Translation: Charlotte
Editor: Weasalopes
I continued watching more matches.
But unlike before, my surroundings were a lot nicer
Six female players.
But I wasn"t too happy.
The only ones receiving any love were my Summon Monsters.
My fairy Heather, my red fox Ninetails, my lion Loewe.
They were being eaten up by the others.
Adele and Irina even switched out their teams to include only the cute ones.
You guys…
The air felt very different from where we were sitting.
It couldn"t be helped.
But really…
Margrid was in love with Loewe.
She enjoyed herself watching the games with one hand in Loewe, and another hand in Adele"s Lchan.
Wait…
Was she even watching the games?
Ninetails was asleep on Reina"s lap.
Completely sleeping.
Sleeping.
Switch with me please.
Ah, I got distracted
There were matches to watch.
Both the B field and the D field of the temporary arena were visible from where we were sitting.
It was a pretty good spot.
It was pretty close to the actual contestants, while still being far enough for us to a.n.a.lyse the fight properly.
An almost perfect seat.
I was absorbed in almost every match.
But some teams were especially noteworthy.
Some teams that were particularly interesting.
A team with everyone focusing on mobility.
Three fighters, one hunter, one elf sorcerer, and a treasure hunter.
It was a wonderful fight.
It was like all six of them were moving independently.
I was especially impressed with one of the fighters and the treasure hunter.
Both were grapplers.
But they still struggled to break through the enemy team"s front line.
One of the fighters managed to flank the enemy, and I was especially interested in the way he took out one of the rear players.
He used both kicks and punches.
Throws too.
And using the player as a human shield, he continued fending off the front line players coming after him.
I like it.
The elf sorcerer survived to the end, making use of her mobility.
With both sides using martial art skills, support spells were pretty important.
But the elf sorcerer"s HP bar was pretty close to zero!
There were also some teams that I had to pay attention to.
「Shinonome! Do your best!」
「Hannes! Fight on!」
The voices of Reina and Helga resounded around us.
Yep.
It was a team full of the best Production Job Players from the Wind Spirit Village.
? ? ? Lv.13
Lumberjack On Standby
? ? ? Lv.13
Stonemason On Standby
? ? ? Lv.11
Blacksmith On Standby
? ? ? Lv.11
Farmer On Standby
? ? ? Lv.11
Ceramic Worker On Standby
? ? ? Lv.11
Alchemist On Standby
There were a few of them that I recognised in a moment.
Yosaku the lumberjack.
Shinonome the dwarf stonemason.
Hannes the farmer.
I was close enough to look at their faces.
I felt like I"d seen the three others before, but I wasn"t too familiar with their names.
「You guys had a proper selection process for who would partic.i.p.ate, huh.」
「Yep. I was nominated to be a support player too, but I pa.s.sed on the chance. I didn"t really like the 100% pain settings thing.」
Margrid was sitting in front of me, commenting on the fight.
Margrid Lv. 12
Lapidary On Standby
It was only after using【Identify】on her that I realised she was at a pretty good level too.
Made sense.
The cheers were definitely more to one team than the other.
All the focus was on the Production Job Player team.
The game ended very quickly.
The enemy team wasn"t weak by any stretch.
Everyone was at Lv.12.
Yosaku"s team had a pretty simple strategy.
Push.
That was all.
They had four players in the front, after all.
Yosaku and Shinonome were in the centre and pushed forwards, while the Blacksmith and Hannes attacked from the sides.
Of course, they took a lot of attacks while they moved forwards, but they didn"t stop.
The enemy team put up walls of earth, but they were quickly broken down.
The other party had three players in the front.
Two of them had especially heavy equipment.
But they were blown away by the force of Yosaku"s team.
They were blown away together with their heavy axes, hammers, and shields.
Wow.
The tank players were taken care of by Yosaku and Shinonome before Hannes and the Blacksmith could even do anything.
Woah.
It was definitely a simple strategy.
But it was still a wonderful one.
It wasn"t that the enemy team didn"t do anything.
They were just no match for Yosaku"s strength.
「Hey, Keith.」
「What"s up, Margrid.」
「What would you do if you had to fight them?」
「Nothing. Just fight and break through like usual.」
「Isn"t that very manly of you」.
「Well… I don"t think I"m going to get the luxury to come up with a detailed plan anyway.」
「Really?」
「That"s what I think, at least.」
It couldn"t be helped.
That was my honest take on the matter.
Yosaku wasn"t the only issue.
Shinonome was just as scary as Yosaku.
I wouldn"t have enough time to come up with a decent strategy.
I just had to dive into it and hope things worked out.
Another team of two summoners and four Summon Monsters appeared.
Wait, I"d seen them before, right?
They were using a wood golem and a big crab as tanks, and then attacking using a tiger and a wolf.
But they were unfortunately defeated.
The Wood Golem just couldn"t stand up to the enemy team"s barrage of attacks.
The crab survived to the very end though.
「What do you think they did wrong there…?」
A question came from Irina, who was sitting beside me.
I had a few ideas.
「No matter how you think about it they only have two players on their team. It"s no surprise they lost the fight in the long term when it came to using strengthening spells.」
「I think they used their Summon Monsters pretty well though.」
「Yeah, I think so too. The opposing team members were all over level 10, so it may have just been because of that.」
「I feel like they ran out of opportunities eventually too.」
「Yeah, it may have gone better for them if they managed to take out that front line player before they buffed themselves up.」
Yep.
They actually had a chance of winning.
One of the front line players was pretty close to being taken out.
But the support player"s recovery spell was just in time.
「I guess it"s just important to calmly look at the enemy and plan from there.」
「Good point…」
Irina agreed with me.
As a summoner, she would have to deal with a lot of the same issues that team had to deal with.
Of course, that went for me too.
The second round continued.
They were all very nice matches.
Every match was interesting.
It was a lot more interesting than one-on-one battles.
I saw two matches with bards as support players.
There was one bard that tried to play an offensive role using damage-dealing songs.
The other bard focussed more on supporting the entire team by increasing their ATK for a quick victory.
Two bards on opposite ends of the spectrum.
The spirits were very interesting too.
Even though I still didn"t fully understand them.
Apparently, spirits couldn"t be present on the battlefield for a very long time.
That was why teams involving spirits often only summoned them when they had to.
Sometimes the spirits were enough to turn the tide of battle, and sometimes the spirits were out too late to make a difference.
Was that the reasoning behind spirits in battle?
I had no idea.
My only experience with spirits was when I defeated the spirit in my first fight.
Of course, I saw a team taking a strategy like mine.
But to properly take out the spirit, they needed support spells and attack spells too.
It was really an annoying force to deal with.
But still, I got the impression that spirits weren"t that powerful.
They were difficult to use too.
The team would have to fight with only five players, after all.
And the elf would have to be quite skilled to use the spirit too.
Interesting…
No, it was very interesting.
I just intended to enjoy each match, but I ended up thinking about the matches a lot more than I expected.
What should I do…?
What would I do against this team?
The answer I reached was always just to dive into it and hope for the best.
It was about 3 pm when the second round ended.
The tournament was progressing pretty quickly.
「Ahh, that was fun!」
「It"s totally different to the first tournament.」
Everyone said something along those two lines.
They sounded like the same thing, but the more I thought about it, the more I realised they were different.
One of them was comparing this tournament to the previous one.
Yeah…
Well, that wasn"t a bad thing.
The admins may not really be planning anything after all.
「Well then, we"ll part ways here!」
「Sure, thanks.」
I wonder why…
Adele and Irina were blocking both my sides.
We parted with Margrid and the others in front of the temporary arena.
Hey.
What are you two planning?
Well I had a vague idea.
「In other words, there"s another one today, huh?」
「Huh? What?」
「Well, actually…」
「I"m free right now, so why not.」
Hmm…
I was pretty sure it was that.
You two don"t have to hide anything, it"s not like it"s anything bad anyway.
But there was something else I didn"t expect.
There were a lot more players than the day before.
The whole summoner meetup took a strange turn from the very beginning.
I used【Instant Portal】from the beginning.
We had our dinner party in the portal.
Of course, the purpose of that was to allow anyone to log out whenever they felt like it.
Not having to look for accommodation in Remut was very useful.
「The area is limited! Please refrain from going into Battle Mode!」
Yep.
The portal was about the size of a soccer field.
It should"ve been easy to have a match in there.
But there were just that many people.
And of course, everyone"s Summon Monsters.
It was chaos.
It felt like a petting zoo.
I kind of expected it from before the party even began.
But the popular Summon Monsters were the same as yesterday.
But something else attracted everyone"s attention.
「My name is Hyodor, I"m an elf summoner.」
Yep.
What a pretty elf…
But it was a guy.
But still, he was very short…
Even though he was a guy.
Beautiful…
Well, he was an elf, after all.
He was still at Lv.4, so he wasn"t in the tournament, but came to partic.i.p.ate in the party anyway.
「C- Cute.」
「Right? Hmm~ Can you call me big sister please?」
「I like this one~」
Such voices started to surround Hyodor.
Run away.
Run away, Hyodor!
The voices from our hearts didn"t reach him.
He was caught by a wave of older sisters.
Sorry.
I can"t rescue you from that.
Not that I don"t want to, alright?
I had a feeling he wasn"t there the day before.
He stood out a lot, after all.
He was more popular than even Summon Monsters.
There was something else that attracted all the men"s attention though.
Mermaids.
And the number had gone up from the day before to four mermaids.
Their pretty figures healed the heart.
I was glad that the【Instant Portal】reached the river.
Male summoners were crowded around the river.
All four of them had their own personalities too.
Every one of them had their own cute points.
Their chests.
Their a shy expressions.
Their slightly angry expressions.
「What are you doing you perverts!」
Konohana found out what we were doing and shouted at us in anger.
There were a few male summoners fighting back.
Ah, it was starting to get out of hand.
There are some real perverts mixed in our group, but we"re not all perverts, alright?
「Hey everyone! The food is here!」
Adele and Irina helped out with cooking.
They were distributing plates of food to everyone.
Wow…
Summon Monsters were excitedly running around them.
Adele and Irina took their time petting the Summon Monsters they had already become familiar with.
Are you going to be okay?
Well, I"m sure it"ll be alright.
Who did I summon?
I summoned my grey wolf Volff, my fairy Heather, my red fox Ninetails, and my tiger Tigris.
And of course, my lion Loewe.
I was already sure they were just going to become everyone"s playthings.
I didn"t mind though.
Some people had already logged out, and logged back in again.
This is bad…
I had a feeling the party was never going to end.
I used Toggle as a pillow while I lay down to relax.
The tournament?
What"re you talking about?
Hyodor tried to come and ask me some questions, but the female players soon dragged him off.
Sorry.
I"m not capable of helping you.
I"m sorry.
「I kind of had a feeling it would end up like this.」
「Well, good point.」
「But I didn"t expect it to be this bad…」
「I mean, Adele doesn"t look that different from the way she usually looks.」
Irina looked pretty tired out.
You"re not that much better, you know.
I wanted to show her the face she made when she was around Heather and Muret.
Speaking of which, there were a few more fairies than last time.
They were getting more popular.
A group of red foxes ran around in front of me.
A group of wolves was chasing after them.
Sweet?
No, the sight kind of hurt my head at that point.
「By the way, I wonder how many of us made it to the third round?」
Hmm…
There were only three teams left at the party.
Not that many, huh.
Especially considering the number of summoners.
「There are two other teams who aren"t here right now.」
「It"s gone down, huh.」
「I mean, only 32 teams will make it to the actual tournament. It"d be nice if another team of summoners could make it.」
Wait.
Wait Wait Wait Wait Wait.
Are you a.s.suming I"ll already make it in?
Haven"t you seen the other scary teams in the qualifiers?
The time was already past 9 pm.
The discussion was already moving on to planning the next meeting.
Looked like everyone was already comfortable with one another.
Although let"s not stay up too late, alright?
「We"re ending the party soon!」
At Haruna"s signal, clean-up started.
But really…
I was surprised I could have so much fun at a party without alcohol.
「I guess I"ll log out too.」
「Keith?」
「Hmm?」
「Are we going to do that tomorrow morning?」
「Another match?」
Adele and Irina were pretty stiff.
Hmm.
I actually had another idea for Jericho.
But I wasn"t very confident that it would work in battle.
It"d be nice if I could test it out.
「It would be nice if we could have a few matches…」
「I knew it!」
「It would be nice if you handicapped yourself a little more though.」
「Really?」
I had a feeling I was spoiling them.
But I guess it wouldn"t hurt.
It would be a nice experience too.
「Well, alright then.」
「Great! Thanks!」
Hmm…
I was much more grateful that they were willing to hang out with me though.
Thank you very much.