Chapter 710: A Confrontation Destined to be Unfair to Teaching Assistants

As I stood on one side of the designated antithesis venue, the surrounding crowd consciously retreated beyond the chalk lines.

This left me with ample combat space.

Opposite me, several figures also stepped onto the field at this moment… a team composed of four individuals.

In the antithesis, a Teaching Assistant's opponent could be a lone individual, or it could be a team composed of multiple people.

After being “hunted” repeatedly by Teaching Assistants, they were well aware that the combat power of a Teaching Assistant was not something a single person could contend with.

Therefore, teamwork became a logical choice.

I did not recognize any of the four people in this first team to take the stage.

Furthermore, they were not students of the Witch Academy.

From their sturdy physique and the partial beast-like features on their bodies, it was clear that this team was composed of examinees from the Beast Academy.

And they were very likely a combination of four berserkers.

Were they trying to drain my stamina right from the start?

I wasn't concerned about this.

My physical quality was very strong, and simply wearing me down in this manner would not be a problem.

Instead, during this intense moment, I found myself thinking about other things.

If this was a trap aimed at me, what was the “one-hit kill” move in this trap?

What was the method that could utterly kill me, a method that even the Resurrection Spell couldn't reverse?

How would they bypass the reactions of the mentors and strike at me before the Transcendent Witches could intervene?

A series of questions plagued me at this moment, but this did not hinder the current confrontation.

After a brief pre-match exchange between both sides, with the call of "Begin," the battle officially started.

The four Beast-people advanced toward me with a tacit understanding.

Their heavy fists, augmented by skills that gave them “fist-edges,” and the gauntlets on their hands transformed into the fiercest weapons, imposing the most violent suppression on me.

I, however, adopted a relatively conservative posture, maintaining distance and employing the Spell Cultivator's most effective method for spell suppression.

The power of Fireball was much stronger than the power of the Beast-people's skills, but Fireball required casting time and charge-up to increase its power, whereas the Beast-people’s attacks did not have such a “sluggish” preparation time; their bodies were their strongest and most convenient weapons.

The Spells I could currently use were probably only Fireball and Ice Shield Spell, these two basic Spell skills as the most fundamental combat responses.

Wind Pressure Spell was used as an assurance to maintain the distance between myself and the opponents under the pressure of four people, preventing close-quarters combat.

And this advantage of distance needed to be combined with the crowd control of Plant Entanglement to achieve a significant edge.

But precisely because of the combination of skills and the stiff casting time, this rule setting infinitely amplified the advantage of a multi-person team.

A skill could be cast to target one person, but there were three others to defend against.

Therefore, to gain an advantage, a preemptive, overwhelming strike was needed from outside the Spell framework.

Reaction, anticipation, rhythm control…

And… the moment the opponent made a mistake.

When the upper limit of a battle is determined, facing an evenly matched battle, instead of praying for one's own extraordinary performance, it is better to pray for the opponent to show a flaw.

No one can be completely perfect, and that includes me.

I could also be careless and have a limb pierced by an arrow during a fight, and similarly, the opponent could also have their brain unable to keep up with their limbs' reaction due to the intense combat.

So, when facing these four Beast-people, my strategy was to wait for the opponent to show a flaw.

After all, the four opponents were all close-quarters Beast-people, a group that maximized one advantage to the extreme.

Naturally, it was impossible for me to forcefully clash head-on with them.

Such a reckless move would not yield any benefit.

Thus, after a sustained battle of attrition, I finally seized a flaw in their coordination, enduring damage with Stone Skin and forcibly trading out one of the Beast-people.

After killing this Beast-person, my kill count also reached the qualification to unlock the eighth skill tree.

However, the eighth skill was an area-of-effect skill.

Ice Hail Spell.

In this kind of antithesis with defined boundaries, it would be difficult to deploy without a teammate's coordination.

Upon seeing its casting time, I decisively gave up on this skill.

Instead, I focused on confronting the remaining three Beast-people.

With one less comrade, and the elimination of one of the blockades aimed at me, the pressure on me greatly reduced, and I could tell that the opponent's combat rhythm was somewhat unsuited to this change.

More importantly, the impact of the reduction in personnel on their emotions was somewhat beyond my expectation.

It seemed that even if these four people were not quadruplets, they were likely the type who frequently referred to each other as brothers.

Seeing them so emotional, I felt relieved.

However, after I eliminated another one of them, leaving only two, I found that the coordination between the remaining two seemed to become more tacit, and it was even subtly more troublesome than when there were still three people.

But two people were ultimately no match for the oppressive feeling brought by four.

Especially when the opponents did not have a large numerical advantage, my advantage in speed and close-quarters technique were also brought into play.

The original combat rhythm of maintaining distance, after the opponent tried everything to close the distance, was met instead with my furious counterattack!

This change in combat style was meant to catch the opponent off guard.

Furthermore, after they joined forces as two, I found that wounding one person had more advantages than directly killing them.

The injured person could become a burden to the other, and their focus, coordination, mistakes, and so on, would reduce the pressure of the current battle for me.

So, as expected, the last two were successively dealt with by me in a short amount of time.

With my victory in this battle, a burst of cheers erupted from the spectators on the sidelines!

This was one against four!

Before this battle, other Teaching Assistants had also undergone similar confrontations.

Although most had won, some appeared battered, some looked very relaxed, and some were dragged into a prolonged fight…

But for the audience, an entertaining battle was what they most needed to see!

Although this antithesis was irregular, its popularity was undeniable.

Only those with strong personal strength were qualified to stand on the sidelines and enjoy the best viewing perspective.

Those with weak strength were even excluded, unable to even see the hem of the garments of those fighting.

And those most confident in their own strength… disdained being spectators; they wanted to be the ones surrounded by stars!

As the first to bite the bullet and challenge a Teaching Assistant, most teams were guaranteed to lose their first match.

This was the pattern summarized by the crowd from the previous few Teaching Assistant confrontations.

As the number of matches increased, more people eagerly stepped forward, hoping to exploit an opportunity.

After all, a direct kill of a Teaching Assistant was the best way to gain scores and glory!

But for me…

As the most unique individual among the Teaching Assistant collective, lacking the Undying Nature of Teaching Assistants, the first battle was already fully booked with people who were confident that they were no weaker than the previous opponents.

This was why so many people were willing to applaud after my first battle victory.

Because in their view, with my strength, even if I lost in the second round of the wheel battle, as long as the loss wasn't too unsightly, not many people would have anything negative to say.

Because I still had a title that many people were almost overlooking: if my Teaching Assistant identity was removed, I was also a lower-grade student just like them!

Now, all my possessions were sealed; the things people constantly mentioned—the number of Magic Power Sources, powerful Spellbooks, Super Consumption Spellbooks, and even Grand Spellbooks… all were gone now.

Using the same power, I had triumphed in a multi-person battle against peers of the same level.

What could be more inspiring than that?

And following my victory, the expressions of the other Teaching Assistants at different arenas or those on rotation instantly became serious.

After all, many of these Teaching Assistants had participated in the encirclement and annihilation against me.

They had “certified” my strength, so to speak.

But then, I don't know what they thought of, and their tense expressions relaxed.

After all… this was an antithesis aimed at Teaching Assistants.

Death was the inevitable end for every Teaching Assistant; it was merely a question of who went first.

At this moment, the “corpses” of the four Beast-people I had killed were carried away by the onlookers.

Although they were the defeated, they were also respectable for being lower-grade students who had the courage to step onto the stage and challenge a Teaching Assistant.

Thus, their bodies were carried away, not dragged.

Although this crude antithesis was somewhat non-compliant and absurd, with the cooperation of the Resurrection Mentor with this confrontation, it was sufficient to serve as a publicity stunt.

The mentors who originally resurrected the examinees on the spot were now waiting in a separate, dedicated resurrection area for the corpses to be delivered.

I looked at the blood splattered on the venue; the air was still filled with the scent of blood, but this scent only added a touch of cruelty to the battle.

Perhaps… this was what those busybodies referred to when they spoke of the rivers of blood they anticipated.

Such a battle might cause both physiological and psychological discomfort for ordinary people, a primal fear and aversion stemming from life's instinctual reaction to the “playing with death.”

And now, I didn't have the time to mourn the four lives that had just passed, because the wheel battle against me was far from over.

Opposite me, a new team of enemies was approaching!

And this time, my opponents increased from four to five.

A five-person combat team!

They weren't giving me any opportunity to catch my breath.

I chuckled softly, scanning the five people opposite me, confirming that they were my opponents for the second round.

In the first battle just now, I fully utilized the advantage of my Body Cultivation Five Senses Enhancement.

That battle also brought me a different kind of insight, or rather, every battle before that had brought me different insights, but those insights converged into an enlightenment that I understood during that last fight.

Every Transcendent Power System has a corresponding framework and the support of Transcendent Power.

Body Cultivation was no exception; a Body Cultivation framework without the support of Transcendent Power was merely for physical strengthening.

But my starting point was Self-awakened Body Cultivation.

So, what was Body Cultivation without Transcendent Power?

It was the most basic physical strength, along with the Five Senses Enhancement, which was the power I had been cultivating.

My Body Cultivation training was too fragmented, as I did not follow the conventional path of Body Cultivation through Physical Arts training, so I didn't have much physical exercise.

Instead, under Big Sis Bai’s advice, I embarked on the cultivation of the Five Senses Enhancement.

The cultivation of the Five Senses Enhancement itself did not involve the intervention of Transcendent Power; this method was essentially about accumulating strength over time, and upon advancing to Transcendent, the intervention of Transcendent Energy would instantly propel one to a higher level.

Big Sis Bai was an example of this; after advancing to Transcendent, she self-generated Heart Sense, and subsequently derived the Mental Realm Domain, advancing to Transcendent, and then immediately entering the Saint Stage.

However, my Sixth Sense, Heart Sense, had an early enlightenment and, through a series of coincidences, linked with the two Grand Spellbooks, prematurely intervening in the energy derivation from the Spatial Rift of the Grand Spellbook and developing a Mental Realm Domain.

Now, all my Transcendent Power was sealed, and my Sixth Sense, Heart Sense, also reverted to its initial mode without Transcendent Power.

There was a wonderful feeling of returning to the essence.

This was a very novel experience.

Just like death, if one does not experience certain things, they will never be able to fully grasp the insight within them.

Suddenly… I somewhat understood why there was such an odd Spell as the Self-Awareness Sealing Spell in the world.

When I was learning this Sealing Spell from Big Sis Natalie, I only learned the Consciousness Sealing Spell for constructing the Consciousness Firewall of the Great Tree of Knowledge.

Now it seemed that if I had the chance, I should definitely learn more about this Self-Awareness Sealing Spell.

I recall Big Sis Natalie mentioning that the broad category of Self-Awareness Sealing Spell was seemingly promoted and perfected by a Truth Witch.

Indeed… the Truth Witches possessed many good things.

Those who have not reached a certain level or comprehended certain truths might not even understand the purpose of their actions.

And now… I looked at the five people in front of me.

Even before the battle started, through the perception of my Heart Sense, I could still sense the intense fighting spirit and a hint of impatient greed from the opponents.

It was as if they had me completely figured out, daydreaming about the beautiful scene of five people splitting a hundred points in the upcoming fight.

With a simple "Begin" to the battle, the five people adopted their respective combat stances.

The five of them did not have the same professions; instead, they were a hunting group with clearly defined roles and cooperation.

This was a complementary multi-person coordination, completely different from the previous battle.

Although I couldn't say which of the two was superior, it was evident that the confidence of these five people in the second battle provided them with a great boost in combat power.

And their combat style was not as mindless as the Beast-people; the impact of combat mistakes was not enough for me to take advantage of.

This was the advantage of complementary coordination, significantly raising the lower limit of a team's combat effectiveness.

The extreme coordination in the previous battle, however, raised their combat power's upper limit.

Therefore, the pressure the second battle exerted on me far exceeded the first!

Passively waiting for their coordination to fail was an unwise choice, as it would only increase my physical exertion, and if I made a mistake, it would lead to an irreversible disaster!

So, the strategy for this battle had to change from passively waiting for the opponent to show a flaw to actively guiding the opponent to show a flaw.

This was an extremely dangerous decision, but it was worth trying.

And how to guide the opponent to show a flaw…

Naturally, it was for me to expose a flaw from the perspective most disadvantageous to the opponent, to encourage the opponent to get ahead of themselves.

Once the opponent became overzealous, the possibility of them showing a flaw would increase.

Of course, my danger would also be multiplied.

Just as I exposed a flaw to lure the opponent into a strong attack, the Holy Angel’s “Healing Support” member, due to the main attacker’s impatience, exposed an unrecoverable position.

My originally charging Fireball diverted its trajectory, bypassing the main attacker under the pretext of charging, and what greeted him was only the subtle time difference gained by the triggerable Plant Entanglement.

After relying on Stone Skin and Body Cultivation close-combat to repel the obstruction, I followed my own rhythm and prepared to critically injure the Holy Angel in the back row.

“Hmm? Wizard?”

Just as I was wary of the Wizard in the back row casting a curse on me, the opponent actively chose to protect themselves, allowing me to strike the Holy Angel.

Personal grudge?

Or… a trap?

In the blink of an eye, I got my answer.

It was a trap.

The opponent sacrificed the Holy Angel as a lure and forcefully surrounded me.

Aside from the repelled main attacker and the Holy Angel used as bait, two others instantly exerted their power, as if they had caught an opportunity.

But my gaze had already shifted from the current encirclement, as I noticed that the Wizard, who I had previously ignored and had a low sense of presence… actually had a problem.

I originally hadn't planned to use Spirit Vision to cheat, wanting to purely hone my combat skills, but my Spirit Vision instinctively captured abnormal information about this Wizard!