I doubt that Shooters thought that we would have a perfect gameplan for whatever they wanted to do out of the gate. The idea came from our second battle when the entire team attacked me at once and how Wispy could handle it all. So we lined up with everyone directly in a line behind me so that they would have to fire through Wispy to get to any of our team.
The announcement for the match to begin did its countdown as the announcer said "Fight" a volley of attacks were instantly sent our way. Wispy blocked all of them when I had started to run forward and Travis, who was behind me, was shocked to see how the attacks were being blocked and didn't realize I had run forward. They caught up as I charged forward and so far our plan was working.
Shooters started to fan out as we were coming in a straight line and as soon as Adam saw his opportunity he blinked to his first target, their life fairy beast master. The healer wasn't expecting to be attacked so suddenly and was expecting Adam to go for Justin due to their history. Justin saw the blink but was too far away and didn't have a ranged weapon other than his spear which he tried to throw at Adam before Adam could make the killing blow.
Adam simply dodged the spear being thrown and the beast master who specialized in healing suddenly realized that the spear thrown at her from her teammate was thrown for a reason. Adam didn't give him a chance to make the full turn as he sliced quickly with his katana through the midsection of the beast master knocking it out of the arena. Adam smirked at Justin and then blinked to the opposite side of the battle to where the lightning gryphon beast master and his gryphon were currently firing at me.
The gryphon sensed Adam's blink and defended his master with a swift kick to Adam's side. Adam hadn't expected the kick and was knocked back several yards, losing his balance and falling to his knees before getting back his balance on his feet. Several lightning arrows were then fired at him as he was fortunate the first missed then he somehow dodged the next two. Joey finished off the beast master as he had turned his back to us, by throwing his sais into the back of his head.
I charged forward and as soon as we were in the middle of the other team I then lifted off the ground from Maddy's Light as a Faery spell. Abby, Joey and Travis all then continued the charge and went to separate targets. Travis charged Justin, Abby charged the ice fox beast master and then Joey took on the fire faery. Wispy was now covering only me but I had the attackers focus at first when I lifted up as they all figured I was making myself an easy target. Instead it worked as a perfect distraction to let my melee teammates get in close.
I have to say that I was way too nervous but I was not going to let it show. The misses didn't really matter especially given the fact that all my shots caused the beast masters to dodge and delay their own attacks. It was the first fight that I felt I didn't participate fully as I didn't knock out anyone. Justin, who had chased after his spear, grabbed it just in time to block Travis's shield. Travis was told to not knock out Justin but to keep him busy, didn't hold back at all as he knew that Justin would have some tricks up his sleeve.
Adam was still engaged with the lightning gryphon and its beast master and he brought out Dante to even it up. I sent a life mend arrow to Adam just in case he took damage and needed a boost. The gryphon and wyvern started to battle and to be honest I was shocked at how quick and powerful they both were. The back and forth between them and then Adam blinking in only for the beast master to roll away from the blink.
Maddy sent a life mend to Travis who had taken a spear stab to the leg and was slowed down. The healing was so quick that Travis simply said through the panda tribe spell 'you're the best Maddy!' knowing it was from her given how quickly it healed. My life mend was the iron rank of the spell, while Maddy said it was the one spell her faery could do at silver rank already. Most of us were using bronze spells at best, to have a silver healing spell was basically over powered healing for us.
Abby and the ice fox beast master had a nice back and forth as the ice fox was desperately trying not to be eaten by Abby's lightning wolf. The saving grace for the ice fox was the fact it had an encasement ability that would make a shell of ice on the fox preventing Lacy from biting down and killing the beast, sending it back to the beast master and kicking them from the arena. Despite the speed of Lacy through lightning affinity the ice fox was able to keep rebuilding its armor which made it slower but it was saving itself from the killing blows.
The beast master of the ice fox being engaged by Abby suddenly produced an ice shield. The shield took the typical shape of a tower shield covering his whole body. With his right hand he would shoot ice spikes from behind the shield forcing Abby to recalculate how to fight this beast master on the fly. The massive shield though made Abby wonder how much longer this guy could keep up the spells as mana reserves usually affected first year matches more than any other as we all were still so young.
The combination of both the beast master and beast being on the defensive finally gave out and the shield was broken for the beast master. He tried to summon another it seemed like but it only made a small block on his forearm. Lacy was still chomping at the ice fox and she finally broke through a spot that wasn't resurfaced with ice armor. The final blow was dealt by Lacy to the ice fox but Abby was about six inches away from her saber doing the job as she was able to attack at an angle he couldn't block.
Throughout these fights Joey was engaged with the fire faery who was quite agile and the mini crossbows had connected with Joey's armor but didn't do any real damage. Joey had figured out long before the sweat spots that get you kicked from the arena due to the protection spell, furthermore the armor we were gifted by the royal family made it to where we could handle any ranked attack one above our current. So with all of us being bronze, silver would not penetrate our armor. The chances of a first year with a platinum ranked spell was unheard of so Joey let arrows hit him knowing they would simply bounce off.
The pace of which the fire faery could attack made it nearly impossible for Joey to get close. The first opportunity was when I shot an arcane missile forcing him to dodge toward Joey out of instinct to not be hit by the arrow. Joey was able to get the killing blow in sending the beast master out of the arena. Joey then went to box in Justin with Travis waiting for Adam.
Adam and the lightning gryphon beast master had been battling back and forth till Adam was able to maneuver his positioning to where Dante could get a quick attack of the back of the beast master. It worked out to where Dante lunged at the gryphon who dodged out of the way giving the backside of the beast master exposure. Dante's second head was able to move over to take a bite at the head of the beast master which kicked him out of the arena.
Dante melded back into Adam giving him his full extended blink ability which led him directly behind Justin. "Boo!" Adam shouted into the ear of Justin who had just rolled out of a dodge and wasn't expecting anything behind him. Justin literally screamed at a much higher pitch than most girls would hit. The crowd laughed at the reaction causing Justin's face to turn red in embarrassment that was more visible than his red face from exhaustion.
Justin now wanting to show his best since he was finally engaged with Adam belched out a flame from his mouth much further than Adam was expecting forcing him to roll to the side. Then as Adam got to his feet the fire salamander bursted out of Justin and lunged directly at Adam midsection. The salamander's maw was wide open and fire was proceeding it as it lunged to get the killing blow on Adam.
The next moment Adam blinked to right behind the salamander grabbing its tail with his right hand and in one motion slammed the beast back into Justin causing it to meld so hard that Justin was knocked to the ground. You could audibly hear the wind get kicked out of Justin by the force of his beast being shoved back into him.
I have a wisp who could never really go through what the tail of the beast allowed to happen so I can only go off of what others say, but I am told it's one of the most painful experiences. If Adam had held onto the tail and pulled the beast back out and repeated a second time he would have been ejected out of the arena as it was seen as an act of cruelty. The maneuver he did is a one time only but man it made the entire crowd groan.
We all knew to let this play out between Adam and Justin but when Justin looked around and realized he was by himself he surrendered. Adam didn't say anything, to be honest I think he was about done with dealing with Justin, Devin and all the nonsense it entailed. A part of me wanted to bring him back to my house for the two week summer break before we started second year so he could get away from it all.