...Last part of 173

  Chapter 173 Part C

  I got a bit nervous. There wasn’t helping it. I took a deep breathe, and then approached the ptform where the enchanted machines were.

  “OK, this is my first time. How does it work?” I said.

  I heard several people nearby groan. Some were wishing they’d put their money on the other guy.

  “What?! You signed up and haven’t even practiced?!” the staffer is stunned. Then he looked down. “Look there are no refunds if you mess up. I hope you don’t get bankrupt. They sell debtors into sves.” His eyes say it all.

  Some of them made negative comments about not betting on the newbie. I’ll show them.

  Around me all kinds of soldiers and dirty mercenary types that look like they haven’t bathed in weeks are now ughing at me while he expined it.

  “Just keep your hands on the magic pad. When you do that after inserting money it will feel like you are fainting, but you will find yourself in like a mini dimension. There you will basically use your abilities just like normal and it will feel like a real fight. It will for all intents be and feel real. You can use any of your normal abilities in their as if you were really swinging your sword or casting magic, except that it will be in your mind and the contender’s mind, so it’s not usually fatal,” he smiled.

  “Not usually?” Sunghee gives me a scared look.

  “Well nothing is perfect,” he expined apologetically. “But it’s less mess to clean up than the rings upstairs,” he added.

  “OK,” I said.

  “No don’t do it!” Sunghee panicked.

  She’s hugging me while crying. But not hugging me to hug, but to try to pull me away. “Please lets find another way!” somehow she got really spooked about this, even though I’ve proven myself so many times.

  It takes a good ten minutes of calming her down before we can continue, during which we had to let a couple of people go ahead of us. It makes the others ugh at me even more while they think I’m someone that’s trying to be dragged away by a retive or ruled over by his wife.

  Finally I order Sunghee to stop. If we don’t do this, I’ll never meet the demonologist. And there’s too much that we don’t know yet. I need to get stronger anyway, even without the demonologist option. If this is an illusion fight there still should be some gain in battle experience even if its diminished too. I suspect its at an unknown percentage of a whole rate.

  Sunghee bites her lip but stays right next to me to assist me. But she’s still spooked and wiping away tears. What got into her?

  The guards are making sure she won’t interfere however. They are really big on non-interference in the arenas.

  Finally I step up to the pad of the giant arcade box with the magic pad. I put in 1 gold.

  As I do I find myself fading out of consciousness.

  But I wasn’t passing out, instead it was like I was having my consciousness uploaded into a dimensional pocket room.

  In no time I find myself in a brightly lit room, and it’s almost even like a real fighting ring with everyone in the surrounding area even the spectators. I hear Sunghee in the background there shouting for me to be careful while city guards are keeping order. Strangely its as if the real people in the arena are still around us outside of the ring observing and shouting stuff at us or throwing stuff, though they look a bit pixel like almost.

  This is really vividly made! I don’t have time for that. I have to concentrate. I see my opponent looking at me hungrily.

  Weird. Not a dwarf. Not a dwarf at all. It’s some kind of heavily muscled lizard man with a sharp looking bck iron spear.

  Ready appears in the air.

  Weird how it’s in my mind’s nguage and not in the hieroglyphics…

  3…

  2…

  1…

  Fight! Appears written in the air…

  OK, that’s kind of cliche resembling a certain other system.

  With no warning I was forced to dodge as the huge lizard man suddenly pointed his tail at me and started shooting barbs.

  What?

  Can a lizard man do that? I didn’t know they could do that!

  It’s weird!

  Isn’t that cheating?! Not fair!

  I dodged right then left as he keeps shooting while people are ughing at us. I keep rolling and moving as barb after barb are shot at me. It’s not easy to keep up. I roll to the right and finally get my runic shielding up.

  His eyes widen. He said something but it’s not dwarven so I’m not sure what he’s saying. I think he’s surprised that I’m a mage. I can’t even understand his nguage but he looks cunning and smart despite being a lizard man. He looks like the ultimate bipedal predator.

  The runic shielding takes a few hits while I then cast protection from missiles to strengthen it, with holes punctured in pces with sounds of gss breaking as it shudders but holds.

  Then he shoots more barbs. I dodge and then reset my shielding so that it’s fresh and undamaged.

  But I was unprepared for what happened next.

  Suddenly he opens his mouth and a huge gout of fme shoots out at me like a fiery nce. I did roll to the right but my shield is melting like pstic. He’d adapted quickly after seeing that his barbs were doing less damage after my second spell.

  I re-casted my shielding to strengthen and reset it.

  He counters and does the gout of fme again.

  Then I realized I was in trouble. This guy is strong! He’s possibly one of the strongest people I’ve encountered yet on this world.

  This guy is a fme mage of some kind or a lizard shaman. I’m not sure which but I’m already sweating from effort to keep up with keeping my shield up, so I’m not covered in third degree burns. I suspect the video game machine also doesn’t completely mask all pain too, since this is based off real physics emution.

  The tail barbs and his fme were all offensive magic that resembled creature abilities to put me off guard thinking he was just some small fry lizardman, and I’d underestimated him.

  I had to recast my runic shielding again and again barely keeping up, after the next fme bout which had made my clear transparent shielding dripping like melted pstic full of holes.

  The next round he tries both shooting barbs and the fiery nce at the same time, forcing me to dodge. I was lucky he missed. But it’s also true he’d gotten one of the little barbs to shoot inside of my shielding using the nce’s opening he’d created with the other spell. Its true that I’m not damaged, but I’m not able to get to offensive mode yet either because he’s so good.

  After I get the shielding up again we’re circling each other while I put up all my other buffs including the elemental resistance and my movement buff. Then I dodged some more.

  The sweat is pouring down my face.

  This guy is ridiculously strong! I can’t even a step forward in.

  After like twenty rounds straight I’m still only casting runic shielding while both of us are getting tired. I’ll probably have to reset my protection from missiles and resistance buffs again.

  Finally by round thirty I’m getting tired again.

  His eyes are really wide that I’m still up and facing him. He’s even gotten a bit more intense seeing that I’m not a normal opponent either. But he respects me more now that he sees I’m not some small fry.

  But the spectators are totally quiet now. They’re really into this and watching to see what happens while bookies are trying to cash in on it. They’d been jeering and throwing stuff before but now they are on the edge of their seats and the bookie betting line just got three times longer than it had been as people are in a mad rush to get something in before the fight is decided.

  He tried to do the double cast thing with the tail barbs and the nce of fire several times but it seems like he can’t just do it non-stop and has limits to how soon he can do that almost like a ‘cool down time’. He needs a rest between doing them both at the same time. My shielding has like a couple hundred tiny needles all stuck in it too but somehow I am afraid the needles are poisoned too.

  I’m afraid to let anything get through and this guy’s offense is so tight that I’m not even able to get my stun ray on him. If I could the fight would probably end but every time I try to go forward I just end up having to heal my shield.

  What the heck is this guy?

  This is a lesson on humility…

  For me…

  I’ve been too cocky and arrogant. This guy is really humbling me to fight. I’m not the top dog after all.

  I thought I was unbeatable but I’m just trying to avoid dying and getting wounded on this guy. To be fair, he hasn’t scratched me yet or hurt me but poisoned barbs and a fiery nce would probably suck. And just because it’s an illusion doesn’t mean it wouldn’t hurt like hell.

  Finally the lizard man guy is breathing hard.

  The crowd starts to get excited again.

  Eh…

  I think I’m like half mana by now. Even though its illusion powered, it’s powered by our own mana tanks. So I can feel what my real mana is at while it’s being eaten up.

  We keep going about six more rounds and the lizard man is looking sloppy like he might faint from exertion because I’m starting to wear him down.

  Finally he stops and says something to one of the referees or judges or whatever they are dressed in funny armored leather clothes.

  Simution freezes. Then somehow I’m not in the alternate reality bubble anymore, but back at the video game like controls.

  I can read text on the screen.

  Victory!

  Enemy has conceded defeat through surrender.

  Because enemy has surrendered fatality mode is disabled.

  Its good he gave up because that was one of the hardest fights of my life. And I found out too that lizard guy is a shaman. And he has a whole troop of angry older brothers on the sidelines that are all staring at me with red angered eyes.

  And I couldn’t also help but notice the words, ‘fatality mode is disabled’.

  Shit. Even if it’s an illusion box this is some serious shit.

  I received 1 gold for my trouble PLUS what I’d put in originally. On this world 1 gold is a lot of money. This is great earnings now! But I wonder if it’s worth it. You can’t always predict what or who you’d be fighting. There would be some losses among any gains, especially because the enchant magic of the system uses your real stats and combat data. I wouldn’t be surprised if all his brothers try to get his gold back and then some if I stick around. And lizards…oops it’s racist to call them that; lizard men have a lot of brothers according to Sunghee.

  But I can already see his brothers, all of them taller than he is, gring at me and sizing me up. And lizards have lots of siblings because they are hatched from eggs rather than grown in a womb like people are.

  Um, yeah it’s probably a good time to leave.

  Like right now, now…

  1 gold of PROFIT isn’t worth getting killed in an alley over. I’ll need to rest too. I’m drenched in sweat and look like I just ran a ten mile marathon after I step off the pad. I still took the gold, but bowed to the angry lizard man shaman.

  I’m still weak.

  Is this because I’m basically a support css?

  I might have been able to do something if I could get an edge in casting faster than that guy, but he was really good too. He also must have a mana tank about half the size of mine, which is extremely, very impressive.

  If my mana tank is size times the size of a normal mages, then that guy’s is about three times the size of a normal mage’s would be. And his brothers being taller than he is by several feet mean his whole family are all really good genes.

  I sure hope none of them are shamans either. That would really suck.

  I better not come back here for a few days until I can be sure those lizard men types are gone.

  As we slip out the back I try to make sure we don’t get followed home. And with those noisy dwarven kids I think that pn isn’t going to be very easy to do.

  -1 silver for mail, supplies, lunches for six people counting dwarven kids, and to pay the dwarven runners that helped us decipher written dwarven today. Plus also the cost of factoring a few days worth of the renewal of my dwarven nguage enchant.

  I’d also forgotten to tally up the 50 silver that I’d paid the underground market contact gnome, I mean dwarf guy that we’d met the other day, (10 silver for the bribe to meet, plus additionally 40 silver for the cost of bribes to initiate spying on Lotti) Thus, -50 silver…

  +2 silver for giving Sunghee a dwarven transtion job (+1 silver) which she did plus handing in the one that Fox did st night (additional +1).

  -40 copper for hiring a dwarven girl on the street to transcribe the notes of Sunghee and Sylvie’s transtion job from my nguage into written dwarven. (We could transte to our nguage and using the dwarven enchant we can tell the girl what it’s suppose to say in dwarven, but we can’t actually write in dwarven.)

  My gold bag = 196 gold 28 silver 47 copper+ 1 gold - 51 silver (approximately) +1 silver 60 copper = 196 gold 79 silver 07 copper

  I wanted to go back and do another one of those non-lethal video game fights but the truth is I’ve used too much mana. And that’s not counting the 1 fight per day rule still holds with the steampunk video game machines. It’s scary that you can die in them though.

  Also I’d tried to get that one dwarven girl runner / transtor to teach me to write dwarven but she’s scared of men, and I don’t have enough clout with dwarves yet. But since Sunghee is a war hero I did manage to get her to teach Sunghee some letters but it’s not enough yet. There’s no effect. If I paid her every day for a year, we’d be lucky if Sunghee learned something because it’s that hard of a nguage to learn and master and its very complex to learn.

  But I’m considering it.

  And Gyle is still AWOL somewhere so we can’t really count on him if he’ll still be disappeared somewhere.

  For me, if I put in the time to learn dwarven it would be useful but with the same amount of time it would be easier to have a tutor for Sunghee to learn it while I focus instead on magic and strengthening my skills. I could then use a small remnant of time for what I can though it would be slower. But if I use all my time for only acquiring dwarven nguage skill then my magic skills will also stagnate.

  And I need my magic skills to keep going up. This isn’t strong enough. And people will be studying what moves I did to figure out how to beat me.

  The fight with the lizard man shaman proved I’m not yet strong enough to hold my own yet. My power in team battles is unrivaled because the buff stacking efficiency on others brings up everyone’s survivability considerably, but on a solo versus single enemy battle I realize I have a long way to go because my offensive power is cking.

  Another thing we pnned out back in the inn room was the need for being able to do a normal real life skill to earn money in case the government shuts down the adventurer’s guild for some reason, or if I get maimed or decide adventuring is too dangerous. There’s the possibility that if my identity is discovered we may have to go underground too and that means stuff like living under the radar while being disguised as a normal vilger type and this type of escape pn does actually have a good chance of being used if things continue as they are. It was for that reason that I’d tried to experiment with Sunghee and Fox doing nguage interpreting in writing, even though it was basically so small of cash that I questioned if it was worth it. And the small amount of increase, even if it was only about 2 silver there will offset what we’d used for the bckmailing payment that Lottie is charging us of 40 silver per day.

  Plus it gave Sunghee and Rina something to do while I was resting in our room, so they wouldn’t attack me in my sleep, which is becoming a problem tely. It’s weird seeing a cat ying down on the bed like a human would though, since Rina is still in cat form.

  I kind of want to find out how much it would take for me to start up a demon milk farm full of girls like Asakura to milk and sell on the bck market. That might be less dangerous than risking my neck every day. And if I risk my neck everyday then wouldn’t I sooner or ter die because of the risk piling up?

  That would be heaven right to have a cow girl farm? But maybe I’m not being serious. I’d need like at least five girls that were producing breast milk to do that probably. That would take a lot of money right? I already know cowgirls are ridiculously expensive that even rich people can’t afford.

  Later after a nap we trained harder than ever.

  I’m having Sunghee teach me aikido throws back and forth. That went on for an hour while Sunghee is trying to secretly fsh her boobs at me when she throws me on the ground. Then she switched with me to teach her about mana, since she has a little for small adventurer skills; but I had to keep buffing her and even use a regeneration spell on her because she’s weaker.

  She’s currently confined to an adventurer version of a ‘cleanup’ spell, which I love since we’re in a medieval setting. And her party system magic that lets her see party members health status, though it still doesn’t look the same as a video game’s.

  If Rina weren’t in cat form I’d be having her learn range skills like dagger throwing, bow or crossbow archery too, and basic close combat self defense.

  We also worked on Sunghee trying to score hits on my shielding while I dodged while she’s swinging her sword at me, which is freaking scary even though I have magic shielding to protect me.

  Then we practice going through virtually every skill possible to work things up.

  I hope it works.

  But different than a game this is real life.

  We don’t train until we’re out of stamina and power because only an idiot would do that.

  For starters several times little gangster twerps tried to follow Sunghee and cat form Rina around. I discovered that they’d become interested in our training and showed up te to to it, in the st few minutes. There was risk there; others use children as innocent looking spies too, often orphan kids or those whose parents aren’t around very often. There was also risk of people ambushing us or following us around for robbery, or night attacks. We didn’t know if those assassin guys would be back, or if that lizard man shaman’s brothers would come today to kick my ass either.

  Thus we stopped to rest while I still had mana.

  Still there is no word from the underground contact on some weak points or information on Lottie.

  Also the dwarves are being really quiet about what’s going on with the siege going on outside the mountain. The fact that they are keeping this hush, hush makes me more worried than if we did hear something. Shouldn’t they want us to know? And why aren’t they mobilizing more people?

  I still haven’t forgotten about that demon prince candidate thing that we’d discovered but I can’t do anything about it yet. I can’t worry about it till I have some clues to investigate it. That’s another headache.