That Time a Bookworm Got Ascended in Tensura

Ch.56 Three more matches

Rozemyne's pov:

I gasped out loud, completely baffled. Why you may ask? Ferdinand had just won on a ring out against Carrion, someone who after feeling both of their aura's to their fullest, had at least double his magicule storage. This did come with the context of Carrion having been rung out to preserve his anonymity, however I was still incredibly impressed. 'How powerful is Ferdinand? How powerful am I? Can I do that? Questions for later.' I shook my head a bit and looked to my left past Florencia to see Wilfried was loudly cheering, and hollering. 

Florencia carefully manipulated her aura to feel more toxic for a moment, and with a venom I had yet to hear from her spoke. "Please quiet yourself, Wilfried." After saying this, and ensuring Wilfried did in fact quite down, her aura returned to it's more serene calming state.

I could see despite this Wilfried felt genuinely shaken from his body posture, very straight but with a bit of shiver along his spine and in his neck. His hands were also shaking a small bit, the aura didn't actually seem that threatening to me, but I suppose it is still far too much for him to deal with at his current capacity. He finally spoke more softly now, "Uncle did very well, I wonder who that is." 

Charlotte responded to this with a bit of an undertoned reply, "It looked like the spell Uncle tried to cast first didn't manifest properly, it started out as something completely different but then became the lightning." She seemed somewhat worried for a moment while staring down at Ferdinand in the distance with a quizzical gaze.  

I decided it would do no harm to answer their questions, "His spell did go unstable, from his aura. It happens to us sometimes, but it seems a lot harder to manage for him than me." I was a bit shaken at that for a moment, as it meant technically I was the demi-spirit with the highest level of control over magic. That idea simply didn't feel right to even think, in my mind. Ferdinand was way smarter than me, especially with magical things. Finally after wrestling with my mind for several moments I finally replied to Wilfried as well, "I know who that was, it was ex-demon lord Carrion." After making this comment I felt the air turn a little hot for a moment as I could see Milim look directly at me from quite a distance, as she was sitting next to Rimuru possibly hundreds of meters away. 

"Woah, wait, really? A demon lord? Or, he used to be I guess. Uncle is that strong? Is Father going to be stronger?" Wilfried seemed astonished for a moment and got a determined face when mentioning Sylvester, he wanted to see he father do well clearly. 

I wasn't really sure myself anymore after watching Ferdinand defeat Carrion, maybe Sylvester was a good fighter. Though I had a sneaking suspicion Ferdinand was the superior of the two in that respect, so I just tried to brush off the question to not disappoint him. "I am not sure about how strong Ferdinand is, I am sort of confused right now." I pressed my hands together for a moment and felt a bit of tension from Milim looking directly at me, still. 

Suddenly Milim disappeared from where she was sitting and I felt a hand gripping my shoulder from behind me. "So, you revealing any secrets?" I could feel the venom in her words and the heat of her aura in the space around me. 

Charlotte was a little shocked for a moment and glanced over to the two of us with a worried expression, seemingly shivering a bit at the sight of Milim. "H-hey.. Don't just show up without announcing yourself.." She tried to get a small line out though, and held herself in place. 

Milim glanced over to Charlotte  for a moment and smiled before turning back to me and saying, "I, Milim Nava, have used a spatial skill to enter this location." In a pretend noble voice, while making a small bowing motion, causing me to get dragged down with her. 

I could see Wilfried was shaking where he was sitting, while Florencia was trying to keep herself composed in front of Milim. Honestly it was admirable of her to even try, I definitely wasn't fully composed at the moment. 

As an example of that my hands were sparking a little as I was intentionally casting a spell past the bracelet. Since they were held together tightly though, it didn't really matter all that much. It just looked somewhat odd for my hands to spark like they were, little sparks flying off of them and into the surrounding air a few inches away. 

Tuuli stepped behind Milim and lightly tapped her on the shoulder, "Milim-sama, please step away from Lady Rozemyne." She was a little jittery while saying it, but held her composure the best. She did spend the most time around people who could easily kill her, I suppose. 

"Ooo, right! Tuuli-chan, I have been meaning to tell you. The person who kept her safe last night, it was me-noda!" While saying this she lightly stepped away from me and her her arms on her hips proudly. 

Tuuli seemed to respond to this with only her expression, it seemed to shift to one of a small bit of surprise and a small bit of something else I couldn't quite place. However she seemed satisfied with Milim having stepped away from me, and quickly stepped back herself. 

"Thank you, Tuuli..-san." I said while looking up to see Ferdinand was now on his way up the stairs with Sylvester, I could tell from the magicules around them. I had slowly been familiarizing myself with the differences between them. 

Milim smiled a little again and walked over to the edge of the raised platform while commenting on the next match, "Seems like it is gonna be that Gobta-san, with that hero boy. They are both so cute, with all that perseverance. Though hero boy seems kinda scared." She was saying this as the next match was going to be between Gobta and Masayuki, I had ignored the announcements though because I knew neither of them could win. They had to go up again Sylvester next, after all.

Ferdinand made a comment immediately upon seeing Milim, "Sorry, Milim-sama." He seemed somewhat shocked for just a moment by her being here, her aura was completely hidden from anyone but me, I suspected. So I could not exactly say his surprise was his own fault. 

"Oh, Ferdinand-san! No no, it is fine. You beat him very well, I am not mad he lost to you." She seemed to have a small bit of sparkle in her eyes lookin at Ferdinand for a moment and got closer to him, stepping away from the ledge and right into Ferdinand's bubble of personal space. She lifted his arms and looked at him from a few different angles before stepping back and commenting on him, "Yes yes! No problem at all, thank you for teaching him he needs to get more resistance to ranged magics. By the way, you seem sort of interesting. You are closer to Rozemyne-chan than the other two, but you are a bit different than her too. You magicules look really unstable, might wanna talk to Ramiris about that." With this being her final comment she made a small motion over to Tuuli and handed her something. After that she stood next to Tuuli passively, intently staring down at the platform. 

It seemed the fight was starting, and I could see that Masayuki, or hero boy as Milim has referred to him. He was in a state that looked like shivering, it really was sad. Though he was still standing there, and opposing him Gobta seemed somewhat frightened himself, which I really did not understand. I did not believe he had any reason to be scared, though what happened next surprised me. 

The moment Soka announced they could begin, Gobta held his hand high into the air to spread his shadow out in front of him. From his shadow came  a massive wolf that I recognized as Rimuru's personal wolf, Ranga I believed his name was. He completely dwarfed the capacities of both the hob-goblin and the hero, standing there majestically. 

However it did not end there, it seemed they stepped closer together and I could see for a moment a small splash of black spread across the two, at which their bodies seemed to get sucked into eachother. Soka was going crazy commenting on this, as soon enough the hob-goblin and Tempest Star Wolf seemed to fuse into a single being, it was like a hobgoblin with wolf characteristics similar to some of the wolf-men I had seen in Tempest. A wolf head with black skin and a mane, additionally there was hair along the back and legs but not long the chest which was bare and muscular. 

"Is that even allowed?" I commented while looking down at them, it seemed odd that the hobgoblin had even been allowed to summon Ranga, but to go so far as to fuse with him as well. 

Ferdinand commented on this, "It seems unsavory as a tactic, however I cannot say it is forbidden. The hobgoblin used his own magicules to summon the beast, therefore it is an allowed summon. What is done with the summon after this was not regulated either." He seemed to be quite interested in what had happened at this point himself, I could tell if he was not wearing his bracelet at the moment his aura would be buzzing around. 

"That is so cool-noda!" Milim loudly yelled, and it seemed she was joined in this by Wilfried who also cheered at the display in front of him. Milim was practically jittering all over watching the fusion of the two monsters standing on the platform below now. Even Melchior seemed somewhat interested as he pointed at the fusion himself why babbling something. 

Though I came to think something was wrong relatively quickly, they were just standing there, completely still for some time. Masayuki was indeed shivering, but it seemed almost like they could not even move. Then, suddenly, all in a flash. I watched as they jetted across the platform, flying right off and into the wall at the edge of the clearing in the center of the colosseum. A loud thud could be heard across the entire colosseum and the fused competitors fell off the wall like a sheet of blown paper, before Ranga hopped out of Gobta and the Hobgoblin was left lying there completely unconscious for several moments. 

Soka seemed momentarily very surprised and announced the winner with a sort of stutter, "I-it seems the W-wolf-Goblin had gone out of the ring, and therefore the winner if this match is the hero M-Masayuki!" She seemed to jitter a bit where she was standing while staring to Masayuki with a completely ajar face. 

"WHAT!? How could they make such a stupid mistake! I am gonna go ask Rimuru to train them, they can't get away wth that." After the declaration Milim disappeared into thin air, and I saw her reappear next to Rimuru in the distance. She started loudly talking to him immediately, and it seemed like quite an earful very quickly. 

Wilfried seemed oddly excited despite the boring turn of events. "I couldn't quite see what happened, but I bet the hero threw him out of the ring! It was just too fast for us to see, right Uncle?" He turned to Ferdinand right away for confirmation, on his incorrect assessment. 

"That is not what happened in the slightest, perhaps you should attempt to pay closer attention?" Ferdinand berrated Wilfried in an indirect way while looking on in surprise for a moment himself. The happenings seemed to completely baffle him for a moment, and he was quick to question it once he had looked to Gobta again. "I believe his control over his magicules was too inexperienced for the increased capacity of their combined body, though I am somewhat surprised something like this is even possible in the first place so I am somewhat unsurprised there are complications with such a large difference in strength." 

After this we settled back down, Ferdinand taking his own seat somewhat away from us while Sylvester had taken a new seat next to Wilfried and Florencia. the next two matches were relatively more boring from my point of view, there was no large amount of magic being thrown around. It seemed the winner of match three was decided after a long drawn out fight, which I avoided watching due to the bloodiness of the spectacle. Gozer had beaten out Mezer due to his regeneration, allowing the bull headed humanoid to be the victor of their feud. However Rimuru seemed to think the fight was to close to allowed either of them to completely control the fiftieth floor of the Labyrinth, and therefore would allow them to alternate. 

Immediately following this was a match between Jinrai and Kai, both of them were swordsmen, however Kai was clearly much more of a brute than Jinrai. It was a match that was almost as drawn out as the previous, however the ultimate winner was Kai due to his superior defensive abilities. It did not take long for this to turn into another speech about how Masayuki could defeat Rimuru, which made me particularly want to shut him up. Really I did not know what he thought what so great about Masayuki, but the crowd seemed to eat it up way too much in my opinion. 

Tuuli made a comment once the match had concluded, "Lady Rozemyne, I believe there is a skill at play to create those reactions from the crowd. I do believe it is effecting Lord Wilfried as well. However, I wish to leave to perform a task I have been given by Milim-sama. May I have permission to do so?" Her wording was too formal for me, and it took a lot of getting used to, to listen to my sister talk to me that way. I could not wait till we were in private together, I'd much prefer it. 

"I suppose you can, I have enough company with them. Please do come back when you can, though." I tried to put on my own noble-like wording scheme, to make it seem like I was used to it. Though deep down it sort of caused my stomach to turn. 

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--2441 words-- 

(AN: I am sorry I am taking so long, I will try to write more consistently if I can. Thank you all for reading consistently.)