SS Awakening: My Monster Merging System!

Seeing the human suddenly lounging at it, Slimy was startled and shrank back.

"Silk Barrier."

A semi-transparent barrier appeared instantly.

The roots struck the barrier with a series of soft impacts. The barrier did not break immediately, but there were too many roots, and soon they began to coil in from every direction.

Zich raised his hand.

Blood Arc condensed into a red slash.

FWOOOSH!

The Blood Arc cut through the mass of roots, opening a gap for Slimy.

Slimy immediately bounced out through the opening and landed beside Zich. It had clearly been startled, but it quickly puffed itself up again and looked at Mira with open hostility.

Mira looked at Slimy and noted to herself softly. "It reacts very quickly."

She drove the end of her sickle into the ground.

This time, the roots in the soil no longer emerged in scattered fashion. They rose from four directions at once. Interlocking into a circle, they quickly surrounded Zich and Slimy, as if trying to trap them inside.

The audience immediately erupted.

"There it is!"

"This should be a large area control skill!"

"Zich is trapped!"

Roots covered the upper space, and the ground also began to soften.

Zich immediately understood Mira’s intention.

She was not trying to win outright with this. She wanted to restrict his landing points. No matter how fast Blink was, if all the possible places to land nearby were covered by roots, the value of teleporting would drop dramatically.

"Very fast targeting," Zich said.

Mira stood outside the root cage, both hands gripping her sickle.

"Your movement is very troublesome, it’s the only way to contain you."

Zich didn’t know how to react to that. He looked up at the roots above, then at Slimy.

"Spit upward."

Slimy looked up.

PSHHH! PSHHH! PSHHH!

The poison did not spray toward the ground, but toward the root cage above. As it fell, it scattered like rain, and large stretches of roots immediately gave off white smoke, their structure corroded into several irregular gaps.

Zich caught one of them.

Blink.

FWOOSH!

He vanished from inside the cage.

When he appeared again, he was already behind Mira and slightly to her side.

However, Mira was already waiting there.

Her sickle swept across.

Zich raised a hand, Blood Arc forming in his palm, but he did not fully release it. The red slash stopped in front of Mira’s shoulder, while Mira’s sickle hooked onto the sleeve of his robe.

The two stopped at the same time.

...Very close.

The audience erupted in gasps.

If this were not a match, both sides might have been injured.

Mira looked at him.

"You’re harder to catch than I thought."

Zich glanced at the sleeve that had been hooked.

"For a farmer, you’re more annoying."

Like, shouldn’t she be in the farm or something? Why was she giving him such a hard time here?

There was a big difference between the battlefield and farm land!

Mira nodded lightly. "Thank you."

"That wasn’t a compliment either."

"I’ll still take it as one."

The corner of Zich’s eye twitched slightly.

This person was harder to talk to than she looked.

Both sides retreated at the same time.

Half the match time had already passed.

Yet so far, neither side had seriously wounded the other. And still, the audience was watching more intently than many explosive duels, because every step in this match looked like testing and dismantling.

Mira began pushing toward the boundary. She did not attack Zich directly, but used roots and grass to slowly reshape the terrain, squeezing the area where Zich could move toward one side.

After noticing her intention, Zich did not resist. He followed her rhythm and retreated a little.

Mira’s eyes narrowed. She knew Zich would not be forced back this easily, but she kept pressing anyway.

Very soon, Zich was only a few steps away from the arena edge.

The audience grew noisy again.

"Is Zich about to be pushed out?"

"No way?"

"Can he not break Mira’s terrain?"

Mira’s sickle swept in from the side, while roots from the other side reached for Zich’s ankles. The angle was sharp; if he kept retreating, he would step over the boundary.

Slimy suddenly unfolded a Silk Barrier behind him.

Not to block an attack.

But as a platform.

A white barrier tilted in midair, and Zich tapped the edge of it with his toe, using the force to change direction. The next instant, his body vanished.

FWOOSH!

Mira’s eyes narrowed.

Zich appeared behind her.

His fingers stopped at her back, a faint Blood Arc forming in his palm.

He did not actually slash.

He was only proving that he could hit her.

The host and the judges reacted at the same time.

"Stop!"

Mira did not move. She lowered her head, glanced at the Blood Arc mark behind her, then slowly withdrew her sickle.

Zich also lowered his hand.

After a brief silence, the audience exploded in noise.

"He won?"

"He actually used the slime’s barrier as a launch platform!"

"Wasn’t that a defensive skill?"

"He used it like a stepping stone!"

"Mira was just a bit too slow in forcing him out."

"This match was way better than the earlier ones!"

The host’s voice rang out.

"Winner, Zich Grave!"

Mira turned to look at Zich, her expression still calm.

"Your slime... if you don’t mind, can you lend them from time to time?" 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Zich looked at her, then at Slimy.

"I’ll think about it..."

Mira nodded lightly and picked up her farmer’s hat, putting it back on.

The two of them stepped down from the stage, one after the other.

The light screen soon began updating.

[Zich Grave — Victory]

[Mira Vale — Performance score increased]

[Control confrontation evaluation: Excellent]

[Adaptability evaluation: Increased]

This time, the audience did not mock either side.

Because anyone could see that Mira, the loser, was not weak, and Zich, the winner, had not had it easy at all... at least that was what they thought.

After returning to his seat, Zich looked at Slimy.

Slimy was trying very hard to straighten up.

"Good job," Zich said.

Slimy instantly became so happy it nearly bounced.

Mira sat down beside them, her hat brim lowered, her voice calm.

"Next time, I’ll seal off your landing point more cleanly."

Zich leaned back in his seat. "Next time, I won’t fight with just one summon."

Mira considered it before nodding. "Fair."

Some time later, the second round of the preliminaries came to an end.