Chapter 59

“Bwha! I almost feel sorry for you!” the wolfkin laughed as he swung around his massive mace, nearly hitting Bob on the head, who ducked before he was struck. “So, can we get on with this or what?”

“Yes, but take some distance away from us and the others,” Bob said. “Any harm to us or other participants, accidental or otherwise will be punished by termination.”

“You, heard him, darlin’!” the wolfkin smirked at the human girl. “Lead the way! I’ll let you choose the place of your first and last knotting by a true alpha!”

Number Seventeen turned away from the wolfkin and rolled her eyes. She then led him away from the burly shirtless men, with nothing but a single arrow in her hands against the wolfkin’s preposterous mace.

Number Seventeen took about five steps before she had to tumble and roll forward to escape the giant arc of the wolfkin’s mace.

“Nice reflexes!” the wolfkin shouted and jumped forward, swinging his mace overhead, aiming to crush the girl.

Quickly recovering her balance after the first tumble, Number Seventeen jumped sideways from the second strike.

“Weren’t you going to knot me first?” Number Seventeen asked while covering her face from the debris that was blown into the air by the heavy strike of the wolfkin’s mace.

“I never said you’d be alive!” the wolfkin laughed and swung his mace again, abusing the range advantage of an eight-foot mace versus a bow-less arrow.

However, despite the modest spectacle, the interest from the spectators was lukewarm, at best. Most of them were still gossiping about the events of the previous duel.

“When was the last time someone injured the masked staff?” a random monkeykin in the crowds asked.

“Has that ever happened?” an elephantkin asked.

“I heard that one time someone injured one of the arena staff,” a tigerkin said. “They boiled the poor guy alive. Or so they say.”

“This is bullshit!” someone cursed in another spectator area. “Someone strong enough to do so much damage and he gets taken out by the organizers! Isn’t this rigged?”

“Yeah! I had Number Four as my winner!”

“You did!?”

“Yea, I did! Got a problem with that!?”

“I’ve got a problem with your face!”

“Tell that to my nine-inch dick!”

“Aren’t some of the participants a little strong this year?” another discussion continued elsewhere in the crowds.

“‘A little’? Like the two-headed demon?”

“Maybe that’s why the white-masked chick stepped in? Damage control?”

“If that’s the case, she’s doing a piss-poor job so far!”

“I hope Thelicia is alright! She was fun!”

“If by ‘fun’ you mean ‘bat-shit insane’...”

“AAARGH!” the wolfkin swung the mace again and hit some rocks again.

Number Seventeen dodged the latest attempt on her life with relative ease., still keeping her arrow in her hand. The wolfkin breathed heavily. Wielding such a massive weapon proved to be more trouble than its worth. At this rate, the tide of battle was bound to turn in the girl’s favor.

“Fuck this!” the wolfkin cursed, dropped his weapon, and dashed at the human girl with his bare paws and claws.

Number Seventeen tried to outrun the beastkin, but she was running backward and such a handicapped speed contest could not be won against an opponent of equal speed.

“Ghah!” the girl cried when the wolfkin tackled her and slammed her against the ground. She thrust the arrow she held into the wolfkin’s eye, but the wolfkin caught the arrow in his jaws and snapped it into tiny pieces with his sharp fangs.

“Looks like both our weapons proved useless!” the wolfkin grinned, holding the girl down, panting, still tired from wielding his oversized weapon. Pressing the girl down with one hand, the wolfkin then started unbuckling the belt on his trousers with his other hand. “See how it all worked out for you? You’ll get to experience my knot while you’re still warm!”

“Lucky me!” Number Seventeen made a deadpan sarcastic remark, pinned under the bigger, stronger wolfkin while he revealed his bright-red, hard wolf peen.

“Why aren’t you taking your clothes off? Shy?”

“Yes, very!” Number Seventeen said with all the emotion of a seashell. “Could you help me out, please?”

“Bwahaha! When a girl asks so kindl-HUURK—!”

The wolfkin’s emerald eyes bulged and grew three sizes, veiny red. He let go of the girl and reached with both paws for his throat, desperate to release the constricting pressure on his neck. Gripping the strange cloth that wrapped itself around his neck, the wolfkin pulled it with all might, trying to pull it off, tear it off, rip it off. But the suffocating pressure only grew stronger, like a python, tightening its grip.

The wolfkin looked down at the girl who now calmly watched him suffocate. He realized that the scarf she had around her neck was no longer there. Instead, it was around his own neck, not letting go. Failing to release the pressure, the wolfkin raised his paws to strike down the girl before it was too late, but a single kick to the groin did him in.

The weakened beastkin fell to the ground beside the girl, gurgling, foaming at the mouth, gasping for empty breaths as he desperately struggled with the scarf around his neck, the desperation of his struggle only matched by the automatic response of his hardening wolf-peen.

Number Seventeen got back on her feet and watched the wolfkin’s final moments, his changing colors, his jerking movements, and the final expulsions of his bodily fluids.

Number Seventeen pulled her scarf off her suffocated opponent’s neck. The cloth slid off effortlessly, making practically unbelievable that the wolfkin would be unable to free himself, if not for a fact that he was in fact dead, with an exposed stiffy saluting the crowds.

“Number Seventeen wins,” Bob said with zero fanfare and put his hand into the barrel with the balls, pulling for the next participant.

Number Seventeen tied the scarf around her neck and looked around awkwardly until Bob waved for her to go away. Bob then opened the next wooden ball and lifted up the light-blue piece of paper with a bright red ‘Forty’ written on it in numbers.

The pale girl with ‘Forty’ on her black armband did not even look at Bob who called her out by her number, nor did she see her number on the giant displaying sphere above the arena. She sat on her knees, despondent, caressing her uncle’s head.

“Oh, that’s the niece-fucker’s niece!” someone in the crowds shouted, pointing at the number displayed on the giant sphere.

“Not much of a toy if he never got it up for her!” another added.

“He just didn’t satisfy her properly!”

“How the fuck? Was he impotent or something?”

“Maybe if she lives through this, I’ll give her what her uncle couldn’t!”

The distant jeers and laughs from the spectators finally broke the pale girl from her trance. She looked up, finally realized that she was picked next for the fights and her distraught expression turned to rage. Number Forty jumped to her feet and rushed to Bob who was already talking with several of his burly buddies and pointing at her.

Number Forty slammed her fist against Bob’s table, pointed at the mysterious masked girl, and shouted, “I WANT HER!”

The mysterious robed girl simply snickered.

“Haha! She has a death wish!” some spectators laughed.

“Fuck yeah! I wanna see that!” others cheered with renewed interest.

“She was the first to win in the previous round!” someone pointed out.

“You think she can stand up to that bloodthirsty psycho? That masked lady toyed with the old man.”

“After he pounded her into the ground!”

“And did no damage!”

“How do you know that?”

“Either way it would beat watching some dumbass get asphyxiated with his pants down!”

Bob lifted up the small wooden container, holding it right in Number Forty’s face, and said, “Pull! ... Maybe you’ll get lucky.”

All the wooden balls look indistinguishable from one another. The girl could not tell which balls were the ‘special’ ones with the white piece of paper. Her crimson eyes burned with the fury of hell itself as she looked at her uncle’s murderer, though it was probably just the light of the pillar flames reflected in her eyes.

With grit teeth and her face distorted in rage, Number Forty plunged her hand into the container with the wooden balls—

“WAIT!!” a thunderous, but familiar voice thundered through the mines and reverberated over and over, forcing the mines into momentary silence.

Everyone looked up to the announcer’s platform where a pint-sized, so-called adult of a fluffy white hairball with large ears stood in her usual position, overlooking the arena. Her face was still covered by her black mask with blue flames painted across it.

Behind the announcer, in the shadows of the deepening cave, a bright flame lit up and disappeared. A few seconds later a flaming tornado appeared behind Bob. The flames dissipated as fast as they grew, revealing John and Carl inside them, completely unharmed. John, the skeletal, thin masked staff immediately walked to Bob and dismissed him from his duties, resuming the post himself.

The hairball raised her arms—revealing that she did have human skin and hands, and it was just the hair on her head that had been grown beyond any and all reasonable proportions—and declared, “A proposition!

“If Number Forty wants to break the rules and fight miss Ruby that badly, she has to first prove that she is worthy! Number Forty, if you last to the end and win tonight’s games, follow the rules, and kill all your competition, miss Ruby will honor your request for a fight! Against her will if necessary... Or you can take your chances with the draw but miss Ruby will not be participating after this round!”

Ruby crossed her arms as she looked at ‘Thelicia’ but did not comment.

“Any objections?” the announcer asked.

“No,” Number Forty hissed.

The announcer read the girl’s lips and smiled.

However, the crowds were far less pleased, booing the delay to a match they hyped themselves up for, but the announcer raised her hand again.

“Of course, that is too much of a delay, isn’t it? Our dear fans have spoken! Let’s speed it up! All remaining participants! Those who want to fight Number Forty right now, step up and pick any weapon of your choice!”

The remaining participants looked at each other in confusion.

Another volunteering? Beatrice remembered how the last time worked out for all but one of the volunteers. She around and wondered who’d be stupid enough to fall for the same trick twice.

“Come now, don’t be shy! Two on one, three on one, ten on one—all perfectly legal! You have but one opponent! If Number Forty dies, everyone who fights against her advances to the next round while also keeping the weapon of their choice. And the one to deal a killing blow will win a special prize: one night with princess Mary!”

“WHAT!?” Ruby exclaimed.

Gossip instantly spread through the crowds.

“I know, I know, it’s a little hard to believe,” the announcer nodded and snickered. “After all, why would a princess lower herself to contact with some commoner rabble? Especially if she was already promised to one of the High Priest’s sex cultists. But worry not!

“Her father is a very reasonable man ... When offered certain gifts, hehe! Not to mention that it’s for a good cause, since the princess’s daddy wanted her to learn how to properly please men. Everybody wins!”

Laughter broke out among the spectators.

Beatrice recalled how the King snorted some kind of powder in plain view of his court, and some of the rumors that circulated about the King whose name commanded no respect among the people.

“But just in case some spoiled little princess is not to your fancy, I’ll throw in another bonus: any man or woman from any of our entertainment booths! You may pick up to three of them! They will expertly fulfill any of your deepest, wildest fantasies ... As long as you kill that old fuck’s cocksucker of a niece!!”

The announcer audibly and deeply breathed a lung full of air, breathed out, and asked cheerfully, “Any takers?”

Beatrice sighed when she saw more than half of the remaining participants rush forward, hurrying to take whichever they viewed as the best weapon. Beatrice was glad that at least Olivia resisted the temptation of a promise of an easy victory.

“Pathetic,” the ninja girl said. “Either they’re rushing to gang up on a single opponent for the promise of sex they’re incapable of otherwise getting, or they’re rushing to gain an advantage without which they know they do not stand a chance against some of the powerhouses here.”