Death... and me

Chapter 3428: Pay Up!

Rean and Forvani reached an agreement where Rean would help Forvani in exchange for 100 Rank Four Divine Stones for each win. As for how many points he would get from that, it would depend on how much Forvani would manage to make his opponents bet in each round.

The first round was about using Fire Element in ring shapes and increase their intensity of fire element. There was an elder there to judge their efforts by the end. For this round, Forvani bet 50 of his points, and so did the others around. At some point, Forvani saw a chance of running away with his results, confident that he would win this easily.

’Okay, hold it!’

Yet, Rean’s Divine Sense immediately reached his mind, much to Forvani’s surprise. ’What?! Look at how many I managed to pull off! If I stop now, I’ll be letting a lot of points disappear for nothing!’

Rean shrugged. ’You hired me to help you win, and that’s what I’m doing. But if you don’t want to trust me, so be it. I won’t say anything else. Our deal ends here.’

Forvani’s mouth twitched, but he remembered how Rean predicted the last round in front of him. He knew exactly who would lose before a result was even out. ’Fine! What do you want me to do?’ In the end, he only bet 50 token points. Even if he loses, he would still have a little less than 150 points remaining to try something else.

Rean faintly smiled, sitting on a chair and drinking Roan’s tea. He even pretended to not be paying attention to any of the many challenges going around. ’Let’s try a little trick, but be careful. If you go too far, they will get suspicious. Don’t forget they are scammers, so they have experience detecting such things. Let’s see... circulate your fire element in your body to increase its temperature and make you sweat just slightly. However, do not show it on your face, as if you are pretending you are not feeling that heat.’

’At the same time, reduce the intensity of your Fire Element on the fire rings by about three to four percent. If you are that confident in your control, you shouldn’t have an issue achieving this degree of precision,’ Rean ordered.

Forvani did as Rean said, and the fact Rean challenged his Fire Element Control made him want to show he definitely had that much precision. Sure enough, he started to sweat, but it was almost nothing, barely perceptible at all, unless you paid close attention. At the same time, the Fire Rings he was controlling did indeed reduce in intensity by three to four percent. From the outside, it was as if there wasn’t anything wrong.

However, how could those guys not see the difference? They caught up to the sweat on Forvani’s face and especially how his Elemental Control seemed to dwindle just slightly. In their eyes, Forvani was trying to pretend there wasn’t anything wrong.

Their leader faintly smiled, and his Divine Sense reached his other accomplices in that group. At first, to the scammers, Forvani seemed to be the hardest one to deal with since Forvani wasn’t the only outsider there. Yet, seeing how he was ’struggling’ to keep his control, they also discarded Forvani as a potential threat for now. Of course, they weren’t idiots, so they didn’t let Forvani of their sight.

By using the same methods as before, one of the scammers immediately caught up to Forvani, and just slightly surpassed his performance while the others all seemed to reach their limit. That was the trick there. They would have one of their group win just by a fraction, causing their ’lambs’ to think they lost by very little and that they could win if they tried again. In fact, that was not their real potential.

Seeing that, Rean sipped a little bit more tea and waited as the timer went down. ’Once there are three seconds remaining, go all out. Those guys will definitely notice it and do the same. However, there is no need to worry. They will not be able to reach the same level of performance as yourself.’

Three seconds? Everyone in that group, including the scammers, was in the Void Tempering Realm. Three seconds was pretty much an eternity to them. Even if Forvani tried to pull ahead there, the scammers would notice he was pretending that that was his limit and would act accordingly. Rean already noticed that quite a few of them were actually pretty good at controlling Fire Element, and some were at the same level as Forvani or slightly ahead, depending on what they were doing with Fire Element.

Forvani didn’t notice that far, but he understood three seconds was way too much time. ’Are you certain? Isn’t it better to wait for the last second or half a second?’

’Just do what I say,’ Rean didn’t explain as the timer was nearing the end.

Forvani narrowed his eyes and nodded in the end. Just as the three-second mark arrived, Forvani let go of his pretense and went all out, increasing the intensity and number of fire rings.

The leader of the scammer snorted at that sight. ’So you were really pretending to struggle. Hehe! Trying to scam us? Too naive!’

The leader instantly released his own Fire Element. Many rings formed, and their intensity increased. In just one second, both he and Forvani had a similar number of those rings. But that wasn’t where the scammers excelled at. If that was the case, there was a risk they would lose for real if someone too good came by. What they excelled at was disruption!

The Yang Energy in that group suddenly took a turn, which affected everyone’s control over Fire Element. It was just slightly, barely perceptible. Even Forvani thought it to be nothing more than a side-effect of all these Fire Element users fighting each other and nothing else. Too bad that wasn’t the case. Even though it was just slightly, that caused Forvani’s Fire Rings to sway a little, losing some of their intensity.

In the hands of the leader of the scammers, a ring released a faint energy that interacted with the Yang Energy of the surroundings. It made his life easier without anyone noticing. At the same time, the disruption caused Forvani and the others to get worse. In the end, the leader would be the winner, even if just by a tiny, tiny margin, but that was enough.

However, at the very least second, things changed again. The Yang Energy of the ring completely lost control, and the leader, who wore the ring, felt his own Fire Element go chaotic. ’What?!’

*Fla, fla, fla...*

A few of his Fire Rings dissipated, and the intensity of the remaining ones decreased by quite a lot. Once the last second was over, the leader of the scammers wasn’t in the lead anymore. Instead, he lost to most of those present, including the weaker challengers.

As for the winner, it was Forvani. "Hahaha! Pay up!"

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