Beneath the Dragoneye Moons

Chapter 396: The Gladiator Gauntlet XII

Chapter 396: The Gladiator Gauntlet XII

I looked up at Xocoh, who was going cyan with fury. Kobold quirk there.

Well, might as well rub it in a bit. I split one part of my mind off to work on a Water-generating spell, while taunting my opponent some.

It was terrible practice, but this was a show. I was being a [Showwoman] today. Or something like that. Rah rah go!

Either way, glory to the School! Down with Hapensburgs! Make them look bad!

I needed to get some serious practice and training in after this to unlearn any bad habits I might’ve picked up.

“I mean, yikes, that didn’t even warm me. Are you using illusions? Are you secretly a Mirage mage? Oh wait, hang on, the fires are real. Sheesh. You could think about how hard the fauns work to keep this place looking nice.”

I popped out a spellbook, [Comprehensive Speed Reading] letting me instantly flip it open to the page I wanted. I put my hand on the pre-drawn mandala, the lines glowing and the page disintegrating as mana flowed through it.

A new outfit popped into existence on me, the material questionable and the cut so bad that any novice [Tailor] would want to gouge their eyes out, but it was clothing.

More importantly, it made a point. I was so unconcerned with Xocoh that I could blow mana on pointless clothing that was going to get disintegrated again.

I snapped my spellbook back into my [Bookwyrm’s Hoard], not wanting to risk it. I’d poured dozens of hours into crafting the spells inside, and it wasn’t protected. Taking a flaming blast would incincerate it, burn it to ashes, and I’d be a real sad panda if that happened.

My spell finished crystallizing, and I cast the mandala with [Lepidoptera], making it extra-large for the crowd. I sprayed the little fires that had erupted near the edge of Xocoh’s spell, deliberately ‘wasting’ a ton of mana doing something ‘useless’.

In other words - rubbing in how little Xocoh was doing, and how little concern I was appearing to give her.

In reality, I was still laser-focused on her. I was unshielded for the fight, mostly because I trusted in my fire immunity more than the organizer’s shields to protect me. Xocoh could still pull out a crossbow or some other tool, just like Iona’s first round opponents had surprises.

The other issue was Xocoh was another Radiance mage. Great for yoinking skills off of when she displayed them, but she had [Radiance Resistance] and possibly [Radiance Manipulation] herself.

If I sent my butterflies at her, the odds were great that she could simply seize control of them. My [Nova Lance] was significantly stronger than her resistance though, and it could probably take her out, although the mana cost would be prohibitive, compared to other ways I had of winning.

She couldn’t hurt me, and I had to use wizardry or physical blows. Easy enough once I got close, and I could close the gap at any time, ending the fight.

The big question was how I’d end the fight.

At this level, on this stage, it was more than just ending it and winning. It was about showing dominance.

I was carefully managing my mana, keeping myself close to full, knowing my regeneration would top up any issues I had.

Xocoh was still standing on top of her ziggurat made out of Radiance, her eyes narrowed at me in careful calculation.

She spat a word in what was probably Arawak, then searing Radiance came pouring out of her, bathing the entire arena in harsh rays.

I’d done the same thing often enough to recognize what was going on.

“Nope! No mirages here! Just 100% pure me! It feels nice though, keep going.” I tilted my head back, ‘enjoying’ the ‘sunlight’, although I couldn’t bring myself to close my eyes. There was showboating, and there was being stupid. If she was in range of [The World Around Me], maybe I could keep my eyes closed, but it wasn’t quite high enough level to reach her.

Xocoh screamed in impotent rage - honestly, some nobles just had incredibly fragile egos - and launched a new barrage of flaming skills at me. I gave a dramatic yawn as they landed on and around me, stretching like I didn’t have a care in the world.

It stopped as suddenly as it started.

“Okay, we’re done.” I announced, teleporting out another spellbook, opening it up to exactly the right page. With a press of my hand, I activate the spell, the handle of a shortsword forming in the center of the mandala. I grabbed the handle and slowly - from my point of view, probably not to everyone else - ‘pulled’ the weapon out of the spell, feeding it enough mana to form the weapon as I ‘drew’ it out.

There technically was a short window where my spellbook was vulnerable. In practice, I’d stash the book and abort the spell before any attack hit.

It was, by most objective standards, a shit weapon. It didn’t have any of the fancy… stuff… that regular blacksmiths could do to a weapon, let alone skill enhancements from either the maker, or from myself.

However, I could enchant it myself. A quick trio of Jiwa runes, drawn by [Lepidoptera], glowed as the metal melted around them during the engraving process.

Durability.

Gripping.

Heat Resistance. The sword was useless if Xocoh just melted it! While I was immune to fire, I wasn’t immune to molten metal.

My concerns were the weapon getting yoinked and turned against me. After the event? It’d probably get destroyed, so nobody passed it off as a ‘real’ weapon, and not a conjured one.

It only took me a second or so to arm myself, most of it spent carefully managing the spell generating the weapon. Then I snapped my wings open and soared up to Xocoh. She had to be out of mana at this point, and the longer I dragged this on, the more the kobold and Netos could restore their mana.

Having both of them be out of mana for the teamfight would be a major strategic edge, starting to even up the numbers between both sides.

She spat at me, and I used [Mantle of the Stars] to block it. I did not want to get spat on. That was the only resistance as I ‘impaled’ her, sword-first. A bright red shield appeared around her, signifying her loss.

There were no further saliva-based assaults as the match was called.

“Round 3 Winner, The School of Sorcery and Spellcraft! Current points are 4-2 in favor of the School!” The [Referee] dutifully called out the score as we retreated to our respective sides. Sarama offered me a mana potion, which I declined with a hand.

“Strong work. How much mana was that?” Shirayuki asked.

“Practically none. Didn’t need to heal anything.” I said.

I got some raised eyebrows at that, then Hapensburgs sent forth their next member, a gnome. Short, wearing the classic uniform of the Hapensburgs team, with dark hair and brown eyes, carrying a crossbow nearly as tall as he was.

Gnomes were the single biggest loser in ‘the System multiplies the base’ of all the elvenoids in the world. With a height measured in inches - my opponent was about two inches tall - they simply didn’t have much to multiply in the first place, nearly every single combatant specializing in magic. Heck, most of their population did as well! Gravity was a popular element, since even a low-level mage could move more material than the average gnome worker, given the small scale they worked on.

Magic was magic. The rules and abilities stayed the same, regardless of size… mostly.

“Tinbeg. Spatial and Mantle, with a specialized [Trigger] variant.” Iona quickly said.

Spatial was part of the mostly.

“Crossbows and [Teleport].” Shirayuki confirmed. “He’s slippery, but you should be a harder counter to him, with how fast Radiance is. I’d been planning to keep you for this match, why are they feeding him to us now?”

[Blink] and the closely related [Teleport] scaled their cost on mass, and gnomes, with their tiny mass, could use Spatial magic on themselves like nobody else.

The gnome called something out to the referee, who had a brief conversation with him in the gnome’s tongue. Switching back to Combrogi, he made the conversion clear.

“Tinbeg has requested to be unshielded for this fight. School representative, would you like to be unshielded for this fight?” The [Referee] asked.

I cursed. A huge amount of my arsenal was eliminated with that move. He wasn’t the first to take advantage of my [Oath] status, and he wouldn’t be the las-

Wait.

He very well might be the last person to ever take advantage of my [Oath] in an event like this.

Huh. That was kinda sad, in a way. This could be my last 1v1 fight ever.

“Heck no! He’s scary!” There was no way I was fighting unshielded against someone who could harm me. I wasn’t risking life and limb on a game, just no. Iona chuckled in the background. I stabbed my conjured sword point-first into the ground, leaving it available for me next round if I managed to win this one.

I couldn’t use it, and we both knew it. Why carry it around?

I continued to ignore the obnoxious [Announcer].

“Fame. Glory. Honor. Fight!” The [Referee] called with minimal fuss.

I couldn’t just blast Tinbeg. Blasted lack of shield and my [Oath]. I needed to force him to surrender without hurting him… and he knew I couldn’t hurt him. A sword - or heck, with his size, a fingernail - to the throat couldn’t force a surrender when the gnome knew it was a bluff, and I couldn’t follow through.

The gnome immediately shot his crossbow, the single ping! - not a thwack - of the bow firing resulting in three silver bolts - screaming across the field. They magically grew larger as they left the crossbow, otherwise they’d be roughly as potent as a toothpick. I neatly side-stepped the now full-sized bolts, letting them slam against the arena’s protective barrier. I then charged across the field at full speed, the anti-friction runes on my skin lighting up as my enchanted boots dug into the dirt.

I was going straight for the tiebreaker flag. This was going to be an endurance contest. Could I dodge or tank enough attacks to win via tiebreaker before my shield was triggered?

The gnome quickly and expertly reloaded, and fired a second barrage as I was three-quarters of the way to the fort. The single shot once again split into three. A deft twist dodged two of them, but I wasn’t able to dodge all of them. The third bolt ‘bounced’ off my skin, transferring momentum to my body but nothing else as my protective shield ‘ate’ the rest of the harm.

It was worth the minor hit to my arena shield, versus using [Mantle of the Stars] to deflect. An extension of Maximus’s ‘take it or shield it’ training from eons ago, delivered in a small field outside of a minor city from a long-dead empire.

Then I was through the gates.

Climbing up the tower was trivial, taking only a few seconds before I tied the School’s flag to the center pole.

Which started the countdown.

“The School of Sorcery and Spellcraft has claimed the center tower. Hapensburgs, you have five minutes to dislodge the School’s contestant before they win.” The [Referee] announced.

I cracked open my spellbook to [Billowing Darkness], engulfing the top of the tower in blackness thicker than night.

… this was something of a bad look, wasn’t it? [Evil Queen] Elaine, on top of her tower, surrounded by shadows? With the smallfolk besieging and trying to take me down? Yeeeeeeah, oops.

Annoyingly, it didn’t seem to slow him down in the slightest. Given the massive hollowed-out trees they lived in, it should've come as no surprise that he was adept at fighting in the dark. He teleported on top of the fort’s walls, loosening another set of those damn bolts.

I predicted his next attack, dropping to the ground and doing a pushup, before springing back to my feet. As I jumped back to my feet, I summoned one of my spellbooks.

[*ding!* [The Very Hungry Bookwyrm] leveled up! 76 -> 77. +80 Dexterity, +80 Vitality, +80 Speed, +240 Magic Power, +240 Magic Control, +240 Mana, +240 Mana Regeneration per level from your Class! +1 Strength, +1 Dexterity, +1 Speed, +1 Vitality, +1 Magic Power, +1 Magic Control, +1 Mana, +1 Mana Regeneration per level for being Chimera (Elvenoid)! +1 Mana, +1 Magic Power per level from your Element!]

FINALLY! A level! Woohooo! It had been way too long since my last one!

I banished the distraction from my mind, feeling momentarily sad for all the spells I was about to burn through.

I flipped my spellbook open to the spell I wanted, putting my hand on the mandala. The Awarthril Special. The runes glowed and the page disintegrated as I cast the spell. Chains erupted from the mandala, chasing the gnome, as globs of sticky ooze liberally sprayed around in his direction.

If I tied him down, I could just sit back and relax. I didn’t like my odds of succeeding, but it was better than doing nothing.

“Fwoop!” He called out, but I was ready. I knew from prior matches that Tinbeg liked teleporting to blind spots, or even just to break up line of sight and force people to find him again, but neither were a concern with [The World Around Me]. I mentally directed the chains, the oversized manacles grabbing his entire body. His crossbow was being impossibly held by the tip of a single finger, impling skills at play.

“Boop!” He teleported again.

Fucking.

Trigger.

Mages.

This time he teleported practically under me, almost jamming the crossbow into my chin. He launched a shot from point-blank.

The [Triple Shot] slammed into my head, and I was reflexively slapping at him with my free hand as he called out “Gazoop!”, vanishing again. This time he teleported far away, further than [The World Around Me] perceived.

My shield was calibrated to an absurd degree. I could take dozens of his shots to my head before I got concerned about losing.

The organizers didn’t quite believe me when I said my head wasn’t a weak point, and I wasn’t willing to demonstrate. I was fairly certain I was significantly tougher than the shield they’d given me indicated, but I wasn’t willing to prove it.

Binding wasn’t going to help. He’d just teleport out of whatever I did, assuming I could even trap something as small as him to begin with. I traded out my spellbooks, opening up a new set of abilities.

I shielded a second attack, pinpointing where the gnome was. Another spell, another page disintegrated, and a cone of screeching, disorienting noise blasted out.

It was on one of the lowest power settings I could manage, gnomes being particularly fragile. My spell couldn’t harm him, but it might make him feel dizzy.

I ducked another triple shot, cursing. So much for that.

Fuck, I couldn’t wait to get the skill to a combat-practical state for myself.

Binding and restriction wasn’t going to work, nor could I apply anything strong enough to slow or disorient Tinbeg. Harm was completely out of the question and far too easy to cause accidentally against such a tiny opponent. My hands were somewhat tied.

Same spellbook, different page, and I had the wind blowing around me, causing my hair to whip around. Tinbeg’s bolts wavered and were blown off course, and I was briefly elated that I could just stand here with the [Twister] spell going.

Then he adjusted his aim, and I dropped the spell. It was costing me significantly more mana to disrupt his shots briefly than he was spending, and I’d need to use a new spell every time he adjusted his aim. It wasn’t worth it.

Fine. Time to change mindset, track, and strategy.

I stood there, crossing my arms and wrapping myself in [Mantle], having it flow like a cape woven of starlight. Offense wasn’t working, and fundamentally, this contest was about showing off. Standing here, daring Tinbeg to attack, demonstrating a flawless defense would do more for our image than a thousand ineffective attacks from me.

That just made Hapensburgs look good.

I dropped the darkness spell, letting the crowd watch. Why be a [Showwoman] if I was hiding the entire event from the audience?

Tinbeg was no amateur, and bolts came flying thick and fast within seconds of me standing there, daring him to act.

I had a good amount of fun using [Nova Lance] to simply burn the silver bolts out of the air, utterly disintegrating them. It made for one hell of a lightshow, and an impressive display to boot.

I had to be extremely careful with each shot. The bolts were coming in a straight line from Tinbeg to me, and my Radiance beams only came in straight shots. Just a flicker of [Nova Lance] at the power needed to disintegrate bolts at Tinbeg could seriously injure or flat-out kill him.

I stopped after a close call had my heart leap into my throat. Winning a round in a game wasn’t worth someone’s life.

I dodged some, deflected others, shielded more, and flat-out tanked the rest. His goal was to get me to move. My goal was to stay here. It was an endurance contest within a showmanship contest.

I wasn’t too concerned about getting his [Trigger]-set [Teleports]. Tinbeg was too fragile to enter the teamfight unshielded, and I was going to blast his ugly little face into a thousand pieces the moment he had a shield on.

“Hapensburgs, you have four minutes.”

An annoying reminder that winning via the anti-stall rules gave the Hapensburgs mages who’d already fought more time to recharge their mana. Bah!

Bolts flew up from one part of the wall in a steady stream, and I simply walked to the other side of the tower to avoid them. A moment’s pause, then they’d start up again from a different position.

I considered erecting a set of thick metal walls, but no. The mana requirement for something like that was absurd, and so far I was keeping my mana pool high. The gnome was blowing through mana at a prodigious rate, and I didn’t want to win the battle only to lose the war. Keeping me intact for the teamfight was more important than spending all my mana on a questionable defense.

[Mantle] got a strong workout as a billowing cape, making me look good. Didn’t cost anything when it wasn’t deflecting any attacks!

“Hapensburgs, you have three minutes.”

I briefly tried flat-out lying down to not give any profile for Tinbeg to shoot at. He teleported above the tower, and rained bolts down on me. Being on the floor was terrible tactically, and he got in a few good hits before I rolled out of the way.

“Hapensburgs, you have two minutes.”

The cheeky little shit tried to teleport on the tower, shooting me from point-blank. The angle was finally right, and a [Nova Lance] disintegrated half his crossbow. He teleported off.

It didn’t stop him for long - but he didn’t repeat the stunt.

“Hapensburgs, you have one minute.”

Tinbeg teleported back onto the tower, and I sniped his crossbow again. He looked smug, dropping the smoldering embers of his bow, and I got a Bad Feeling.

Three ghostly crossbows appeared around him.

Then five.

A dozen.

Dozens.

Hundreds.

He intoned words I didn’t know, but I knew the general gist of.

Some utter horseshit [Noble] skill. Probably like [Every Man, Woman, and Child Picks Up A Weapon in Defense of the Tree] or some other nonsense like that.

I made the snap decision to showboat. This was obviously Tinbeg’s trump, and I was so close to winning. I could jump off the tower or fly away, but that’d reset the timer, and give the rest of his team all the more time to recover.

If I defiantly stood here, not flinching as I took the entire barrage, and won? The entire match would practically be over, people wouldn’t be talking about anything else.

All the bows fired. Each bolt and shot was weak, but there was the sheer quantity of it. A storm of metal rained down on me, feeling like a light breeze.

“Ten seconds left.” The [Referee] declared.

I smirked as the storm petered out, and made the snap call not to make the same brushing motion as I did against Xocoh. The fight wasn’t over yet, and flubbing the last seconds could make me look bad.

My shield had to be low after all that abuse. Just a few more seconds.

“Nine.” The ref counted down.

“Floop!”

Tinbeg teleported onto my head, a new bow pointing down at point-blank to my head.

He fired as the ref announced “Eight.”

My shield sprang up, bright red.

Damn. Blasted accumulated-shield damage limit. I suppose having all my mana available was more than a fair tradeoff for my shield having a maximum amount of damage it could take before I was ‘out’, and frankly, I’d have probably taken enough ‘damage’ to drain a huge chunk of my mana anyways.

“Round 4 Winner, Hapensburgs! Current points are a 4-4 tie!”

Fucking unshielded jerk. Exploiting my [Oath] like this was so unfair.

… Then again, I’d been trained by Artemis. Her first lesson was literally ‘don’t fight fair’, and I guess it was being turned on me.

Ah well. While I’d lost the round, strategically, it had been a win. The 1v1’s didn’t matter anymore for determining who took the crown, and I came out of that fight looking much better than Tinbeg. The crowd wasn’t dumb. They knew he’d exploited the rules hard, and even then I’d just stood there and taken the brutal beating without blinking.

At this point it was all about weakening the various members of both teams, and given how reluctant Tinbeg had been to use that last, big skill, and all the teleporting around he did, he had to be out of gas, and mostly out of mana. I’d ask Iona to check.

Meanwhile, I was sitting pretty with 85% of my mana pool left, Sarama had mana potions, my mana regeneration was crazy, and I was pretty happy about our chances.

Sir Polarton went up next, and he had no issues about causing harm, and everyone knew it. A single devastating roar from the Sound Classer, impossible to teleport to avoid, crashed across the field and instantly eliminated the fragile gnome.

6-4. There was an argument that we should’ve substituted me out the moment Tinbeg wanted to fight unshielded, but that would’ve looked bad, compared to the display I’d put on. Plus, I’d ended up so close to winning.

Iona was happy to confirm that Tinbeg was entirely out of mana to boot.

The great-great-many-times-great grandson of Sultan Qizm took the field, the elf all flowing lines and elegant swordplay, dancing around Sir Polarton in a stunning display that had our jaws dropping.

Sir Polarton was still a fucking polar bear, and while elves were the god’s perfect creation, they had nothing on a half-ton killing machine. The two ended up in a mutual kill, eliminating each other.

8-6. We still had a lead!

We sent up Ling Li, and I was startled to hear the name Sahel announced from the other side, a beautiful naga slithering up to represent Hapensburgs.

Iya was a member of the Sahel family, and from what I understood, she was the heir. So why was this Norta being announced as the heir?

“Any ideas?” I asked Iona as we watched the fight.

She snorted.

“They’re all a pit of vipers. My ideas range from one’s a fake, designed to throw off assassins, to they’ve both been told they’re the heir, and they need to out-maneuver and kill each other for the survivor to end up ruling the house.”

I eyed the magic Norta was throwing around.

“Iya is so fucked if it’s a direct fight.”

Iona nodded agreement.

Ling Li was flying high on a gigantic leaf, firing an unending stream of razor-sharp, acid-edged leaves at Norta. They withered and died before they could reach her, and the naga kept drawing dark runes to fire spells back.

The [Cultivator] and the [Wizard] exchanged blows for far longer than I’d imagine, Shirayuki getting more and more impatient the entire time.

“She’s stalling.” She finally declared. “Waiting for the rest of the team to regenerate. Ling Li! Concede!” Our [Coach] shouted across the field.

Ling Li stormed back, and it was 8-8.

We were down to Pascal and Sarama. Sarama was our potion maker, and potentially deadly in a fight, throwing her concoction. It was also the last round, so we were willing to go all-out, and Pascal was no slouch.

At the same time, it didn’t matter, and we all knew it. The teamfight would determine the final winner… although the more points the loser racked up now, the better prizes they’d get. Motivation from the fauns organizing the event to keep us fighting.

Pascal stepped up, and half transformed into the werewolf he was, his pool of mallium twisting around him. Norta had burned a good amount of mana fighting Ling Li, and he quickly beat her.

10-8 in our favor.

Someone announced as the Vollomond [Princess] was next, and Pascal turned to us with an awkward look on his face. Shirayuki gave an exasperated sigh.

Fucking politics. Even if it was ‘all clean fun’, and there were ‘no repercussions’, we all knew that was something of a lie. Openly ‘defying’ the princess of the country he and his family lived in, and were prominent, if low-level nobles, was a poor life choice for his future. At the same time, showing deference could easily get him and his family noticed in a good way, and he didn’t want to be made to potentially wreck his future over a single event.

Politics.

“We’ll pull you.” Shirayuki’s tails told the real story of how she felt.

“Nobles.” Iona spat onto the ground.

“Nobles.” I agreed, adding my spit.

Pascal looked deeply disturbed at our display, but Ling Li of all people put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

10-10. Only Sarama was left. Sarama, and her limited supply of potions.

“We concede the rest of the singles portions.” Shirayuki announced, and with that, we were moving into the teamfight.

My last fight. The one that would determine if I ever got to wear the crown of the Gladiator Gauntlet or not. The one that would let me feel I got the chance to repay the School for granting me free tuition, and a place to learn and read for years.

I - we - was determined to win.