Scarlet

After walking around the dome for a few seconds with a generous distance magically appearing between me and any actual person as I go, I eventually give up on finding her. Only to raise my head and lock eyes immediately onto Denise’s live footage on one of the screens.

Oh. There she is.

The blonde is currently fighting against some random dude wearing factory made magi-tech armor and appears to be winning. So I stand there for a few seconds to watch, only to reach my hand up and press the random challenge button on my earpiece, following which it says in my ear, “You have challenged Rachel Garcia.”

I immediately turn my head as I hear someone else’s earpiece play out “Will you accept Scarlet Asger’s challenge?” And after a pause, they mutter a confused, “Sure?” Likely confused in that no one had touched them.

Then I find myself appearing in some sort of old style arena stadium in a desert with empty bleachers and a girl wearing a regular uniform staring at me with eyes wide open in both shock and fright. Which probably means she didn’t link my first name to my title when accepting my challenge.

Oh well. Sucks to be her.

Guess I’ll avoid killing her this time, seeing as her mana level is much lower than mine.

I use partial shift on my right arm as always before burning a large amount of my blood, using blood boil and life drain, and bursting from my position straight towards her, reaching her right after she quite literally falls onto her butt from fright. But instead of cutting her open, I just grab her throat and raise her up while she’s still shocked, then suffocate her just enough to knock her out without killing her.

Then I find myself back in the dome again.

“That was boring,” Tar complains, making me raise an eyebrow.

[Three points have been awarded for winning a duel. You now have a total of 9 points.]

Although I can’t help but agree.

Well, anyways, I repeat that same process again, getting another challenger chosen at random. Although this time I can’t quite make out where the sound of the challenge from their earpiece is coming from over all the chatter in the dome and the many challenges playing out that I’m trying to ignore. Because there’s a lot of noise in this dome.

Guess that’s my own fault for switching back to my blood lycan ears during this. But it just feels so uncomfortable to use my human ears now…

Doesn’t matter in the end though as this person apparently declines my challenge as shown by my next message from the earpiece.

[One point has been awarded for your opponent declining your challenge. You now have a total of 10 points.]

Kind of annoying, but also free points, so I won’t complain.

I press the random challenge button again before this time having the student accept the challenge. And once again regret it the moment they see me.

So I make this duel short without a vicious death just like the last one. Then I repeat the process over and over again.

Eventually the people seem to catch on, since by the time I get back to the dome again with a message telling me that I now have a total of 113 points, I find everyone just staring at me with fear in their eyes. Or rather, everyone but around twenty or so people. Then I look up to find that the screens don’t actually have many battles going on right now, just a few minor ones, with all the major players in the dome right now.

I look down again to find about fifteen people walking up to me – the other five of the ones looking at me without fear having already lost to me – before we end up just in a section all to ourselves thanks to the distance the other students have made.

“Hi?” I state, half in greeting and half in query, unsure of what’s going on.

One of them – the death magic user – walks forwards with one of his hands in his shorts pocket and his other waving as he says, “Sup! We were wondering if you wanted to start dueling with us instead of the poor people you’ve been massacring? Since we’ve already dueled each other, and there’s the whole ‘can’t duel anyone more than once’ thing going on.”

I blink once, then twice at his statement.

We can’t duel with anyone more than once? That’s a shame.

It also means I’ll likely run out of people to duel before the three hour mark hits, so I might as well. After all, the duels I’ve been being put in at random have all been against lower leveled students, with the exception of a few, so the duels lasted less than a minute each. For the most part.

Meaning there’s still over two hours left of this part of the test, but I’ve already fought around a fourth of the individuals in this dome.

Without giving me the chance to give them my agreement, one of them – some guy with glowing red slit eyes and red streaks going through his short black hair – just says, “Who gives a shit if she wants to or not,” and quickly walks up to me, touching me on the shoulder and challenging me to a duel. And while it wouldn’t have been too hard to avoid him, I honestly didn't want to.

Because this guy’s an asshole, and I kind of want to beat some sense into his thick skull.

“Please don’t traumatize the guy,” Tar pleads in my head, and I can’t help the scowl that slips through onto my face as I say out loud, “Challenge accepted.”

Then we both find ourselves in some sort of volcano terrain, which is almost ironic considering that the guy – from what I was able to observe in the one battle I watched him fight in – uses some sort of draconic fire magic.

Without wasting a breath, I tilt my head one way, then the other to pop my neck before stretching my arms out and immediately shifting my arm, following it all up with using blood boil and life drain on the ass.

Maybe I might be able to teach him a lesson about how to treat others if I only kind of maul him with my claws.

Just a little bit.