Here it is.
Damn did I have a tough week, different tests practically every day (I still have today that's probably going to be the worst one out of all of them) and a fight with an annoying professor about the point of printing things that we already had in a digital form.
Anyway, I'm ranting now.
Reviews:
BrainWork27 - The pike is the standard prolonged spear type of pike (just imagine standard image when you search up a pike but with a bigger blade, or a bit smaller glaive with both of its sides being the shard edges.) As for the arms being taken by the shields and Jaune not being able to use the pike with a single hand,I would agree with that completely if in the original Shaman King Yoh didn't use a twenty meter long swords as his Over Soul, though again it still might be a bit different than that so I'm not sure. Just imagine it similar to how Yoh's Over Soul at the end of the original Shaman King looked like or something.
Kolomnte'49 - Yeah I guess I missed the opportunity of having a scene with Blake and Weiss about the faunus shaman team, my bad. After googling it up, I can say that the Dukemon is actually quite a decent model to base the image of Jaune's new Over Soul off of.
Gamelover41592, NinjaFang1331, X3runner, Pedro Alonso Buby Huayanay Zamudio - Thanks for the reviews :)
Everything hurt.
That was the only way to describe the effects of Ruby and Summer's training that Jaune and his team were currently going through. There was no point in romanticizing or idealizing it as it was simply the most cruel and torture-like exercise most of them had to ever go through their lives.
It might not have been as difficult, or literally soul crushing, as the training at the Branwen's camp was but it couldn't be argued that it was far more physically demanding. At least when they were thrown into 'The Dark Cave' they didn't have their senses to feel tired or hurt from trying to leave that place, there wasn't such a commodity right now.
Summer's hellish training was beyond cruel on its own but the moment she had not one or two but five different people to unknowingly encourage her and come up with even more torturous ideas that training quite quickly turned from simply cruel to something that Jaune wouldn't wish for his greatest enemies to ever suffer.
"Come on! What are you doing, you pansies?! My great grandma would have done a better job at exercising than you are pretending to be doing right now!" Nora shouted, imitating the voice a stereotypical Atlas sergeant would have, and from the barely contained smile on her face everyone could see that it was causing her a lot of joy.
Jaune could only grumble in response as he couldn't really do anything else, out of all four of them he was the only one whose current exercise was rather stationary in nature so no matter how much he would have wanted to try, he just couldn't train harder.
He could always look at the silver lining however, not only that hellish training was actively making them stronger, it also was gathering quite a crowd of relatively weaker shamans around them.
After their fight two days ago had been watched by almost every competitor of the tournament, many of the weaker shamans realized the sheer gap that was between them and the top dogs of the tournament making them doubt their abilities, the fact that all the fights during the following day were clearly far less impressive and way more even only multiplied that doubt.
Now, only a third day into the third round of the Shaman Fight, it was hard to find a single shaman unrelated to someone who was a favorite to win or in a particularly powerful team that wasn't doing everything they could to increase their strength as much as possible.
Of course, even among those who were the most desperate to gain strength, it was almost impossible to find someone who was actually willing to go through the very same training their non-shaman friends were forcing on them.
That was just how scary and painful their torture, Summer insisted on calling training, really was.
Thankfully, they weren't completely screwed over this day as the last fight of the day was one they couldn't afford to miss, considering that a team belonging to one of the favorite factions to win the whole Shaman Fight was fighting in it.
On top of that, it was also a fight that one of their friends, or maybe colleagues was a better word considering that they hadn't seen them since visiting Argus, was taking part in.
As it turned out, after leaving them, Lyserg had joined the X-Laws and was currently a member of the plainly named team 'X-Laws Gamma' that had a fight this evening.
They didn't really know who their opponents were but seeing as they were fighting an entire day after them in a round that seemed to base its order of the fights solely on the recognized strengths of the teams participating, it wasn't hard to speculate that those people would be way stronger than team Wild Might they were forced to fight.
Although he really didn't want to have any malicious hopes for a person who helped as much as Lyserg had before, Jaune couldn't help but to quietly wish that their opponents would be strong enough to show a couple of X-Laws' weaknesses.
Their leader, Iron Maiden Jeanne, was one of the few favorites to win the whole tournament and Jaune didn't really know how he would feel about having such a coldblooded individual as the next Shaman King.
At the very least it would have been better than having Hao as a next god though.
"Quit daydreaming and move to practicing the formation of your Over Soul!" Ruby shouted loudly after a couple seconds of his silence. "Your inability to properly create your Over Soul the last fight is the sole reason you are training right now!"
A couple of, very noticeable, nods and giggles were the responses of agreement from the small crowd their hellish training gathered.
Jaune only groaned as he changed his position from the painful squatting position he was made to take for an exercise and signaled Summer that he was ready to proceed with the training.
With all the people possible opponents around them suddenly starting to stare at him so intensely that animals at a zoo would have been embarrassed under such stares, Jaune was of a half mind to purposefully fail a couple of times to make them think that he still couldn't form his new Over Soul consistently.
A single fake smile from Summer that promised him pain if he dared to slack off in any way during the exercise was more than enough for him to give up on that idea however.
They should be fine anyway, most of the people around them were of the weaker sort and from the previous fights he knew that quite a few of them had already been eliminated.
What was the chance that letting a couple of people observe his new Over Soul for a while would harm them in the long run, anyhow?
...
A few hours later...
...
With his first fight of the round steadily approaching, Lyserg couldn't help but to feel nervous.
Sure, after joining the X-Laws he might have received training way more effective than anything he had ever tried before and another powerful guardian spirit, in form of an angel, on top of that but it was going to be the very first real fight he was going to have while on team together with the rest of the X-Laws.
After their single scuffle against Hao back in Argus, the X-Laws didn't meet many challenges on their way to the United Tribes Village with the only thing that could really be considered difficult being finding the place.
As it turned out, not many people were dumb enough to risk a direct fight against a team of about a dozen powerful shamans working under one of the most likely candidates to win the tournament.
On one hand it made their journey rather relaxing and allowed him to get some good training from the more experienced shamans that were the X-Laws. On the other, it robbed him of any opportunity to gain fighting experience with his newfound strength.
At the very least, he probably didn't turn out as bad as his colleagues back with Jaune had. He might not have gained such monstrous strength as quickly as them but he was certain that he had way more control over his Over Soul than the blond shaman displayed during his fight and all his showing during the training after that, then again Jaune could be hiding his strength behind that image of incompetence for all he knew, they never were close enough for Lyserg to instinctively know whether the Arc was lying about something or not.
A sigh escaped Lyserg before he stretched a little and grabbed the white coat that signaled he was an X-Laws.
That coat was one of the things he was the most surprised to have received from the team he was in. He certainly was aware that white coats were the uniform of the X-Laws, anyone with a pair of working eyes would have been aware of that, but he hadn't expected them to specifically stop in one of the bigger villages in Mistral solely to find a proper tailor who would make him that uniform.
He smiled a little.
Although their only real connections were a hatred of Hao and a desire for revenge, camaraderie quite quickly formed between them. Of course, that camaraderie might have formed specifically because of that strong emotions related to a common enemy, after all there wasn't a simpler way to bond people together than to give them a foe they could ally against and there wasn't a better foe than the immortal monster that was Hao.
"Excited for the fight 'captain'?" Meene, a kind blond woman who was one of the X-Laws and his team member, asked upon seeing the small smile on his face.
Lyserg turned to one of his companions as his smile turned rather wry in response to the question. He wasn't quite sure why he was chosen to be the leader of 'X-Laws Gamma', especially since in his entire team there wasn't a single person that wasn't either stronger or longer an X-Law than him.
Back when they were deciding how to divide themselves into teams of four, Marco had chosen him as the leader of the third team because of his 'drive', whatever that meant. Considering the fact that the only other X-Laws who had the chance to become the team leaders were the X-Laws weapons keeper, Hans Raihart, and the Iron Maiden Jeanne herself, he, quite justifiably, felt like he didn't deserve his position.
Though, from the way others talked about it, he felt that he was the only one to think about it like that.
"If I were to be completely honest, I'm more nervous than excited really. A fight against some random shamans unrelated to Hao might allow us to proceed further with the tournament but in the end that's not our true goal here, is it?" Lyserg finally admitted after a moment of thinking.
Meene rolled her eyes slightly at his declaration, among all of the X-Laws she was probably the one who was the least determined in their quest to kill Hao. It wasn't to say that she wasn't willing to do absolutely anything to rid the world of that monster though, anyone would be after learning that the only family they had was murdered by said monster.
"I still believe that you should calm down with your desire to get revenge, Lyserg." Meene said before shifting a little towards the exit of their team building. "I know that you want to kill him, I had abandoned my entire career as an Atlesian soldier to finish that bastard myself, but if you base your entire life around it then what will you do the moment Hao's dead?"
Lyserg didn't bother with answering the question and instead only looked at the blond girl with pure resolve burning in his eyes.
"Don't try to discourage our captain, Meene." Cebin, a masked man with a pure hatred of Hao burning inside of him and another one of his teammates, jumped into their conversation with a somewhat zealous tone of voice. "As long as we kill Hao we will be able to look for other purposes in our lives without any issues, it's that monster that is stopping us from doing anything."
Meene only grumbled a little in response as she dodged an attempt to grab her from behind made by the newly arrived masked shaman.
"While I wouldn't say it with such zeal as Cebin just had, I have to agree with him, Meene." Chris, a broad man with his legs replaced by prosthetics after fighting Hao and his final teammate, said calmly as he entered the building.
Meene turned around as if to say something but before she could do that, Lyserg coughed a little to direct attention back to him. Whether he believed that he deserved his position or not, he still was the team leader of this small group.
"If you guys really want to argue about that then we can do it after our fight is over." Lyserg extended his hand to show his team the time on his oracle bell. "We've got less than an hour before the fight starts and, knowing how packed the arena is going to be in mere minutes, we might end up needing to use all of it in order to get there."
All of his teammates quietened down instantly before turning towards him and nodding with determined expressions on their faces.
"Let's go." All of them said at once before heading towards the door of the building.
The nervousness he felt not a few seconds ago vanished almost instantly as cold resolve replaced it. Their opponents might not have been related to Hao in any way but he wasn't going to go any easier on them because of that.
A small barely visible smile appeared on Lyserg's face as he thought of the coming battle. Jaune and the rest would witness just how much he had grown since joining the X-Laws.
...
Some time later...
...
The arena, predictably, was filled to the brim with people, even more than it was for any fight before the last one of the day.
It appeared that their fight on the first day had set up some sort of trend of the last fights of the day gathering the largest audiences. Whether it was because of the sheer difference in power level compared to the previous fights of the day that was displayed during their battle, or because of something completely different, Jaune didn't know, but since the third round began, every fight, as long as it was the last one of the day, gathered untold amounts of shamans to watch the proceeding battle, even if none of the people who fought were really that impressive like the previous day.
This fight however had good reasons to gather such a crowd. On top of it being the last fight on the day that had the most battles fought in since the round began, one of the teams participating in it was directly associated with Iron Maiden Jeanne, who was one of the strongest shamans to exist.
Suffice to say, any, no matter how insignificant or powerful, shaman wanted to learn even a little bit about someone widely known as one of the three most likely competitors to win the tournament.
Of course, Iron Maiden Jeanne herself wasn't going to fight yet as the team 'X-Laws Alpha', which she was a member of, was still with them in the audience but this fight would still shed some light on the capabilities of four of her followers.
Jaune hummed a little as he observed the spiritual screen, they had already begun associating with the shaman fights, phase into existence high above the center of the arena. While they haven't really had the chance to observe it due to their hellish training, apparently the spiritual screen was displayed constantly only during the first day of the round and since then became a commodity that was activated solely for when the fights were happening.
It made quite a lot of sense, after all stationary and only used for sharing information or not that screen was still an Over Soul and even the strongest of shamans would run out of Furyoku at some point if they were to constantly keep their Over Soul on for entire days with only brief night breaks to rest.
Jaune groaned a little in pleasure as he sat down on one of the uncomfortably hard chairs that were given to the audience to sit on, if there was anything he knew of it certainly would be pain, tiredness, and exhaustion, especially after the torture his guardian spirit forced him to go through together with her daughter. Right now even the hardest and most uncomfortable of seats would feel like a fluffy mattress for him.
"Don't get too comfortable yet, we will be catching up on this lost training during the night." Summer said with a cruel smirk on her face as she observed him melt into the chair in bliss.
Jaune was pretty sure he heard some weeping the moment Summer said that and only after someone had lightly hit him in the back to silence him did he realize that this someone was him.
"Quit complaining, guys." Nora chastised them lightly after hearing his wordless complaints before turning around and snatching an oracle bell from Ren and fiddling with it a little. "Just because your Furyoku number increased from mere hundreds into dozens of thousands doesn't mean that you can ignore the importance of physical conditioning."
The entire team ARCS groaned at once, while Summer might have been the most cruel when it came to coming up with different exercises as she had the help of her daughter's team to encourage her, it was Nora whose training was the most tiring and straining. Jaune didn't want to think how absurdly hard that training would have been if he had his Aura unlocked and Nora didn't have to worry about harming him too much.
Jaune shuddered a little just thinking about it, such hellish torture shouldn't have been possible to imagine for a mortal mind.
"From where did you even get those Furyoku numbers anyway?" Whitley, instead of wallowing from exhaustion like all of his friends were, decided to ask in curiosity. "And for that matter, what are you doing with Ren's oracle bell?"
"Back during the first round Verny showed me the Furyoku numbers of Jauney and Renny, if I remember correctly they were in the low four hundreds and high two hundreds respectively." Nora mumbled an answer out loud as she still fiddled with the old scroll that was an oracle bell. "As for your current number, I was just guessing. That's why I'm researching that oracle bell, Verny was using practically the same thing to monitor their fight back then and it's not that different from how huntsmen can check their Aura in the field, there simply has to be a way to check your current Furyoku!"
While Nora's tirade about the supposed function of an oracle bell was so rapid that there wasn't a single person who understood it perfectly, the topic still gathered quite a lot of attention to the orange haired girl, especially from the ever curious shamans around them.
"Wait, can it really do that!?" Someone asked loudly in surprise from next to them.
"I mean, there has to be a way to monitor the spiritual energy of a shaman, right? Otherwise, how would they check whether the competitor was capable of continuing to fight or not?" Someone else mused out loud.
The idea of being able to check how much Furyoku a shaman had gathered quite an attention from the people in the audience as everyone focused on Nora in hopes that she would be able to figure out how to do that, however before their hopes could come to fruition Ruby had snatched the oracle bell away from the energetic girl's hand.
"Hey, let her find it!" Someone complained upon seeing the old scroll being snatched away.
Other people wanted to join in complaining as well but a single annoyed look from Ruby and a threatening look from Summer, who was hovering right above her menacingly, that promised them hell if they bothered them anymore was enough for the busybodies to shut up.
With the attention finally away from them, or at least not entirely focused on what they were doing, Ruby attempted to find the Furyoku detecting function of their oracle bells as well.
"The fight's about to start." Whitley remarked casually after noticing that the teams were making their way into the arena to make everyone focus on what was happening down there.
Almost as one, practically every shaman around them instantly turned their full attention towards the center of the arena, getting a number that could show how much Furyoku they had might have been useful but it paled in comparison to seeing one of their possible future opponents fight.
"Welcome back, you all spiritually adept people! It's time for the next fight, the last one of the day by the way, and I hope that all of you are as excited as I am when it comes to this fight in particular!" Radim's voice spread through the arena as the floating spiritual screen turned on. "Trust me, there's a lot to be excited about for this one! I can safely say that at most there have been only a single fight of similar power level on this arena before! At least during this very tournament, that is."
Cheers erupted from the audience as even the shamans around them seemed to momentarily forget about Nora's statement about their oracle bells being capable of working as Furyoku readers.
Coincidentally, at around the same time when the crowds were the loudest, Jaune somehow managed to notice a small scowl on Ruby's face as the younger girl grumbled something quietly while working on the old scroll.
"I know there's something hidden in here." Ruby shook the scroll in her hands in annoyance. "It should have been possible to notice even if one didn't know about that function beforehand so why can't I access it?"
It looked like Ruby became fully committed to trying to find the oracle bell's function Nora had been looking for.
"From the south of the arena we have a team whose strength lies in their teamwork and determination!" It appeared that the world wasn't going to wait for Ruby to finish her search as Radim has already started to introduce the first team of the fight, Jaune didn't know who they were but based on the fact that Radim decided to change his usual order of introducing the teams by starting from the south instead of the North he could only assume that they weren't really that impressive compared to the X-Laws who were the real stars of this fight.
The crowds quietened down a little, despite not being as important as the 'X-Laws Gamma' the opposing team still managed to have some presence. Though, considering whose opponents they were chosen to be, Jaune wouldn't really call that really surprising.
"During the previous round these people have fought against groups of shamans more than three times their numbers yet they still prevailed, they were one of the few people who had formed their team even before that round started, everyone make some noise for the team P-""I've found it!"
While the rest of the audience was consumed with noise, almost every person in their side of the audience slowly and quietly turned their heads towards the young and excited silver eyed huntress in training who had just found something that could revolutionize the way most of the shaman present around them would train their power as a shaman.
Many of the weaker shamans started looking at them like a predator would look at a very tasty prey, undoubtedly hoping that they would be able to obtain that function of the oracle bells for themselves.
Ruby, upon finally noticing the feeling of having countless gazes directed at her, instantly shrank a little in embarrassment making Summer look at her in worry before flying to Jaune in case they were forced to fight and protect her from all those desperate shamans.
"And from the north of the arena we have the ones you all were probably waiting for!" Thankfully, the situation didn't end up as a brutal fight for information, as the loud exclamation from Ruby was ignored by Radim who continued with the introductions, quickly regaining all the focus of the shamans who weren't willing to miss any information about the X-Laws teams. "These are the followers of the one and only Iron Maiden Jeanne herself and although this isn't their main team that has her on it, in my opinion it's still just as capable and threatening. Everyone cheer loudly for a team belonging to one of the greatest factions of this tournament, X-Laws Gamma!"
The noise from the audience was deafening as everyone focused so intently on Lyserg's team that Jaune was a little surprised that nobody had fallen into the arena itself.
If the gazes that had been directed at Ruby earlier could have been described as 'predators looking at a tasty prey' then the gazes that were targeted at Lyserg were that of a starving animal finding a full meal in the distance. Jaune was pretty sure that those people would have come down to the arena itself to get a better view of the fight were it not for the strict rules the judges of the tournament set up in order for fights to be fair.
He didn't even want to imagine how pressured Lyserg and his new team must feel down there.
Was this what all the powerful shaman teams had to endure to have a proper shaman fight?
Would his team be under similar pressure during their next fight?
Jaune couldn't help but shudder as he thought about that, luckily he didn't have to think about it for too long as during his short reflection the countdown for the fight had already both started and finished, signifying the start of the battle.
The fight, rather naturally, started with the team opposing the X-Laws charging forward with all of their members. What was't usual however was that almost all of the X-Laws team instead of answering in kind, or even fortifying their position for that matter, decided to back down by quite a lot to make place for their leader, they haven't even activated their Over Souls as they did that.
"What are they doing? Don't they realize that the fight has already started?" Some random shaman next to them said in confusion.
Jaune, while too focused on the fight to voice it, had to share the unknown shaman's confusion. With the way all of the Lyserg's team moved backwards and left their green haired leader at the front it looked like they were planning to win the fight with only their leader but that couldn't be the case, right?
"Maybe Lyserg just became so much stronger now that he believes can win the fight on his own?" Summer, who also seemed to have noticed that particular strategy, voiced her idea to him.
No answer met the silver eyed spirit's question though as everyone was fully focused on the fight because Lyserg was about to finally activate his Over Soul and start fighting the opponents who for now seemed content with carefully approaching him.
Lyserg's Over Soul wasn't such a big secret for their small group, Jaune had fought against him during the first round and team RWBY had many chances to witness it in action while they were travelling in Mistral, so when he and his friends noticed a few currents of Furyoku gathering next to Lyserg they unknowingly formed quite a few expectations about it.
Of course, it was rather obvious that Lyserg's Over Soul had to evolve in the time that they hadn't seen him but they didn't expect any really major changes in how it worked, after all from their experience they knew that while their Over Souls clearly became stronger and more advanced they still at their core were the same type of powers they had back when they formed them for the very first time.
With that in mind, their shock upon seeing the completely new and different Over Soul being formed by Lyserg should have been rather understandable.
Unlike how the green haired boy's Over Soul usually looked like, his current weapon wasn't at all related to the wire hidden under his sleeves and instead it somehow became the unfortunately familiar giant metallic angel of X-Laws that they saw fighting against Hao back on Argus. The one angel Lyserg was using in particular seemed to be a little bit smaller than the ones they had the chance to witness before though.
"What is that?!"
"Is this the Over Soul of one of the X-Laws leaders?!"
"It's huge!"
The shamans around them shouted in awe at their first sight of an X-Laws standard Over Soul. Jaune wanted to say that it was a little bit of an overreaction but after remembering how he had felt back when he first saw an Over Soul of a similar scale, he found that he couldn't really blame them.
For someone who didn't have the unfortunate opportunity to witness the soul crushing power of Hao or Iron Maiden Jeanne, first time seeing an X-Laws' angel was certainly an eye-opening experience.
"It isn't that impressive." Whitley mumbled with a pout. "My steel giant is way better than those guys."
The only response Schnee shaman had gotten was a comforting pat from his sister and if it didn't end up with another one of their sibling fights it would have almost been heartwarming.
The angel was doing a fine work fighting against the entire opposing team alone, while the rest of the X-Laws team was so far away from the fight they might have as well been the spectators as well, but Jaune was only barely paying attention as he decided to focused on the new function of the oracle bell that Ruby had found.
"Hey Ruby, can we check Lyserg's Furyoku number with the oracle bell?" Jaune asked as he leaned closer to Ruby to see the old scroll in her hands.
If they could see how much Furyoku other shamans had they could make some speculations about the current fight. It wasn't to mention how they could juxtapose it with their own strength to strategize ideas about defeating them, of course.
"I don't know, maybe?" Ruby said with some uncertainty before fiddling with the scroll for a bit more. "It seems to work based on the camera in the scroll so we would have to get a decent zoom on the fight with it."
After hearing that, he quickly snatched the oracle bell from the younger girl's hands, at this point he was pretty sure that Ren simply didn't care what was happening to his oracle bell anymore, before straightening himself and extending his hands to get a good view of the fight with the camera of the scroll.
It wasn't easy getting a close zoom on the green haired boy as, despite the rather stationary style of fighting, the fight never stopped being chaotic but after a couple annoying attempts he finally managed to get a reading.
"LYSERG DIETHEL 21 364/24 305"
"Huh, so that's how much Furyoku he has." Jaune remarked casually with some interest, not sure whether he should be impressed or not as he didn't really have anything to compare it to.
"That's quite a lot." Nora said, looking at the oracle bell from behind him with curiosity. "Or at least it is compared to how much you had back when you fought against Renny, back then your Furyoku was somewhere around four hundred."
A quick look at the Furyoku levels of the other combatants told them that the opposing team's Furyoku, even when added up, wasn't equal to Lyserg's. The strongest among them had barely six thousand Furyoku and the rest of their team fell quite far behind them.
With that knowledge, on top of being aware that Lyserg was a capable shaman even before joining and training with the X-Laws, any doubts about the winner of this fight were eradicated, especially since the green haired boy didn't have to worry about anything aside from fighting as his teammates were too far away from the action to be in any danger.
It did make Jaune wonder what the Furyoku levels of their previous opponents were though. Supposedly, Team Wild Might should have been quite weaker since the order of fights seemed to be based on the known power levels of combatants.
Cheers suddenly exploded around them as the first fighter was taken down while he wasn't too focused on the arena, and predictably it were the X-Laws' opponents who lost their member and not Lyserg.
The moment the opposing team lost one of their members any resemblance of opposition against Lyserg disappeared. The huge angel of metal tore through the remaining enemies in a matter of seconds, throwing the more fragile ones away with a single swing of its weapon and pinning the strongest one to the ground as it pummeled the trapped shaman with everything it got.
"The fight's coming to a close." Ren said as he witnessed another one of the combatants getting their Over Soul broken, and being successively eliminated, while defending from the metal angel.
Seeing as the battle was about to be over, the wind shaman of their group extended his arm to the side, quite clearly implying that he wanted his oracle bell back.
Knowing that there wasn't much point in trying to check the amount of anyone else's Furyoku as they couldn't really judge someone's strength solely on a single number and the rest of Lyserg's team hadn't even revealed their Over Souls yet, Jaune gave it back with a smile.
Almost instantly after the unconscious body of the pummeled shaman had settled on the ground, both of the remaining X-Laws' enemies raised their arms towards the air and announced their surrender.
The audience immediately became a loud mixture of cheers, jeers, and insults at the surrendering team who didn't even manage to make every member of X-Laws Gamma show their Over Soul to the crowds. The only people who stayed quiet were those who were either so confident in their abilities that they weren't worried about the side X-Laws teams or were among the few people who were favorites to win the whole tournament.
Jaune and his friends were among those few who stayed quiet though none of them were exactly sure why the fight hadn't made a bigger impression on them. Maybe they just became stronger than the average X-Laws members who were present in this fight, who knew?
"Well, it's time for us to go." Jaune decided for his team as Radim's voice started announcing the winners of the fight from the spiritual screen. "We wouldn't want to get stuck in here on our way out, would we?"
With a couple nods and sounds of agreement their entire group stood up from their seats before heading towards the exit of the arena and although none of them could see it a couple of the judges responsible for overlooking the audience paid an unusually closer attention to them.
...
A few moments later...
...
Lyserg collapsed on the very first bench he could find outside the arena. His body was covered in sweat and his breathing was so heavy that if someone didn't know that he just fought in a fight, they would have certainly thought that he had run at his full speed for at least fifty kilometers.
Nobody had ordered, or even asked, him to win that fight on his own but he wanted to prove himself to his team and the rest of the X-Laws that he was worthy of being one of the three team leaders among the X-Laws.
Now, feeling pain in almost all of his muscles and having barely enough air in his lungs to breath, he couldn't help but wonder whether that decision of his had been worth it.
While it might not have been the most spiritually tiring fight he had been, as his Furyoku was almost untouched, it for sure had to be the most physically exhausting ordeal he had to ever go through.
A single person simply wasn't meant to take on four times as many people in a fight and he had just learned why.
"Good job with the fight, boss!" Chris said with a happy smile on his face as he walked up to him before abruptly becoming serious while adding. "Although if you ever have the idea to fight against the entire team on your own, then we will be vetoing that idea."
Nods of agreement from the rest of his teammates that were just behind Chris showed that they were quite serious about that comment.
"D-Don't worry, I won't be doing anything like that again." Lyserg barely got out an answer from in between his exhausted huffs. "I-I only hope that it will prove that I was a worthy addition to the X-Laws."
Instead of an answer he got two confident laughs and a concerned look from Meene who began grumbling to herself something about 'drive' or 'idiots' but he couldn't have been bothered to really listen.
He had really grown while with the X-Laws.
Hopefully Hao had seen his fight and realized that too because the next time he was going to fight alone he would be doing that against the one who had taken his family from him.
And... Cut!
I know that current Lyerg already has more Furyoku than canonical Marco from the original but it's not here. I mean seriously Marco has only 12 000 Furyoku? Depending on how you looked at it, he was either the leader of X-Laws or the second in command after Jeanne and he was supposed to be the equal or at least a slightly weaker rival of the Luchist based on their interactions near the end of that story and Luchist canonically had more than 10 times the furyoku Marco had.
Like I'm aware that these numbers do not necessarily equal the strength of a character but come on more than ten times the difference?!
Anyway I probably bored to death enough of you who read both my rants today, see ya!