Hulk looked at Greem and Mary, the latter looking at her boyfriend for what to do next. He was the one who made them come here after all.
The surroundings had grown quiet as doubtful gazes from the fighters and the crowd fell on the couple. The two fallen apprentices Hulk mentioned had a fierce reputation in the underworld, and most of them here were not confident in facing either of them one on one.
Treating the numerous doubtful stares like they didn't exist, Greem looked at his opponents before focusing on Hulk.
"Do we get a reward for winning?"
The murmurs that had begun to disrupt the silence died down again. 'Where did Black-hand find such a bold apprentice?' was the general sentiment of the crowd.
Hulk cocked an eyebrow at the question and shook his head lightly. "No. But you'll become members of this camp, and the benefits are a secret so don't ask. However, if you're feeling that confident, you can place some bets."
Greem smiled and did exactly that. He bet 50 magic crystals each on himself and Mary, stating that each of them would pick and defeat one of their opponents.
This sent the crowd into an even bigger uproar.
Which one of them with their above human abilities wasn't arrogant? In their eyes, Greem was also arrogant, however his own eclipsed theirs all combined. It went without saying they didn't truly believe he and Mary actually did what Hulk said they did.
Well, it was a good thing they were about to fight weren't they?
Standing on the earthen arena, two pairs of individuals stood 50 meters apart and faced each other; Greem the lightning body-refining apprentice, and Mary the fire elementium one.
Mary drew her babies and channeled her blood energy into them, granting them the ability to worsen bleeding and absorb enemy blood and transfer it to her.
Greem simply tapped his storage waistband, summoned eight yellow beads, and promptly threw them onto the ground.
Multiple expressions turned strange and constipated as clumps of earth rose up and twisted around each of the cores, taking the shape of seven humanoid figures and a mammoth sized alligator.
The tallest of the earth figures at 2 meters tall, strolled towards the alligator at Greem's command and simply … walked into it, merging their forms into one reminiscent of a centaur.
Capitalizing on the brief lull the stunning display had caused, Greem sent a command to the humanoid cores and they all raised their right arms in unison.
Copious, dirt yellow elementium surged at various points and formed 2 meter long earth spears they all grasped and lowered, tips pointed at the scowling, lightning-wreathed body-refining apprentice.
"Are both teams ready?!" Hulk's booming voice echoed over the silenced grounds a few seconds after.
Seeing the right heads bob up and down, he yelled out again. "Begin!"
Three apprentices moved when Hulk's voice fell, Mary, the fire elementium apprentice, and body-refiner facing Greem. Of them all, Mary was the fastest, followed by her opponent, and finally, lightning armor guy.
She crossed the 50 meter distance in less than 2 seconds, reaching the fire apprentice's former position in a near instant.
While the array beneath his feet improved his maneuverability, he was still a touch slower than the determined vampire.
After the brief introspection she had when Greem proposed to her, Mary's competitive nature had been somewhat tempered. She had ditched her plans to challenge him after completing her advancement, finding their current arrangement to her liking.
However, her desire to not be seen as weak was not all gone.
Greem's display just now had stirred that side of her, making her keenly aware of the onlookers and the thoughts and opinions they must be forming. 'Even if they really killed those two, he must've done all the work. What can a little vampire like her do?'
While such thoughts would've formerly enraged and driven her to fight like a berserker, she remained calm this time and thought about how she could end the fight before Greem finished his own.
That's why she didn't hold back on speed at all. She pulled out all the stops and chased after the fire apprentice, simultaneously dodging his rapid fire fireballs and closing in on him.
Little by little the distance between them shrunk until the only thing stopping Mary from skewering him on her blades were the three Inferno Shields rotating around him with minds of their own.
The fire apprentice didn't need to consciously control the positions of the hovering masses of compressed fire, though he could.
Whenever an enemy tried to cross the 1 meter distance to the caster maintaining the spell, the sensors in the nearest shield would react and halt their advance.
Her face a picture of calmness, Mary gave the shield a few test strikes and chose one, replicating the "digging" attack she used on the Giant Alligator Kind.
With her current Agility, she could strike close to 50 times in a single second.
The result of her dig was immediate—the targeted shield popped into a dense shower of orange sparks, providing her free passage to her enemy.
However, in a surprising move, she didn't charge through the dispersing cloud of fire elementium to finish him. She instead channeled the strength in her feet and jumped, her leathery wings unfurling in a flash of red mist.
A split-second after she went airborne, the giant fireball the apprentice had been using to fire miniatures of itself struck where the shield failed, engulfing that area in a ball of explosive flame.
Her original goal still in mind, Mary struck right as this explosion occurred.
Immediately after she jumped and unfurled her wings, she exerted their full strength and flapped them, shooting herself downward towards the fire apprentice.
Caught off guard by the unexpected angle of attack, the startled elementium apprentice forgoed recasting his fire artillery spell and engaged the magic array beneath his feet to retreat. Or at least he tried to.
The red and black meteor Mary transformed into slammed into him. They both crashed onto the ground with a loud slam and a yell of pain, a small dust cloud rising from the collision and slightly obscuring their tangled forms.
When the dust cleared, Mary was bent over the downed apprentice, her rapiers hilt deep in the ground, pinning him by his shoulders.
Looking at the apprentice grimacing and gritting his teeth in pain and unwillingness, Mary flashed him her fangs and twisted her blades. "Do you yield?"
"I.. I yield," the frightened apprentice stuttered amidst whimpers, his gaze going sullen.
Pulling her blades free and turning to Greem's fight, Mary retracted the blood energy around them into her body and received the little blood she extracted from her opponent.
A single minute had passed since the fight began, and Greem was still tangling with his opponent. Though it looked like it wouldn't be that way for long.
His new mantle flapping in the wind, Greem danced about the lightning wreathed body-refining apprentice like a phantom, dodging all his strikes and landing three or four of his own every chance he got.
His every strike left bowl sized holes in the apprentice's lightning web, the infused life force strikes disrupting the shield and going further under his skin to wreak havoc.
Of course, as a body-refiner himself, thunder axe guy had a large amount of life force and subsequently, a defensive force field as well. It allowed him to weather the storm of blows, reducing their intensity and patching up the small injuries they caused.
What they could not mend readily were the gaping wounds littering his body, the exposed flesh a sickly, dirt yellow.
All throughout the fight, Greem had been controlling the golems to throw their spears toward the two of them.
Being their summoner and possessing the ability to foresee the movements of his opponent, moreover someone significantly slower than he was, Greem had never once been hit by the earthen projectiles.
Whenever it seemed like one was about to hit him, he'd suddenly disappear from his position and let it hit the body refining apprentice.
The spears would pass through the gaps left by his fists and break off on the apprentice, leaving shallow but visible and painful wounds.
What's more, the small part of the spear tips that managed to penetrate his flesh each left behind elementium residue, the flesh at the contact points turning into a sickly yellow.
It goes without saying the apprentice was enraged. He caught onto Greem's tactic when the first spear hit him, and had immediately adapted to overcome them.
But somehow, Greem had found a way around this too. Immediately after he slapped away two dirt spears with his axe, all the golems sunk into the earth and disappeared from the scene.
Thunder axe guy stowed his confusion and kept trying to hit Greem, shooting lightning bolts from his axe where he thought the latter might appear and waved the weapon around himself without stopping.
He was hoping, almost praying for Greem to slip up, only for the latter to strike him in the back again and disrupt his shield. Like always, he swung the axe behind him and started patching the holes when three spears struck him in quick succession.
Completely shocked, he spun around to find three of the earth golems standing apart in a semi-circle 10 meters away.
Before he could even process the sight and his confusion as to how they got behind him, the remaining ones, including the crocodile centaur one, rose up from the ground at different points and formed a full circle with him and Greem in the center.
Shock and despair is what thunder axe's internal state could best be described as.
As for spectators, they were all silent, all of them finally convinced by the sight before them. Most of them imagined themselves in Mark, the lightning body-refining apprentice's position, and found themselves losing every single time.
With Greem's Agility that didn't lose out to a Pseudo Adept's, he could apply this strategy to almost every caliber of apprentice within his level and come out on top. Easily.
A Pseudo Adept however would give him some trouble. But what was the claim again? Two apprentices fought and killed a Pseudo Adept. It was a two on one fight.
By patching together the abilities and prowess they observed from Mary with Greem's tactics, they could understand how the duo not only survived but killed Wind Devil, a fallen apprentice known for his cruelty.
That guy held a special hatred for above worlders and always went out of his way to chase down and torture any unlucky apprentices he stumbled upon.
Speaking of Pseudo Adepts, many eyes in the crowd shifted to the center where Hulk and Kevin stood, the brains behind them wondering how their leader would fare against the duo of Greem and Mary.
"Hmph!" Hulk just harrumphed and loosed his rippling Pseudo Adept aura. If they could think it, surely he could too. Greem's showing had impressed him, but that was it.
The spears that were so damaging to Mark had to pass through the gaps Greem left in his lightning enhanced life force field. Greem could easily leave those gaps because he and Mark were on the same level Physique wise.
If the kid tried that with him, his fists and life force would only cause his own defensive force field to ripple, not break. His spears would subsequently be rendered useless.
Speaking of useless, that was the current state of Mark's lightning enhanced life force field.
He was currently on one knee, the lightning cloak he wore so valiantly reduced to a few, thin arcs that left the current state of his skin visible to all.
Most of his skin was covered with gaping, yellow wounds, making him look like someone with a weird case of liver disease. A broken off earth spear jutted out of his abdomen, the projectile finding no hindrance from his withered defense.
Standing about three meters away from him was Greem, who had commanded the golems to tighten the encirclement and level their spears at him.
Coughing out a glob of blood and dirt, Mark looked up at the source of the shadows surrounding him and found himself completely at Greem's mercy.
He tightened his grip on the alloy axe and looked Greem in the eye, his defiance clashing with the latter's calmness.
He moved his gaze between the multiple spear tips, the golems wielding them, and their leader's placid expression for a good minute before sighing and dropping his axe with a clang.
"I yield."