Chapter 587: Anticipation can kill a man…
*Bing-Bong*
It has come to the writer’s attention that using: <{""}> as an indicator for multiple languages being used is a massive pain in the ass, as such, all dialogue will be denoted with “” for this chapter due to a majority of the dialogue being in Tide Tongue…except for the kaijin and Zhen Liu due to them technically thinking in all languages at once, and the branch clan which…honestly could be either language.
Thank you.
…
Wait, when did you establish that they could do that?
|While back, hence why Hurricroak is multilingual.|
Ah…that’s how you’re justifying her cursing in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese?
|…maybe.|
*Bing-Bong*
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“Ladies and gentlemen, we have our first qualifier! Contestant Zhen Ren Fa has drawn a winning marble right from the get-go!”
“Wooo!”
‘Well that’s fun…looks like we’re gonna have to deal with her later rather than sooner…dammit,’ Zhen Liu cursed as he saw his distant relative’s good fortune. While he wasn’t afraid of being unable to defeat her in combat, he didn’t want to deal with her because he knew of the consequences that would occur after doing so.
Hopefully, she’d get eliminated by another competitor before she had to go toe to toe with him or his cousins.
Soon after Zhen Ren Fa had pulled that winning marble, the other two people that had gone up there with her decided to throw caution to the wind and pull from the treasure themselves.
*FWOOSH! FWOOSH!*
Only to be met with…mediocre results.
“Oh it appears we’re finally having our first combat pulls! Looks like their luck has failed them, so we must see how their combat skills hold up!”
‘Okay, so I’m gonna hazard a guess and say anything that’s a primary color is going to be a combat roll,’ Zhen Liu observed.
One of the contestants had pulled from the aether treasure a red colored marble, while the other pulled a yellow one.
Before any explanations could be given about the meaning of the colors, or at least before the contestants could ask, the two contestants were immediately encapsulated by strange colored balls of light that matched the marbles they had just grabbed!
“Do not panic, this is just the effect of the [Myriad Marble Garden]. Behold!”
The two orbs of light proceeded to float upward until stopping at different heights and then ballooning in size.
The two orbs of light proceeded to become transparent, allowing everyone to see the inside of them with only the slightest tints of yellow and red obscuring the image.
From what Zhen Liu could see the latter one had it’s occupant in some kind of sunny wasteland, while the one in the red orb was stuck in a forest of some kind. It appeared that the two contestants were teleported to another dimension entirely…which was apparently the case.
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=Well would you look at that! That aether treasure is a spatial attributed one,= Logos pointed out, =it’s not as good as our implementations, but it’s good enough for these main branch guys I guess.=
‘Wait, what? Good enough? Those two got yeeted into entirely different biomes in a marble sized object!’
=I think our record was…thirty? Each about as big as that one amusement park in our lord’s memories.=
=Bingo.=
‘Enough of the commentary please, I’m trying to focus on what’s about to happen to these two.’
“ROAR!”
“Ah!”
‘Case and point.’
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The two contestants were initially caught off guard by their sudden teleportation, as far as the audience could tell, until they had both turned in a certain direction.
From the contestant’s point of view, they could see the arena and the people in it on the other side of a strange window-like tear in the sky. That was all they needed to see that they weren’t captured, but were under the influence of that weird aether treasure.
The two contestants gave a quick wave to indicate that they could see the audience, before both heading off in whatever direction they thought was a good idea…which was when shit got interesting.
Just as the contestants were about to take a step, two more beings manifested in their respective spaces.
Judging by the reactions of the two young warriors though, the audience could tell that the two new beings were not friendly.
In the wasteland space displayed in the red orb, a fully armored soldier armed with a guandao had appeared and took up a fighting stance. The insignia on the man’s armor indicated that he was a soldier for the Zhen main clan, whether he had either volunteered as a combatant or was ordered to by his superiors was unknown.
As for the opponent that appeared in the yellow orb, it was giant bear-like aether beast with burning red eyes, dull gray fur, iron claws and a visible metal spine embedded in its back. But this wasn’t just any bear-like aether beast.
“Wait a minute,” Zhen Hai said aloud to alert his cousins that he had a question, “isn’t that…”
“An Iron Spined Bear that we brought as tribute alongside a bunch of other aether beasts? Yes, yes it is,” Zhen Yue answered, as she was the most familiar with bear type aether beasts.
At the sight of the bear aether beast, the rest of the branch clan members had come to the realization that the beasts they had brought with them as tribute, were going to be used as an obstacle for this competition.
This wasn’t a terrible thing, as they were more used to fighting beasts than people in their line of work, but then the Hero Elder made a rather…unsettling announcement.
“As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, the warriors who pull one of the combat marbles will have to battle one of several types of opponents we have keyed to each of them. Only be defeating the opponent attached to the marble will the contestant be allowed to participate in the next round. But be aware, not of all the marbles will be connected to opponents that can be easily dealt with by the competitors here. In fact, one of these marbles out of a thousand contains the power of a deadly beast that took three Grand Masters and a Lord to apprehend!”
Gasp!
As soon as the Zhen Clan scions heard that last line, they all went pale and wide-eyed.
“Did…did he just imply…what I think he just implied?,” Zhen Tai asked.
“That one of those marbles contain the Thunderscale Dragon Otter that almost killed us naught several days ago? Yes, yes he did,” Zhen Xing answered.
A feeling of dread and relief filled the branch clan’s scions stomach, it was the sort of feeling one gets when they know a natural disaster could happen at any moment.
You know its going to suck, but you know what to expect.
Granted, it didn’t stop one from at least trying to prepare for it or at least…remember a way to deal with it.
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‘Oh joy. The one other thing in this competition that could possibly kill my ass is in the fucking qualifier round. Whoop-de-fucking-do…”
[Oh it’ll be fine, director,] Razorstella assured Zhen Liu, [that particular marble is like one out of…several hundred? Chances of you picking that particular marble out is really low.]
[From what I can see, he has a bout a…0.12 percent chance of getting that marble. Assuming I’m doing the volume math of that container correctly…also assuming its not one of those spatial treasures where its significantly bigger on the inside,] Spring Brawler added.
[When could you do math?]
[Borrowed some textbooks from the kids.]
[Ah…]
[Besides, maestro,] Hurricroak interjected to move the conversation along, [push comes to shove, just summon all of us and we can take that thing together. No family members to worry about this time and we’re about the same level as that vicious river rat mano y mano.]
‘I guess…bah! I just know that the dragon lightning is going to be a massive pain in the ass to deal with since I’m not exactly lightning proof and I don’t exactly have many means to justify and explain how I can-wait a minute…Logos, Pathos…we extracted some blood from this thing a while back, right? The first time we took it down? Any possibility that if I can figure out a way to sneak out of this arena for a second, you guys could-‘
‘That’s…unusual…why can’t you guys do it? Is it because I’m not strong enough again?’
=No, no nothing like that…its actually a bit more embarrassing than that…the daemon we use to make those tattoos for our previous lords…broke down a few centuries back. We haven’t been able to repair it since.=
‘I…don’t know if I should find the idea of something in that weird magic library being able to break…relieving or worrying…’
<=Probably both.=>
‘Yeah, yeah…how did it break?’
<=Nepherage isn't the first time we've had to manage a rock kaijin.=>
‘Ah…’
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While the two (un)lucky contestants were battling their respective opponents for the right to move on to the next round, the Hero elder made an announcement.
“While we wait for two of our contestants to either win gloriously or fail horrendously, we will now be looping in groups of ten to pull from the lottery. Raise your hands now if you’re ready or just pray that your luck holds up.”
In response to this challenge, dozens of hands went up.
“Wonderful.”
