Having seen the penalty taking effect, Velvet wondered about how effective they could be now.
Even then, they should first get Vibora down. Velvet didn’t fly, after all!
Vibora's plan was obvious. She had made a mistake by being prideful, appearing between them, and getting attacked on two fronts at once. Now, being up in the ceiling, she could control both of their positions.
Six paper figurines weren’t enough to detonate the ceiling.
Velvet looked up again, realizing something.
Vibora liked the dark, or at least she had picked a very badly illuminated place.
She sent her figurines to help Alrai, exploding whenever a snake got too close.
And she ran away, to where Vibora couldn’t reach.
…
“Look, your friend left you.”
“Do we look like friends?” Alrai backtalked, still on the ground. “I can take you on my own.”
“Not in a fight.” The woman said, from inside that spiraling, coiling mess of snakes.
A paper figurine tried to explode close to her face, but got easily slapped away, exploding against the wall.
The remaining five also tried to get close before exploding.
Alrai refrained his mouth from twitching. Did she leave them on autopilot? They weren’t that dumb before.
Maybe Velvet really did abandon him here. They weren’t friends, or on friendly terms.
Oh, whatever, I have won quite a few points already… But a last gamble goes a long way!
Vibora saw Alrai laughing alone.
She was aware of the Siberetti’s infamous reputation. Everyone was. That only made her more wary of Alrai, since she didn’t know what tricks he would pull when cornered.
Better dispatch him now.
She uncoiled her whole body, increasing her snake’s length, and throwing them all at once to overwhelm him.
Alrai jumped backwards, but he was surrounded by all sides.
Cutting the ones that were blocking his movement to the side, a few managed to slither its way up to him, biting his legs and shoulders.
He rolled on the floor to remove them, even when that made him tear a few skin pieces.
Vibora squinted, feeling a dark pleasure raise over her body. She licked her lips. Even when Siberettis didn’t scream, harming them made any mage happy.
Click.
A lonely paper figurine teleported itself to Vibora’s face. She was going to hit it, when it started sparkling.
Having made her body become snakes, and sending them to Alrai, she had no hands to cover her eyes.
Vibora screamed. It was too much light, too soon!
Her body curled instinctively, almost falling down. Nine more figurines appeared close to her, also starting popping colorful, blinding lights uncontrollably.
Even closing her eyes did nothing to protect them. The lights had some sort of magic that made them unable to be blocked.
She decided to escape, throwing her body to the floor and crawling away. But then, something activated when she hit the ground, and she felt herself chained down.
The lights barely let her see anything more than silhouettes, but that was enough to see someone walking leisurely towards her.
She felt the person using some paper things. Strengthening charms, she guessed.
She saw Velvet use one.
Then two.
Three, four.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
At the fifth one, Vibora almost flinched.
Aren’t those too many?!
She tried to escape, to no avail. Whatever was holding her down, was stronger than her.
Six, seven.
Eight, nine.
Stop already, do you want to kill me?!
Ten.
The first thing she felt was the chaining spell turning off.
The second, was a kick to her torso, that sent her flying to the wall, almost making her part of it.
The third was getting the knockout, losing and disappearing.
…
Alrai coughed between gasps for air, supporting himself against the wall.
He was not a night lover like Vibora, so the lights didn’t affect him that much. He still kept his eyes closed, taking a deserved rest.
Maybe he will just go on and disappear too.
…
Something was pinching and pulling his cheek.
“Is this how you wake your prince up?”
“You are no prince. Where’s your castle?” Velvet kept doing that until Alrai opened his eyes.
“You’re mean, woman.”
“I have some charms to stop bleeding, but only if you can keep going.” She didn’t want to waste materials, after all.
“And cruel, have I said that already?” He looked at Velvet, who was crouched in front of him, holding her chin up with one hand, and pulling his cheek with the other. “Go on, patch me up. I won’t leave happy if I don’t kick you at least once.”
“That’s the spirit!” She started patching him up. “The hell did you do? Agh, that thing looks awful.” She poked something.
“That thing is my face. And I am very good looking, thank you so much.”
“Does your grandma tell you that? Awawawa!” She winced when Alrai pinched her waist. “Oi! I’m nursing you for free here!”
“For free you say.” He still reclined back, letting Velvet patch his wounds.
“By the way… what is an Ophidia? Vibora called me that.”
Alrai gave an exaggerated sigh. “I cannot even rest in peace… Don’t pinch! Well, long history short, some mages wanted to have an exclusive club for being little special boys.”
“Guess you were not invited?”
“Damn straight. Who doesn’t want me? No one, I’ll tell you. Continuing. Those mages think that a true, real mage needs to have eaten one demon at least, to be closer to the Primordial or whatever. An Ophidia is just someone whose first demonic snack was a snake.”
“They don’t even call themselves a special term, they use ‘True Mages’ to call themselves. A bunch of narcissists.”
“Someone is cranky for not being in the special guys club.”
“Do you know how hard it is eating a demon? Catching them outside their pocket dimensions is a rare occurrence, and if you get one, selling it is usually more rewarding.” He felt Velvet’s gaze change upon hearing that. “A million auris, and sometimes more. They sell by bidding.”
“Hey! Don’t cry over me now!”
…
It took Alrai five minutes to somewhat recover a bit of energy. During that time, some more notices were appearing.
Velvet counted them to cope. Unless someone just spent the whole time hiding, there were fifteen fighters. One was defeated by Alrai, two by her, three by both of them, including a Champion.
With them, those counted eight.
Some notices of defeated mages had sounded during that. Velvet counted five.
Three of those were defeated by the same players. The team of
So, if there were only fifteen fighters, only four of them remained. Velvet, Alrai and those two.
“Can you take one final battle?”
“Yeah.”
“We will ambush them.” Alrai wasn’t in a good state, Velvet noticed, and she wasn’t going to lose money because he was prideful. “Go bury some seeds and charms.” Velvet gave him a few of each.
“What will you do?”
“Craft more charms, I’m going to use all the materials I’ve grabbed. Let’s explode those two.”
…
After they had an extremely well built corner, they waited.
It seemed some watchers were getting bored, since they offered money for them to move.
It pained Velvet, but building all those traps took too much time to just undo it, so she refused.
After a while, which worked nicely for them since it helped Alrai recover, steps were heard.
“They are over here…” A feminine voice sounded. “I can feel some traps.”
“Hm, only weak mages fight like this. I expected more for the ones that defeated the Champion, but it seems I was mistaken.”
I know that voice… She didn’t even stop Alrai from going out, waving his arms around.
“Hahahaha! Oh, this is great! We met again! This is truly destiny!”
Igern made a disgusted sound. “I knew it was you, using your name like an imbecile.”
“Maehdon…” Velvet said. “Or are you Creftalia?”
“I’m Creftalia…” The girl said. “And… It’s also my name…” She seemed sad at being called part of the imbeciles that used their names by Igern.
“Damn, what an asshole, you bully your poor teammate?” Alrai said.
“Yeah, zero shame, no wonder she looks like being kidnaped.” Velvet added, nodding.
“Don’t worry, you poor lady, we will rescue you from that petty, ugly, resting bitch face syndrome!”
“It’s… It’s not like that…” The poor, unwilling victimized damsel in distress said in a low voice.
“I am really going to beat you two into a coma.” Igern said, pissed at them already.