Alex looks at Erza before the game starts and he feels quite bad for her. In the series, this is the game where she shines. But now, he will do his best to take the spotlight even if it means defeating his Guild Mates.
Well, no one other than him was frozen in time for 7 years. They have been making names for themselves in the last 7 years. All of them have played in this tournament too and no one looks down on Fairy Tail because they weren't the forever last place anymore.
Instead of the whole Fairy Tail, it's Alex who receives most attention. People want to know if he really is strong. Even if he only drove Acnologia away from Ishgar, it was still a feat that would need a lot of power and skill.
He has shown that he can defeat a Wizard Saint, so people know that he is strong. But they are still hoping for more because he survived a battle that killed Ishgar's strongest Mage who stands above all Mages including the Wizard Saints.
So they have really high expectations of Alex and aren't satisfied yet by his victory over Jura. He has been hailed as a Hero, which shows how great people's expectations are and now they want him to show his greatness.
Alex doesn't care about people's expectations, but he does care about winning the tournament. He never has any intention to lose here. He has decided to join the tournament, so he will plan to win.
This different Pandemonium is also a good challenge for him. He has never fought against these many monsters at once. So this will be a nice challenge to find his current limit.
Soon, the event is started. All 8 participants are entering the upside-down castle through 8 different upside-down towers around the main building. They are teleported inside using magic to the spots that have been assigned by the organizer.
As soon as they enter the towers, they are welcomed by some D-Class monsters looming around in the entrance room. So they can't wait and immediately start to fight because the monsters are attacking them right away.
Alex jumps back to dodge a monster attack and he transforms into the Mini Matatabi form midair. He quickly covers the room with a flame that burns all the monsters inside and even scorches the walls.
Then he quickly climbs up the upside-down tower that also has upside-down stairs, which means the side he can step on is the flat side, not the stair side, and it can be slippery if one is not careful.
But it's easy to climb when he becomes Matatabi the cat beast. He doesn't even always need to use the spiral upside down stairs because he can jump around using the walls when the stairs are broken or when he needs to dodge monster attacks.
Alex keeps climbing the upside-down tower while killing monsters with his flame, claws, tails, or even by biting them. He climbs very quickly while disposing the monsters. They don't even look like obstacles on his path because he easily kills them while passing by.
The others also climb up the upside-down towers while killing the monsters that get in their ways. They are not as fast as Alex, but some of them are progressing quite fast. The ones who struggle the most are Hibiki and Nobarly, while the others are quite quick.
Erza and Jura are especially quick. Jura crushes the monsters using a pair of flying rock hands that he controls to fly here and there to punch, slap, or catch the monsters before crushing them with strong clenches.
As for Erza, she is using Heaven's Wheel Armor that can make her fly and shoot multiple swords at her targets. At her current level, she can easily kill a D-Class monster with 1 flying sword while flying, that's why she's quick.
(Author Note: Sorry, I changed Sting to Orga again, just like in the canon. I wanted to switch Orga and Sting for the Chariot and Pandemonium. But because now I made Pandemonium the 4th day event, it will make Sting too tired to fight in the 2 vs 2 Battle Round. So I changed him back to Orga. Sorry for the inconvenience.)
Behind them are Kagura and Orga. Kagura only uses her swordsmanship to defeat the D-Class monsters. She uses her Gravity Magic just to help her run faster and even stick on the wall to make shortcuts.
Meanwhile, Orga is running very fast despite having such a big body, thanks to his Lightning God Slayer Magic Enhancement that can greatly increase his speed. However, he is still not as fast as Laxus and can't even catch up to Kagura.
It's mostly because he is not focused on speed even though he has Lightning Magic and only focus on strength. So even with such a great speed enhancement, his body and mind are just not used to moving very fast.
Also, he can't transform his body into lightning like Laxus. Though even if he can't, he could still be faster than Laxus just with lightning magic enhancement, just like how Alex is faster than Laxus when transforming into the humanoid Gyuki form and use Lightning Mode.
Orga's biggest shortcoming is he doesn't explore all of Lightning's great trait and only focus on firepower. That's why in the MPF game, his attack power was not too far behind Jura's attack despite clearly being younger and having much less experience.
Macbeth is behind them in terms of speed because he can't run as fast as them. While they can kill the monsters quite easily, they just can't run as fast as Alex, Jura, Erza, and Kagura. They also have problems when some monsters attack them at once because they can't kill them very quickly.
Macbeth has an easier time because he can only focus on attacking by distorting air to make invisible blades. Monsters can attack him, but his magic automatically reflects their attacks, giving him an absolute defense that can even kill the attackers.
He can't run as fast as those ahead of him, but his pace is very steady, so he can catch up to their speed because they need to stop a little long every now and then while he can just keep running while attacking.
Though no one can keep up to Alex's speed that's simply ridiculous even for those who watch from the screens outside. He runs very quickly as a tiger-sized 2-tailed blue-flame cat while killing the monsters like killing bugs.
Normal people might think that those monsters are too weak. But despite being just the weakest in this event, these monsters are still hard to handle, especially with their number and various abilities and traits.
The difficulties of fighting these monsters are shown by Hibiki and Nobarly. Though Hibiki can still fight the monsters and even defend against their attacks decently. He can't defeat them as easily as those ahead of him, but he is making progress.
Hibiki protects himself with the screens of his Archive Magic to block the monsters' attacks that can come from everywhere. To attack, he surrounds them with screens and explodes those screens.
Using his Archive Magic, he can find out the monsters' weaknesses and exploit them. But because of his low attack power, he needs a while to even kill 1 D-Class monster. The good thing is, he can climb up the tower rather smoothly.
Nobarly is actually ahead of Hibiki, but not by much. His Magic wasn't shown in the series, and now he shows it. He uses Fire Magic, which is quite common and has strong attack power, but its defensive power is quite lacking.
That's why Nobarly is having a hard time defending against the monster attacks. The monsters are attacking fearlessly without even trying to defend because they don't care about dying. They are artificial monsters, programmed to only try to kill the Mages.
Nobarly can't kill them fast enough, so he keeps getting attacked and it makes his advancement very slow because he can't defend their attacks or kill them easily. Now he is in the last place with the fewest points.
The audience watches everything that happens inside the upside-down castle excitedly through the magical screens. This is an event full of actions, so it's really exciting. Every floating screen shows battles between Mages and Monsters, something everyone wants to see in this tournament.
Their excitement increases along with the increase in points of the players. Alex leads with 120 points, killing all 40 D-Class monsters placed in his tower. Each tower has 40 D-Class monsters and the remaining monsters are gathered in the main building.
In just less than 10 minutes, Alex has cleared his tower and now enters the main building. The monsters will be mixed here, so there will be stronger ones helping weaker ones, making this more difficult, but it just makes Alex more excited.
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Ch. 240. Matatabi's Turn