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Chapter 214: The Strongest Card
🕑 Added 2024-11-26 18:59:23 +0000 UTCChapter 214: The Strongest Card
Neither Emma nor Dione were moving now, the former thinking the situation over, while the latter was happy to conserve energy in the battle of attrition their standoff had become.
“How exactly did you find a matching set of magical items?” Emma questioned, leaning fully into a snooty tone only commonplace in historical dramas. “Seems like an awfully big coincidence, this early into the event. Soulbound as well, to boot; is there anything you want to tell the audience?”
“What can I say? Fate simply loves me,” Dione retorted, flashing a grin that nine out of ten dentists would approve of. “Besides, I’m not the irregular here; how else would you be able to perceive item effects, if not for a helping hand on the sly?”
[Technically true, though that doesn’t absolve him of blame. The System is recognised as an inherent part of an individual, the same as soul modifications, and does not violate the rules of entry as long as I do not provide external magic. Using daddy’s credit card to smuggle in a set of magical equipment, on the other hand? Felix is going to bury him once the show ends.]
If that’s the case, then why is Dione allowed to participate at all?
[To humiliate him. His spawn point wasn’t random, there’s a reason he was put here for us to find. Furthemore, while there’s usually a chance to slip away anonymously after the event ends, that privilege will not be extended to him.]
I suppose I should stop playing around them, Emma rolled her eyes, before returning to the grind.
In theory, there was no way to get past Dione as long as his stamina held out, allowing him to keep up his hit and run approach to keep Emma where she was, until the map began to shrink. In practice, if the stalemate really lasted that long, Emma had already resolved to simply rush Dione down, accepting a non-fatal wound to get him and his rapier out of the picture. It didn’t come to that, in the end, because if there was anything Emma had earned from her adventures until now, it was a high degree of fine control in her movements.
Dione was arrogant, always pressing up near the limit in his lunge and retreat, retreatment only at the last minute before being caught. Accordingly, over the course of several dozen lunges, Emma began to slow herself down; never much, just a few milliseconds at a time, stage-managing the deterioration of her reaction speed a little bit more with every aborted clash of blades. Seeing her start to falter, Dione became assured of his victory, and with assurance came arrogance, until by the fiftieth exchange, his retreat was a whole tenth of a second slower than during their opening exchange. On the fifty-first attempt, Emma returned to full speed, and flicked her wrist to extend the reach of her crowbar just a hair, and the blunt back end of the crowbar connected, smashing the tip of the very expensive rapier to dust.
Dione opened his mouth, perhaps to scream at his loss or hurl an obscenity her way; Emma never found out what, as her follow-up throat punch connected and left him coughing blood. To his credit, Dione tried to bring up what remained of his weapon, but the rapier was ill-suited for slashing and easily held down, failing to even scratch her crowbar. It also took most of his attention, leaving Emma free to capitalise. As close as they were, she could’ve swept his feet fairly easily, but since humiliation was the order of the day, Emma felt no need to hold back in the slightest, and so her knee slammed into his nuts at full force.
“Looks like Hollywood was accurate on this one,” Emma noted, narrowly dodging a stream of vomit as Dione fell to the floor, emptying his guts the whole way down.
When Emma finally brought her crowbar down on the back of his head, it was more of a mercy kill than anything else.
[100 EXP earned for busting his balls (literally).]
Emma brought up her status page out of curiosity, to find that it had been assigned to her Damned Apostle Class, which made sense given that it was her main body for combat. She’d have preferred it going to the homunculus, but she wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth. A cursory search of Dione’s body found another can of Red Bull, which Emma quickly drank, and nothing else. True to the Soulbound designation, his clothes refused to be moved, her fingers phasing through them as if they didn’t exist, while the rapier was damaged beyond repair, at least by any means Emma had available.
[Broken Rapier: No refunds.]
Even the enchanted effect was gone, so Emma left it behind, seeing no reason to bring what was essentially scrap metal with her. She might have considered it, had her inventory remained accessible, but not when she had to actually carry it on her. Tossing the empty can aside, Emma decided to make up for lost time and continue her journey towards the middle.
[Attention all contestants! As there are now fewer than fifty fighters remaining, the arena is undergoing the first shift of the night!]
Just in time too, as Emma’s mini-map lit up, showing a red light on the outer edge of the circular arena. She was close to safety, enough to proceed at a light jog as opposed to a panicked sprint, watching as layers of red slowly peeled off like an onion, leaving only blank space behind on an increasingly small map. A full thirty seconds passed like this, and when Emma looked back, she found only a smooth chrome wall behind her; the fate of anyone caught by the shift was only self-evident. Surprisingly, Emma wasn’t immediately accosted in her new surroundings, though screams could be heard nearby, so she supposed it was only a matter of time. She did find one unopened chest however, and received a flashbang for the trouble.
Comments
saganatsu
did she get a grenade, or was the chest trapped?
