Scarlet

Unlike with the previous competitions of this tournament, everyone chose to have the anti-death clause allowed. Except myself, of course. Since it’s nearly impossible for one of these people to kill me.

Plus I absolutely have to win this. I need that ability to teleport to any planet across the universe if I’m going to be hunting the void invasion for levels.

Although I’ll probably enable it for the very last round. Just in case.

I glance to the side as Blue reappears near us, perfectly fine and just as he was before entering that battle. Then I focus on the arena again.

And the next duo who appear on the brackets is Leonidas and some random dude. A random dude who doesn’t last five seconds before the battle ends.

Boring.

Next up is Amelia and some other random dude.

Which ends up being the same as the battle before it.

Also boring. Also just a few seconds in length.

Then comes Black’s duel with Purple.

That duel isn’t even worth talking about since Purple isn’t a combat specializing contractor at all. So Black wins that one rather easily.

A few more boring duels occur now that all of the top hitters other than me are taken out, following which I finally find my time to shine. And to my surprise, I end up facing against Satan.

“I forfeit,” he says the moment we appear in the arena, making the humans in the crowd boo him. Although the demons don’t. They actually seem to approve of his actions for some bizarre reason.

I grumble to myself about the unfairness of that surrender option when I reappear above the arena, which makes Tar laugh.

After my ‘duel’, King Oberon starts talking about the second round of this competition beginning. And immediately after that, the brackets are shown in their entirety, moving the winners up to the next position on the brackets. Then the previous level of the brackets are knocked off the screen with the screen growing larger to show the second round.

Unfortunately, I’m just paired up against some random person I have no idea who is.

That said, since I was the last duel in the first round, apparently I’m the last duel in the second round as well. Also, I’m rather interested by the fact that this bracket didn’t immediately follow the bracket lines. It kinda makes the entire setup a little fake looking.The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

I wonder who set up these brackets?

My eyes move to look at a certain Fae King who looks pleased with himself.

Putting the Fae King’s obvious manipulation of the brackets aside, the first duel of the round actually looks pretty interesting. It’s between Red and the leader of the Arachnae Clan. An arachnae who is actually around the same level as Red.

This may just be the most even fight so far in this tournament.

Arachnae are known more for stealth, kind of like Black. Whereas Red is clearly known for his firepower. Literally.

And while the arachnae – whose name is Octavia Marcella Morgana – is still stronger than him just on account of her being a Clan Demon, her lack of specialization in combat will balance the playing field out a little bit.

Honestly, I’ve never met the leader of the Arachnae Clan before. And I also heard that this is a newly selected leader, having just taken over from her father.

Then again, I never met her father either. The arachnae barely ever visit the Demon King’s castle, much less the Castle of Ruin in the Bloody Duchy. So I never really got a chance.

I barely even met any arachnae at all, actually.

Most arachnae love to stay in their underground caverns, unlike the ghouls who also live in the caverns on the Northeastern continent but don’t mind leaving them.

Actually, I’ve heard recently that the Northeastern continent has become a much nicer place to live nowadays thanks to the Sin curse being gone. Now thievery and murder is a hell of a lot less common there, and a lot of the cities are starting to crack down on thievery since it’s no longer being driven largely by their Sins.

Before now, Envy always drove them to stealing, whereas Gluttony drove them to, well, killing and eating other people. A rather… gruesome culture in general.

Gramps only allowed what was going on because apparently, their Curse would just blow up if they tried suppressing it. It would grow worse and worse with every passing day until whatever atrocity they committed was far worse than what it would’ve been before.

Envy and Gluttony certainly do have a way of gradually building up more and more as time goes on after all.

Rather detestable sins, those two.

Then again, I’m just glad I don’t have to see those terrifying succubus giving me those stares anymore…

I shiver a little at the memory.

And that’s not including the kitsune.

I’d just rather not talk about them.

Tar snorts at my thoughts that have gone entirely off track while the Fae King has been blabbering away about stuff I don’t care about.

Eventually though, the second round of the tournament finally begins, and both Red and Octavia are teleported into an arena. One filled with hellfire and poison.

Not a very pleasant looking place, to be honest.

Black flames quickly jump up all around Red as he prepares, a grin on his face. Meanwhile Octavia – whose humanoid form is that of a beautiful woman with long white hair and lovely purplish green eyes wearing a flowing black cloak – simply steps forwards while different types of corruption leak out of her skin, forming puddles across the ground she’s walking on. Corruptions ranging across pretty much every color, but most of which being green, purple, or black, making a very distorted rainbow on the ground with a focus around those colors. Then the corruption begins to form little spiders that walk around on eight legs surrounding her.

Spiders of corruption. Interesting.

Then Octavia herself begins to shift into her true form. That of a massive, black spider.

And the crowd goes absolutely wild when both she and her little spiders rush towards Red while he too rushes towards her with his black flames coating his entire body and his fist raised to strike.

Finally! A good fight!