“Kitty, hey, Kitty, wake up…” Someone’s gently shaking my shoulders, but I’m pretty content just lying here, meditating, not really thinking about much of anything… “Kitty, come on, wake up!” There’s a gentle slap against my cheek, but that’s okay. I’m fine right where I am… “I didn’t want to do this, but…” There’s a pause. Snore, honk, mimimi…

“Wake up Kitty, time for school!”

I fly to my feet. “Whu—where?! I’m awake, I swear, I just have to—” I pause. Standing up, I find that I’m not at home, in my bed, late again. Instead…

I turn to Moleman with barely hidden ire. “...What’s up?”

He puts away the pots and pans he was slamming and gives me a cheeky smile. “Thought it’d be a shame for you to miss your quarter-final match because you overslept. Don’t you agree?”

“Well, yeah, but…” I cross my arms defensively. “I wasn’t sleeping, okay? I was just… resting my eyes a bit, that’s all.”

“Sure, sure,” Moleman replies as he starts setting the table. The smell of fried eggs makes me drool. And is that bacon? Oh, boy. As per our usual routine, I help set the table, giving us both cutlery and a plate and cup. Normally speaking I don’t really use this kind of stuff, but Moleman told me that if I wasn’t going to eat with proper manners I wouldn’t get to eat at all, so now this is how we do it. After a few minutes, breakfast is served, and we both take a seat.

Bacon, eggs, potato pancakes, and a tragic lack of lingonberry jam. Still delicious, though. Moleman is a surprisingly good cook. Actually, no, he feels like the exact kind of guy who’d be a great cook, but he’s even better than that. I eat greedily. Man, this is good. Crispy eggs, flaky bacon, tender potato pancakes…

I glance up at Moleman. Luckily, he’s also eating. I was a little scared he might still be sulking about the whole me-being-executed thing, but he seems to have cheered up a bit. Enough to eat, at the very least.

I swallow down a mouthful of egg white. “Hey, Moleman.” Looking up, he meets my gaze, sipping on his water. “You’re okay, right?”

He gulps the water down before responding. “Yeah, sure I am.” He quirks an eyebrow. “And you?”

“Of course I am!” I answer quickly. “I was just, you know… Thinking.” My words aren’t making sense anymore so I pause by cutting a piece of bacon into slices. “I mean, today, if things don’t go the way you maybe want…” I poke at my egg yolk to stall. “Will you be alright? I mean, without me?” Dumb question; I’m sure he’ll be alright. If he was the one getting executed and me being left behind I would probably handle that as well as a child losing their brother would. But Moleman has tons of other friends. He’ll be fine. I’m not even sure why I asked.

He falls silent. After a while, he mumbles, “You tell me.”

But I don’t tell him, because I’ve learned from experience that that expression is rhetorical and not meant to be taken literally. Still, I kind of want him to talk. It’s not like this is mainly my issue. I won’t have to worry about this when I’m dead, while he’s the one left to grumble about how he could have handled it. What he could have done, what he should have said…

Unfortunately enough, I don’t think this is the kind of thing I can force out of him. Maybe breakfast isn’t the best place to have this conversation, I suppose.

I turn back to my plate, with all the items neatly separated, and continue eating.

A while later, once the food is eaten and the dishes done, we head to the colosseum. I don’t know who designed the timetable for the solo matches, but the very first quarter-finals match between the skirmish winner of the first floor and the skirmish winner of second floor took place at six in the morning. I can’t imagine there were many spectators.

The same can’t be said for the match I’m about to have. Oh, yeah, apparently, my quarter-finals against the seventeenth floor is at twenty minutes past seven. In the morning. Who decided on these times? Might it have been Pain? Ahh, who knows.

Then again, I think I remember something about the group tournament going on way too late into the evening, so this might be in response to that. Maybe.

Either way, since the trial stuff has a long way to go, I’ll do my quarter-finals first and then we’ll see if I’m alive to do the semi-finals.

I say goodbye to Moleman outside the preparation room, he wishes me luck and recommends me to not fight too creatively, I give a roundabout answer to avoid lying to him, and then I enter. Surprisingly enough, there were more people inside the preparation room than I’d expected. Not a single one of them will look me in the eye. When I approach the receptionist desk for the shard, the queue that was there before dissipates, letting me go up to Cathy without having to wait at all. She gives me the shard, I pretend it doesn’t hurt, and then the pop-up appears.

The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

has now ended.>

will begin shortly.>

Hell Challenger Lo Fennrick.

If you are not present at the arena within

4:59

the match will be forfeit.>

Right, right, I got it.

As I head towards the entrance to the arena, I watch the parting crowd around me, trying to parse who my first victim is to be. And from the crowd steps… Hm? Don’t I recognize her?... Well, either way, she certainly recognized me, considering the look on her face. Maybe there’s even some old blood at play here, because for how terrified she looks, she still decided to face me. Brave, but foolish.

We head out onto the drawbridge, and then into the harsh, glaring sunlight of the arena outside. The arena isn’t quite as crowded as it had been at my latest matches, but it’s still a pretty good amount.

“And let’s welcome our next two challengers with a big hand! Here we have GlowingGlyphs of the seventeenth floor, coming in from the Hard Difficulty at an impressive level of thirty-nine, finally facing off to take revenge on our dearest PrissyKittyPrincess of the Hell Difficulty, at a stunning level of eighty-one!” At Pain’s intrusive and frankly uncalled-for exclamation, the crowd is split, some cheering, others murmuring amongst each other, maybe about my level, maybe about something else. Pain doesn’t care, as He excitedly continues His introduction, “Will GlowingGlyphs avenge her fallen teammates and finally defeat Kitty once and for all, or will yet another challenger fall victim to Kitty’s horrid claws? Let’s find out! Is everyone ready down there?”

He looks down at us. I nod up at Him. I have to show some appreciation for yesterday. Glyph, on the opposite side of the arena, also nods at Him, though only after a little pause.

“Wonderful! With that said… Ready… Set… Go!”

I don’t move. I don’t need to. Heck, I don’t even crouch down or anything. I’m standing, casually, watching as she with trembling hands tries to unsheath her sword. Oh, yeah, now that I’m looking at her, isn’t she the one I saw in the hospital the day before yesterday? I recognize the scent of her fear. It’s very distinct.

While I’m thinking, she actually drops her sheath, the whole thing clattering to the floor. With the arena being so silent, the sound feels much louder.

She almost reaches down to grab it, only to stop once she sees my eyes. Ah, she’s petrified. And no magic needed, either. What, does she think I’ll kill her while she’s trying to pick up her sheath? I mean, I could, but where’s the fun in that?

I wave my hand at her. “Go on,” I say, loud enough for her to hear. “Pick it up.”

Wow, now she’s really sweating. I wonder if there’s a telepathy skill or something. At this moment, I’m very curious to hear what kind of thoughts she’s having. Considering the way she’s looking at me, I wouldn’t be surprised if she thought I was playing 5-D chess in my head. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that I don’t need any clever strategies to defeat her.

“Come on Glyph, don’t let him psyche you out!”

“Yeah Glyph, just kill him! You can do it!”

“Don’t fall for his mind games, Glyph!”

I turn towards the voices and the group instantly falls silent. Hm. These people… aren’t they the rest of her party? That makes sense, I guess.

Unfortunately, it seems Glyph has decided to take their advice. She bends down, keeping her eyes on me, fumbles for the sheath, grabs it, and stands up straight again, clipping it to her belt before I have time to wonder why she didn’t just keep the unsheathed sword in her inventory. Maybe there’s something in the rules I don’t know about because I didn’t read them?

…Nah.

Spurred on by the cheering of her friends, Glyph takes her sword in both hands, points it towards me, and…

—Freezes again.

It seems to me that no matter how much she tries to transform her fear into a fighting drive, she can’t help but get stuck on the far more primal ‘freeze’ instinct. I guess I’ve got no choice but to help her.

I start walking towards her. The audience holds its collective breath as I stroll up to her, hands on my hips.

I’m not even taller than her or anything, but because of the way she cowers from me, she certainly feels smaller. The tip of her sword trembles mere inches from me, but with how stiff she is, she won’t be able to use it. Am I really going to have to do everything here?

I grab the blade. Good sharpness. Even just holding it like this has already let it slice into my palm, making my blood trickle down the edge, all the way down the hilt to soak into her gloves. She still won’t move. Eyes still glued on me, waiting for me to do something. So, I’ll fulfill it.

Holding the sword in place, I step closer, forcing the tip to stab into my stomach. Her entire body gives a jolt, but that’s hardly enough. Another step and the sword slides in just a bit further, the muscles of my abdomen twitching and spasming around the intrusive metal. One more and I can feel the tip pressing against the skin of my back, so with another step, I stab it into me fully. Now we’re face-to-face. Close enough to kiss. I let go of my grip on the sword.

“Well?” I ask her. “What now?”

She looks at me, mouth opening briefly, and then…

Her hands lose grip of the hilt and she falls to her knees, mouth opening and closing rhythmically, eyes staring straight ahead, no longer at me, staring at anything and everything. “Ah, ah…” And now, just to complete her impressive display: tears. “P—please…”

I look down at her. It would be easy to kill her. Maybe even dissect her while she’s alive as a threat to future enemies. On the other hand…

My eyes move up to the bleachers, up to where Moleman sits. Next to Rice. Surprising, but a nice sight nonetheless.

Sighing, I turn back to Glyph. I let my eyes sharpen threateningly. “Do you surrender?”

Her head jerks up and down, nodding frantically.

I sigh and look up, towards Pain. “Hey, Pain, she gave up. That counts, right?”

He blinks down at me from atop His cloud of fireflies. “Huh? Oh, yes, of course!” Sitting up properly, He clears His throat and starts actually doing His job. “It seems GlowingGlyph has unfortunately decided to surrender! What a shame. Nonetheless, let’s give a big hand to Kitty for winning without laying a single hand on his opponent. What an achievement!”

Silence. I expected as much, but…

Someone claps.

…Huh?

No, not just one. Two. Up there, Moleman and Rice both clap. I think I can even hear Rice yelling something. And then, on the other side, there are two others clapping as well—Virgil and Almos. And with these four clapping, a few others join in. Not everyone, but a few. Some.

But even more than that, nobody’s booing.