"Cid, on your left!" Alesha hollered, alerting him to the presence of an enemy that was approaching him.
"DIIEEEEE!" He yelled in response, deflecting the opponent's sword away with his buckler before swinging his shortsword in return. He was a stout man with powerful muscles which, although they didn't completely make up for his lack of reach, made his attacks pack quite a punch when they landed. His opponent's yelp of pain evidenced that fact quite plainly.
Alesha didn't have time to see how his clash went from there. She ran quickly, cursing Zorhellian under her breath as she surveyed her surroundings. Unlike the first arena, which had been filled with sand, the arena this time was a fairly large field with patches of forest, hills and even a large pond. The stands could barely be seen from her current vantage point.
The premise of this team battle was Capture the Flag. Why was such a juvenile event being conducted in a Gladiator Arena where hundreds, perhaps thousands, of powerful aliens were the spectators? She didn't know. Considering how bloody the battle had been already, though, it was clear this was no simple children's game.
Another thing that had become clear over the past two fights was that even using Natalia's Advantage Tickets didn't guarantee them an easy victory. Sure, their opponents had been weaker than them and the battles had heavily favored them, but that hadn't stopped their team from losing members. Of the ten original members, only seven remained at the start of this fight.
Someone else had probably died already this time, too.
Alesha hoped that wasn't the case. Even though their team size dwindled, they couldn't recruit anyone else. Teams would fight until only one team remained…
What came after that?
A battle royale between team members?
It was the most logical conclusion, given Zorhellian's sadistic tastes.
"AGH!" She yelled as an arrow lodged itself in her thigh. "Hngg," she whined as she came to a stop, looking around to see where it had come from.
Evidently, battle was not the time to wander off in one's thoughts.
Another arrow slammed into her shoulder, pain making her mind go numb for a moment. She fell to her knees.
Before she realized what she was doing, Alesha pulled out the arrow in her thigh, then began reaching for the one in her shoulder. She hesitated, logic kicking in. Wait, shouldn't I leave them in? I'll just bleed out if I remove them!
[No, you idiot,] Rogork sighed, [You've got Troll's Regeneration. It'll heal up quickly, just yank it out! I've had to tell you this how many times now??]
"Dammit, it's not so easy to reset years of common sense just because I got a convenient skill," Alesha complained.
Glancing down at her thigh revealed that her wound there was already sealing up. In another minute or so, it would be completely healed, with nary a scar remaining. "Shit," she cursed, blinking her eyes against the tears. She yanked out the arrow in her shoulder with one swift motion.
"Ouch!!"
A third arrow came whizzing towards her, but it missed. There, she thought, finally spotting the archer. An alabaster-skinned person with black hair.
Alesha hissed in anger, noticing how, from this distance, the person looked strikingly similar to Flynn -- a man she hated more than almost anyone. Since she was in the middle of combat, her heart's accelerated beating at the sight of him only contributed to her adrenaline rush.
She launched herself forward in a sprint.
The archer quickly nocked another arrow and fired, hitting Alesha in the abdomen. Alesha shouted in pain but ignored it, pressing forward despite how continuing to run caused the arrowhead to tear her muscles apart. Blood oozed out from around the projectile in a slow but steady trickle.
Eyes lighting up with fear, the archer shot a fifth and sixth arrow towards Alesha, the person's too-hasty motions causing the fifth shot to miss wildly and the sixth to merely graze Alesha's arm.
By then, Alesha was upon them and with one quick strike to the heart, she ended the archer's life.
Shortly after that, a pair of purple windows appeared.
[Regular Human Killed! +10 XP]
[Level Up!]
"Cool," Alesha said. "Rogork, do you know how much XP until the next level?"
[No. But it will be a multiple of 100. We'll be able to tell what level you are currently and how long until your next evolution based on which multiple of 100 it is. Whatever the case, you need to kill a lot more people a lot faster if you want to level up before the Games are over. 10 XP per person isn't much. Get to it, host.]
Feeling a bit surprised, Alesha realized it had been quite some time since Rogork referred to her as 'host.' Why was it doing so now?
[Andale, andale!] Rogork snapped. [You don't have time to daydream! Get to killing!]
Alesha winced at how the System phrased it, but it was right. She examined her wounds, which were already mostly healed, and removed her spear from the archer's corpse.
"Wait, the archer was a girl?" She asked, incredulous. From a distance, the archer had looked so much like Flynn that, apparently, Alesha's brain simply ignored any conflicting details and saw what it expected to see.
Disturbed, she moved along. It wasn't like it actually mattered all that much anyway.
As she searched the area, looking around for her next target, she saw traces of battle. Still-burning chunks of forest, some dirt that had been crusted over with what looked like instant concrete, deep gouges in the soil and plant life.
Clearly, some intense battle or other had been fought here.
"Here, kitty, kitty," she muttered.
"Meow," a deep voice whispered directly into her ear.
At the same time, a long dagger penetrated between her ribs from behind and stabbed her heart. The dagger twisted with a quick motion and was then removed.
Shock at what had just happened rendered Alesha temporarily numb. Then, half a moment later, the pain hit all at once and she tried to scream. Doing so only increased her agony.
Feeling dizzy, black encroaching on the edges of her vision and a flush of tingling running through her, she staggered to the side and fell to the ground, her legs having gone weak. She dimly noticed various weeds and rocks poking into her. However, all these sensations were nearly negligible compared to the agony as her heart repaired itself all too slowly.
She looked around, a delayed sense of danger telling her that her attacker must be somewhere nearby.
Instead, she found her surroundings noticeably empty.
Had her attacker assumed she was dead and left right away?
Was she safe now, if only because the one who'd stabbed her was confident that a direct wound to the heart had to be fatal?
Curling up there on the dirt, Alesha allowed herself to cry quietly. Just because she could heal from almost any injury didn't mean she had a high pain tolerance; far from it, she had never been good with pain.
"This damn world is out to get me," she whimpered.