Our groups, separated by a large force field, keeps us from attacking each other. After eyeballing each other for a moment, the announcer's voice says, “In our first match of the day, we have Monster Squashers Inc versus the Randos. The Randos only seemed to have formed a team yesterday. Regardless, we wish them luck. Teams, are you ready?” But without waiting for a response, the voice continues, “Go!”
The force field separating us from our opponents disappears. The man in the black leather disappears in a puff of smoke, and the man with the staff begins to chant. The guy in with the pizza necklace just stands there examining his nails.
Our team doesn’t need to say much. We’ve been fighting for the last couple months regularly while getting me leveled up enough to qualify for these competitions. Lillian opens her inventory and taps a button that changes into her mechanized battle suit with a flash of light. She stands in front of us, our tank, in a black battle suit with glowing purple tech inscriptions. She turns, winks at me, and then pulls a large two-handed sword from the inventory. With a whisper, the blade ignites, and I recognize it from our fight with Krampus. She uses some boost feature of her armor and bursts forward with a whoosh. Beside me, John pulls a drone with an attached gun out of his inventory and throws into the air. It speeds ahead and above the fight, likely looking for a place to attack. Then he too runs forward to join the fight. I watch the two of them in amazement, then remember that I’m also in this fight.
With Lillian taking point, I run up on her left and begin shelling the chanting man and his seemingly bored pizza companion. John, on the right of Lillian, starts to shoot at them from above. Just as my first explosive grenade is about to hit the chanting man, a shimmering blue shield forms around the two, and both my explosive grenade and the shots from the drone are absorbed. At the same time, the man with the staff flings out his hand, and massive fireball flies towards John.
John, being the sensible man that he is, yells and dives to his left to hide behind our well-armored tank. As he does, I catch a shimmer out of the corner of my eye, and the leather-clad man appears just where John was just standing. He’s thrusting his daggers exactly where John was just standing, and his eyes are wide open in surprise and anger at having missed his chance to backstab John. He’s even more surprised when the fireball his teammate threw explodes in front of him.
When the smoke from the fireball clears, the rogue is still standing but is missing his hood, his eyebrows, and about a third of his health. Now, here’s where professionalism comes into play. Our team, even if we made a mistake like that, wouldn’t bat an eyelid. We’d just continue to fight and use the surprise of the situation to catch our opponents off guard. Instead, these guys start to fight amongst themselves. The short rogue starts to call the mage that threw the fireball an arrogant ass that doesn’t know how to use his magic effectively. The mage points out that he said that he was going to kill the stupid-looking one. The rogue points to me with his knife and says that he thought the mage meant me. The mage slaps his head and points at John and says that he’s obviously the stupid-looking one. The two get into a big argument over who looks the stupidest, John or me. Eventually, the two walk right up to each other and start to yell chest to chest. Their companion inserts himself between the two and reminds them that they should save their energy for their enemies.
But it’s too late. While the two argued, I very handily activated my new Camouflage ability and ran right up to the edge of the magical shield protecting the mage and the purple pizza man. All around the area I planted explosives with a remote trigger. The moment the guy with the golden pizza necklace points at us and reminds his teammates who the enemy is, I press the remote trigger setting off all the explosives. There’s a massive blast of heat and energy all around the trio. The magical shield glows brightly as it tries to absorb all the energy, then pops as it fails. The shield down, John begins to blast the area with his drone, and I launch more grenades into the area.
Together, we kill the mage and the pizza guy. But the rogue escapes the area of attack. He’s met by Lillian in her mechanized battle suit. The poor man tries to go on the offensive, but his daggers can’t penetrate her armor. Instead, Lillian whirls around with her massive sword held out and sliced the rogue in two.
With the last member of the team defeated, the bodies disappear and the announcer says loudly, “The winners are Monsters Squashers Inc.”
There’s another flash of light, and our team transports immediately to another location. This one is a field of lava with thick pillars made of some black stone dotting the space between ourselves and our opponents. These opponents I recognize. They’re some of the guys from Ludas Inc. I’m worried until I see that they’re all geared for close combat. Yup, as long as we can keep them away from us, we have the advantage since John, and I are ranged fighters.
The moment the force field comes down, the three guys from Ludas Inc. sprint and leap across the stone pillars, trying to close the gap between our two teams. It takes me a moment, but I switch out my explosive ammo for the freeze grenades. I launch six grenades at the pillars between our teams. The grenades don’t do any damage, but when they explode, they coat the top of the pillar with a thin layer of ice. Too late does the other team realize what I’m doing. One of them lands on an ice-covered pillar and loses his balance and slides right off the edge into the lava below. Another of their team members slips, but can catch himself at the last minute and is hanging on by his forearms. John’s armed drone buzzes right over to him and shoots him in the face until he loses concentration and falls off too.
The last member of the Ludas Inc. group can avoid the iced over pillars and actually makes it near us. Lillian, no longer in her mechanized battle suit, but still wielding her two-handed flaming sword meets him in melee combat. The two move quicker than I can see and I only catch blurs of steel as they leap from pillar to pillar and strike out at each other. Blood flies everywhere, and in the end, it’s the blood that determines the winner. The other swordsman slips on some of the blood, and his balance is momentarily thrown off. But that’s enough to give Lillian the advantage, and the next moment her blade skewers the man through the gut. He smiles and nods respectfully at her before the light in his eyes dies, and his body disappears.
Chapter 48
With another flash of light, our group finds itself in the middle of a large warehouse. Between the dim lighting and the force field that distorts the view, I’m not able to see who our next opponents are. Instead, I check my character sheet briefly to see how I’m doing.
Anthony Tinoco
Level 10
Unspent stat points: 0
Unspent skill points: 1
XP to next leveclass="underline" 49820
Health 240/250
Mana300/300
TP50/350
Abilities
Roll
Flying Kick
Smash
Stab
Fireball