Chapter 476: News Crew breaks down the first Day of Preliminaries

The moment Joshua arrived back at home he was met with his mother just arriving home while Amy was still fighting her matches and his father was still out at the dojo supposedly. She smiled as he came over to help her with the groceries that she must have gone shopping for after her day at the hospital. "So how did your day of matches go for the tournament? I'm sorry that I missed out on it, but I didn't expect you to finish so soon." Joshua's mother said as she gave him a quick hug for helping her with all of the bags.

"It's fine, I wasn't expecting it to go so fast either." Joshua said while putting some of the food up to cook later. "We can watch the rest of Amy's matches. At this point she's probably on her final match since I just finished and I doubt it would have taken her much longer than I did to get through all of her matches."

"Sure let me get some stuff started for dinner really quick. Some of the stuff I plan for us to eat later will take a long time to cook." She said as she made her way into the kitchen. Joshua quickly made his way over to the couch and turn on the television to see if he could find Amy's match. It didn't take long to find it and Joshua was glad to see that the countdown hadn't even started yet so the two contestants were going to be transferred to the arena soon. Joshua's mother came back to sit on the couch just in time as Amy and her opponent were both brought into the arena.

From the way Amy was casually stretching with a board expression Joshua was certain that she hadn't had any tough fights up to this point. Otherwise she would be taking things more seriously and have a more excited disposition, right now it looked as if she was ready to just get the match over with as quickly as possible. Her opponent was a mage that clearly relied primarily on earth magic just based off of some of the spells he had planted on his side of the field. The match up was already greatly in Amy's favor do to her opponent's level of fifty-nine and the moment the countdown came to an end it was clear that the fight wasn't going to last long.

Amy easily danced around all of the traps that the man had laid out for her with such speed that the moment the earth pillar shot out of the ground in an attempt to hit Amy, she was already moving over the next trap that would react to slowly as well. Joshua realized from his earlier fight against Marl that mages were at a huge disadvantage in one on one fights if they didn't set the stage well before the fight and have an ability to go toe to toe with close ranged fighters or keep them away long enough to do more powerful spells.

It was clear that Amy wasn't going to give her opponent the time to cast any spell more powerful than your basic ones and her opponent must have realized that as the spell he casted after getting as far away from her as possible was a spell that created several small spears of rocks that shot out all in front of him like a shot gun blast at the right moment. The spell wasn't strong enough to do much more than knock Amy back if it hit but instead of getting hit she dived under it using her flexibility to avoid any of the stray rocks that passed over.

A pillar of earth shot out of the ground right in front of the mage in an attempt to give him some separation, but Amy just punched straight through it and grabbed the mages shoulder keeping him from being able to get away. With a swift motion she pulled him through the collapsing earth pillar and with one heavy punch to the chest the mage vanished from the arena since the strength of the attack was too much for him to handle. Amy gave the audience an excited cheer before being teleported away from the battlefield. Joshua wasn't surprised when she ended up teleporting directly into the foyer of the house in a similar way that he had beforehand.

"That was so disappointing!" Amy shouted as soon as she saw Joshua and her mother turn around to look at her. "Where were all the cool opponents with hidden moves and powerful spells?"

"That's for later on. Judging by your current reaction I'm sure you won all of your matches?" Joshua asked getting a look that could be summed up with the word 'really'. "Even if the first day matches were easy you need to make sure you continue taking each match seriously. It could have an effect on your seeding later on in the tournament."

"Yeah, yeah. You get to serious about these things brother." Amy said as she made her way over to the couch to sit next to the both of them. "I guess you two were watching my match. How cool did I look?"

"You were great darling just try not to act out so much next time in front of the crowd." Their mother said as she patted Amy on the shoulder before getting up and heading to the kitchen to make sure dinner was coming along nicely.

"Hmm, I was just trying to be entertaining. There isn't much else to do when the matches are so one sided. I'm sure it was the same way for you as well." Amy said getting an agreeing shrug out of Joshua. "Do you know how everyone else did?"

"Not sure yet. I'm guessing all of the information will be published by the battle arena after all of the matches are finished. I'm waiting to see if the news crew will start reporting on such things after the last match." Joshua said as he turned from the battle arena channel towards the major news station that was backed by the guilds. They weren't showing specifically picked out matches with the most excitement like the last channel, but were instead discussing who the favorites were to win the tournament based off of what had happened in the first days matches.

"Looks like they're on top of things. I wonder if they'll interview some of the participants after all the matches are over." Amy wondered out loud getting Joshua to think along the same lines. It would make a lot of sense so Joshua was going to keep an eye out on his system messages just in case he got some kind of invitation. It ended up taking another hour's worth of time since the end of Amy's match for every match of the day to finally end. At this point it was around four in the afternoon which meant most of the day had gone by. The amount of channels that were discussing the tournament showed just how much attention it had grabbed up to this point. It would only become more influential after the preliminaries, where the real contest would begin.

Now that the matches had ended the news stations were starting to discuss how things went on the first day of preliminaries. Joshua was surprised that he was one of the first people to be discussed as a favorite in the competition. The news crew wasn't able to say much about his matches since they all ended within seconds, but they did bring up some of his past fights in the battle arena against stronger opponents where he actually fought with his scale blade.

Joshua wasn't the only person from the alliance that was singled out by the news crew as both Madalyn and Laura got a lot of spot light for their quick matches where they swept away all of their competition. Adrian, Aito, and even Henry were shown on the television as well along with several other people from the alliance that seemed to be standing out in the preliminaries so far. There weren't really any matches that showed off their abilities since they all ended quickly, but the news station did its research well and showed some footage from previous matches that they had participated in just like they had done with Joshua.

At first Joshua worried that the news station might be giving other competitors an advantage by showing off previous fights, but they seemed to be doing that with any and all participants that stood out on the first day of preliminaries. One of the funniest videos they showed was the match that Joshua had already seen of Lilly bringing out Momo to destroy her cocky opponent. The replay that was being shown by the news crew had a zoom in on the poor guys face and showed the moment he got slapped out of the arena from several different angles. Since the station had a chat window scrolling by of people commenting on the tournament Joshua was able to see how a lot of people were laughing at the arrogant guy's situation.

"It's a good thing that guy is already in a guild otherwise he might never be invited to one seriously after Lilly turned him into a laughing stock." Amy said after she finally stopped laughing at the scene. Joshua could only chuckle a bit before turning his attention to some of the other contestants that were being talked about. There were several large guild leaders that were being discussed but there were a few people that stood out to Joshua that were being shown off. Of course there were the members of the World Government Guild such as Charles and several of his higher level subordinates that were standing out, but it was the name that Joshua hadn't seen in a long time that grabbed his attention more than anyone else.

The man simply went by the name Iron Claw, he didn't sign up for the tournament with his personal name like most people did, but Joshua didn't need to know his name to know who he was. The moment he saw the man that was as tall as himself standing in the ring chocking someone out casually with one hand to win a match, he was able to recognize him. He didn't recognize the man because of him being someone he had faced in the past, but because of the fact that he was someone that was a rival of his father way back in his fighting days. The man casually through his opponent away as he vanished from the arena before the recording ended.

What surprised Joshua more than anything else was the fact that the man was higher level than anyone else. The man was level eighty-six.