Krogor rolled over, squirming about to bury himself deeper in the pile of stuffed toys on which he lay. Plush animals of diverse sizes, styles, and types surrounded him on all sides, so numerous that they seemed more like an eccentric ball pit than a collection of plushies. Krogor purred in satisfaction, the sound reverberating deeply.
He opened his eyes in a half-lidded expression of bliss. Doing so allowed him to catch sight of the stuffed toys nearest his face: a little fairy plush wearing a green leaf dress, an eldritch god plushie with a mass of fabric stalk eyes, a rainbow-colored whale with six angel wings, a softened blocky rock golem, a sloth hugging a tree branch, and a chaos demon plush that had been a gift from Zorhellian.
Krogor snorted at the thought of him. Zorhellian was a sly, sadistic little demon who went through a lot of unnecessary complexities to spread Chaos in a roundabout way. Krogor just didn't get it. Why go through all that trouble when one could just spread Chaos by destroying everything in one's path? It was much simpler that way.
Still, Krogor wondered how his adopted son, Orochi, was enjoying his time at Uncle Zoro's. Was he having fun?
He rolled over, snatching up a specific plush toy as he did. It was an oversized, raw steak plushie with a chibi, cat-like, blushing smile embroidered on it. Troubled, he bit into it and chewed. It didn't taste good but that wasn't the appeal of this toy. He simply liked that no matter how many of them he destroyed, there was an entire production line dedicated to creating him new ones whenever he pleased.
Thus, he could bite, tear, and otherwise ruin as many steak plushies as he wanted to, without ever having to risk running out of them.
Gnawing absently on the 'steak,' Krogor furrowed his brows. His son, Orochi, was quite the troublemaker -- just like him. He loved causing Chaos even though he hadn't been born with an affinity for it. That was, of course, part of why he had adopted the young dragon, but it made him worry.
Was Orochi bored? Could Uncle Zoro's convoluted, tedious Storytelling Games really be that interesting to him?
Considering that he'd repeatedly insisted on going back to watch them over the last year, Krogor really shouldn't have been worried. But he was a simple dragon. If he thought something was boring, he naturally assumed that others would as well.
Therefore, Krogor ended up making a decision that he never would have under normal circumstances.
He'd attend the Storytelling Games and make sure his son was having a good time.
----
After Alesha, Veronica and Natalia formed a team, they spent a few hours watching Participants come and go from the Cafeteria.
Something they appreciated was that anyone who was selected for a team did not have to fight again until the team was complete. This meant none of their team members would die in combat before they could even compete together. There were, of course, supplementary rules in place to prevent Participants from using this as a loophole to escape fighting altogether, but that wasn't a problem for them since they were earnestly looking for suitable fighting companions.
An unexpected aid to their endeavor to find suitable teammates was Veronica's Participant-Recognizing Magic Eye. What Alesha had mistaken for a Boon that would have no use beyond the Story for which it had been designed became an overpowered ability incredibly well-suited for their current situation.
This Magic Eye allowed her to peek into the personal information of the other Participants. Instead of displaying their physical capabilities on something like a status screen, the Eye focused on revealing critical strategic information: their name, age, which Boons they'd chosen (and if consumable, how many charges they'd used up), their current role, chosen weapon and objective level of proficiency with that weapon.
Perhaps the most useful aspect of this was that Veronica didn't have to be looking at a person directly in order to peer into their information; she could save it for later. This also meant that she could recruit Participants remotely as long as she'd seen them once.
Once she found that out, Alesha didn't know whether to feel intimidated that Veronica could force-recruit Participants to her team or relieved that she'd been politely invited.
Their biggest issue was that they had no idea what kinds of team battles would be taking place. At first, they didn't think it mattered much; in a gladiator arena, wouldn't even team fights be fairly straightforward? However, their opinions changed as soon as they began thinking about Zorhellian's tricks and the myriad array of unexpected stunts he'd pulled on them so far throughout the Games. They could never really predict what was coming next.
That was when they realized the importance of constructing a versatile team. Rogork, of course, made a series of unhelpful comments, audible only to Alesha, throughout the entire discussion.
In pursuit of that goal, and knowing that the ideal window of opportunity for snatching up desirable teammates was quickly passing, they chose individuals whose abilities seemed like they'd be useful in a variety of situations. They recruited people in person at first. However, they soon resorted to force-adding them to their team from a distance (using Veronica's Leader privileges and Magic Eye) after discovering that a couple of their ideal choices had already been recruited to other teams. No one protested this action once it became clear that competition for quality teammates was fierce.
In the end, they had an excellent team with several highly capable members and a few who seemed decent enough to make up the remaining numbers. Even those who had been forcefully recruited using Veronica's cheat-like Boon combination were fine with it once they saw how good the other team members were.
There was one team member who Alesha absolutely did not want to recruit, but she was outvoted: the vampire from earlier, the one who had triggered her panic attack.
Veronica was the only other person who voted against recruiting him, once Alesha told her why she was against having him. By that point, though, other members had joined in on the voting. The prospect of having not just any vampire, but a Progenitor Vampire, on their team was simply too alluring for most of them to pass up on.
"Damn it," Alesha whispered into her pillow that night, curled up under blankets that seemed way too nice to be given to simple gladiators. Tears leaked from her eyes and her heart pounded just a little too quickly.
"I don't want to have to trust a vampire again!"
[And you don't have to,] Rogork told her in a soothing voice. [Just kill him. That's what they get for trying to force you to work alongside someone you can't get along with. Plus, a Progenitor Vampire is worth more XP than a regular human anyway, so if anything, this is something to be grateful for. Just kill him in his sleep, or spear him in the back when he least expects it; no more vampire, and a few less humans you have to kill to get your body back for real.]
Rogork's suggestion, ludicrous as it was, tempted her far more than she wanted to admit.