One Last System

Once again, Mia crashed right into the opposing team. However, this time, she didn't bother with avoiding their stronger side.

'Bring it on!' she thought, running right into the front of the leader of the group.

Mia never had any hopes about winning this tournament. If she could, she would be happy to do it. But the main aim of this event was to check the strength of her opponents so she could devise some tactics for the following tournaments.

And in order to test the strength of her enemies, she had no other choice but to allow them to strike.

"DIE!" a woman roughly Mia's age shouted, sending her fist forward. It had no elegance, but one could feel the tremendous weight behind it just by looking at how it seemingly tore through the air.

'Slow!' Mia commented in her mind, unable to stop herself from dodging. She wanted to block the attack, but out of instincts alone, she ended up easily sidestepping it.

"Damn," Mia muttered, grabbing the girl's extended arm and pulling on it while setting her leg against the girl's knees. Once her opponent lost focus, she simply allowed herself to fall on top of the girl, using her weight to crush her into the ground.

"How can this be so easy?" she asked in a loud voice before turning her head towards the rest of the group.

In the end, it took three more encounters before Mia finally managed to hold her ground, taking the straightforward attack of her opponents directly on her guard.

'How can this be so damn weak?!' she lamented in her thoughts, incapable of combining what she thought about those people and what she just experienced.

'If they are all on this level, then maybe...' For a moment, a ray of hope penetrated Mia's mental defenses as a chance to actually win the tournament appeared to be possible.

'No, let's not think about it just yet,' she told herself before looking at the battlefield.

Right now, they were in some sort of a plaza, surrounded from two sides by small houses while the north and the south remained perfectly open.

"This isn't a good spot," Mia muttered, only to see a group of cultivators emerge from beyond the hill to the south.

'The last of the western groups, I think,' she took notice before waving her hand to attract the attention of the rest of her team.

"Any special orders?" Veila asked as she approached the girl.

Mia looked at the faces of her team. While it was clear that they were no longer in perfect condition, it would be an overstatement to call them tired yet.

"No," Mia shook her head before looking towards the approaching group. 'Do they think that there is another group of sponsored disciples here?' she attempted to guess the reason why the enemy walked out in the open so carelessly. 'Or maybe it's a trap?' she finally took notice of the possibility.

"Wait!" she shouted as silently as she could, stopping the rest of her team from rushing in. "Let's wait for them to get closer," she added, inspecting the area around.

And sure enough, while the path ahead to the south and west were perfectly open, the same couldn't be said about the areas that surrounded that open space.

"I see," Sander muttered as he kneeled down and took cover behind the wall of a building. "They might want to lure us in," he added, explaining what he assumed to be Mia's reasons to the others.

"Guys, in this fight, I won't participate," Mia suddenly announced after taking a long look at her teammates.

'I need to see how they work on their own,' Mia thought as she gave Sander a long stare.

Sander was the most capable one in her team. But that was the extent of what she knew about the fighting ability of her entire team.

How strong was Veila? Would she hesitate before striking down an opponent? And how effective was the couple that Mia still had to talk with even once?

'We can't be like that if we want to win the tournament,' Mia thought, her mind already set in stone.

Sander only looked at Mia's face for a moment, refusing to reply to her order. He ended up nodding his head before moving his eyes back at the approaching enemies.

"What the fuck is taking you so long?!" the sponsored disciples shouted over, not stopping while they did so.

'Are they that sure that there are only friendlies in here?' Mia thought, refusing to believe that her opponents could be so naive.

But she didn't have much time to think about the matter, as her team finally decided to make a move.

Sander went in first, rushing madly right at the center of the enemy formation. Behind him, the couple followed, running exactly one meter apart from each other. Lastly, Veila kept the rear.

'Did they work on it before?' Mia managed to think before the two teams clashed.

In theory, her team was at a disadvantage. After all, they were fighting with a full team of five while only having four on their side.

'Wait, what?' Mia got stunned once again when she realized that the situation... It was actually the opposite.

Sure, her group was one member short... But they still managed to gain the advantage of numbers.

Sander would open the fight by kicking away at the enemy of his choosing. But instead of facing him head-on, he would just swing past by, forcing the rest of the enemy group to take their stances.

In the meantime, the young couple would angle their paths away from each other, only to recoil back and strike the poor victim from both sides. Not wasting their momentum, they then swapped the place and continued to look for a chance.

Lastly, Veila rushed will all her force. She was against the enemy that had already received a powerful beating from three people. Yet, when Veila curled her hand into fists and drove it deep into the man's stomach, Mia couldn't help but flinch.

Seeing the man bend in half and obviously about to throw up his dinner, even she felt uncomfortable.

"Guys, retreat!" Mia suddenly shouted as a devious idea popped up in her head.

'It doesn't matter if we win or lose now,' she thought, watching how her entire team instantly followed her order. 'What matters is that we will continue winning in the future,' she thought, standing up and leaving her cover.

"What's wrong?!" Sander was the first one to return, just like he was the first one to step in before.

"Nothing," Mia shook her head, a vicious smile plastered all over her lips. "A small change to the plan," she added, slowly approaching the petrified group of her enemies.

"You stopped us for something so silly?" Sander asked, clearly dissatisfied with Mia's actions.

"Silly?" Mia echoed his words with a small smirk on her lips as she approached their enemies. "It's not silly. Listen, if we want to keep on winning those tournaments, there is only one thing that we need to do now," she said as she looked right in the eyes of the nearest of her opponents.

Mia wasn't in a hurry to explain her thoughts. Instead, she approached the man and stood right outside of his attack range.

Just that fact alone was enough for the guy to start sweating profusely.

'Oh?' Mia shrugged, slightly surprised. 'So he can realize what my position means,' she noticed.

She stood right outside of the man's range. Which meant she was perfectly able to read his range. And that alone made all of the man's fighting ability completely worthless!

"As I said," she said, turning her face back to her team. "There is only one thing that we need to do now," she explained.

A tiny rustling sound reached Mia's ears, alerting her and forcing her to take a step back.

That guy actually attempted to close the distance, making a single step forward.

'That was nice,' Mia commended the man's initiative. He managed to keep his stance intact by taking only a single step!

She then turned her face back to her opponent and put up the nicest smile she could come up with.

"We just need to beat the shit out of them so that they will never join another tournament in their life!"