Chapter 283 – Eternally in charge

Chapter 283 – Eternally in charge

“Hello, folks, and welcome back to another rousing round of the tournament!” Jeff shouted into his microphone; “Today we are going for another game. It’s Mi-”

“No! No, we are not!” Dra hastily interrupted his fellow commentator. “By the correctness of the dictionary, did you forget to read the memo again?” the lizardman asked and pointed at the talking cards they were always holding. Dra actually looked at these notes of cardboard, .Jeff might as well have held a second microphone.LaaTest novels on (n)ovelbi/n(.)com

“Uhm,” the announcer stopped his hype train in the station as the onlookers below murmured, displeased with the delay. Quickly, he went over the card. “Okay, sorry folks, the game got delayed due to organisational reasons; we are doing the group fight today as scheduled... Yo, it was an honest mistake, you tossers!” Jeff shouted against the boo-ing from the audience.

“Entertainment addicted peasants,” Lydia mumbled. “Not satisfied with people fighting for their amusement, they seek that they make a fool of themselves as well in the process.”

“Oh shut the fuck up, anal queen,” Thana, balancing on the back legs of her chair, feet lying on the table, said; “They are just enjoying themselves.”

“Their amusement is a politically important event.”

“Pretty sure the average folk here is not German, why the fuck would they care about who gets on that glorified chair you keep on blasting on about.”

Lydia was starting a retort but then reminded herself who she was trying to convince. Instead, she sighed, “You can continue in your anarchistic ways.”

“I am not anarchistic, I just don’t give a fuck about politics in total.” Thana leaned back in her chair so far that it should have fallen over already. Only her heel on the table creating a considerable counterforce kept her in a fragile balance. “Why the ever-shitting cockbiscuit should I? Not like you can enforce your dumbass rules on me.”

“Thana, we all know that you are pretty strong,” John said, “but don’t forget the true monster up there.” He was pointing at Romulus, who was currently looking at Jack sitting in his giant hand. The sparrow had been hit by a series of gusts that forced it to land on the platform Romulus was on. It had clearly been the emperor’s own work as he had gone ahead and caught Jack the moment he had set as much as a foot on the balcony.

John had waited for the emperor to speak up since, and when he did, the words were clear, “I have heard about your incident, John Newman. An elemental skipping ahead two steps of power is practically unheard off, forcefully no less. It would have been interesting, if it hadn’t been accompanied with the threat coming from the first foe. It is to your luck that the corruption that entered our world was so minor I felt content watching you sort it out yourself.”

Why did they keep calling the Lorylim ‘the first foe’? John would need to ask Lydia once he was done getting lectured.

“Accident or not, if you summon even a speck of these foul beings into my city again, I will scrub that impurity from earth before it can spread to anything. I have no intention of your leniency chipping away at the current lock on them. If the taint remains on your Undine and I find out that you haven’t taken care of it... that’s your end.”

John felt a chill running down his spine despite him trying his best to remain composed. He spent a lot of time worrying about things, but he usually didn’t let stress impede his everyday life. Here he had an ultimatum from Romulus himself. He wouldn’t get any second chances.

“Until the last doubts of her corruption are cleared, I will not allow you to fight,” Romulus voice seemed to reverberate in the little sparrow and reach all the way into his real body, “and - you - won’t. This group fight will be happening without you.” Jack nodded to the best ability a sparrow could, beak flying up and down. They had come to that conclusion without Romulus’ input, but this was a one way communication, and John did not feel like he could get away with being sassy right now.

The already giant of a man was bending over his small bird form and caged Jack in the shadow of a colossus. His eyes, lying in a face torn with the wrinkles of a wise man in his middle-age, bored through the sparrow and right into John. The few hundred metres between them felt like a non-existent distance to him. Truly, to the emperor it might as well not have existed.

“And let your princess know that her painting arrived. Her grandfather was nice enough to bring it himself,” as if on signal, the old king stepped out from the hallway behind them.

“You still like being flashy, don’t you, Rom?” Frederik teased his friend and fell down into an empty chair.

“It is one of the few entertainments left to me,” Romulus returned in kind, his tone friendly and his face lighting up as he sat up straight.

“Sure, sure,” Thana waved off, folding her arms behind her head afterwards. She obviously didn’t even give the possibility any time of day.

“Don’t be too arrogant,” John threw his hat in the ring, and Thana’s cocky expression quickly changed into sad shock.

“Don’t you believe in me, John?” she mumbled, all quiet and miserable.

The bipolar display tugged at his heartstrings, that was for certain. “That’s not the problem here, Thana. You should just entertain the notion that the enemy actually has a plan to deal with you,” he explained.

“Ah, yeah,” Thana went right back to cackling. “They would, or at least they really fucking should. If they don’t, I am going to tear them a new asshole. Okay, leaving things up to the bleached blonde bitch over there then.”

“...My hair is not bleached,” Nia pointed out.

“I don’t fucking care!” Thana shouted back. Blinking slowly, her head tilting in confusion, the pariah stayed silent while staring at the bloodmage. “Stop doing that, it’s creepy!”

“Anyway,” Lydia forced the conversation to remain on topic. “Nia’s job will be to obstruct whatever attempts at slowing you down exist. I will provide back-up on that front. Thana, you will dispose of the enemy as quickly as you can. Are we clear?”

“Orders received,” Nia said. “Crystal fucking clear,” Thana grinned.

A signal from Lydia later and the commentators desk hovering down to them, and Jeff shouted the results into the microphone, “The team of the Secundus candidate has been made clear. It’s the tiny psychopathic Thana...”

“He did NOT just call me that,” Thana growled and jumped off from her chair; “He keeps calling me that! I AM NOT THAT FUCKING TINY, YOU COCK-GOBBLER! I will...!”

A cascade of threats was shouted up to the announcer’s desk while John did his best to calm her down. Jeff just wanted to continue talking but was interrupted by Dra. “...Jeff, I recommend you stop calling her tiny.”

“Huh, why is that?”

“Because you won’t live a week after the tournament if you keep pissing her off like this.”

“Pooooooint taken and ignored,” Jeff laughed it off, checking if his hair was still in the ridiculous upwards style with his hands.

“Moving on, it’s Thana, the princess Lydia herself and the blank soul Nia. Let’s see who Maximillian fields against that line-up. What do you think, Dra?”

“Well, Alexej is most-likely going to partake in this battle. His whole reason for being here has to be to win the group fights, otherwise previous actions wouldn’t make sense. Aside from that, they will want someone that can fight Nia, so either Ankleshanker or Mario due to them not being as reliant on magic. It will be hard to counter both the incredible threat of Thana and the magic eradication of Nia with just three people,” the lizardman analysed and took a sip of his ginger ale. “So my money is on Alexej, Mario and Ankleshanker. If they equip their physical fighters with glass again, Lydia becomes less useful. I have to wonder why they decided to field her over John Newman. Maybe his power level is overhyped after all?”

“Well, we won’t get a chance to see that today, but the hype in this stadium is real, right folks?” Jeff worked up the audience, the same one that had been boo-ing at him just a few minutes prior. They were now applauding like that had never happened. Fickle, that is what an audience was. Always incredibly fickle.

“Ah, it seems Maximillian made his choice!” Jeff said upon seeing the king of Viena raise his hand.