228: 29:59
“Perfect! We have sixteen neat teams! Not a single straggler left for execution!” Thelicia praised the participants for following her instructions so diligently.
Beatrice breathed a sigh of relief and looked to the right at her three teammates, wishing she had her real team next to her. But this also meant that everyone made it, including the double-teaming bunch, though the girl ended up taking her position in the row buck naked, displaying her fluffy tail for all to see while cum leaked out of her pussy.
Beatrice scanned the arena for Olivia and found her in the company of savage-looking beastkin. Good for you, Beatrice smiled, happy that Olivia wasted no time in securing a formidable-looking team for this round.
“Now, as you may have noticed, our lovely staff members have a gift for you,” Thelicia said while the sixteen masked men undid the cloth from the item that they carried. As many had suspected, the masked men brought weapons. A single weapon each, to be precise. And each of the men held a different kind of weapon: a spear, a crossbow, a rapier, a mace… Some of the weapons Beatrice could not even name, though each of the weapons that Beatrice saw had lethal potential, even the primitive-looking club with nails sticking out of it.
The masked men threw the weapons in front of each team. Beatrice watched the dagger clang against the rocks just a couple of feet away from her.
Number Fifty’s team found themselves with a crossbow.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” the bearded man, Number Twenty-two, spit and crossed his arms. “Seeing this again reminds me of the good ol’ days when daddy took us boar huntin’.”
“A ranged weapon should give us an advantage!” the girl on their team, Number Forty-nine, said with a nervous smile.
“With just three arrows, it ain’t giving us shit!” Number Twenty-two shook his head, as the amount of ammunition was the first thing he looked for. “We’ll be usin’ it as a club before the first minute passes!”
“But each team has only one weapon!” the other teammate argued. “As long as we get that one, we can take their weapon too and arm ourselves.”
“We don’t even know what exactly we’ll have to do,” Number Fifty, their leader, pointed out. “And besides, there may be several people here with abilities that require more weapons. They might even give their weapon to the weakest person just as a distraction.”
“Oh,” Number Forty-nine lowered her head and sighed.
A few participants stepped forward to collect their weapon, but a sudden fireball explosion between them and the weapon made them jump back with a scream.
A warning shot, Beatrice thought when she saw the masked men raise their hand, aiming the potential next shot into the transgressor’s faces.
“Oh, did I forget to mention it?” Thelicia asked lightheartedly as if she forgot to mention the weather. “You absolutely cannot touch the weapons until the round begins, sillies!”
The balls of fire that the masked men fired off were not even close to the level that Ember unleashed yesterday. But when Beatrice considered that these men might very well be also responsible for the pyrotechnics around the arena, it was safe to assume that the members of the masked staff were no pushovers.
“Now, the rules for this First Round are simple!” Thelicia continued merrily. “All of you have neatly divided yourselves into sixteen single-elimination brackets.”
Oh, Beatrice quickly realized what this meant for her, her teammates, and everybody else, including Olivia.
“What?” several participants whispered and looked at their teammates in confusion.
“Well, I’ll be bamboozled!” Number Twenty-two cursed and spit again as more participants caught on to what awaited them while Thelicia continued her explanation of the first round.
“As you stand right now, your group is split in half, and you have two pairs locked in for your simultaneous semi-finals!” As Thelicia said this, each masked man fired a fire beam from his finger that charred a line in the rocks, dividing each group of four into pairs.
“Once both semi-finals are over, the finals begin immediately between the two victors! All fights are to the death! You may not kill anyone else but your current opponent! Whether you choose to use the weapons we provided or not, is up to you, but you will move on to the next round only after you kill your ‘finals’ opponent!”
The crowds livened up once again and grew louder and louder while many of the participants paled.
“The time limit for this round is thirty minutes so I would not recommend stalling!”
As Thelicia said this, four masked men fired flames into the air above the arena, just below the giant viewing sphere. The fires morphed into large fiery numbers, a timer, “30:00”.
“Oh, and you should make sure that you do in fact kill your opponent!” Thelicia added. “Any lucky survivors will be executed along with the false victors… Begin!”
“29:59”