Chapter 67

The fight felt like it had gone on for eternity. My body was long past the point of feeling tired; I could barely feel my own limbs anymore. The fact that we were no longer using any form of Mana attacks probably meant that we had ran out a long time ago, at least I had. And for that matter, what had happened to our weapons?

I looked around…

It looked like we were in a narrow, somewhat dark alley, with the only illumination coming from a flickering street crystal a few meters from our location. Had I actually seen one flickering in all my time in Mesily? I didn’t think so. A slight drizzle peppered me as I faced off against my adversary, taking controlled breaths of the chilling cold night air. If the trend continued to hold true, I was about to die a misery death. Pointless really. I felt like not doing anything and just letting them get it over with quickly.

That thought brought to my attention that there was more than one adversary, and it is sad to admit that it took me a couple seconds to get a feel of their essences. If this body is aware of my presence, they must think me a useless idiot. Their clenching of fists on that thought had me wondering if that was actually possible. Scary!

But there was nothing I could do, after all, I was nothing more than a place-in co-pilot.

I felt the tension in my knuckles rise as the body clenched their fists further, eyes solely focused on the shadowy figure ahead of them. The tension was high, nearly palpable to me. It felt worse than what I felt in the arenas; a polite reminder that in the arenas, we were just playing at fighting. This was the real thing, with actual lives on the line. Only mine though, truly.

Without warning, the other figure lunged forward, their fist aimed straight at my jaw. I ducked, barely in time, feeling the rush of air as the blow narrowly missed me. I countered with a swift kick to their trunk, but they were quick, dodging the attack and throwing a series of punches that forced me back against the hard, rough wall.

Adrenaline surged through my veins, my heart pounding in my chest as I fought to regain the upper hand. Really, just give up, you are a goner already. The body didn’t pay my resignation any heed, blocking a punch aimed for my face as I delivered a powerful uppercut that surprisingly sent the opponent into the air.

I checked and rechecked my [Status], confirming that I was really out of Mana. I hadn’t felt any stir up, but the body had proved quite adept at using Mana. I couldn’t put it past it to use Mana without me knowing.

The adversary recovered quickly, their eyes glinting in the shadowy alley, the only thing clearly visible of them, as they launched themself at me. The fight went on, a trade of punches and kicks, more blows landing than not. And I attributed that to the state of tiredness my body felt.

Why are the others not attacking? I thought to myself, as the body punched and punched again. Don’t tell me the opponent had asked for one of those honorable one-on-one fights. Oh Mesily, no! I would have none of that!

I felt anger rush through me, I really hated those things. I didn’t think there was anything honorable about them. Besides, one should be doing their all to win a fight, no matter how dishonorable they had to be. I felt a primal emotion rise up from somewhere deep within me as I unleashed a series of punches that nearly dropped my opponent to the ground. I could have sworn the body was doing what I wanted it to do as I closed in on him, evading a weak attempt at a punch as I got a hold of their head and twisted with all my strength, the sound of their snapping neck a welcome relief.

I watched their lifeless body drop to the ground in a near slow motion pace, slowly preparing myself for the next fight, as it was far from over. As the body landed silently to the ground, I felt something thud into my chest, nearly throwing me to the ground. Looking down, I saw the protruding head of an arrow. I felt the tension in me ease as I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. Finally, the body gave up, slowly dropping to the ground.

“What!? He said nothing about what we should do after he died.”

…

I woke up groggy, and all sweaty. I was beginning to hate these not-dreams. Who would like dreaming about their death, that’s what I thought it was, past or future, nearly once every week? Maybe The Grand Competition wasn’t such a great idea for me after all. Before it began, I had had zero such dreams. Or at least I think I had, it was possible that I might have forgotten about the dreams, not everyone remembered all their dreams. And if I was already forgetting what was happening while I was awake, who is to say what else I forgot about.

I slowly went through my morning routine, mostly because I knew that I had a free day, but the grogginess had something to do with it too. Muscle soreness had become a constant companion for me every morning, all mornings.

Then off to breakfast for me, the so-called most important meal of the day. Most people have more than ten hours under them before they have breakfast, compared to the six to eight hours between meals during the day, of course they would think breakfast was the most important meal of them all. They were starving.

I picked up Artina and the top finisher from Sjuma, or they picked me, on my way to the library. And after minutes of unnecessary conversation, it became clear that only Artina and I were contributing. I had thought her deaf, but she reacted to the things we were saying alright.

I just couldn’t take it anymore.

“Are you dumb?” I asked her, and they both looked at me funny, accusingly more like. Had I somehow mispronounced it? It wouldn’t be the first time. “I meant dumb, as in mute. Incapable of speech.”

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“Look, in all the time I’ve interacted with you, not that much, I know, you have never said a word, or made a sound come to think of it.”

And she still stayed silent. It was unfamiliar of me to be the one prompting someone to actually talk, maybe I was being a hypocrite and should have minded my own business, but it was too late for that. I decided to stay quiet for a while, let the conversation drift to other topics. It was what I would have wanted if I were in her position, assuming she was like me.

In the end, it was Artina who spoke next, and she literally floored me. “Don’t mind her, she’s just shy.”

I stared at her unblinking for a few seconds, I couldn’t believe what she had said. So much that I repeated it to myself just to be sure.

Don’t mind her, she said, she’s just shy.

It still didn’t make sense to me, so I turned to the subject of the conversation. Was she… she couldn’t be. But those rosy cheeks, the downcast gaze with the slight eye twitches that meant she was probably sneaking glazes. Ooh Mesily no. No, no, no. Who did she think she was fooling, not me that’s for sure.

I turned to Artina then, not bothering to hide my dubiousness, “Shy? Her? I’m shy,” I said, pointing to myself.

“No, you aren’t,” she said as she shook her head, not bothered at all by the look I was shooting at her. “She’s. I would know.”

“No, it’s you that doesn’t care whether I’m shy or not.”

I pointed to the still faking third member of our group, how did I still not know her name? “That is what a deadly killer looks like, and this,” I continued, gesturing to myself again, “is what an innocent shy looks like.”

“No, you’ve got it all wrong. It’s the other way around,” she insisted.

“What? Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Has she brainwashed you or something?”

“I know her better than you do, better than I know you.”

“Yeah, brainwashed,” I concluded, there was no other explanation for why she thought so.

…

“Your opponent was tossing you around for the whole fight,” Artina said, smiling, laughing at me, more like.

“You watched my fight? What about your fight?”

“Your fight was in the early morning, while mine was the last fight of the day. I had time enough to spare.”

“And you should have used it to scout your next opponent, not to come watch me.” I was more worried about my embarrassment. It was one thing for nameless faceless strangers watching my fights, and another to know that one of the people I knew was out there watching. Why hadn’t I had any issues with Paul watching my fights in the Baronies?

“It wouldn’t have mattered anyway.”

It took me a couple of seconds for what she meant to register.

“You didn’t make it?” I asked surprised. I turned to look at the supposedly shy top finisher of Sjuma, but it was Artina who answered for her.

“She didn’t make it either.”

“Really?” I asked in bewilderment.

I had been glad when I saw her on the other side of the ladder of destiny. I knew deep in my bones that there was no way I could win against her, at least not yet.

“Who took her out?”

“Sunshine.”

She speaks.

And Sunshine? I knew she was not to be messed with, but good enough to take out… why can’t I just ask her her name? It’s too late for that. I looked to Artina for confirmation, and she just nodded.

Was it that bad? I mean besides not making it to the Duchies. Yeah, it’s awful. For them, not that I was out of the water yet. But I still had hope.

“Too bad we won’t have our rematch at the semifinals,” I said to Artina. If she had managed to hold on, we would have met at the semifinals again, alas, that was not to be.

“I would have beat you to a pulp, return the favor I owe you,” she said as she pumped her fist my way. “You’ve to avenge us.”

“Avenge you? I will have to make it to the semifinals for that, don’t even get me started on her case.”

“You intended to reach it for our rematch. What’s changed now?”

“Well, if both of you didn’t make it to the quarterfinals, my chances of going through have just dropped to below zero.”

“There is no such thing as getting below zero.”

“What do you call not having any chance whatsoever?”

“Zero chances.”

She speaks, again.

“What she said. There is nothing below that,” Artina said, taking the support she was offered.

“There is always something worse.”

…

We soon parted ways when we got to the library, them going to the training facility to join up with Sunshine and the others, and me going for my regular library dose.

I was quick with my book selection, aiming for topics that I wanted to read on for the day. But somehow, even with all that determination to do something meaningful for once, I still got distracted by an array of titles that read familiar to me. I couldn’t pinpoint why exactly that was the case, and I couldn’t let that go either.

I spent minutes perusing the titles and book descriptions, but those gave nothing I could use to help me recall. And then I decided to read sample chapters from each of the books. Around the third or fourth book, a familiar name popped up, and I was hooked.

I never did find where I had left off on the Halle story, but I found an account that was a little ahead from where I had left off. Apparently, one of the local leaders, if not the actual leader, had been arrested and died while in custody. This deteriorated an already tense situation. The uncooperative locals became more than ever determined to drive away the elves from the area. Time and again, the elves had to mount expedition after expedition against the recalcitrant locals.

Some of the local collaborators to the elves increasingly involved the elves in their personal and petty quarrels, and the lure of economic rewards led them to hatch quarrels even where none existed. The elves found themselves embroiled in the local affairs and soon enough, Halle came to realize that his so called collaborators had been telling lies in an effort to get him to go out to fight and get compensation for their services.

Halle responded by befriending another neighboring group of locals, and began using them as levies for the expeditions. This did not endear him, or the new group of locals, to the other locals. Matters came to a head-on collision when one of the new locals killed one of the other locals during a quarrel. A showdown ensued where an all-out fight between the three groups broke out. Soon, everyone was killing anyone who wasn’t them, and by the time the fight bled itself out, Halle was no more.

There were some suspicions that he had died by one of his own, but I stopped reading after that. I really didn’t like stories where the main character died. I knew that the story was an actual account of someone’s life, which actually made it all worse. Not that I sympathized with Halle or anything, but he was the one I had been following, and to me, with his death, it felt like the story had come to an end. Anything that happened after that was meaningless. Everything.

In the end, I didn’t accomplish much during that library session, but I did brush up on the things that where bothering me. I spent a considering time of it reading up on how to strengthen my staff better, the techniques and Mana form channels and frameworks I needed to use to better achieve that. Things like [Mana Shield]s and Mana attacks had become an afterthought given how fast I had gone through my staffs. I didn’t have any fight worthy staff left with me, either I swallowed my pride and asked Xan to buy one or two for me, or I went to the next fight with a shoddy weapon. I didn’t even know which would be worse.