He dissipated into a gray mist, and the damage he took was actually just that much. First, he used normal attacks to test the waters, and discovered that the Scarlet Witch's hit area was actually quite large—not only did you have to hit her humanoid body, but hitting the densest layer of energy around her could also deduct health. As expected, the game balanced things out in this regard; overly powerful characters must have weaknesses.
At this moment, JARVIS said to Wanda in her mind, "Actually, our best opponent would be Batman because then my skills would be useful; I could hack into his equipment, and our chances of winning would be higher. In this current situation, my skills are completely unusable, so I can only rely on you."
"It's okay, the Doctor's skills are also unusable," Wanda consoled him, "Right now, it's essentially a one-on-one, and we still have a chance to win. Unfortunately, we haven't really encountered the Gray Mist much, otherwise we'd have more information."
As Wanda said, it was actually a duel between the Scarlet Witch and the Gray Mist now. Not only were Greed's skills unusable due to an inability to charge, but JARVIS's suite of electronic infiltration skills couldn't be used either, creating a new balance between the two sides.
If you had to say it, Wanda's combat experience far surpassed that of the Gray Mist. However, because he was so experienced, he had a kind of fixed mindset, starting off with the same set of skills.
After activating a group attack skill, Wanda directly closed in, her fist, infused with the power of Scarlet, striking towards the Gray Mist. The Gray Mist was somewhat bewildered, taking a punch and losing a chunk of health before remembering to dodge.
"Oh, my God," the Gray Mist said as if just waking up, clumsily activating skills. First was a set of Triple Strikes, but only the last hit struck Wanda, not taking much health, before recalling to activate Factor Infiltration, locking away Wanda's displacement skills.
However, Wanda reacted quickly, realizing that she was losing health after using this skill, promptly understanding this must be the effect of the Gray Mist's skill, thus simply abandoning the advancement and switching to ranged attacks.
"Her skill set is too comprehensive," the Gray Mist said, "There's displacement, single-target, group attacks, and even long-range. How do you fight that?"
"You have high health, stall and wait for the ultimate," Greed suggested. It may seem like there's no other tactic, but in reality, it's a strategy.
Greed had already calculated in his mind; previously, during their explorations, they gathered a bunch of health-boosting items, making the Gray Mist's health the highest among all the participants—even higher than Superman, who seemed very strong, possibly twice that of those frail types, making it take a while to knock him down as a punching bag.
Greed had long noticed that in this game, stacking any attribute was not as beneficial as stacking health. Because skills have cooldowns, having more health means you can take more hits, and hence, you can stall longer for skill cooldowns to finish. And the Gray Mist's ultimate does exceptionally high damage, making it entirely viable to play a health-tank ultimate style.
Though it looks quite pathetic, getting beaten without being able to hit back, only holding out for the ultimate. But, as long as you can win, why care?
He completely forgot that bringing the Gray Mist into the competition was to train his strategic thinking, yet it turned into a massage therapy.
The Gray Mist's mentality, however, remained consistently good; whatever Greed said to do, he did it. The Scarlet Witch chased after him, yet he remained unfazed, just keeping an eye on the ultimate's cooldown.
As soon as the ultimate cooled down, he directly unleashed a "The Nameless Fog". Wanda was immediately struck heavily, falling straight down from the air and crashing onto the ground.
The Blue Bar deduction was secondary; the critical issue was that the spiritual pollution was extremely hard to bear. Her vision instantly turned to snow screen, with various strange noises echoing in her ears, instantly triggering the PTSD from her previous "Return of the Old Days".
However, this time, it wasn't just her in trouble; somehow, the walls of the Dueling Field failed to withstand the spiritual pollution, suddenly eliciting screams from the audience.
"Ahhhhh!!!"
"What the hell?!!"
"Damn?!!"
The spectators fell like wheat being harvested. Even the Transcendent was shocked, quickly reinforcing the barricades, but the spiritual pollution's effects already inflicted wouldn't dissipate easily, prompting him to hurry and restore everyone's sanity (san).
By the time the audience came to their senses, the less affected were dizzy, while the worse off were hugging their chairs and vomiting—the snacks they had just ingested, all spewed out. The audience area was filled with sorrow and desolation.
Some started cursing, though mostly at the organizers rather than the Gray Mist. Previously, when the skill didn't adapt to the blackout, they could understand since they weren't hit. But this flimsy barrier could only block Physical Attack? Might as well blow up the Dueling Field and send us back!
The taste of being spiritually polluted by an Outer God was highly unpleasant, even Batman, known for his strong willpower, looked rather pallid. Despite being able to ignore the visuals and noise, a Gray Mist of this level from an Outer God forcibly deducts Sanity Points, physically impairing brain function and forcing all abstract thinking to halt, rendering willpower futile.
More crucially, the brain is a sophisticated component; forcing part of it to shut down causes imbalance. Once the brainwave is disturbed, it also affects the cerebellum, creating a sensation similar to motion sickness, resulting in dizziness and nausea.
The audience now had one thought: No wonder the Dueling Field hadn't been blown up despite the long battle; did Shiller change style, not bombing the organizers but bombing us instead?
Quickly, ambulances arrived, carrying off several weaker individuals. Those remaining couldn't bear the sunk cost, having endured this far; leaving without seeing the end would be a pity.
The Scarlet Witch, too, forced herself up. She felt a bit like vomiting, but held it in. Looking at her Blue Bar again left her more desperate: How did it drop so much in an instant?!
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to calm down. Now, she sort of understood the strategic thoughts of the Gray Mist, but unfortunately had no good countermeasures. The most frightening part was that the effectiveness of this approach might be even better than what Greed had anticipated.
In the Battleworld, pain is weakened to about one-third of its original strength, which means getting punched wouldn't hurt much. It's the same on the mental front; if you get hit by a brainwave attack, at most you'll get a headache, which will quickly recover.
So the most feared are ambiguous attacks, like not using fists to hit you but bleeding you instead—a cut won't hurt much but the dizziness and weakness from blood loss are more uncomfortable because it's not within the reduction range.
Psyshock is the same. This kind of mental attack from the Gray Mist doesn't directly carry out a brainwave attack but disrupts your thoughts, leading to a series of discomforts due to brain disorder, which is more bothersome than simply causing a headache.
Wanda floated up for a while before she finally recovered a bit. When people feel unwell, their judgment of time is inaccurate; she thought only a second had passed, but by the time she came back to her senses, the bad status on her head had stacked five layers.
Indeed, Greed had turned back into a human form, seizing the moment of Wanda's discomfort to start channeling. And when Wanda attacked him, he'd turn into a gray mist and start running.
So this became a vicious cycle: Wanda was suffering from mental abnormalities, her hit rate dropped significantly, and the Gray Mist didn't lose much blood. After fighting for a long time, it still had half its health left, and its ultimate skill cooldown was almost ready again.
And when the ultimate skill was used again, Wanda would feel nauseous and dizzy, resulting in more bad statuses being inflicted on her, causing her hit rate to drop further. Even if Greed didn't use a finishing skill, she still couldn't hit the Gray Mist.
Wanda took a deep breath, looking at her status bar—her blood volume was still relatively healthy, but her Spirit Value was almost depleted. However, there was another counter value on her panel, which was now full.
At this moment, Greed wanted to transform into a human form to channel again. Wanda soared into the air, and the power of Scarlet burst out instantly.
"I will not be affected by any abnormal status!" she shouted.
In an instant, all the abnormal statuses above her head were cleared, and the skill that Greed had just finished channeling couldn't inflict any abnormal status at all.
"What the hell!" Gray Mist exclaimed, "How did I forget she still had this trick?!"
At this moment, the ultimate skill was finally ready, and the Gray Mist hastened to use it. The blue bar indeed decreased, but the Scarlet Witch was completely unaffected by the spiritual pollution, flying up with a punch. The Gray Mist fled awkwardly.
"What to do, what to do, what to do?"
"I've got no solution," Greed spread his hands, saying, "You're on your own now."
"Ahhhhhh!!!"
The Gray Mist was chased and beaten. Indeed, its blood volume was quite ample, but it couldn't withstand such attrition, and without the mental abnormal statuses, Wanda's punches were all hitting, soon wearing it down to just a sliver of health.
Fortunately, Wanda's blue bar wasn't much left either. The Gray Mist, in a moment of desperation, finally began to think. It thought, another ultimate move should do the trick, but the problem now was its blood volume might not last until the next ultimate skill was ready.
But very quickly, the Gray Mist remembered the "Factor Infiltration" skill it used before had been in effect all along, and because Wanda was chasing it with many displacement skills, her blood volume might not be much either.
So actually, using physical skill attacks now might be faster than waiting for the ultimate skill to be ready, and the opponent believed they had figured out its pattern, would only be guarding against its ultimate, focusing more on the decline of Spirit Value and neglecting the blood volume.
Moreover, from start to finish, the Gray Mist had only unleashed one physical skill, which hadn't fully hit the opponent, so she didn't understand the strength of its physical skill. If the opponent's blood volume wasn't much, perhaps one Triple Strike would directly take her down.
With this in mind, the Gray Mist began observing Wanda's positioning. Because the more hits the Triple Strike lands, the higher the damage, to one-shot the opponent all must hit, missing one means it's the end for itself.
At this point, the Gray Mist had the advantage—it was dispersed across the battlefield and could attack from any angle and direction, leaving the opponent nearly undefendable.
Catching a gap when Wanda rushed over, the fist formed by the Gray Mist attacked from her upper side. JARVIS hastily shouted, "Watch out!!!"
But it was too late. Wanda had already been punched by the time she looked up. The damage from this punch made her heart pound with fear, and she hurriedly used a displacement skill to retreat, only to find herself bleeding, and her once seemingly healthy blood volume was now reduced to just a sliver.
This fact stunned her for a moment, so the second strike from the Gray Mist also hit. Wanda instinctively wanted to run; JARVIS hurriedly stopped her—if she used another displacement skill, she'd bleed to death, but if she didn't run, she couldn't dodge the last strike.
Wanda gritted her teeth and stomped her foot, deciding not to run, charging straight at the Gray Mist. A collision of gray and red occurred fiercely on the Dueling Field. In the end, only a beam of white light illuminated.
After a moment, the voice of the Transcendent rang out: "Let us congratulate the winner of this match—Shiller and the Gray Mist!!!"