Chapter 63

“Hehehe, it looks like that’s all she wrote for Number Forty!” the announcer giggled as she watched Lilith get cut again and again by Ruby.

With Lilith no longer able to fight back, Ruby toyed with her. She pushed Lilith back while making quick, slices in a wide arc across Lilith’s body. Sometimes the curved dagger barely nicked Lilith’s flesh, and it seemed to only excite Ruby more as she practically danced forward as if performing rhythmic gymnastics, where the colorful ribbons were replaced by thin streams of blood flying through the air.

“She deserved a fair fight!” Uma protested to John, who did his best statue impression. “Since when is anyone supposed to have several matches in a row?”

“Are you stupid?” Number seven asked. “Did you forget that we’re all here to kill each other? If that white mask doesn’t kill her, you’d have to! She knew what she was getting into. And if she didn’t, that’s her fault. Nobody’s special, and she gets what she deserves if she thought otherwise!”

“There’s still supposed to be some semblance of rules and structure!” Uma did not relent. “However brutal, these games always had rules to determine the strongest! Since this round started that hairball kept making things up as she went along! Number Forty might have been one of the strongest and she got punished for it by the organizers!”

Uma walked even closer to John and said, “Look me in the eyes and say that whatever is going on with that announcer and the white mask girl is in the spirit of the games!”

“Intervening in an ongoing match is absolutely forbidden,” John coldly reminded the redhead in her white and blue uniform.

“Tch!” Uma turned from the skeletal black mask staff member and looked at the one-sided match.

“BOOO!” a great portion of the crowds expressed their displeasure with how the fight developed, despite receiving the bloody spectacle they usually so desired. That is the portion that was still sober enough to follow the match and wasn’t preoccupied with drinking and/or fucking.

“YEAHH! Cut her uph, Humbr Forty!” one guy cheered and emptied his cup.

“Drunken moron, she’s the one that’s getting sliced to pieces!”

“Bah, whatever! I gotta go take a piss, anyway!”

“The spectators indeed seem outraged with Number Forty’s piss-poor performance!” the announcer commentated, barely holding back her joy. “And who can blame them? After all the boasting, after all her pompous posturing, this is all that Number Forty’s fiery resolve has amounted to! What a disappointing embarrassment!”

“You didn’t give her a chance to rest!” people from the crowds shouted.

“This could have been such a better match!”

“Would it have been though?” others asked. “She did her ‘explody’ move and it got countered completely.”

“Yeah, she had no chance, to begin with!”

“That’s horseshit! She was obviously tired!”

“She wasn’t even supposed to fight that bloody cunt in the first place!”

“I want my money back!” a furry beastkin screamed, red in the face.

“You didn’t pay any money!” a middle-aged man who stood in front of the beastkin shouted back at him.

“And neither did you!”

“A smart-arse, are you?”

“And it’s pretty too!” the beastkin turned around and lowered his trousers, wagging his furry ass right in the man’s face.

“Get that shit outta my face!” the man pushed the beastkin, which quickly escalated into a brawl of about a dozen drunks.

“Hey, could they like make out or something before this is over?” some guy in another spectator sector asked.

“That ~hic~ robed girl would have to take her mask off, then,” a woman pointed out while keeping herself on her feet by leaning against the rock face behind her.

“Oh, right ... Well, what if she just spread her legs for a quick licking? Ya know, kinda like ‘I’ll keep you alive for as long as you keep giving me orgasms’?”

“You haven’t been paying attention, have you?”

“Welp, bottoms up for the grill!” a swaying, naked young man lifted a mug that was the size of his elongated head and then proceeded to empty it by taking gulp after gulp, after gulp.

“Kh!” Felicia snorted gleefully as she leaned against the railings of her platform and watched the increasingly drunken crowds.

That’s all that your heroics amount to, little fool! Felicia mocked the girl who was under Ruby’s playful but relentless assault. A few passive shouts and moans, before moving on to something else. Most of them will forget about you before the sun rises. You’re not meant to be remembered. Just a nameless, numbered piece of meat for entertainment. A piece of meat that should have known her place! Just like that old fucker!

As the bloody dance continued and the number of cuts multiplied, Lilith’s counterattacks became increasingly feeble. The impressive part was not how Lilith still managed to avoid a death blow, but how the white mask girl managed to avoid inflicting a killing strike.

“She can’t even use those bubbles of hers anymore,” Olivia said in a somber tone. “They did no damage before, and at such close distance, she’d just kill herself. And for all the surprising ‘boos’ from the crowds, it’s not like they achieved anything. Big surprise that the organizers could not care less!”

Yeah, so we’ll just stand here and watch her die ... Fuck! Beatrice’s pulse rose. What’s the big deal? It shouldn’t be! It’s not like she’s any more special than any other of the sixty poor souls that perished here! So what that she got treated unfairly? The Fridge is right! Everyone that came here knew that it will be a fight to the death! And I came here just for training in combat!

“UAHH!” Lilith screamed after a particularly carefree attack on Ruby’s part, grabbed the hand which held the dagger, and tackled the masked girl.

“Ah?” Ruby seemed surprised but a quick knee to Lilith’s stomach bent the girl in half, followed quickly by a plunge of the dagger through her shoulder.

“GHUH-HYAAAH~” Lilith gasped as the air got knocked out of her only to scream out due to the sharp, deep, burning pain inflicted by the cold steel.

“Oh, I actually managed to avoid your vitals?” Ruby breathed a sigh of relief. “You can’t imagine how hard it is not to kill you instantly. With your back and neck exposed like this, there’s hardly a spot left that wouldn’t bleed you out in minutes like meat for slaughter!”

Unable to catch her breath while also in numbing pain across all her body, Lilith dropped to her knees. Her beaten and slashed body could no longer even summon the strength to stand. Ruby pulled out her dagger, leaving a gaping wound that proceeded to bleed profusely.

What are we supposed to do? Beatrice argued with herself. Listen to Olivia’s complaints and fight the entire organization in their lair? That’s stupid! Everyone would get killed anyway! And by acting so recklessly and foolishly, I’d condemn to death everyone I could have saved in the future! Isn’t that selfish?

Beatrice looked at Olivia. You yourself only care about your sister! You’re not rushing in to save that girl! Because you have your own priorities! So what that you’re not ‘The Savior’? What about being a decent human being and separating yourself from the scum you so despise?

Trying to save some foolish girl who willingly walked into this and risk failing an entire world? And why? Just because it’s hard to look at injustice right in front of our eyes? That’s the only reason! What about all the suffering that we don’t see? No doubt demons are feasting on human flesh this very moment! Thinking logically, it is a no-brain course of action to ignore the poor fool and concentrate on the long game. On my goals! ... Fuck!

“Hmm~ this is it then?” Ruby asked playfully as she circled Lilith while holding the pointy end of her dagger to her back, drawing a bloody line from one shoulder to the other.

Does it hurt? Felicia wondered she watched Lilith bleed out. It does, doesn’t it? I hope you’re in fucking agony! My eyes hurt like a hell! How dare you fucking scum attack me! My fault for not knowing that you were relatives with that old fucker. I would have thought up something special! I had thought that the ‘team game’ would take care of such issues, but I guess one of you was savvier than the average pig!

Having circled Lilith, Ruby slid the dagger under her mask and licked it clean while touching herself with her other hand. She then put the blade of her dagger right under Lilith’s chin and raised her head to look the girl in the eyes, while threatening to slash her throat at any second.

“Ahn, aren’t you happy?” Ruby asked as she moaned, aroused yet again after her bloody dance. “You’ll get to see your old man soon! This probably wasn’t the result you were hoping for when you challenged me, but you’re also not the one that I came here to fight. So, you brought this on yourself really. Not like this wasn’t a little amusing. Your blood is certainly a lot tastier than that old shitter’s!”

While holding her dagger right against Lilith’s neck, Ruby looked up to the announcer’s platform. Finally, got what you wanted? Don’t think I’ll just let you off the hook for those ‘special prizes’ just because you’re some—”GHAH!?”

Ruby suddenly felt a tight grip on her dagger hand, followed by a numbing, disorienting punch through her hood, right in her temple. For a second, Ruby lost her senses. The following punch straight into the forehead of her mask that pushed into her own forehead and transferred all the force, knocked her back several feet. Ruby fell on her ass while her head kept ringing.

Fuck, there goes my tournament arc! Beatrice thought as she stood next to Lilith, feeling a burn in her knuckles.

Number Forty looked up at the back of the scantily dressed young woman that stood before her in a skimpy, black skirt and top, with a black armband with the number ‘sixty-nine’ written on it. Lilith vaguely recalled seeing her in the arena before and wondered if this Number Sixty-nine always had tiny wings on her back.

“W-why did ... you—” Lilith asked as darkness took her and she finally collapsed.

“What gross violation of the rules of our sacred games by Number Sixty-nine!” Felicia shouted, letting her voice thunder across the mines. “Yet another participant that does not know their place and dares put themselves above others! And to dare raise their hand against one a White Mask!”

Serves you right for starting all this mess, Felicia thought and laughed to herself at the sight Ruby getting punched out of nowhere.

“BOOO-urk-HUURL!” one man retched in the middle of his booing.

“Yeah, fuck that masked bitch up!”

“Tear her a new one!”

“Go, masked bimbo!”

The crowd reaction was mixed, but far from the narrative that Felicia pushed for. If anything, she had more support from half-lucid drunks than from anyone else.

“Well? What are you waiting for?” Felicia asked the buff, masked shirtless men in the arena. “Break her arms for daring raise her hand against a White Mask!”

Here we go, Beatrice readied herself for things to come as eighteen men slowly approached her from a third across the spacious arena.

“WAIT!” miss Ruby shouted, and all the Black Masks froze in place.

Beatrice wasn’t even certain if the masked men froze in place because of the absolute authority of a White Mask or if they were simply stunned to see that very White Mask resume her self-pleasuring right after getting knocked out.

“Hn, if this Number Sixty-nine wants to die that badly, I’ll grant her wish myself!” Ruby said as she slowly got to her feet, breathing heavily and rubbing herself between her legs through her robes, and quietly added, “It’s you I wanted to fight anyway.”

“What mercy from miss Ruby!” the announcer commented. “Giving Number Sixty-nine a chance to fight her way out of this one-on-one! A remarkable opportunity, considering that she should be skinned alive for her transgressions!”

What the fuck are you planning now? Felicia felt her pressure rising again. With Number Forty dealt with, her concerns refocused on the uncontrollable rogue powerhouse in her arena. Felicia half-hoped that Ruby would get punched a couple more times. Maybe that’d knock some sense back into that horny, blood-thirsty brain of yours. And stop masturbating in my arena!! Fucking Bloody Psycho!