Scarlet

“The final round of the team competitions will now begin,” King Oberon declares as the audience fills once more in the morning of the next day. “To begin, the competition will start with just the fae solving the puzzles, with the contractors only entering the combat arena half an hour into the competition.”

As soon as the king says that, all of the fae amongst us vanish and reappear down in a massive cube. One separated into forty different sections, each meant for one fae a piece. And each filled with more puzzles than I can count.

Good luck Tar.

“Thanks,” he says as he immediately gets to work on the first puzzle. “You too.”

Meanwhile all of us contractors are left floating high above the cube as an arena begins to form all around the cube itself. One filled with dozens of different terrains with the terrains alternating repeatedly.

And then we’re all left watching the fae progress through the puzzles for a while.

At some point, I glance at the audience, noticing that they’re all a lot more enthusiastic today than they were when we left off last night. Which is probably for the best.

Guess taking that break over the night before the next competition was all they needed.

Of course, there are still quite a few people who are rather obviously upset and glaring at Oberon, who also still looks less motivated. But it’s a lot better now than last night still.

I let out a sigh before returning my attention to the fae again.

From the looks of it, Leonidas’s fae is in the lead by a decent margin. Then there’s the second and third ranked fae, and so on. In fact, most of them are going almost by their position in the line for the throne. With only a few exceptions.

Tar himself is around tenth place right now.

Which means I’m gonna have to do some cleaning up to catch up. But it makes sense, since Tar is actually in the younger half of the fae royals.

And this competition is about intelligence and wisdom, along with hand eye coordination and just skill in general.

Something developed from age and not just talent.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

I watch him for a little bit longer before my mind returns to last night, when I saw Gramps upset with me for the first time. His being worried in the past not necessarily counting.

Although he’s still a softie since he just ended up scolding me a little and warning me not to destroy the planet or flood it. Then he returned to the party, apparently having already fixed the damage with some of the other demons who have earth magic.

It was rather unexpected just how nonchalant he was about it, even if he was still a little upset.

At least, until Leonidas explained to me that he’d done the exact same thing once a while back. Almost split the world a while back.

Anyways, the fae continue working on their puzzles, making me wonder just how many are filling those enormous rooms. All the way till the puzzle box thingy with the rooms suddenly begins lowering into the ground with the arena extending straight to the center.

Then King Oberon declares, “Thirty minutes have passed so all of the contractors will be sent to the arena. You will begin with three marks, and new puzzles will now appear in the puzzle rooms. Marker puzzles that will give the contractors of whichever fae completes them a mark upon completion. These marks will all count as lives for the contractors, and the Anti-Death Clause is mandatory in this competition.”

At the same time as he speaks, I find myself teleported to a random location within the arena.

But the king’s voice continues even as I’m standing in a random taiga biome, “When a contractor loses all of their lives, both they and their fae will be taken out of the competition, with their score locked in place where it is.”

Mostly just stuff we learned in the rules yesterday, with some differences.

“Now, beg-” King Oberon starts to say, only for a loud crashing sound to echo through the entire arena making me and every other competitor look up to find Titania appearing again with an indifferent look in her eyes.

Eyes that quickly lock onto my own as she speaks, raising her voice to echo throughout the stadium, “Wolf of the Blood Moon, you better not hold back in this round. I have set it so that the System will directly protect the realities of every competitor in this one round since it’s the final combat round.” Her eyes narrow, completely ignoring the silence of the audience. “Use the Red Plague as you wish. It will not permanently kill anyone this time.”

I blink in surprise, not expecting that at all.

Not having to hold back…

Now that I think about it, the reality of this arena looks a hell of a lot more… I’m not sure who to describe it, but it looks a lot more powerful and solid than before. And it’s not just the reality we’re in, but the people. I can sense a strange power coating them.

The question though is if I can trust her.

Also, what does she mean by the ‘Wolf of the Blood Moon’?

Out of nowhere, Titania appears in front of me and cuts me, taking my surprise as an opportunity to do it. Then she somehow pulls the blood through the air and splatters it on a random nearby contractor, making them scream in pain. But I can see that it didn’t actually damage his reality at all. Almost like the reality damaging part of it was held back somehow.

My eyes narrow in on Titania as she stops to float right in front of me.

“Scarlet, show everyone the power of the universe’s defender,” Titania says, keeping her voice low despite how it’s reverberating throughout the entire stadium and arena. “Show them the power of the Warden of the Red Plague. And of the Wolf of the Blood Moon.”