As the Armour guy was speaking, a metallic fist suddenly slammed into his face.
He staggered back a step, clearly caught off guard.
"Damn. I should've expected this much from you," he muttered, rubbing his face. "You modified your runes to operate at different frequencies."
The girl, still restrained by Lian's metallic hands, glanced at the small device in her hand as It already analysed the metallic hand wrapped around her neck.
"Increase the frequency range by two thousand."
With the Interference Rune and an exact reading of Lian's rune frequency, they could potentially force his rune to deactivate and make him suffer the backlash.
Lian glanced at the device.
"At least someone on this team is smart."
He looked toward Kair.
"Three-v-one the scythe guy. I'll handle these two."
Kair nodded and rushed toward the scythe wielder.
The Armour guy raised his hand and activated the Interference Rune.
Nothing happened.
He frowned.
The girl checked the reading again.
"No change it to..." She suddenly paused. "Wait. The number changed again."
Lian smirked.
"I built this shit. You really think I wouldn't have countermeasures against it?"
The Armour guy charged straight toward Lian.
Lian reacted immediately, dragging the girl directly into the attacker's path with his metallic hands.
The armored guy was just about to strike when he suddenly stopped. He had almost hit his own teammate.
One wrong move and he'd end up hitting her instead.
Lian quickly took a few steps back.
"Here's a little gift for you, since you said my tricks wouldn't work a second time."
One of Lian's metallic hands moved toward them. The armored guy immediately removed the other metallic hands from the girl's neck and released her.
The approaching metallic hand had its fist open.
They expected an explosive.
There was nothing.
Seeing that, the armored guy lowered his guard.
The metallic hand moved close to his bracelet.
His bracelet suddenly deactivated.
The armored guy immediately tried to regain control of his Ether flow, but his control wasn't good enough. His Ether became unstable, and the bracelet just deactivated.
The girl, on the other hand, had much better Ether control. She quickly focused on stabilizing her own Ether flow, keeping her bracelet from being forcibly deactivated.
That split-second of focus was all Lian needed.
He rushed forward, and blasted her with the Pyromancy Glove while she was distracted.
"AGH!"
Lian immediately stepped back and activated the Interference Rune again.
Her bracelet shut down completely.
Both of them were eliminated.
Meanwhile, the rest of Lian's team had also managed to defeat the scythe guy.
The armored guy stared at Lian in disbelief.
"Wait... how did you do that without deactivating your own bracelet?"
Lian casually replied.
"Oh, I just added a new upgrade. Now I can control the interference rune remotely from a distance."
They won that round and managed to win a couple more after that.
But their winning streak came to an end in the semifinals.
They are now facing the strongest team from Class A.
The moment the match started, everything happened in the blink of an eye. Almost instantly, the entire battlefield erupted into chaos.
Lian spotted a guy at the far end of the enemy's defence line.
The guy raised his bow and fired an arrow.
There was no fancy spells. It is just pure Ether flowing into the bow and arrow.
The arrow shot across the entire battlefield and slammed into Lian's crystal in a split second.
CRACK!
A single arrow was enough to leave several deep cracks across the crystal.
Lian's eyes narrowed.
These people are on a different level.
Instead of using Ether to create complicated effects, their weapons were designed to channel as much Ether as possible into raw power.
He was putting almost all of his Ether into the arrow itself, making it faster, harder, and almost impossible to stop.
Before Lian and Joey could fully activate their defensive runes, another arrow came flying.
Lian quickly formed a metallic shield.
The arrow punched straight through it.
"What the fuck..."
His shield barely slowed it down.
Lian and the majority of the other students' runes were designed more around engineering, utility, and adaptability. They could perform different functions depending on what spell was written into the rune and how it was activated.
But that also meant part of the Ether had to be spent on those extra functions, converting and shaping the Ether into whatever effect the rune was designed to produce.
Meanwhile the Class A team's weapons took a much simpler approach.
They focused almost entirely on channeling Ether into raw power, letting the user's skill and control do the rest. But that only worked if the user had enough Ether, strong Ether control, and the skill to properly channel all of it. Without those, the weapon wouldn't have any power at all.
Lian barely had time to process it before another attack came.
Kair and the Fatty were already struggling and in no position to help Lian with defense right now.
The strongest fighter on the enemy team, Aren, was tearing through both of them almost by himself. Every time Kair tried to attack, Aren was already there to counter him, forcing both of them onto the defensive.
Then Lian felt it.
A slight vibration under his feet.
His expression changed.
"dodge!"
They moved just in time.
BOOM!
Sharp spikes suddenly erupted from the ground where they had been standing.
The spikes tore through the battlefield and struck their crystal.
CRACK!
The crystal shattered completely.
The entire match was over in an instant.
Lian stood there, looking across the battlefield.
His team was battered and exhausted.
The enemy team barely looked like they had broken a sweat.
The crowd erupted into cheers for Aren and his team. Aren was clearly popular, and it seemed like everyone was rooting for him.
Lian watched them for a moment.
Semifinals. This isn't bad. This should be enough to get me into Class A.
And once I'm in Class A, I'll have more opportunities. A better chance of getting into the military.
He paused.
Then once I get inside, I can hack into everything, uncover all the secrets they're hiding, and also heist the strongest runes and resources.
A small smirk appeared on his face.
Yeah. That should be interesting.
# Author's Note
Sup, outoftheworld here, I know I haven't been very consistent with posting chapters from past month or 2.. I am out here filling out these job applications trying to switch to a better job. Man its only been like one year since I joined this whole 9-5 thing and I already fucking hate working a job and all my lame co workers (except that one fat girl who helps me in job and stuff and that one guy who watches anime in office, he is a really chill guy). The 40 y/o adults are fucking lame, like always talking about 9-5 work like its their entire identity and wasting your youth increasing the shareholders value is your life's purpose and some fucking politics, doing the lame ass stocks bonds saving for retirement and lame ass movie reviews. Their only ambition they got left is to keep working for years and slowly climb the corporate ladder while saving up money in stocks and bonds for good retirement.
Drinking, partying, living for family and love.
Boring ass lives. I don't want end up as that. Like you only get to live once and this is how you wanna end up spending the rest of your life. I would rather risk everything and spend my rest of life like working on some shady human experiments to attain immortality. Like you would at least feel like you lived for something.