Chapter 50

I slowly gathered myself as I got up to follow Artina to her supposedly new friends, maybe they were just strangers she just met on her way to the training facility. Had they been relieved when she left to join me? What if they didn’t want her back in their group? Would that include me too? I should most definitely have stayed at the bench, maybe even excused myself, saying that I had somewhere else to be, the library, I do have things I need to research on. I will just pass them like I hadn’t been meaning to talk to them, like they weren’t even there. They didn’t know Artina had asked me to come for an introduction. Who am I kidding? They most probably have one of those superhearing abilities talked about for fantasy species.

“Hi, I’m Hartie from Kenya. Yange!” I quickly corrected my slip up. “I’m Hartie from the town of Yange in the Barony of Sjuma, Choska County.”

“You really went ahead and listed them all, didn’t you?” the only other male in the group said, a tall, well-build, most definitely handsome human of light complexion with short spiky brown hair. “Why did you stop at County? You should have gone all the way.”

I was sure he was just making light conversation, trying to ease me into the group, but calling me out on what had been a slip of my cool guy façade was most definitely not the way to go. I could feel my hackles rising, and my frail self quickly retreating into the confines of my self-made prison.

“Maybe I know nothing else after that,” I stated flatly. I really had tried to keep the irritation out of my tone, but there was just that much I could do.

“Like he said, this is Hartie, the first runner-up from our barony,” Artina took over from what I thought was a rapidly tensing interaction.

“Barely,” I added unconsciously.

“What? You mean you could have won the fight?” Artina asked in mock surprise.

“No! I mean I was barely the first runner-up,” I corrected her anyway, but I was sure she already knew what I had meant.

“Hehehe,” what is with that villainous laughter? But as ignorant to my internal stupefaction, Artina continued, “Good of you to acknowledge that.”

Then she turned to point to the irritating male, “This untactful idiot is Akos, and this is Mutex.”

Artina had pointed to the first of the females; she was moderately tall with a light tan skin tone, and an angular face with a sharp nose and piercing black eyes, and long wavy hair so black it seemed to glisten under the training facility’s light.

“And lastly, we have this pretty doe-eyed gem here, Sunshine.”

I turned to look at what she had called pretty and doe-eyed, I was not decisive enough to outright call someone pretty, but the doe-eyes were staring at me, like really, really staring at me. There was something unnatural, unhuman, about them, and I just couldn’t help what came out of me then,

“You are not entirely human, are you?”

I really should have reminded Xan to give me that second species talk he had wanted to.

“Yeah,” she answered in a sweet melodious voice. “I have a little bit of elven and animus blood in me, can you tell?” she asked, blinking those eyes at me.

“No,” I answered truthfully. There was no way for me tell if she had any traits of any other species other than human because, first of all, I didn’t know what those traits would be for mixed species, and the more obvious reason, “you look like a big-eyed bubbly human girl to me.”

Shit, I cursed as I realized that the last part had come out loud. But looking around, it didn’t seem to have bothered anyone.

“Ooh… then why did you ask that?” she asked, looking thoughtfully at me.

“I don’t know, a gut feeling?”

“Really?” she turned all blinky again, and I knew what she was about to say couldn’t lead anywhere good. “Then can your gut feeling tell you what my animus ancestry is?”

I knew it, I fucking knew it. I need something inoffensive, cute, loved by everybody, doe-eyed…

“Rabbit!”

“Heh…” and she got this deer in headlights face going, which was most definitely not helping her case if she wanted to claim otherwise.

Akos hiccupped before he cracked in laughter, I could see Mutex trying to hold her mirth in too. But I kept my gaze mostly on… Sunshine? How had that not been the first thing I commented on? Even though I knew I wasn’t in any near mortal danger for that answer, I still didn’t want to offend her. Any more than I already had, apparently.

“I like him,” Akos said as he began to get off his laughing fit. “Rabbit! That’s a good one, I should remember it for future reference.”

That comment snapped Sunshine from her frozen status as she loomed on me, getting way into my personal space as she said, “I’ll have you know I’m a powerful feral ferocious apex predator.”

And as expected from such a comment, Akos was back into his laughing fit, causing Sunshine to retreat a little with a somewhat wounded expression on her face. And I found myself petting her head, a clear violation of over ten personal rules I forcibly adhered to, telling her,

“Easy now, don’t mind him, he is just a goofy idiot.”

Purr. I’ll be damned, it’s a cat then.

“Some apex predator you are,” Akos commented, and I found myself throwing him the most death glare I could manage. I was surprised when he actually blanched.

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What was I doing? They were friends in some way, this could be normal behavior between them. As cats didn’t like sudden movements, especially unstable ones, I slowly pulled back from the petting as I began to get self-conscious of what I was actually doing. Looking at Sunshine’s behavior though, I realized I wasn’t the only one embarrassed by the whole thing.

“Where are you from?” I asked in an attempt to escape from my embarrassment. “You already know where I’m from, down to the village.”

“The village?” someone asked, I wasn’t sure who though.

“Town, I meant town,” I corrected, wondering internally if it were possible that the Realm of Mesily didn’t have any villages at all.

“Attya.”

“Kadgo.”

“Thaini.”

I couldn’t tell with certainty who had said what, but I had a strong suspicion that Sunshine had said Thaini, but the worst part was that I couldn’t even tell whether those where baronies, or cities and towns.

“Are all those baronies?” I asked for confirmation.

Artina nodded her head, answering for them, “Yeah, and you should know at least that.”

I scratched my head as I looked away in embarrassment.

That surprised me, a lot. I had been so sure that they were longtime friends, they still could be, but with their different baronies, it was highly unlikely.

“What? You don’t know any of them?” Akos asked, and I felt like punching him. Artina had been right, he was a plain idiot.

“I thought you all came from the same Barony,” I said instead, keeping my punches for when we eventually met in the arena, hopefully.

“Why? Because we are all so charming together?” he asked as he tried to place his hand across Mutex’s shoulder, but all he got in return was an elbow to the kidney.

“No,” Mutex answered instead, “We all just met.”

And with that, I turned to stare accusingly at Artina. She just smiled shyly, which I was sure was an act too, as she waved me off.

“What are you looking at me like that for? I told you they were new friends,” she defended herself poorly.

I wanted to argue against that but I just didn’t feel like I had the energy to do so anymore. There had been no reason for me to try so hard to be friendly with them, and with that realization, my driving force just left me up and dry.

I slumped down on the bench, but Sunshine beside me was beaming up as she looked at everyone happily, “There is five of us now, we can form a group and plough through the competition.”

“Group?” I asked in confusion, what did she mean by that.

But my question seemed to draw more attention from Akos than her comment had. “Are you just as uninformed as she is?”

I looked from him to Sunshine, trying to figure out how to answer that question. What kind of uninformed was he talking about? I tried looking at Sunshine for a clue but her unabashed wriggling wasn’t helpful at all. He must have noticed how confused his question made me, as he turned to Sunshine instead.

“You can’t form a group at this point of the competition, groups are formed before The Grand Competition begins,” he said with a tired tone, quickly deflating Sunshine’s mood.

They might have just met recently, but it looked like he was getting tired of having to give information, that was considered general, to Sunshine. Little did he know that his days were about to get even worse.

“What groups are you talking about?”

He looked at me like I had just crashed his pretty little eggs, but then he sighed in resignation as he began to explain.

“Groups for the group competition part of The Grand Competition. They are—”

Sunshine took over from him enthusiastically, “Five people group up together in the arena and face off against other five people. They then beat each up until one group emerges the clear victor. For a victory to be called, all members of one group have to be rendered unable to continue fighting while at least one member of the other group must be at least capable of continuing to fight. They get very engaging, and are fun to watch, and participate in.”

“Oh… I don’t think that is something for me,” I said after hearing that explanation.

“What?” Artina asked, “You don’t like the brutally of it?”

“Oh, no! I have no issues with carnage—”

“I knew we were kin,” Sunshine said as she beamed up even more, leaving me to wonder how that was even possible.

“— but working in a group is not my thing,” I finished as I tried to ignore that statement, we were the least bit kin.

“Why not?” Sunshine asked.

“I like my individuality, freedom. I feel like groups are too restricting, I don’t know,” I shrugged, hoping someone else would take over the conversation, Artina?

“But groups are so fun, you get to work together to beat people up,” Sunshine wasn’t letting go, and I was beginning to think the ‘we are kin’ statement wasn’t exactly a good thing.

“What if you accidentally hit your colleague while in the middle of the fight?” Mutex asked a question I had never thought of, adding another point to my list of reasons to avoid groups.

Sunshine’s response was to get an inquisitive look before replying, “I’ve never thought about that. One day, I’ll try it out.”

Mutex nearly exclaimed something, but she shook her head before lowly saying, “All the more reason not to be in a group with you.”

“Why not? It could be fun,” Akos piped up.

“Of course you would say that,” it was Mutex’s turn to give a resigned sigh.

I turned to Artina then, “Why were there no groups in Sjuma?”

“I don’t know. As far as I gathered, Sjuma has never had even a single group to call its own,” she answered. Gathered, had she actually researched about the group competition?

“What about the old competition participants? Why don’t they group together to form one?”

“As they reach Level 40, they leave for better areas. This county doesn’t have the kind of facilities that can help someone maintain Level 40. I don’t even think Dawkins will be there next year,” she said.

“Shouldn’t they stay here at the low Level areas, make it easier to advance?”

“Why? If it’s for the gold, there are baronies that reward their competitors with more gold than we are getting at the Counties,”

“Then why don’t all people go to those baronies for their first fights?”

“Because—”

“Hey, we can have this talk later. We came here to train, let’s do that,” Sunshine said as she got up from her bench and pulled me along, with so much force I nearly toppled over.

Just how strong is she?

“Speak for yourself. I can talk and train at the same time,” Akos said as he showed off his flexing muscles doing bicep curls.

“That’s because you are lifting nothing,” Sunshine said as she picked her own pair of barbells. What was being called nothing was most definitely not nothing. Artina had already moved to a… benchpress? I think it was. She had Mutex with her.

Looking at the weights they were lifting, it became pretty clear just how far behind I was in terms of [Strength]. Akos had begun easily squatting what I was sure was more than double what I had been squatting just moments before. If that was the difference between [Strength] at level 21 and whatever his was at, I assumed in the thirties, maybe early forties, then what could those who had it at level 60 do, squat a whole thousand kilos like it was nothing? Maybe even more?

I slowly began on my modest weights, as much as I wanted to get at their level, I needed to work my way up there, but it wasn’t easy with them there, doing their heavy reps so effortlessly. I felt like a kid who had somehow stumbled into the adult section. One day, one day, I’ll be better than them.

By the end of it, I was out of Stamina by afternoon and was forced to call it quits while they kept going, a clear indicator of how much I needed to gain before the Counties actually began. Not only was my low [Strength] detrimental to my overall performance, it was also affecting my [Stamina] in strength based activities.

I slowly shuffled my way back to The Competitors’ Inn hating myself for choosing such a faraway training facility, though the number of competitors at any given time never went past ten, which was highly appreciated.

When I arrived at the counter, I only said ‘heavy protein’ before retreating to the table I had used in the morning. I wondered if there was anyone else who had such weird ordering habits as I did as I went through my meat-themed meal. Then, it was off to my room for a much needed clean up and rest, I didn’t have the stamina to do even a single Skill.