296: One Naked Girl Versus Seven Opportunists

“H-huh?” the skinny participant, Number Eleven gasped.

Unfortunately for Number Eleven, he was much shorter than Number Forty-four. And what was the abdomen for the sharkkin, was practically the center of his ribcage. Number Eleven looked down and felt up a hole in his chest, where his heart should have been. Even as he fell to the ground, Number Eleven could not comprehend how he suddenly ended up with a hole in his chest just a couple of seconds after a fight began. A fight that was supposed to be a sure thing! A fight where he did not even get to raise his awesome weapon.

“Oh… One down already,” the announcer said quietly with zero enthusiasm, her voice barely managing a single weak echo this time. “Let us hope that the other six have not come here for sightseeing.”

The announcer’s comments were drowned out by the cheering of a reinvigorated crowd that now had full faith in receiving a bloody spectacle.

“Tear her to pieces!!” a bearded, unkempt, hobo-looking man shouted lifted his massive weapon and pointed it at Number Forty’s slim naked back. The weapon looked like some kind of an enormous crossbow with a giant barrel mounted where the arrows should have been flying out. The unkempt hobo, Number Sixty-three, had to lean back just to counterbalance the weight of the weapon which he braced against his hip.

The hobo pressed his hairy finger on the trigger and pulled it, unleashing a three-foot-long arrow right at the girl’s back. The loud mechanism and the whooshing speed of the arrow tearing through the air informed Number Forty of the type of attack that came her way, even if she was already prepared for it thanks to the hobo’s ill-advised public announcement of his imminent attack.

What Number Forty was not informed of was the number of the attacks. And just as she dodged the first arrow, a second one was unleashed in her direction. Then a third, and a fourth. The barrel kept rotating, unleashing arrow after arrow for as long as the hobo-looking man kept pulling the trigger. Several arrows flew right into the group of shirtless staff but were incinerated by defensive walls of fire just inches away from their shredded muscles.

John looked up to the announcer with clear frustration but was not allowed by the hairball to retaliate against the trigger-happy hobo.

At the same time, another attack came from a different angle. Flames spewed toward the girl’s position, forcing her to evade deadly attacks from two fronts. Careless aim by the elderly catgirl instantly set one of the tables ablaze as Number Forty was still near them when the announcer started the match.

John stepped back from the burning table and was able to put the fire out with a swing of his hand, but the damage was done and one of the containers with the balls was no more. A long thick vein popped on John’s bald forehead as he was forced to watch the chaos that unfolded.

Number forty was quick to answer and with a wave of a hand sent her katana flying at the stationary hobo. The katana was knocked out of its path and sent swirling into the air by a giant spiked metal wheel that rolled through the arena, churning up rocks and dust as it charged straight for the girl, guided by the sharkkin with a long metal chain in his hand that connected to the spiked wheel like a yo-yo.

The girl just barely got out of the way of the whirling metal wheel that spun past her and crashed into the other wooden table, crushing it to pieces, sending splinters and wooden planks into all directions.

“The hell!? They had these kinds of weapons?” Beatrice was left with her mouth agape as she watched what was basically a crossbow minigun and a flamethrower in action.

Meanwhile, the one-sided barrage of attacks continued. What first appeared to be a simple boomerang flying the air, suddenly expanded, unleashing two feet of razor-sharp metal into each direction from its tips. The metal that was thinner than that of a katana blade, nearly sliced Number Forty’s head clean off, leaving a thin cut just barely out of reach from slicing an artery in her neck.

But before the boomerang even turned back for its return flight, the girl was charged and slammed into the ground by another beastkin who wielded heavy gauntlets that extended over his forearms like massive metal armguards.

“Ghuah!” air escaped Number Forty’s lungs as her back was forcibly and intimately acquainted with the rough, uneven surface of the arena.