Jake seriously questioned the validity of what Gudrun had just done. No, not how the magic worked or if the strategy was good, but how the hell she had even pulled it off. The massive sand mound she had summoned had to cost a shitload of mana, and what’s more, the sand was still running down its sides like water, making it borderline impossible to climb. That had to have a constant mana upkeep, right?
Yet, upon scanning her, it looked like she had barely touched her own mana pool.
Looking at the mound through his sphere, he soon spotted how it worked. Within the sand were two spears she had stabbed into it, both pumping out mana and feeding the entire formation. Rather than supplying anything herself, she instead used them as catalysts and batteries.
That is when Jake came up with a theory…
The announcer said that Gudrun did not participate in these matches very often but had taken her time, yet he also knew that she did a Show Match every single week. This begged the question… what was she using all the Colosseum Points she earned for? Unlike Jake, these natives of the Challenge Dungeon only had one use for their points, and that was to buy equipment for their fights.
So what if Gudrun saved up for long periods in preparation for these fights and bought an arsenal of weapons and tools to win? Ones prepared explicitly for every opponent she met in the Paragon rank? If that was the case, Jake could see how she had managed to pull it off. The magical items one could buy did hold much inherent mana, and if she had a way to tap into that… yeah, that would explain a lot. The fact she had just exploded her shield and even that spear he had grabbed, along with all the javelins now at her feet, supported this theory.
To summarize, Gudrun was a fucking pay-to-win character. She was the type to just spend exorbitant amounts of Colosseum Points on every fight to make sure she would come out victorious.
Returning his attention to the fight, Jake didn’t make any immediate moves. Looking at the flowing mound, he was pretty damn sure he had no way to ever climb that. Due to the sand constantly being replaced, stabilizing it using his arcane mana to climb up was out of the question, and while he could try to use one of the pillars to jump, that would put him in quite a perilous situation while in mid-air. Also, if he didn’t hit the mound, he would be fucked.
He also had to consider that Gudrun likely had countermeasures prepared for every obvious solution he could think of on the fly. For now, she did seem happy with not making any moves as she just stood there with a javelin in hand, staring down at Jake. She probably knew that he would dodge anything she could throw at him… at least for now.
Because time was on her side.The formation was subtly expanding below the sand, growing a few centimeters every second. Within two minutes, the entire arena would be one big fluidized bed, with the only safe spot on top of the mound. He did consider if just waiting out the formation to run out of power was an option, but by the time those two spears were out of mana, the entire arena would already have been fully covered for several minutes.
As Jake was acknowledging her strategy, Gudrun finally made a move to attack. Probably to distract him from trying to think up any countermeasures of his own, but also because her energy infusion into all the javelins was complete. Throwing one of her weapons, Jake jumped out of the way pretty easily as the javelin embedded itself in the ground before exploding with golden light, sending out more of her golden lightning and leaving an area of weird, electrified sand.
She is shrinking my area of movement even further.
It wasn’t even close to hitting him, but it still kept him on his toes as she threw another, clearly to just buy time for the arena to shrink further as more areas of golden lightning appeared around him. Jake kept dodging a bit longer before he made a big leap to get some distance.
I guess it’s about time, Jake thought. In all honesty… he had hoped not to have to do this before becoming the Champion, but alas, Gudrun had indeed near-flawlessly countered Jake’s usual fighting style.
Holding out his hand, a bow appeared. His action seemingly took Gudrun by surprise as she paused her attack and yelled down from her sand mound.
“I will admit, I thought for a good while that quiver was just for show. Turns out you do have a bow, huh?” Gudrun said, still full of confidence. “I would very much like to learn if you actually know how to use that thing.”
Jake just smiled. She’d asked for it. “Alright then.”
With one swift movement, he pulled out an arrow and nocked it.
Now… going back a bit, Jake had considered how to improve his archery for a good while. At first, he had just gone back to the basics. He had focused on every subtle movement that came with drawing the string, activating the right muscles, and naturally aiming. It was the foundation of all archery, after all, and someplace Jake was already pretty confident due to his pre-system experience with a bow.
Shooting a bow was simple on the surface but highly complex when you really dove into it. A slight misplacement of a finger or the most minor twist could make an arrow entirely miss, especially for someone like Jake, who didn’t use a modern compound bow.
Draw strength was also not simply “pull as hard as you can and let go when you can’t pull the string back any longer.” Sure, that would allow you to shoot a pretty powerful arrow, but it was not even necessarily the most powerful arrow one could shoot and definitely not the most accurate. There was also the problem of consistency when shooting like that.
Arrows still had a drop-off while in flight, even if it was incredibly minor over short distances. Usually, it wasn’t something Jake had to worry about; however, this concept was reintroduced with full force when one began to use curved arrows. Based on how much power one put in, the arrow would curve more or less than one desired, and hitting the same target consistently quickly got hard.
This is where Jake’s unique talents came in. Perception was a stat that not only helped you understand your surroundings better but even your own body. And Jake had a lot of Perception.
Even with reduced stats, Jake could consistently hit the same exact spot dozens of times in a row, even when curving arrows. In other words, his accuracy was utterly ridiculous due to his high Perception and ability to manipulate his own body to a near-perfect level.
When it came to pure power, there also wasn’t much Jake could really improve on. He improved some small subtleties here and there and just optimized the process, but it was nothing really groundbreaking. At least not when it came to the purely physical aspect of drawing the bow.
So… Jake began to focus on one thing, and one thing only:
Speed.
Overwhelming speed.
Every single time Jake drew the bow, arcane mana surged into its body and the string. The second he released, so did he activate this energy, and for the briefest moment, he turned the bow and string slightly more rigid than before, which resulted in him effectively increasing the bow’s draw strength.
This did result in reduced accuracy… that instantly got nullified by the next aspect he had infused. Even before he entered the Challenge Dungeon, Jake had infused plenty of mana into every single arrow he released, but he had been slacking when it came to infusing his Willpower properly.
Whenever Jake released arcane bolts, he could control them all throughout their flight. This was mainly because they were so much slower than arrows, so one would think that Jake making the arrows fly even faster would make controlling arrows in flight even harder.
And it did.
Which was why Jake didn’t try to control them mid-flight quite yet. Instead, he controlled their flight before he even released the arrow. Making curved arrows was already one aspect of doing this, but he wanted to introduce more nuance and make the flight path even more unpredictable.
Before his practice, he could not make an arrow take a sudden turn. It always had to have a semi-consistent curve to its flight, like if one threw a ball with a spin. Jake’s new way would be more equivalent to throwing a ball with a spin that also had a small bomb with a timer attached to it that would go off at a certain time to affect the flight path further.
As a level 0 G-grade with shitty stats, all these improvements couldn’t show their full power yet. Ultimately, the Challenge Dungeon was just a minor event, and all upgrades he aimed for were with his true level and future scaling in mind.
Not to say that Jake’s level 0 archery was something Gudrun could easily handle.
Arcane energy surged through Jake’s body and weapon as he loosed the first arrow. Gudrun, who had already taken out a shield looked smug... right up to the moment the arrow curved around her shield and hit her in the shoulder.
Taken aback, she responded quickly as she summoned a second shield, but before the second one had even fully appeared, a second arrow came from the other side, hitting her in her other shoulder. Each arrow had pierced through her golden armor and penetrated several centimeters into her flesh, making movement harder.
Not helped by Jake smirking as he sent a mental command.
Both arrows exploded while still embedded in her shoulders, sending blood and broken armor flying. Gudrun’s shields momentarily faltered as an arrow struck her in the stomach, making her tumble back. She barely managed to get out of the way of the fourth arrow while the fifth hit her in her thigh.
One of the problems with her strategy was that the top of the mound didn’t really have any space to dodge. Her own plan had turned on her in an instant, as Gudrun had made one major miscalculation… Jake was far superior in ranged combat compared to her.
Gudrun also clearly realized this as she rapidly retreated down the other side of the mound as the formation stopped working. In an instant, the sand turned from fluid to solid, allowing her to land safely as she retreated behind one of the pillars, with shields still held up despite her injuries.
Jake wanted to explode the two arrows he had embedded in Gudrun but found himself unable to. She had done something to block it, Jake reckoned, though he wasn’t sure how she did it. It felt like he just couldn’t “find” his own arrows somehow, despite clearly seeing them still sticking out of her through his sphere.
Several more arrows flew after Gudrun as she retreated, but she managed to block all of them except one that flew by and left a cut on her already exposed forearm. She got behind one of the pillars, and right as she breathed a sigh of relief, an arrow descended from right above her. Jake had aimed for her skull, but in the final moment, she managed to tilt her head, making the arrow side by her helmet and pierce into her left collarbone.
The sheer impact of the arrow forced her down on her knees. The follow-up arrow she still managed to block, if barely. Jake had expected her to raise her shield in time, so he made it explode right in front of her, making the explosion hit her shield and knock her back into the pillar, worsening all her existing wounds.
No more arrows came immediately after that, and the reason for that was quite obvious… Jake only had five left. This was one of the clear downsides of his current level 0 stats.
Summoning new arrows also wasn’t an option either. Jake had spent more than fifty mana on every single one of the arrows and had spent a few minutes on each. He had effectively created twenty-four small Protean Arrows made purely of stable arcane mana.
Jake put his bow away and charged forward. Gudrun, hiding behind a pillar, threw what looked like a golden ball over her shoulder toward him, and Jake instinctively looked at it, trying to find out what it was… right as it exploded in a flash of white light. Jake was instantly blinded and felt an odd sense of vertigo as his balance got all out of whack for a fraction of a second.
Immediately, Gudrun stepped out from behind the pillar and threw one of her remaining javelins. Jake, thinking quick, did not dodge but allowed himself to be struck in the shoulder as he reached for his eyes. Gudrun, seemingly not having realized the full extent of Jake’s Perception skills and feeling empowered from seeing Jake failing to dodge her javelin, charged toward him with a newly summoned spear, aiming for his heart.
Her body was not in good shape, but she still pushed through, trying to take advantage of what may be her last opening. She believed Jake was blind and unable to dodge in time… so when he avoided her spear at the very last second and stabbed her in the chest with a katar, her eyes opened wide.
Jake held nothing back as the weapon exploded with arcane destruction, launching Gudrun across the arena, splurts of blood dripping in her wake.
Hitting the sand, Gudrun somehow managed to land on her feet, but she quickly fell to her knees as she gritted her teeth before spitting out a mouthful of blood and yelling.
“Ancestral Offering.”
Jake had been certain the fight was over after he landed that hit… but she had one more card up her sleeve. Golden light enveloped her entire body as her armor began to disintegrate. The spears still below the sand that had been used to power the formation also ran out of energy, and even all the javelins she didn’t have time to throw before lost their golden luster.
When the golden energy faded, Gudrun was left in only linen clothes with nothing but a spear and shield remaining. Even the storage ring on her finger had reappeared, signaling it was no longer an item. Through sacrificing her equipment, she had managed to heal herself nearly fully.
Jake was still blinded and had only seen everything through his sphere. He was pretty sure his eyes would take at least a minute or two more to fully heal, and Gudrun clearly knew that as she charged and tried to take advantage.
But… it wasn’t really an advantage. Not against Jake.
Gudrun was fast, but she was not the fastest. She was strong but not the strongest. Her magic was powerful, but not the most powerful. The only place where she was truly at the peak was her equipment and her ability to use this equipment. She was just considered okay in every other area, meaning as soon as Jake overcame her strategies… she had no way of winning.
Because Jake was faster, stronger, and had more powerful magic. Moreover, he was the pinnacle in the entire arena when it came to dodging attacks. Even if Gudrun had managed to get herself back in temporary fighting condition, she was in no position to win.
Even if Jake was also injured, he had the upper hand. Over the next minute, Jake slowly overpowered Gudrun in a melee brawl, and even if he did take a few more wounds himself, he gave out far more than he got.
When his eyesight returned, the final nail was in the coffin. With a Fear Gaze, he managed to land a nasty stab in her stomach that easily penetrated through her clothes, which barely offered any defenses.
Gudrun, stumbling back, fell to her knees. She tried to get up, but her knee buckled under her own weight, making her unable to stand. She looked up at him with resolute eyes as Jake had stopped, now certain the fight was over.
“Heh,” she smiled with bloody teeth. “Good fight. Now finish it. I am a warrior of Valhal… so at least honor me with a warrior’s death.”
Gudrun said this while looking him straight in the eye. There were no more strategies or attempts of deceit. Despite how she thought, Jake firmly knew she wouldn’t use the name of Valhal like that or the sense of honor of another warrior. Because, in the end, she was indeed a warrior of Valhal… and from the beginning, he had known this fight would never end in her surrender.
Jake met her gaze and nodded, respecting her wishes. “Thanks for the fight.”
Without any hesitation, he stabbed Gudrun in the heart, and with a smile still on her face, she fell forward onto the sand, ending the fight.