“Liam, I’m worried about you.”
Shayla’s simple statement came between matches, and it was quiet enough that I nearly missed it in the rowdy chatting of the students around us.
We’d found a spot that was removed from the other spectators, higher up on the tiers that would give us a better view of the entire competition. There were several empty seats on either side of our row, and I still had Kassandra wrapped around me and sitting basically in my lap. Rieka had my right side, with Shayla on my left and Jane on hers. We’d gone high enough that there wasn’t anyone behind us, both to give us room to lean back and so Shayla’s wings wouldn’t be in the way for anyone else.
“In what manner?” I asked gently, turning to look towards Shayla. Kassandra lay snuggled into my shoulder again, and I kept the little troublemaker there by running my fingers gently through her hair in a slow and steady rhythm which kept my affectionate noodle content.
“These fights… They are vicious. The majority of summoned creatures seem like they are nothing more than barely tamed beasts. I’m worried that you are going to get hurt really badly.”
Shayla’s quiet words got the attention of the other girls, and both Rieka and Jane were glancing towards us as well, while several caretakers quickly raked the sands of the arena clean to disperse the area stained with blood from the previous fight.
The previous battle had been a clash between a large earthen bear and a fast-moving flying insect with several sharp stingers. The insect had continually struck the bear again and again, evading the counter attacks of the lumbering creature without a problem, until the bear had finally succumbed to the venom in the stings and collapsed.
“She does have a point,” Jane added her two cents to the pot. “I hadn’t really thought about it until now, but the idea that we are basically coercing you into doing this for our classes feels… petty?”
“I think that is just because you two have known Liam more as the person, opposed to the true force of nature that Kass and I have seen him as,” Rieka said gently. “Don’t get me wrong, I worry about him too and dislike that we are asking this of him. But I’m also sure that Liam will be fine. Considering some of the things I’ve seen him tackle, I can’t think of it any other way, really.”
“Yep. Our big, strong human is gonna kick butt out there. No need to worry or fear. He’s got this handled,” Kassandra purred sleepily, and I felt a soft sensation on my neck when she pressed a kiss there. “Just trust in Liam. He’s got this. We’ve done all we can at this point to make him stronger. He’s going to win this competition, so just have faith and trust in his determination. I doubt anything here is as dangerous as that sack monster we dealt with in the ruins.”
Shayla shivered at the mention of the creature, while Jane grimaced, and Rieka nodded.
We’d told the other two all about the monster and the eerie way its blood had corroded everything it had touched. It still confused me as to why it hadn’t been able to escape the complex. The explanation I’d been given that it would have taken too much of the creature’s strength still didn’t make sense to me. Cariad and Cerebaton never mentioned anything about their entropic natures needing energy to dissolve matter in the past, but I was only just now experimenting with the entropic magic myself, so I figured I might learn more with time.
“I’m still torn about that. I want to explore those ruins, or one of the other ones marked on the map, but I also am worried we will run into more creatures like that. It’s a hideously risky endeavor after all…” Shayla had rubbed her arms as if she was cold, so I looped an arm around her shoulders and pulled the tall woman to my side.
Shayla stiffened at first, clearly surprised and uncertain in response to the action, but quickly realized it was just a hug and relaxed into it. Even quicker, I felt the soft tickle of her fluffy antennae stroking over my forehead as the little appendages seemingly had minds of their own, and began running over my head like two inquisitive little dogs sniffing away.
“It’ll be fine. We will be well prepared before we go in there again. I know that Rieka and Kassandra agree on that one, right?”
“Of course, Liam. We need to finish exploring the rest of that ruin up in the mountains, then we can turn it over to my mother for study. I still dislike having to wait on that, but I understand why your contacts asked.” Rieka shot me a small smile as she watched me comforting Shayla.
When we met eyes over top of Kassandra’s fluffy mane of curls, my wolf-eared princess leaned over and brushed a kiss across my knuckles with a small smile. From the twinkle in Rieka’s eyes, I could tell she wanted to do far more, maybe even mirror Kassandra and settle down onto my lap, but her position forced her to be more reserved, and I would respect that for now.
I’ll just have to make sure to spoil her later when I get the chance, I thought with a grin that made Rieka blush slightly, as she clearly knew I had something naughty on my mind.
A bone-rattling roar from down in the stadium that drew all of our attention to the sands interrupted our conversation.
There were four students down there, a group of three familiar wolf kin girls in the fine clothes of noblewomen, and a single male with the scales and clawed hands that reminded me of one of Valda’s people. The trio were facing off against the young man from across the arena, while their summoned monster paced the sand in front of them with an eager stride.
The source of the bellow had been the large, quadrupedal monster that was obviously the trio’s summoned partner. It looked just like I remembered it. Large, with heavy armor plates running the length of its body. Four stumpy legs supported a thick body, three toed feet tipped with blunt-looking claws. A mouth that ran from the tip of its wedge-shaped head to nearly its shoulder scissored open to show a forest of sharp teeth as it let out another eager roar.
Standing in front of the young man was a large feline, about the size of a lynx, with dark blue fur in a spotted pattern like a jaguar, though the cat had a far thicker build. It yowled defiantly at the wedge-headed monster, fur puffing up to make it look larger.
Before any of us could comment, Rainfist signaled the start of the fight.
The battle was short and brutal.
The blue feline did its best, but the thick scales and hide of the other monster defeated it at every turn. Several times, the cat’s claws left thin white lines on the armor of the wedge-headed monster as it lashed out. However, despite its sheer mass, the armored monstrosity was quick.
It lunged at the cat and missed the first three times, its broad maw easily large enough to engulf the feline if it got hold of it. The cat proved more than capable of dodging, though, either jumping to one side or straight up to race along the creature’s armored back. But the fourth lunge, the thickset monster feinted to one side but slapped out with one thickly muscled foreleg.
The blow connected as the cat tried to dodge in that direction, and there was a cracking of breaking bones preceding the feline being launched through the air to slam into the stone wall of the arena. With its prey finally immobilized, the armored beast roared in triumph and charged forward after the cat, mouth wide to snatch it up whole.
“Yield!” yelled the scaled student, snapping his hands in the gesture to dismiss his companion before the other could get there in time to finish it off. A flash of blue light snatched away the feline even as the piercing sound of Rainfist’s horn echoed over the battlefield to signal the end of the fight.
The sound of the horn barely had the time to begin fading before the thunderous roar of the quadrupedal monster overpowered it. The beast wheeled towards the other summoner, mouth still gaping wide enough to engulf him whole.
I was just beginning to move, knowing that there wasn’t any way for me to get there in time to intervene anyway, when the great monster was engulfed in shimmering brown light and dissolved before it made it more than a step.
“Sorry about that,” said the snide voice of the leader of the trio of wolf kin summoners. “He doesn’t like it when his meals get away from him. I assume we are done then?” The wolf kin woman directed the last part at Rainfist, who was giving the speaker a sour look for not immediately restraining their beast at the statement of yield.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
A nod from the instructor saw the trio retreat back into their own gate and vanish from sight while Rainfist hurried over to go check on the other student, who had tripped over himself in his haste to get away from the raging summon.
“That doesn’t help my worry,” Shayla said in a quiet voice. “You promise you’ll come back safe if you end up fighting that thing?”
I didn’t even hesitate to answer that question. It wasn’t a hard promise to make, after all. I definitely wanted to come back from that fight in one piece.
“Of course, Shayla. I promise I’ll come back safely if I have to fight that beast.”
A flash of light around my vision and scrolling text made me grimace as the System made its opinion known.
Defeat the Deep Hunter and return to your contracted companions safely.
Reward - 800 SP
“Deep hunter?” I muttered while studying the mission that I’d been assigned. It wasn’t what I was hoping for in tasks today. I’d quietly been hoping that the System would assign me something a little simpler, but the reward would definitely be worth it.
Does that mean that the System knows I’ll be facing it? Or is it just acting preemptively? I wondered while the girls exchanged looks before there was a bit of shuffling movement.
I started in surprise when I felt something soft brush against my left arm. I looked over to see Jane leaning into Shayla’s side comfortingly and resting her head on my arm as well. Rieka pressing in on my right to receive comfort as well told me they were all worried to varying degrees at this point.
“It’ll be okay, girls,” I said gently, shifting to get my arms around as many of them as possible and pulling them into a gentle hug.
I did my best to not think on the idea I was promising something I didn’t know if I could guarantee, instead focusing on the fact I’d be doing my absolute best to ensure I made good on that promise instead.
<><><>
My next fight was thankfully not the deep hunter, that much I was very thankful for.
While doing my best to reassuringly cuddle four different girls wasn’t really any burden I’d complain about, it had been a bit awkward. I’d also been distracted trying to think of how I’d deal with the creature when I fought it. Given how powerfully it had dominated its opponents, I was fairly sure I would end up against it eventually, though.
Instead, I ended up in the arena against the large, flying insect that had taken down the earth-aligned bear. And even better, the girls had remembered to give me a direct order to win the fight for them, which generated another quest.
Assist your contracted companions, Kassandra Silverscale, Rieka Coldeye, Shayla Valo, and Jane Carsan, by defeating your opponent in this round of the competition.
REWARD - 100 SP.
Wonder if they were dumb enough to just do the fights one after another? I guess I’ll know shortly, depending on what matches occur after me.
Since we had already gone through the first round of fights, Rainfist just checked on the two teams to ensure that we were ready before signaling the beginning of the duel.
The insect monster was even more ferocious up close than it had been when we watched its previous fight up in the stands of the arena.
Nearly four feet long, from the top of its head to the base of its curved stinger, the thing looked like someone had up-sized a flying ant and then equipped it with a curved stinger shaped an awful lot like a cavalry saber. Each of its six legs ended in a hooked claw that would allow it to hold on tightly once it got hold of its target. Mandibles clicked in front of its face that looked sharp enough to shear right through an arm or honestly, anything else it got hold of.
The only thing that looked like a weak spot on the entire creature was its diaphanous wings, but they buzzed so quickly to keep it aloft that I barely could see them as more than a glittering blur behind the creature. The bright light of the afternoon made its red-brown carapace glitter like clay-rich earth, and the buzz of its wings had a menacing drone to it.
As the echoes of Rainfist’s signal faded away, the insect lunged towards me, its hooked limbs spread wide to try to catch hold of me. Rather than trying to meet it, or even block the attack, I threw myself out of the way and into a roll to the right this time.
With an angry buzz, the insect arrested its charge before reorienting on me and charging once more even as I rolled to my feet.
Throwing myself into a second roll, this time ducking down low to roll underneath it, I heard the whistling sound of its stinger slicing through the air where my head had been moments before.
Again, I watched the insect slew to a stop, its wings beating furiously to slow it down and then turn it.
When this bug fought the bear, it did it with dive bombs from above. Why is it just charging me outright like this? It feels like it’s underestimating me, since it’s not being nearly as wary as it was of the bear. Time to change that, I thought furiously and dug the toe of my right boot into the ground before kicking upwards towards the insect monster.
Normally, kicking sand in someone’s face was a somewhat useful way to distract your opponent for a moment. Given the size of the insect monster, I had a fairly large target to hit, but I also wasn’t expecting sand to do a whole hell of a lot to distract the creature. It wasn’t as if it had eyelids to close over the bulging compound eyes it had.
Which is why I ensured that when my foot kicked out, rather than sand, I was propelling large lumps of compressed sandstone in a shotgun effect. My Manipulate Element ability had been something I was trying to work into more tactics, and this was one that I’d come up with for distracting opponents. Admittedly, I’d been thinking more along the lines of more humanoid bandits rather than a giant, flying murder-bug, but the idea still had potential.
The buzzing monster shrieked in surprise as the hard stones peppered into its body, throwing off its wings enough that the bug aborted its charge and dodged to one side, clearly expecting me to try to go after it, but I didn’t move. Instead, I took the opportunity to settle my stance once more and spread my arms wide in a challenge.
“Come on, you flying asshole, you think you can take me?” I called up at the bug, specifically focusing on the idea of speaking in English, so that the natural translation power I had as a Traveler didn’t kick in. Just yelling profanity at it felt like enough to try and provoke the beast.
The bug hesitated, so I threw in some rude hand gestures. I had no idea how intelligent the thing was, but ultimately, that didn’t matter. I just wanted to annoy it enough to get it to come back down.
While playing matador with the winged nightmare was good training, I didn’t want to worry my girls too much. Also, trying to use a competition as training seemed like a bad idea in general to me. It puts too much at risk after all. The only reason I’d used the dirt shotgun spell was to get enough room to set myself.
I smirked as I shifted my stance, putting my left arm forward with my palm up and my right tucked back behind my back while I assumed a side-on stance. Mimicking one of the legends of martial arts, I beckoned the flying murder-bug to come at me while keeping my stance loose and prepared to react.
The bug buzzed its wings angrily—clearly intelligent enough to understand I was mocking it—and charged again.
This time, it was coming in at me from a steeper angle. When it had evaded the earth spell, it had moved higher to hover above the ground. I waited for my opportune moment as it approached, and I distantly heard the yells from my girls to dodge, move, do something. But my body was angled enough that they couldn’t see what I had done to my right arm until I struck.
Screeching in joy at the fact I hadn’t dodged away this time, the bug lashed out with its claws and I reacted. The motion was smooth and practiced, which made sense since I had to do it several times a day after all. My right hand came out of concealment, my hand having changed into a broad, flat crab claw, and snapped out to meet the flying bug’s middle-left talon at the hook. I sidestepped smoothly, though I didn’t try to get out of its way entirely, just out of the way of its stinger and body.
Grunting with the exertion, I cinched down with my new claw-hand and the bug let out a scream of surprise as hundreds of pounds of compressive force locked onto the barbed hook at the end of its leg. The rest of that practiced, smooth motion that I had perfected from being nearly tackled by Kassandra hundreds of times since I met my lovely little snake, happened on instinct.
I let the creature fly past me, pivoting and leaning so that the force of its charge instead spun me in place. Rather than drawing the bug towards me though, I kept my right arm extended and angled the large, flat claw so that it carried the bug upwards, dragging the insect by its pinned foreleg, using the claw like a bird’s wing.
I let the force of the charge carry me around half a turn before abruptly twisting my wrist to bring that shell ‘sail’ down and slammed the flying insect headfirst into the ground like I was bringing a sledgehammer down, using its arm as the haft of the sledgehammer.
The insect impacted the loose sand of the arena floor with a solid thump and a quiet crunch. Its wings continued to buzz furiously, but it was clearly stunned. Releasing its trapped foreleg, I brought my left leg up to my chest before planting it firmly into the back of the giant murder-bug, right between its wings, and pinned it to the floor of the arena.
My heart was pounding in my chest and I bent forward, raising my claw-hand over my head like a club when the word I’d been waiting for echoed around the arena.
“Yield!”
The edges of my vision flashed, and the notice I had completed my quest scrolled past, allowing me to breathe a sigh of relief.