Marcus…
After he had returned home from Selene’s apartment, he spent the day drawing up plans for what he was going to introduce to Forrosa to keep his mind occupied.
The nightmare of the flood was still bothering him and he had no idea how to make any sense of it, so he decided to simply keep himself busy.
One of the first things on his mind to look into was interplanetary travel. With the use of magic and rune formulas, it would be really hard to mess that up.
Not to mention, it would be an excellent way for him to prove his worth to the king in terms of innovative technology. Since all exploration into space travel has been outlawed world wide, mostly due to lack of information regarding the dangers, it would be an extraordinary breakthrough for Forrosa.
The more Marcus thought about it, the more he pondered the idea of simply moving to Forrosa to make it easier on himself.
Of course, he could always just set up teleportation runes between Lycea and Alken, but the Forrosan kingdom had a more interesting feel to it. He actually felt more at home there.
Besides, Selene seemed to like it there too. Since nobody knew her past or who she was, she was welcomed without any prejudice. There was nobody there to discriminate her based on her strength or for taking the blame of her father’s actions.
Maybe, after the contest was over, he should ask her to move there with him.
As he pondered the idea, the thought of Moyako flashed in his mind, reminding him of what he would have to do if he wanted to remain in this world.
He would need to defeat Moyako in battle first if he wanted to have any kind of future with Selene.
Julian…
With his second match on the way, he was left wondering about whether his rune formulas would be enough to compete with the other contestants.
With the way the brackets are set up, he is sure to be guaranteed an easy path to victory before his match with Marcus. If everything goes smoothly, the two of them should end up in the semi-finals.
Even with the threat of potentially fighting the god Heimdall later on, he still wasn’t too concerned.
Julian had learned the hard way that despite being gods with unfathomable levels of strength and power, they are not infallible. They are as equally capable of intelligence and stupidity as the every day human, but less prone to change.
Thanks to his prior knowledge of Terra’s gods and further research into their behavior, he was able to come up with some counter measures. Additionally, with all the extra time in between matches, he can further analyze the other fighters and make additional preparations ahead of time.
Though that’s not to say he would have been able to make complex calculations without something to aid him.
During his fight against that maid Gomori, he could feel that she wasn’t really trying too hard to defeat him. There was nothing he could do to damage her, and his rune formulas were the only thing keeping him out of harm’s way.
He highly doubted that he would be able to win the tournament simply by making his opponents give up out of boredom.
His ability to use rune formulas to distort space is quite efficient, but eventually he would run out of energy before he could land a solid blow.
He needed a new way to fight.
Soon after the fight, he went to a local blacksmith that Kayron suggested he visit, a man by the name of Samael. Apparently he was supposed to be the best non-Dwarven blacksmith in the world, which was shocking to him as he was holed up in a tiny secluded shop. One would expect a man of such talent to have more notoriety, but maybe not.
Yet when Julian met the man and showed him the few intact pieces of technology he had managed to bring with him from Terra, he seemed...more than familiar with them.
He had even showed him a laptop computer and somehow, Samael knew exactly what it was and how it worked. It didn’t make sense, but he decided not to question it and let the man do his work.
Julian asked for only two things to help him in his fight.
One was a talisman, made with adamantine metal plates, designed to perform the same complicated calculations as a high end computer and relay that information into his head directly. As he watched Samael work on it, with each intricately engraved plate stacked on top of one another, it looked more and more like a circuit board.
When each was laid on top of the other and put into shape, it looked like a pointed cross the size of a half dollar coin.
Curious about the design choice, he asked, “Why’d you make it a cross?”
Samael simply chuckled and said, “Its an inside joke. Don’t worry about it. Now you’d do best to wear this as an earring as a necklace would cause some discomfort in a fight. Besides, for the best effect, you want it as close to your head as possible.”
As for the second item, it was far simpler for him to make as it only took him thirty minutes.
A ring made of Black Iron and engraved with a rune formula that would manifest a chain of spiritual energy connecting Julian to his opponent. Its purpose would be to equalize the overwhelming difference in spiritual energy to who he was fighting.
Even after having these powerful items made for him, he still wasn’t certain of victory.
In fact, he was even more uncertain of his victory against Marcus when using the cross earring to calculate the likelihood of winning against him.
Marcus’s first showing of strength gave him next to nothing to go off aside from the fact that he could react to things traveling faster or as fast as lightning.
He would need to pay very close attention and keep track of what Marcus can really do if he has any hope of winning.
Ares…
The Greek God of War was feeling excited from all the new energies he was sensing throughout this competition.
So many pent up emotions and goals, so many gut wrenching ambitions will be explored within walls of the arena.
There were five contestants in particular that interested him the most.
One of which, the woman known as Camilla, was absolutely surging with ambition and longing for her kingdom. She would certainly provide an outstanding showing of strength and power.
The Forrosan Champion Frosk, brimming with talent and the God of Wrath’s power surging through him. With two unholy armaments, Gurthang and Hoffnung in his possession, combined with his magic, could make him an unstoppable juggernaut.
Nashandra, the Lich of Amaskia…
He had fought and lost to her many times in the past, but it did not make each encounter any less enjoyable.
Then there is Moyako Kaneko, a relatively new warrior in this world compared to Nashandra, yet has quickly overtaken her and every other as the strongest woman in the world.
She is regarded as The Immortal Phoenix, but he wondered if perhaps she was simply a god much like himself. What’s even more strange, she smelled much like Hestia and even seemed to share similarities in appearance to her.
But the one man he was interested in the most would have to be Marcus Wright, the warrior who felled Malthael.
When Ares had heard that Dean Smith had felled his human form, he could hardly have believed it at the time. Yet, within only the span of fifteen years, Malthael returned to life just in time to fall at the hands of yet another warrior.
Marcus had done as such whilst wielding Lucifer’s own sword Light Taker, the blade said to ‘Shrive clean, the light from God’s corporeal form’.
If he hadn’t seen it with his own eyes, he would have thought it ludicrous for such a weapon to find itself in the hands of a man such as he.
Perhaps Marcus was not a man…
Yet, due to Ares’ better instincts, he could not rightly call him a god either.
Whatever he was, he was monstrously powerful, and seemed to get even more powerful with every passing day.
He had no doubt that the two of them would cross blades in the tournament. For when that day comes, he had his father’s Master Bolt and his uncles’ Trident and Helm of Darkness to rely on.