Rebirth: The Shadow Of Greed

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Hearing this, the student panicked, what could he actually do in 5 minutes? With this he urgently found a group that was separated from the main body and launched an attack there, using his sword artefact to take them out, before waiting once again. 

In the third area, the same announcement was heard, but instead of panicking, this particular student smiled widely, he sat on the ground leaning on a boulder as he folded his arms and waited for his location to be revealed. 

At the 15 minute mark, due to the non-engagement of the enemy, his location was revealed to everyone, the enemies started to swarm towards him as they slowly approached the rock. Because the AI didn't know what his manifest was, it could only approach cautiously surrounding him and walking step by step. 

As the circle gradually closed up, the future seemed increasingly bleak for the student who was still seated in the middle. He pulled down his round shades as he looked around and nodded.

He smiled deviously as the ground surrounding him suddenly became soft as it turned into quicksand, the soldiers started to struggle as they fell into the pit and drowned, the first batch of soldiers lay flat on the surface, expanding their body as much as possible so that they wouldn't sink as quickly, while the next batch behind them used the bodies of their comrades as a crutch to pull themselves up before plopping down the same way as their comrades. 

This confused the student who was watching the scene unfurl, what the heck was the soldiers doing? The third batch of soldiers jumped on top do the first and second batch, using them as bridges as they dashed forwards towards the students. 

He knew that he was in trouble now, although a majority of the soldiers had either drowned or are entrapped in the quicksand, he still got surrounded by the third batch of soldiers. He was now trapped between a rock and a hard place with a boulder behind his back and the soldiers in his front. 

The student smiled wryly as one of the soldiers charged at him, he swung his sword down as the student raised his hand to parry the sword, 

'clang' 

Sparks flew as the sword was diverted with the sleeves of his robe. The momentum of the swing making the sword land onto the ground making the soldier lose balance. The student slammed the soldier into the boulder behind him hard as he leaned into the boulder. 

Pushing the soldier away he touched the boulder as the boulder seemingly became cloud-like, letting the student fall through it. 

The soldiers dashed forward trying to chase after the student but they all ran into the boulder instead. The ground around them that turned into quicksand quickly hardened back into the solid ground it had been previously, with the soldiers either buried fully or partially. 

The soldiers formed up back into formation as they marched back to defend the castle. 

The student, hiding in a hole under the boulder wiped the beads of perspiration from his brow as he sighed a breath of relief. All these couldn't have been accomplished using his manifest, <Conversion> he had a manifest that could convert the properties of one thing to another, turning the solid ground into quicksand or turning fabric into metal. 

It was not a manifest that he could use infinitely and could only maintain it for 40 seconds at a time. 

His situation was too close for comfort, he had narrowly avoided elimination by leveraging on his wit and intelligence. 

In the stands, the crowd had mixed reactions. One one hand there were people cheering him on, on the other hand, there were audience members who found his fighting style less than savoury. 

"There is no honour in his fighting! Fighting with traps and tricks! He might as well have been a scout instead."

"What rubbish are you spewing! The value of an offence member lies in his offensive capabilities if the offence member dies easily in a head-on fight, then throughout the entire battle, he is useless! His way of fighting is correct!"

"Yeah! At least he managed to kill some soldiers while staying alive! Look at stage 2! Whose score is better?"

"But still… there's still a lack of finesse in the fight, it feels like there is no pride in winning."

On stage 2, the girl was quickly eliminated, the crowd shifted their focus onto the screen showing stage 3, the student placed there had managed to put his strategy into place and attempted to scale the wall before entering to kill the King first. 

He had sent a doppelganger of himself to distract the soldiers and sent them on a wild goose chase. The ranged soldiers attempted to launch a volley of arrows leaving the back of Castle unguarded. 

He quickly scaled the wall and sneaked behind the soldiers before ducking into a stairwell. He released his clone making the soldiers give up on the chase and return back to their starting location.

As he hid in the shadow he cloned himself again, this was his manifest <clone> he could create a clone of himself in which case if either of the body sustained damage he could get rid of one. If either died, the remaining one would be the main body. This time, the clone was on the move heading out to scout ahead. As he progressed down the stairwell, the light began to dim, it was pitch dark. The student was having difficulty seeing through the eyes of his clone, he was struggling he made his clone hide into a dark corner as the main body started to rub his eyes. 

It was weird, the previously dimly lit stairwell started to get darker and darker. That's when he realised he was in complete darkness. Immediately he released his clone before attempting to summon another one. It was better to have safety in numbers, two of himself was better than fighting with one of himself.