Chapter 58

“FUCK OFF!!” the kind old man screamed at the top of his lungs and with a gesture of his hands launched his giant spiky ball of death at the masked hooded figure that approached him, radiating killing intent.

So, he’s human after all, Beatrice concluded when the man let his frustration take over.

The second flight of the death ball proved less successful than the first. The masked girl simply dodged to the side as the weapon zapped past her. The ball crashed into one of the straight walls of the mines, less than fifty feet below one of the lesser platforms on which some hundred spectators stood and observed the fight. The crash was powerful enough for the people standing there to notice minor vibrations.

“Oh no!” the announcer exclaimed as if she was worried. “A miss! It looks like in his fit of impotent rage the niece-fucker missed his one chance to kill—”

Another loud blast of metal against metal spread through the arena when the metal ball scored a direct hit against the masked girl’s lower back, sending her flying several feet forward with her back forming an arch around the spot where she was struck.

The ball ricocheted away from the girl, but this time Number Four did not wait for his opponent to recover and with his hands he redirected the spiky ball back at the airborne girl.

BAM! The ball crashed from above, slamming the girl into the ground. Another ricochet, another return. Again and again, Number Four pummeled the girl into the ground. Five, six, seven consecutive strikes into a prone girl, each slower than the last.

Out of juice, Beatrice sighed.

Indeed, the eighth strike was far weaker than any previous ones, the metal ball barely ricocheted higher off the ground than a basketball would off a court. The final fall looked to be guided by gravity more than whatever magical force that controlled the sphere before. After the fall the heavy ball did not even bounce—it simply rolled off the motionless figure to the side as any plain heavy metal ball would.

“Most certainly a commendable effort and an impressive ball control!” the announcer commented with a mix of revived excitement and not-so-subtle patronization. “No doubt that a regular citizen of Klapsus would be pummeled into mush! But has he managed to put an end to miss Ru-NO! No, he hasn’t!”

Before Thelicia even finished her sentence, the ball-pounded girl moved her arms. The girl pushed against the ground with both hands and slowly—like someone who had just been knocked down by a direct hit to the head in a game of dodgeball—got back on her feet, looking no worse for wear than possibly suffering from a minor concussion.

“A flying morning star, huh?” Ruby asked as she looked at the weapon that beat her body. “What a strange coincidence! I have something similar to offer!”

Ruby swiftly moved forward her arm and threw her dagger at Number Four. Though surprised, the old man managed to dodge the swift flying dagger just like Ruby dodged his attack. However, while the old man watched his back for an imminent counter-attack, Ruby sprinted to him, ducked, and slammed both open palms of her hands into his chest, blasting the old man high into the air above the arena.

“UNCLE!!” the pale, slender dark magician girl screamed in fear for her uncle’s life.

Number Four flew through the flaming numbers that counted down the five minutes of this round, through the ethereal viewing sphere, momentarily disrupting the image, and flew further up until he slammed into the shadowy ceiling high above the arena.

“Ah! I Need to get used to this,” Ruby muttered as she looked above and watched the old man’s motionless body fall back down.

“Let me see...” Ruby raised her hands, aiming at Number Four’s body that already fell back through the viewing sphere and the flaming numbers and—just some thirty feet over her head—managed to slow the man’s fall, leaving him hovering in the air up above her.

“Miss Ruby is showing impressive control of levitation powers of her own!” Thelicia said. “But isn’t she just levitating a dead body?”

“Only one way to find out,” Ruby said and—holding one hand aimed at Number Four—gestured with her other hand to the side. The next second a dagger flew from the side of the arena and pierced the man’s knee, forcing an agonizing scream from the reawakened man.

Through the old man’s screams of pain, as he bled from his destroyed knee which had a curved dagger impaled through it, nobody could hear the soft reaction of the figure that stood directly under the trickle of blood and welcomed it as it fell on her white mask.

“Ah~” the masked girl moaned when droplets of blood finally seeped through the holes in her mask and hit her face.

But even if the girl’s moans could not possibly be heard by anyone else through the screams of Number Four and the cheering of the invigorated crowds, the girl’s blood-welcoming posture betrayed her intentions, which became apparent to not only Beatrice, Olivia, and many other participants, but also to several people in the crowds.

“Do it again, Ruby!!” one of the beastkin in the crowds laughed.

“You better not let him off easy after all the waiting we had to endure!” some girl shouted.

Ruby could not see the remaining time she had as she stood directly before the fiery countdown, but the announcer was kind enough to inform her.

“After a little more than a minute of resistance, Number Four is already at the mercy of miss Ruby!” Thelicia commented. “What shall she do? Number Four is woefully short of his five-minute survival goal. Will miss Ruby Spare his life anyway for such a commendable all or nothing effort and wait out the time limit?”

“Hell no!!” was the sentiment among the merciless spectators.

“Well, you heard it directly from the fans, miss Ruby, Number Four!” Thelicia passed on the verdict to the duelists, implying that her and everybody else’s hands were tied.

Ruby giggled and—suddenly and roughly—guided her dagger out of Number Four’s knee, sending a fresh dose of mind-tearing pain into the old man’s brain while rewarding herself with a fresh stream of blood pouring down on her body.

“At a loss for words?” Ruby asked as she guided her dagger, flying it up and down past the old man, grazing his body in each pass through, creating narrow but deep cuts. Left shoulder, right forearm, left thigh, left calf. The dagger flew at an ever-increasing speed, delivering more than a cut per second. “Aren’t you going to ‘fuck off’ me again? What about begging for your worthless life?”

Ten cuts. Twenty. Thirty. Another zap of the dagger severed two fingers clean off from the old man’s right hand.

“I can save you, remember?” Ruby asked as she continued multiplying the small wounds across her opponent’s helpless body. “Just beg for it like a dog!”

“Yeah, sure! Beg and live!”

“What’s with those bitch ass pussy cuts!? Cut an artery or two!”

“Yeah, there’s barely three minutes left anyway!”

Many among the spectators laughed and cheered them both on—the girl to keep pushing and the old man to beg for his life.

“Not that they want him to be saved,” Olivia commented. “Him tearfully agreeing to do anything and beg for his life before getting executed anyway is what they truly hoped for.

Instead of pleading for mercy, the old man reined in his emotions, struggling through the pain. His last defiance: denying both the blood-thirsty girl and her growing fanbase the satisfaction of hearing him cry or beg.

There was one person however who not only wished for the opposite but barely held herself from jumping in and killing the masked bitch. Number Forty’s pale fists trembled with rage. Ruby’s back was facing her. Even from fifty feet, she could—

“Don’t,” said a girl with long, gory red hair when she put her hand on Number Forty’s clenched fist. “She’s obviously baiting you in.”

“Fuck off!” Number Forty shook off Number Fifty’s hand. “You think I don’t know that?”

The announcer chuckled and said, “Looks like Number Four’s niece abandoned him! That’s what you get for leaving a girl unsatisfied. She already went and found someone better! Let this be a lesson to you, folks!”

The spectators laughed while Ruby intensified her attacks, increasing their depth, striking closer and closer to vital organs, pouring more warm blood on herself.

“Scum!” Olivia cursed. “If that girl intervenes, the announcer will instantly refer to the rules of a one-on-one duel and the girl will be killed. If she does nothing, ‘she’s a coward and a traitor’.”

“You’re probably right,” Beatrice said quietly and looked for Bob among his masked companions.

Though many of the shirtless men had a similar figure, Bob’s kilt was far more wrinkled than any of the others after his adventures with Beatrice and her friends. Their eyes locked and Bob barely shook his head, urging Beatrice not to intervene, confirming Olivia’s theory.

“With two minutes still to go, will Number Four be able to endure miss Ruby’s assault?” Thelicia asked. “Abandoned by his niece whom he could not properly satisfy, with the crowds rooting against him, what chance does he have? Each strike of the dagger could be his last!”

With the ever-increasing speed of Ruby’s dagger that toyed with the floating figure as a kid would toy with a butterfly, the wounds on Number Four’s body grew uncountable. Though Ruby’s dagger strikes cut up the man’s shirt and left enough space for blood to flow, too much of it was absorbed by the brown cloth that turned moist and darkened.

Perhaps because of that, the next dagger strike cut from the old man’s neck and along his spine all the way to his butt, tearing the shirt in half. The next few cuts finished the job and the old man’s ripped shirt finally fell from his mutilated body, revealing a sickening, ghastly sight.

Blood bubbled and seeped through dozens upon dozens of shallow and deep cuts. Most of his abused skin was now varying shades of pink and red with countless open wounds that were given no chance to close by sudden, fresh crosscuts that opened them further. The hairs of the old man’s muscular aging chest turned red while Ruby kept increasing the severity of his injuries.

Beatrice turned away, already sick from such senseless, self-indulgent torture.

Number Four steeled his resolve and resisted giving any emotion to the crowds, but Ruby had long stopped pressing the issue. With the shower of blood increasing in thickness and amount, the no-longer-white-masked girl was so preoccupied with covering herself with blood that she no longer seemed to care or outright forgot to further verbally terrorize the man, leaving that work to the announcer.

“How boring!”

“Stop toying around!”

“Finish him already!”

“Don’t let the time run out!”

“Yeah, I don’t want to see his wrinkly ass in the next round!”

“He wouldn’t live to the next round anyway.”

“Indeed, it seems that Number Four has resigned to his fate,” Thelicia said with boredom. “Subjecting our dear guests to this pathetic display for any longer would be a crime.”

Whether Ruby paid any attention was questionable. However, her attacks now pierced through the old man’s flesh and muscles, unleashing streams of blood from the gaping wounds.

“YOU PROMISED!!” Number Forty, the old man’s niece, screamed as loud as she could. “You’re going to just die like that without fighting back!? You’re going to die a liar!?”

Ruby momentarily halted her dagger attacks and turned her head to the girl. But Number Forty did nothing else.

“Disappointing,” Ruby said and looked back up to the bleeding, cut-up Number Four before launching her dagger straight through his kidney. “Both of you!”

First dagger strike flew up, through the old man’s body, tearing up his insides, and creating a gaping hole in his body. The second strike followed a second later, flying down, piercing through a lung, breaking several ribs in the process, and causing massive internal bleeding.

“Ghurlkh!” Number Four coughed up dark blood, helpless to prevent the attacks.

Ruby paused before the final strike. With one hand, she turned the old man in the air so that his side faced her, his neck—directly over her. With the other hand, Ruby repositioned the dagger, aiming it for the old man’s throat.