered to take care of the problem.
Serena gathered soul energy in her palm to shoot an energy beam and destroy the tornado.
Never in the world she expected that a giant bird of flames would appear in the sky and it dives directly toward the tornado and instead of destroying it, boosted its power to form a fire tornado.
Julius was sweating heavily as he was keeping his entire concentration on the tornado and controlling his soul skill.
The powerful fire tornado with high-rank-5 strength descended on the shocked students, who felt threatened by the fusion soul skill.
Daniel couldn't think straight and shouted, "Everyone, dodge…"
As the flying cards are quite slow, he jumped down and ran away without looking at his teammates.
Serena and one more successfully escaped the tornado's range but the remaining two couldn't.
They were caught in the fire tornado along with their Arcana spirits. The two of them screamed in pain as their skin started burning.
However, Snivy didn't intervene as she judged that it wouldn't be a life threat.
Looking down at the result, Julius let out a smile, "Our plan A worked. Now, let's continue." He motioned to his staff, indicating his teammates to proceed to their next move.
All of them equipped bows conjured energy arrows and shot into the sky until they couldn't do no more.
These arrows weren't strong and each of them just contained low-rank-4 but still, their sheer number overwhelmed the three opponents who were already distracted by the fire tornado and also the screams of their teammates, who couldn't escape but getting burned at a slow pace.
Immediately, the members of team JB took out their SP recovery cards to recover their soul energy.
In the meantime, the two earth-attribute Arcana beasts started digging a hole under their feet.
The remaining water attribute Arcana beast helped them by turning the soil softer in the place they are digging. Since they were using their attribute energy, it didn't impact their owners' soul energy recovery.
After digging like five to six meters, the top was closed. And the three Arcana beasts disappeared.
Once they successfully hide under the ground, the two Arcana beasts controlled the raised block of earth and let it fall back to its original place in the arena.
"It's coming down, Dan," shouted Serena as she was on her left knee while blocking the energy arrows with an energy shield.
"I can see that." Daniel snarled in anger as he was blocked with some kind of umbrella-type shield that the blade of his lance was transformed into.
Serena looked at her boyfriend in a blank way as if she was saying, 'No, you don't see it.' But, she refrained from making any comments at the moment and stayed silent.
The barrage of arrows was stopped. The block of earth was coming down.
By the time the level of eyesight became equal for both of the teams, the two teenagers who were caught up in it managed to escape it by expelling all of their soul energy, creating force to push their bodies away. Both of them ended up unconscious.
Prince Daniel Eranyl, who was consumed by rage because of how their weak opponents outplayed them, didn't care about anything and just blindly charged forward.
"Wait…" Serena tried to stop him but he didn't listen to her. Archie, the lightning katana user, looked like he already lost the willpower to continue the battle as he realized the difference in strength between their team and the opponent's team.
The shield disappeared and Daniel's Arcana retransformed back to a lance as he thrust the weapon at Julius.
With enhanced vision granted by the 'Super Eye' sealing technique, Daniel's movements were cleanly captured by Julius and he dodged to the left before swinging his staff like a baseball bat at his opponent's butt.
Daniel lost his footing and crashed onto the ground. As he raised his head, he saw the four opponents with their bows pointing energy arrows at them.
Susie, the one at the head of the pyramid, was the one who took action in a timely manner.
"Soul skill: Shadowmist"
As she conjured and released the arrow, it transformed into a sphere of concentrated carbon dioxide gas and enveloped Daniel's head, making him inhale it by force.
*Thud*
Unable to think straight to defend himself against this unexpected move, Daniel ended up collapsing into the group and lost consciousness due to hypoxia.
"Dan…" Serena rushed forward without thinking. Julius didn't stop her and let her reach him.
However, once she reached him and was about to take him away from that place, one of her opponents mumbled, "Juer, unleash the Soul skill: Quicksand."
Serena's feet started sinking into the soil at a rapid pace and Daniel's body had already sunk.
She quickly screamed, "I give up. Stop it."
A large centipede and a large gopher exited the underground with Daniel, whose entire body was smeared with mud.
Watching them from the distance, Archie let out a sigh and dismissed his katana before walking away.
"JB" "JB" "JB" "JB"
Cheering poured for the team from the audience as how Julius managed to completely overpower a stronger team with his strategy. Perhaps, the only mysterious thing that hasn't been solved yet is the hardness of the pyramid-shaped joint barrier as Daniel and his team never got the opportunity to test it.
As the field was cleared within the next couple of minutes, the next semifinal started.
It was between Team SA and Team VA, meaning Team Serestia of class 'A' vs Team Victor of class 'A'.
Team SA contained Serestia Leveret (leader), Navi, Bill, Laura, and another boy named Charlie Stripes. Except for Laura, the rest of them are from Northern Qudour.
Azzy couldn't help but cheer for them in his heart as he watched from the stands.
Unlike the earlier one-sided match, this one went on for quite a while before Team SA ended up victorious.
After a five-minute break, the finals started. Azzy doesn't know who to support as he liked all of them.
*Whistle*
Just as the whistle was blown by Snivy, Team JB summoned their Arcana but surprisingly, no one from Serestia's side summoned theirs.
Instead, they spread out in five different directions, forming a pentagon formation.
All of them simultaneously took out skill cards and unleashed them at the same time. "Skill card: Descent of the Hydra."
"No way… How is it possible?" Azzy abruptly stood up on his feet in shock.
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