The Prelude to an ass-whooping.

“Well then,” John said as he sat down between Rave and Lydia on the table. They were an hour early, again, and sitting on the platform. He pulled his laptop from his inventory to check a few things out. “Okay, they have Wireless,” he announced.

“Awesome!” Rave brought her chair over until their armrests were touching. In response, John pushed the laptop slightly into her direction so that she had an easier time reading. “Now then…” he opened another website they had found yesterday called aww.seventeenth-tournament.rom.

The reason why that title was interesting was twice fold. One, there was the fact that the abyss used aww (abyssal wide web) instead of world wide web. Two, rom (Rome) had its own destination as well. While fairly unimportant in the grand scheme of things, this tickled the fancy of John’s nerd-brain.

Anyhow, that was not why he was pulling up that site. Neither was the livestream with the countdown; he had the actual event right in front of him, so no need to watch the stream. No, he went to the FAQ section and checked if his question had been answered by now.

The Gamer: You said everyone was protected, but can I get some more details on the how?

Well, it had been answered, publicly, and by someone important as well.

Lady Luna: Greetings. Our safety precautions are three-layered to allow each and every single one of our participants to fight without worries of terminating their opponent’s life and to their best of their abilities. The first of our precautions is my personal ability to erect powerful barriers.

These barriers will be applied before the battle and only protect vital organs, as to not interfere with slashing weapons and the like. Should a barrier break, our second layer activates.

These barriers are scaled to a person’s life **** and will only become active if needed, so you won’t need to worry about your enemy aiming for the destruction of them in order to achieve an easy victory.

The second layer is the prestigious ability of Fateweaving. Thanks to this ability, if someone is about to be struck lethally, they are, instead, teleported to a designated point inside the arena. Due to safety precautions in regards to **** attempts, that location cannot be disclosed and changes daily. The supreme Fateweaver himself is overlooking the tournament, so that our contestants may rest assured that their lives are in good hands.

The third layer is the Apothecary guild. Their best and brightest are stationed here to make even the most gruesome of injuries a minor and short-lived inconvenience. Broken skulls, ripped out hearts, as long as the target isn’t dead (or hasn’t been dead for too long) restoration is possible.

Was this answer helpful? Yes No

John clicked on the yes and closed the site. “Ey, I wasn’t done reading that yet!” Rave complained. “Oh, sorry,” he pulled it back up. Rave needed another minute and then made a gesture that indicated that it was fine.

“I don’t have that bullshit quick brain of yours,” she informed him. “No, you don’t,” Momo agreed; “You are way quicker to punch stuff.” “Do I hear a fucking complaint?!” Thana growled her way into the discussion; “**** solves 95% of my problems in less than 2 seconds.” “That statistic is obviously flawed, since 95% of your problems are caused by you being a tremendous social bigot,” Momo drily retorted.

“IS THAT SO, YOU CYANIDE PILL?!” Thana shouted. “Yes,” Momo simply answered with half-closed lids. “I guess,” the blood mages mood suddenly swung around, and she fidgeted with her hair in a bored way; “Sorry, just wanted to rant about some shit. Whoever thought that waiting was a good thing should die by cum-guzzling.”

“Anyhow,” Momo ignored the blood mage, “maybe you should spend some time after this is over going back to school.” “Ya are sounding like my parents,” Rave warned; “Don’t.” “You are sounding like an uneducated amazon,” the support shot back; “Please, fix your behaviour.”

“Can we skip this discussion?” John intervened with a heavy sigh; “Jane likes using her brawn over her brain in a world that is about asking questions later. I say it is perfectly sensible.” “Also I attached myself to Brainiac,” Rave defended herself; “He is going to do all that boring tax stuff while I pat kittens.” “And what do I get out of that deal?” “My wonderful smile!” “…You are lucky that I love you, otherwise that offer would hold no value whatsoever,” John reminded her. “I know when to push my luck.”

They kissed. Momo rolled her eyes, “So, you are just going to leech off each over like John leeches off Aclysia?” “It’s called a symbiotic relationship,” John informed her; “Aclysia likes doing chores, I like grinding resources and caring for her, Rave likes punching stuff.” “And we all LOVE sex,” Rave added.

“Give it up,” Lydia told Momo; “They have formed some sort of ant colony at this point. Separation is impossible.” “May I remind ya, Lylytina, that ya are part of this colony?” Rave poked fun at her; “Ya know, with the whole ‘Winning the tournament for ya’ deal.” “This is a business transaction,” Lydia corrected.

“Sure~,” Siena’s teasing voice echoed from John’s shadow; “’Business’ is the reason that you gave him the soulpotion as a present.” “I profit from this arrangement as well,” Lydia held her ground. “There is no reason to gift it to him, renting it out would have done it. Be honest, you gave it to him in hope of the second part of business or pleasure.”

Lydia pressed her lips together and blushed slightly. That exchange ended with the princess being defeated. “I am abso-fucking-lutely fine with being part of this ant colony, by the way,” Thana picked the topic up again; “I mean, as long as you are willing to have me… you are, right?” Her voice dipped into obscure uncertainty.

“Yes, Thana, we are,” John reassured her; “What is wrong with you today? Even for you, this is pretty moody.” “Shut the fuck up,” Thana jabbed back; “Also, thank you? Also, urgh, yes, I feel all fidgety and shit.” “That’s called nervous,” Momo informed her.

Thana broke out into a shrill laughter. “Nervous? Me? Why the fuck would I be nervous?!” “I mean,” John spoke up, “how about because you could lose after all and disappoint Lydia, thus causing her to abandon you and then you would be thrown out of the house and suddenly you are all alone in a city you don’t know, on a continent where you know nobody?”

A moment of silence. “Geez, John,” Rave slung her arms around his boyfriend; “Why was that so detailed?” “Yo try sitting in a house, alone, for a couple of months,” John looked over to Lydia; “With several hundred billions in debt without word from the person you need to repay.” “I have apologized for that numerous times,” Lydia crossed her arms and stared back with her greyish blue eyes; “But if you don’t inform me about your situation, I can hardly help you, can I?”

“Thing is,” John retorted, “that you didn’t inform me about the fact that I should come talk to you if anything was wrong. You can’t just tell people that they should have known.” “You had my phone number!” Lydia held her ground. “You are also one of the least approachable people on this planet,” Momo chimed in; “When a person wants to talk to you, first thing you usually do is check your watch and tell them how long they have.”

“That is a hyperbole,” Lydia denied that. “Right, you only check your watch and then look at them as if they only have 30 seconds,” Momo corrected herself with a smugly raised eyebrow. “Yeah, that is pretty accurate,” Rave said. “Agreed,” John added. “How did you NOT fucking know that?!” Thana threw proverbial salt into her open wound.

Lydia glared daggers at all of them. “My acute sense of duty and lack of time does not excuse me being unapproachable, but you all are being overly offensive in this cause of discussion. Aside, we were talking about Thana,” she steered the ship back around; “So, are you nervous?”

“NO!” she denied outright, only to then add a less certain; “I think?” “Why would you even be nervous, you are level 400,” John said; “You know what? I am just going to Observe you, and then I know what you are feeling. Sounds good?” “Sounds like you are breaching whatever fucking privacy I still have!” she hissed.

“You are running around in your underwear,” John reminded her. “I wish I could just run around in the nude…” Thana sighed and softly tugged at her leather bra; “Clothes are so annoying… Okay, fuck it. Observe me, wszystko jedno.”

“Okay, so you are not nervous, you just REALLY want to punch Mario,” John informed her about her own emotions, “Also, and I want to say this bluntly: How THE FUCK are you 27 levels higher than last time?!”

Everyone looked wide-eyed from John over to Thana. “I told you I was still mutating,” she looked heavily confused at the fact that they were all this weirded out by this. “Yeah but… 27 levels?” John repeated. “Motherfucker, I developed HEAT VISION yesterday,” Thana shouted at him; “What makes your shitass numbers that much more impressive than that?” “Your libido doubled!” “You can place blame for THAT firmly on yourself,” the blood mage giggled; “After all, you are pumping me full of your semen every day, daddy.”

“No,” John firmly stated; “Stop doing that.” Thana laughed. “I mean it!” he warned her; “It’s making my insides crumple up like used tissue paper. I mean, Jesus, nothing against people who enjoy it but… please don’t?” “Fine,” Thana waved off in a way that ensured John that this wasn’t the last time she called him that; “boring ball-busting bitch.”

“Change of topic,” John turned to his girlfriend; “I was wondering about this yesterday, but where is that battle-suit that you supposedly don’t have.” Rave was still wearing an outfit normal for her, a crop top that revealed her belly button, blue jeans and shoes that looked like a mixture of rubber boots and sneakers. The only thing she had on herself aside from that were the Miales-Gloves. “What battle-suit?” Rave smirked and therefore skipped the topic entirely. John had the inkling that it was her shoes and could have figured it out using Observe, but he liked surprises. They beat the rest of the time speaking about less interesting stuff and surfing the AWW.

Point 16 o’clock, the announcer’s desk once again found its way into the sky. “Ladies and gentlemen!” Jeff shouted. It was only him and Dra on the desk, the memeshifter apparently didn’t want to stay for longer. Either that or they were keeping him for another date. Either way, he wasn’t there.

“Welcome to the second day of the tournament, a quick recap of yesterday’s happenings: The first fight of the tournament turned out to be a game of Jeopardy. In a stunning display of knowledge, neither team answered a single question wrongly, however, thanks to Maximillian showing just how daring he is, he cleared more of the high-point questions early and thus won the game. This puts our current points at 1 for Maximillian and 0 for Lydia. Will the princess of steel manage to tie their points today? Let’s find out! Candidate Maximillian, please present us with today’s fighter!”

John looked at a screen that was hovering above Maximillian’s platform (a similar one was above their own) as the animation of a wheel of fortune spinning was played. The desk flew over to hand the king of Vienna the microphone.

“With great pleasure, I announce today that I will pitch one of my stronger fighters into the ring. A spectacle of true skill, a master of the blade, the traditional weapon of mankind, forged and tempered from the strongest metals. Today, you will see the swordmaster, Mario de Medici!” he announced in an over-enthusiastic manner.

The crowd went wild as John shook his head with a slight grin. Maximillian’s unsubtle hint towards metal only added believability to Thana’s claim that they wanted to reel in Lydia in this first round. Too bad that they didn’t know that the blood mage had seen through them already.

The blue platforms appeared, and Mario jumped on top of it. The announcers made their way over. “So, Dra, who do you think the enemy team will pick?” Jeff asked on the way. “Well, against the swordmaster, Lydia’s metal-bending powers would certainly be of help. For the rest of the contestants, we sadly don’t have any information about the powers. However, following the humiliation Thana Newman has brought him at the announcements last week…” The screens showed a video clip of Thana breaking Mario’s hand back in Cologne, “…I am sure I know who Mario himself wants to face.”

“Now then, Lydia,” Jeff stopped the desk in front of their platform; “Which of your fighters will you sent?” “Thana,” Lydia kept it short. “WOOOOOHOOOOO!” Thana cheered and then jumped. Not on the platform that formed but straight into the arena and then ran towards the middle, where Luna herself was waiting for them.