"Well that was a little more one sided than I expected. Shadow weasels really live up to their reputation." Richard says with a slight frown on his face. "Okay Rebecca heal the Land Raptor so that we can continue with our matches."
After Richard says that the woman in a white robe and holding a staff that had been standing next to him rush's forward and points her staff at the fallen Land Raptor. A white light seems to engulf the Land Raptor and right before everyone's eyes the wounds that Loki had inflicted upon it began to heal in real time. After only a minute or two the Land Raptor is able to get back on its feet and walk over to the bewildered Vincent.
Vincent stood there with a perplexed look on his face, he had only been able to give his soulbound one order through their soulbind before he found his beast bloody and on the ground. To him things had just happened way to fast.
His family had found the most promising Land Raptor that he could currently form a bond with and gifted it to him for his birthday. He had battled with his instructors back home numerous times and had never faced such a quick and one sided defeat.
Vincent almost couldn't tolerate the numerous powerful blows to his pride that he had suffered in the past several hours. He'd been raised to be an elite of society and today was the first time he'd ever had people he viewed as lesser than him defeat him in anything. His pride almost couldn't take such repeated punishment, almost.
The match's continued and Oliver just sat on the side while gently scratching Loki behind the ears and watched. Most of the battles were pretty lack-luster to him seeing as he grew up so close to the wilderness and that almost everyone in Shadow Glades had fairly impressive beasts as their soulbound's, well at least compared to the soulbounds he was seeing do battle at the moment.
Most of the beasts Oliver watched battle were some kind of dog or domestic cat, there were even a few rodents among them, though of course none nearly as impressive as Loki. It really put into perspective for Oliver how different the rest of the country was compared to Shadow Glades. He's sure that Fated Sect would have loved to have all of his home town fight in their war if they were able to.
The only reason Fated Sect hadn't conscripted more veteran beast Tamers into their war was because they had an agreement with Demon Sect that only allowed them to use their own members or conscripts who were eighteen and new to the system. The reason behind this was so that neither side ruined their economy or cause to much widespread destruction. The higher level you are the more destruction you could cause to a city or town. The reason this war was even going on was for more benefits and resources from the government which was the true ruler of their country of Thermopoly.
The government distributed resources and gold to sects based upon a variety of things. Everything from the amount of resources a sect can gather all the way to how many people they governed or how much land they had. So wars were fought to claim valuable resources points and city's in order to receive more benefits from the government which would allow them to keep more of their own resources and tax money, because the government took the bulk share of most resources and tax money that the sects harvested.
Before long it was Brutus's turn to fight. Him and his Armored Boar stood across from a tall and lanky man with dark hair and eyes. Brutus's opponent was part of Vincent's party and standing in front of this man was a four foot long red lizard, though a foot of this lizard consisted of its tail, it stood at only about a foot high but its entire body seemed to be letting of steam which made the lizards body hard to see. Oliver knew from his extensive schooling in beasts that this beast was called a Fire Gecko.
Richard signaled for the fight to start and as soon as he did Brutus's Armored Boar sprinted towards the Fire Gecko. When the Armored Boar was about ten yards from the Fire Gecko the Fire Gecko opened its mouth and from it came spewing extremely hot flames. The Armored Boar just tanked these flames and kept running as if he wasn't' bothered by them at all. Right when everyone thought that the Fire Gecko was going to be impaled by the Armored Boars tusks the Fire Gecko turns and bursts to the right causing the Armored Boar to miss by a wide margin, the Fire Gecko's agility was just to high.
After the Fire Gecko avoided the Armored Boars charge it sprinted a little further away from the boar and opened its mouth again to continue spewing flames at his target. At this point all the bristly fur had been burnt off the Armored Boar and all over its thick leathery skin were severe burn marks, even if the Armored Boar is extremely tanky there's only a much of this kind of elemental punishment that it can take before its turned into bacon.
This kind of charge and avoidance scenario continues a few more times with the Fire Gecko constantly spewing Flames at the now burnt Armored Boar.
The Armored Boar again charges at the Fire Gecko and it seems to be that its just going to be a repeat of last time where the Fire Gecko plans to burst to the side at the last second. This time though Brutus's Armored Boar activates a skill of its own which makes its tusks take on a shiny luster clearly buffing them.
Everyone watching is confused why Brutus would use such a buff skill when his beast isn't able to land a hit on the Fire Gecko. But when the Armored Boar is about ten feet from the Fire Gecko, right before its about to burst to the side to avoid the boars charge something different happens. All of a sudden the Armored Boar bursts forward its speed increasing by fifty percent. It clearly had activated some kind of movement skill! The burst of speed makes the Armored Boar to fast for the Fire Gecko to avoid and it gets hit by the boars right tusk on the backside of its body and completely crushes the Fire Geckos back right leg, the boars momentum causes the gecko to fly into the air and hit the ground hard where it briefly tries to get up before falling back onto the ground, clearly extremely injured.
"Okay that's enough. Rebecca quickly heal both of them but start with the Fire Gecko because it might have internal bleeding." Richard exclaims. "That was a good tactic there saving your Armored Boars Charge skill until you'd lured your opponent into a false sense of security, most people would have used it right of the bat to try and end the fight early. If the Fire Gecko hadn't waited longer and longer to dodge to the side it probably would have been able to preemptively dodge it before your Armored Boar could get in range for the Charge skill to be effective. Nice job, but remember that tactic will only work when you have a healer nearby. If I'm not wrong your Armored Boar wouldn't have been able to take to much more of that fire and wouldn't have been able to fight for much longer." Richard explains to a solemn Brutus.
"I understand. I just knew that if I used the Charge skill right away and the Fire Gecko was able to dodge it that I would never get another chance to use it. The Fire Gecko species just has way too much agility and I knew that I was only going to get one shot at victory. If I used it and missed the Fire Gecko would just constantly kite me around until eventually I would have to surrender or else I'd have a pile of bacon as a souldbound instead of a beast." Brutus replied.
"That's very true which is why I said it was a good strategy. But its only a good strategy in a one on one battle or when you have party members and a healer nearby. I'm going to give you ten gold instead of five because honestly I thought you were going to lose that battle. As you said Fire Geckos just have way too much agility to get hit by an Armored Boar in most scenarios." Richard says.
With that fairly exciting match coming to a close Richard quickly gets back to deciding on match ups after both beasts had been healed and the the contestants had joined the rest of the group.
The matches continue as before with most of them being fairly boring or completely one sided.