"So how does this tournament work, anyway?" Tim asked some time later, when the score was six to twenty-nine in Emma's favor.

"It's not a tournament," Lekthi said. "Oh, this is so exciting! She's so clever!"

"How many pieces does this game have?" Cin grumbled. "I'll have actually had Drake's children by the time it's over."

Rai chortled, and Tim held in his own laugh.

"It has sixty per side," Lekthi began, "and—"

"No, please, make her stop!" Cin said with six-out-of-ten feigned despair.

"I didn't mock you when you were reading those books of mating positions," Lekthi snapped.

"I was losing my mind waiting for Rai's matches," Cin protested. "And you were reading over my shoulder, as I recall."

"I—I was not!" Lekthi said, sounding only two-out-of-ten convincing.

"Oh, oh, is that a little flarm I see?" Cin said with unrestrained glee.

"No! Igyn!"

"Cindriz, please stop trying to make Lekthi flarm," Igyn said in a voice that radiated patience. "It's not very nice."

"The Great Gamble is a competition, not a tournament," said Enzi. "Deities challenge each other and make wagers over their champions' battles, and everyone gets to watch."

"Uh, you mean there's no bracket? No final winner?" Tim asked. Oh shit.

"No, nothing like that," Enzi said. "Challenges and wagers are made between the deities, and then their champions fight to see who wins. Right, Igyn?"

"That's right, Enzi," said the cloud-shaped deity. "The entire thing ends when all the deities have stopped accepting challenges."

"Doesn't that mean it might never end though?" Tim asked, feeling a knot forming in his stomach.

"No, because there's only one deity who accepts every challenge," Igyn said.

"And that's Sateus, obviously," he said, groaning inwardly. I could be here forever.

"It is!" Igyn said. "And there's some incentive to make challenges against Sateus too for us smaller deities, you know."

"What? Why?" Yeah, this is definitely not good. How am I only finding this out now?

"Well, remember that we're competing over worlds, Drake," said Igyn. "And the main reason for that is so we can gain part of a more powerful deity's power if we take one of their worlds away."

"Right…"

"Think of it this way: if you have a vessel containing some water, and you poke a hole in the bottom, the water drains out. But if you take that same vessel and toss it in an ocean before making the hole, what happens to the water in the vessel?" Igyn floated just in front of him with a sense of expectation.

"Nothing happens, because…" Tim was unable to hold back a two-out-of-ten portion of his ten-out-of-ten groan. "So the less powerful deities all challenge the stronger ones because they have nothing to lose?"

"Other than their champions," Enzi added. "Most deities don't care as much as Igyn does."

"Shouldn't you know all of this?" Rai asked.

"Now, now, I'm sure Sateus is very busy discussing all the challenges and making wagers," Igyn said.

"Then… When Sateus competes, the competition ends when…" Tim grimaced. This is much worse than I thought.

"From what I've heard, Sateus chooses champions who discourage anyone from challenging them in order to avoid having things go on for too long," Igyn said.

"I watched some of his fighter's matches this week," Nela said with increasing excitement while continuing to rest against his shoulder. "I don't know what this Ir'alith was, but I couldn't even see it move once the contests began!"

"It was scary," Enzi said, sounding spooked. "It had blood-colored spikes jutting off it at all angles, and it tore its opponent's head from his body before I could even blink in the first match we saw. Then the next match began immediately, and the same thing happened. And it kept happening."

"Drake, have you met it?" Rai asked. "That Ir'alith champion? Is it really scary?"

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Tim swallowed as he remembered the message Vol had passed along last time he'd tried to find her. Carl, I think your girlfriend here is messed up somehow. "Yeah, I've met her," he said. "She's… She's really nice. Usually."

The others went quiet for a short while as a feeling of worry continued to grow inside of him. Did she fight all her matches right after she flipped out that first time? Is she upset because she killed everyone?

"His magic champion's more fun to watch," Enzi said, sounding pleased. "She only uses lightning, but she's so good with it! It's almost as if the lightning comes alive when she fights."

"I feel a little bad for her," said Cin. "She's just there all the time fighting. I wonder if she takes any time to rest."

"How long has it been since the whole thing started?" Tim asked.

"Around two Aleon years," said Lekthi. "That's… Two hundred and something days per year. Days here are—She did it again!" she exclaimed, pointing over his head in excitement. "She keeps baiting him in, and it looks so convincing, but then she always comes back to punish him a few moves later. Ooh, I'd love to play against her sometime!"

"And we just met this week, huh" he continued.

"We did," Rai said, giving his right hand a good clawing as she smiled at him.

Tim's thoughts were spinning at a ten-out-of-ten speed now. So the competition has been going for years, and we got here late. But then also Sateus can control time, so maybe we've been here all along and I just fought really late into it? That would explain Vol getting weirder. This is making my head hurt the more I think about it.

The crowd began to cheer abruptly, with many of the surrounding creatures rising onto feet and other appendages.

"That was amazing," Lekthi called. A burst of fire shot up over Tim's head into the air. "She's so good!"

"Ladies, it's starting to get dark out," Igyn announced through the noise. "Let's go back, okay?"

Tim glanced up, noting that the sun was already most of the way down and the moon had become partially visible. When he looked back down, the stands surrounding the arena seemed noticeably less crowded than before. Did everyone just come out to see her match?

"Okay," Cin said with a sigh.

Nela hugged him a little too tightly, and he felt like his bones were creaking under the strain. Just when he worried that they might actually start creaking, she sat up and straightened her dress over her legs a little before sliding off him and onto her feet, joining the others who were already standing. She gave another shy smile and reached towards him.

Tim abruptly fell as his surroundings changed, landing once more in his sitting room. "Fuck, this is so annoying!" He turned around immediately and stormed out into the hallway. I'll pound on those fucking doors until—

Something bounced off him as he stepped out of his room, and when he looked down, the something was Emma, and she gave him the same blank look as the last time he'd seen her while she picked herself up. "Uh, hey," he said, feeling his previous nine-out-of-ten annoyance change into an equal measure of awkwardness.

"May I pass?" she asked, staring up into his eyes without blinking.

"I saw your match," he said. "I don't know much about the game, but you had a lot of pieces left. That's good, right?"

She continued to stare at him.

Shit, her whole everything is way too fucked. "Alright, let me at least make sure you didn't accidentally break something without knowing it," he said. "Restoration." He tossed the spell at her, and nothing happened.

"My thanks," she said, blinking but otherwise remaining impassive. "If you've quite finished saving me from a minor tumble, I'd like to return to my quarters."

"Yeah, sure," Tim said, feeling like he'd reached eleven-out-of-ten awkwardness as he stepped back into his own doorway.

Emma waited until he'd stopped moving, then took a circuitous route that put her against the opposite side of the hallway until she reached her own door, whereupon she turned and walked in without looking anywhere but forward.

He stood in place for another minute as his face moved through a series of expressions, at last settling firmly into a grimace. Why is everything so fucked up here? It was so simple and relaxing at the arena a minute ago. He sighed, looking over his shoulder at the big, stone doors at the end of the hallway. I don't even know what I'd say if the doors opened. It's—

"Hey, Drake!" came the call of a zero-out-of-ten person.

Just when things seemed like they couldn't get more annoying. Tim turned back to Kazuto, who had appeared from somewhere and was standing just a little bit too close. "Hi," he said. Now how do I—

"Really sorry about before," the boy said, standing unusually upright without any form of his usual slouching. "I didn't know—I mean, how awesome is it that you have a cloud goddess in your harem?" he said.

Tim stared blankly. What?

"I thought I was the only one who had a goddess as a girlfriend, but you're really just the actual harem master in the flesh!" Kazuto said with increasing excitement. "How—How do you do it? I mean, what's your secret? I had a harem, but none of my girls were anywhere near as… I don't even know what the word for that is? They were all over you back there, even though we were out in public! Did you bang any of them after I left? Or all of them? What—"

Sateus, I'm pretty pissed at you right now, but if you make him disappear again this second, I'll… I don't even know, but I'll owe you something.

"—do lizard-girl pussies even feel like?" Kazuto continued. "I mean, like, are they, you know…" He held one hand up with his thumb and forefinger held together to form a wide loop and passed the index finger from his other hand through it. "Or is it more like…" He curled his index finger, making the finger-loop smaller to fit more closely around the finger he was continuing to poke through. "Because I was wondering about—Oh, and actually, they have lizard tongues, right? Like snakes? So really, I bet they give amazing blowjobs, because they can wrap their tongues completely ar—"

He disappeared mid-word, and Tim let out the deepest, most satisfied sigh of his life, to the point that he couldn't even evaluate it with a rating because numbers couldn't represent the value. He stood in place for a couple minutes, just basking in an annoyance-free existence after having his brain try to violently escape through his ear just moments earlier.

What the fuck is wrong with that kid? And how is he okay aft—Shit, he has that regeneration skill. That's handy to know though. If he annoys me too much more, maybe I'll do some PvPing. Even if he's strong, which seems unlikely, he's a total idiot.

He shook his head, then glanced at the timer ticking away at the edge of his vision. Still a while to go. May as well see if I can find the others. After a quick pit stop, now that I think of it…