"This is getting interesting!"
Watching the situation in the arena flip again and again in just over ten minutes, the group of powerhouses in the stands finally grew excited.
From the very beginning of the match, these experts from various factions had already regretted coming.
Even though they had expected a boring fight before arriving, they still thought there would at least be one or two highlights.
But what did they actually see? Acting. Acting. And more damn acting.
In the top seats, aside from a dozen or so from World No. 2 and World No. 3, most of those present were powerhouses from World No. 1. This was not favoritism from the Underworld, but simply the result of differences in strength between the worlds.
Among the three worlds, World No. 1 was the strongest. Every major pantheon had at least one member ranked within the world's top fifteen.
World No. 2 came next, but thanks to three Vampire Primogenitors within the top fifteen, it could stand on equal footing with World No. 1.
World No. 3 was the weakest. It barely had any Demon King or God-level beings. In theory, it did not even qualify to join the World Alliance and should have been divided up by the others.
Yet it had Shadow, a top five existence.
Most of the powerhouses in the audience might not know each other inside out, but they could at least say they had fought each other's fathers.
Under those circumstances, they could see through the act of Rias's Peerage Members at a glance.
That "Queen," Akeno Himejima, did she really think that just because she had Devil wings, no one would notice the strong Fallen Angel aura on her?
Not only did they notice, some of them even identified her father based on the Lightning attribute within that aura. No need to ask how. They had fought before.
And that white-haired nekomata. A mage who can use senjutsu taking the role of a Rook, a pure fighter class. Quite the creative choice.
Then there was the cardboard box Vampire. Probably the best actor of all. A Sacred Gear that can stop time, a noble Vampire bloodline immune to sunlight, and even a portion of power from someone rumored to have died among the world's top fifteen. Put those together and you get at least SS-level strength, yet he was eliminated first.
If the Underworld had charged them for tickets, they would have already demanded their money back.
But free admission did not change the fact that this was a terrible match. Rias's side was already weaker than Riser's, and they were still putting on a show. What was the point?
The earlier fights looked flashy, but to them, it was boring. The strong defeating the weak was only natural.
What they actually wanted to see was Rias using strategy and intelligence to defeat a stronger opponent, not a fight that looked intense but was as obvious as three being greater than two.
Claire's outburst later did catch some attention.
It was clear she exploded in power because Riser had hurt someone important to her. That kind of emotion-based power, possibly unique to World No. 3, was enough to pique interest.
But that was it.
Claire had already reached SS-level strength at that point. Her victory should have been guaranteed.
And yet, she suddenly collapsed. Almost as if she had been forcibly shut down. They could all see clearly that her body had not actually reached its limit.
So the situation returned to what it had been before.
On paper, Riser was stronger than Rias. After consuming Phoenix Tears and recovering more than Rias, that gap only widened.
As expected, Riser defeated Rias.
An outcome so obvious it could not be more obvious. Just end it already.
Just as everyone mentally concluded the match, a boy stepped in.
Their only impression of him was that his injury had triggered Claire's rampage. Nothing more.
At first, no one paid him any attention. In their eyes, the result had already been decided.
No one cared about what he said either. The anger in his words sounded like nothing more than youthful impulse. After all, how many people could truly use emotion to overcome their body's instincts?
The first time he stood up, a few glanced at him and then looked away. They thought his limit would be the next fall.
The second time he stood up, it was slightly surprising, but still within expectations.
The third time, some people began to take Cid seriously. He had already exceeded what they thought possible.
The fifth time, everyone in the arena was watching him.
The eighth time, some people's breathing grew heavier. For the first time, they truly started to take him seriously.
A miracle.
A real miracle.
By all logic, he should have collapsed long ago. And yet, he kept standing up again and again, driven by sheer will.
Every time Cid fell, everyone's common sense told them the same thing. This was his limit. He could not possibly get back up again.
And yet, time after time, Cid went against all reason and stood up.
Right now, Cid was like a madman loading five bullets into a revolver and then pointing it at his own head.
Each time Cid fell, it was like that madman had naturally pulled the trigger on a loaded chamber and dropped dead.
Yes, naturally, not out of bad luck. With five bullets loaded, death was only natural. It would only count as bad luck if there were just one bullet.
And each time Cid stood back up, it was as if that madman had climbed up off the ground, grinning as he told them he had only been bluffing, that he had pulled the empty chamber after all.
So when Cid defeated Riser, everyone in the arena grew excited, because this was a true miracle.
They could confidently say to anyone in the arena, except for Cid, that under the same conditions, they could have done better.
Even if they had been the one commanding Rias, even keeping that same lineup of actors unchanged, they still had the confidence to defeat Riser.
They had that confidence with anyone.
Anyone except Cid.
This was no longer a matter of whether it could be done. It was a matter of whether they themselves would have dropped dead the moment they took his place.
Using B- strength to fight an S- Phoenix would have been challenging, but not impossible. Based on Riser's combat level, the odds of victory or defeat would have been about even.
But using a body on the verge of death to fight a heavily injured Phoenix?
Deep down, they all knew they could not do it.
They could tell that the wounds on Cid's body were genuine fatal injuries, the kind where it would not have been strange if he had suddenly died and been eliminated on the spot.
In Cid's fight against Riser, it was fair to say his health bar had been at one point the entire time.
Trying to fight someone in that state meant the only question was how long he could keep hanging on. The moment that state vanished, he would drop dead immediately.
"That really was a fine battle. Looks like this trip wasn't wasted."
Seeing that most of the audience was satisfied with the match, Sirzechs let out a breath of relief. He turned to Ajuka and discreetly signaled for him to dissolve the separate space, only to meet Ajuka's anxious eyes.
Realizing something was wrong, Sirzechs immediately looked toward the separate space inside the arena.
A hazy white mist was drifting out from it, and at some point it had spread across the entire venue.
Because the white mist was too thin, and because Riser had already been defeated and it was time to dissolve the separate space and announce the winner, the powerhouses present had not noticed anything wrong.
By the time they wanted to act, it was already too late.
Almost at the exact moment Sirzechs realized something was off, the thin white mist instantly spread further. It thickened, losing its transparency, and for a moment no one could see each other clearly. Ripples of spatial distortion appeared along the edges of the mist.
The ground shook violently.
The dim Underworld sky above the venue vanished, replaced by an empty black void where nothing existed at all.
"The Dimensional Gap? Interesting!"
The powerhouses in the arena quickly recognized where they had been transferred to, the gap between the main world and the subsidiary worlds, the Dimensional Gap.
"They're pretty confident. Aren't they worried they've cut off their own escape route?"
After realizing they were under a terrorist attack, not only did no one panic, some of them even looked around with interest, curious to see who had made a move against them.
To be honest, before coming here they had considered the possibility of a terrorist attack. But with the lineup present, even if Shiva, the world's sixth-ranked God of Destruction, decided to go mad, they could still kill him. Rather than worrying about themselves, it made more sense to worry about the terrorists.
Once they intentionally started looking, they quickly found what was wrong.
It was not that the terrorists had appeared in front of them.
It was that several of the powerhouses who had come with them had suddenly become extremely weak, their faces twisted in pain.
And those few all had one thing in common.
They were dragons.
"This mist... it's poisonous..."
One of the collapsed dragons pointed out the source of their condition. After hearing that, everyone else also turned to look at the surrounding mist.
They themselves did not feel anything wrong with their bodies, which meant the mist was specifically targeting dragons. And since none of them had noticed anything unusual about it before, the amount of poison mixed into it had to be extremely small.
And yet such a tiny amount was enough to bring these powerhouses down.
Why did the potency of this poison feel so familiar?
"The Dragon Eater?"
"Samael?"
Two people in the crowd seemed to recall something and spoke the same name.
"Right. If it's Samael, then even a trace of this poison, so small that even we couldn't detect it, would still be enough to weaken the Dragon race."
The forbidden existence from the Bible who tempted the residents of Eden to eat the fruit of wisdom. The embodiment of original sin. The Dragon Eater, Samael.
He alone bore all the malice, resentment, and curses born from the God of the Bible's hatred toward dragons.
That was why this poison was so terrifying. It did not only affect dragons. It could even threaten the very survival of their race.
Once they understood the source of the poison, everyone exchanged looks. Their expressions changed drastically. The earlier curiosity vanished, replaced by shock as they realized something.
Even if they could not smell it, they were certain of one thing.
Standing within this white mist, they had already been tainted by Samael's presence.
And that was the real problem.
Being transported into the Dimensional Gap was not the issue.
Being tainted by Samael's presence was not the issue either.
But appearing in the Dimensional Gap while carrying Samael's presence was a huge problem.
"ROAR!!!"
Three dragon roars echoed through the Dimensional Gap. One sharp, one sinister, one hollow.
Within the Dimensional Gap existed one of the world's top five powerhouses, [Great Red], along with two otherworldly enemies who had been hunted by Great Red for over a year. They too were beings on the same top tier.
That was not the key point.
The key point was that all three of them were dragons.
Now, with everyone present carrying the presence of Samael, a natural enemy of dragons, it was no different from slapping those beings awake in their sleep. Samael's presence alone was enough to draw all three of them here.
As for why those three would still come after sensing the presence of Samael, the bane of dragons, the reason was simple.
This was only Samael's presence, not Samael himself.
The relationship between dragon slayers and dragons was not exactly like light and darkness, but it was close. If the strength was equal or slightly weaker, it would be overwhelmingly effective. But just Samael's presence…
All it did was provoke the dragons and make them attack with even greater ferocity.
Just as the people above were on the verge of a battle that could wipe them all out if anything went wrong, Cid realized something.
He might have messed up.
He had suppressed his body's natural healing for too long. The fatal wound had become truly fatal.
Cid, get a grip. Cao Cao and the others have already started their plan.
Dying because you blew yourself up with your own Magical Power… that kind of pathetic death doesn't suit an Eminence in Shadow at all.