"Thanks, I'm feeling fine now. You can let me off." I told Lucille on whose back I rested.
"Are you sure?" She asked worriedly.
"Don't look down on our amazing Healer. I'm as good as I've ever been. We gotta finish this round of the Trials and then we can lick our wounds in fort. That is, if they don't push us to do the second round instantly right after, but I doubt that."
She nodded at my words and I found myself standing with the backs of my three lovely frontliners' backs greeting me. Aurora quickly rushed to me and gave me a teary hug. "I was so worried!"
"I will pamper you a lot tonight, but focus on the battle for now, Dream." I admonished my plump princess, but I knew that she would be too emotional to remain bat-ready while my life or death was hanging in the air.
With all that done, it was finally time to take a good look around the empty cave, save for the podium from which Wrinkle had long since run away, and the numerous batants- or their desecrated remains.
"How are we on Mana?" I asked. I lost quite a bit with the previous battle, so now it was time to regain some points in the relatively stable position we've found ourselves in.
"More than half left, so I'm good!" Aurora chimed in happily now that she was sure that I would live.
"I'm not." Seraphiel replied wryly while eyeing Lucille in particular. She expanded a lot of her mana in order to keep the overeager woman alive according to our previous mental link exchanges.
"Master, Ghost is battle-ready! She wants to kill all who approach Master!"
"I'm good." Ayame said in a cheery tone. She must've also been deathly worried for my health, even if she was the least affected of my lovers.
"Same! Though my armor isn't for some reason."
"That's because the 1500 mana I expended on keeping you alive in the short five minutes you spent fighting didn't affect your armor's remaining durability." Seraphiel revealed the absurd number dryly. "I feel like fainting when I think about how much healing you will need once you lose the armor and embrace being a Berserker…"
"Oh… Sorry." That was all my dearest Lucille could say to the grumbling elf. Seraphiel had slightly more than 1700 base mana due to her high level's nearly all points being specced into Magic and the healer class giving 50% extra MP. She should be regenerating 100 mana faster than a minute so most of it will be refilled if we can stay out of trouble for a bit.
"Berserker is a lone-wolf class, I'm pretty sure it will get some self-sustaining skill soon enough." I said, trying to cheer up my cute long-eared ally. "Plus, I wanted to visit a temple sometime soon too. Maybe the Goddess will give me the class as well. We could heal our suicidal frontliner by taking turns."
"Uh, no, she won't." My sexy elf was either pissed off more than I thought or she agreed with me that the chances of that happening was extremely low.
"You have a literal Healer, a woman she blessed with the class, as your slave, master… I don't think she would appreciate that, nor think that you have an 'altruistic, benevolent heart'."
Yeah, she was right. I didn't try going to a temple yet because I feared that instead of blessing me, she would curse me. After all, in the past 7 weeks I've done a lot of bad things. If she can feel the good in me, she should also sense the bad, and might send her guard dogs- also known as Arch Priests- after my bum.
The risk-reward ratio wasn't worth, especially since I could just get someone else to be the healer of the party.
With that out of the way, it was time to examine the 'battle', but perhaps 'mayhem' or 'war' might be better words to describe what it was in reality.
.|l-e'm,p| y- r
The stale air of the cave mixed with the overwhelming scent of blood and death. The ground beneath us all was wet due to being soaked with crimson that pooled and spread like water. Another team was occupying this place by the looks of it, but they fell to someone else. As to why the victors didn't camp here I couldn't tell. Maybe they got too bloodthirsty and couldn't sit still. 𝘳áℕòᛒĘṥ
Bodies littered the cold floor, twisted in grotesque forms of agony and desperation- they were all fallen batants who were mutilated beyond recognition. I don't think even their mothers could identify most of these corpses.
Next to them, broken swords, spears, and other weapons were scattered amidst the lifeless bodies. I had the urge to crouch down and began scavenging some stuff, but the insect-helmeted guards were watching us. Now that I think about it a bit better, it feels like they are giving us a lot of attention especially considering the fact that we are just chilling at the moment.
The cave was vast, forming an arena of death carved from cold, unyielding rock. It was as though the Trials had been staged in the maw of a beast, swallowing thousands of batants whole. The distant roar of clashing steel, the cries of the wounded, and the guttural screams of the dying echoed from every corner, creating an audio display of violence that never seemed to end.
At the heart of it all, 6,000 souls had been thrown into this pit to fight for their continued survival, forced to claw and kill for a fleeting chance at victory. However, based on my rough estimate, for over 2,000 of them that chance had already been snuffed out.
Their bodies lay still, trampled underfoot or discarded in heaps like refuse. Flesh had been torn apart by blades, leaving stumps of torn muscle and exposed bone. Some batants had even been burned alive based on their charred skin, while others had been crushed with their bodies barely resembling anything human anymore.
I watched as a hulking brute swung a massive warhammer and managed to land a hit that brutally caved in the skull of his opponent with a sickening crunch.
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