Kae
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Dungeon Diver CH832
🕑 Added 2025-04-08 23:00:07 +0000 UTC“Really? They’re all the way over there?” Ava replies while punching through the avatar of a large, overgrown boar-like creature that has been charging around in an open plains area with tall grass.
“Yeah, 48 biomes away.” I send a mental projection of the map I see on this glass screen, and begin to see Ava instantly follow my direction.
A bright streak of green light glows visible in the woods as she borrows a small amount of stats in order to close the gap in a few minutes.
She doesn’t kill anything else on the way over; she only has the 7 points floating above her three crowns from the past few kills upon entering.
The Goblin Queen touches down in the middle of a dry desert terrain in front of the two wolfmen, forming a crater, as they both hide behind a massive rock structure.
When the dust clears and she shows her face, they look up in fear, but slowly realize who is in front of them.
“It’s Boss!” “Boss Lady is back!” comes out from the two wolfmen’s mouths, and Ava lets out a sigh and nods.
“Indeed, I’m back. Come on, we have a mission to complete.”
She turns and points toward the edge of the biome, and they obediently follow. Ava sends me a mental message back, “Well, one thing is for sure, they haven’t lost all their memories like you thought they would… I’ll make sure to get them a thousand points each by the end of the round.”
Good. I smile and sit back down, far more confident things will work out now that the delicate data is in good hands.
–
As the 5th round goes on, it is a lot like the last few.
Many challenges spring up. I watch Orcs, Ogres, Serpents, and massive Golems all fighting in the top 10.
An extremely powerful fiery lizard creature and a mammoth also put on quite the show, destroying over 6 biomes in the process, but the ancient, furry, tusked beast comes out on top.
The only other outlier that has been shown is an insect with a very large green and white greater form. It looks similar to a praying mantis and uses sharp blades of wind magic, but it stays away from large fights despite being in the top 10 from pure quantity of kills.
These figures are what the announcer is fixated on.
Ava keeps an even lower profile under the radar, hunting beasts that have high single-digit points. She injures them, shattering limbs or paralyzing them with a single punch, and lets the two wolfmen make the final kills.
The announcer may not be paying her much mind, but as the timer for the round ticks below 10 minutes remaining, three random 3rd Class Lords have somehow stacked enough points to qualify. The Admins rigging the event catch on.
They start pushing the action all in one direction to try and force an exciting event in the final minutes.
Massive explosions showing the mantis and the mammoth creature start to light up in my vision, and the shockwaves even reach where Ava is protecting the wolfmen right now. She turns to them and instructs them to press the option in their avatars to move on to the next round without her, and she’ll see them soon.
It takes a full 10 seconds, just as the option shows, but two flashes of white light carry the wolfmen away, into a holding cell with all of the other Lords that have moved on from this round and are being cuffed up, waiting for the round to be over to join the rest of us.
Ava, on the other hand, stands her ground. Even as the jungle biomes all around her are torn to shreds, she floats in the air unbothered, watching the clash of auras two biomes away with a grin on her face.
“Rank 1 and 2 are deep into their match! Two monsters from the Star System of Elites! Place your bets, Lords, this is a match to remember!” the announcer yells, as hundreds of stray Lords get killed in the shockwaves of their blows.
Dense waves of ether fill the mammoth’s and wind wielding insect’s attacks and defenses.
In my status, where all of the generals’ stats and health bars are visible in my mind, I watch Ava borrow more and more stats in order to withstand the wind and aura flooding through the arena.
Massive gashes open up in the mammoth’s greater form from the wind blades, and the praying mantis flies around the beast in arching motions, leaving trails of white and green light behind.
The crowds go crazy as it pulls off a finishing move and stays floating above the destroyed biomes with both of its sharp, spiked forelegs still glowing hot from its last dual wind blade attack.
Less than 5 minutes remain on the Round 5 clock, but the creature doesn’t let up. Its beady black eyes turn to Ava, the only Lord that stayed nearby during this clash. The rest died in the explosion or ran away while they still had time.
A bright stream of light bursts through the sky, straight toward Ava, and she doesn’t move a muscle. She just calmly looks at the monster coming her way while slowly increasing her borrowed stats to match the strength of its aura as it gets closer and closer.
Upon impact, there’s an enormous green and white blast of energy that erupts into the atmosphere, obliterating even more biomes than the collisions with the Mammoth.
Through the debris and cloud of dense green residue, it’s impossible to see exactly what happened.
The announcer yells out, using logic to guess what happened, “And that’s it! The Rank 1 Mantis took out its only threat, and now it’s going to kill everything left in the dome before the time runs out. That’s what I call a total domination!”
The crowd’s cheers from the destruction echo through the arena. There are over 100 million Lords watching now, as the hours passing, getting closer to the main event, have built up an even bigger crowd.
Though, their cheers halt the moment the residue begins to clear, and what they see beneath it is a Goblin Queen holding a bright white hammer, clashing against the two front claws of the Mantis’ greater energy form.
A Lower Race, quite similar to humans on the galactic totem pole, stops a 1st Class Elite’s finishing move without even activating a greater form of her own.
I grin inwardly, seeing that Ava is pulling 1% of borrowed stats from all my links of loyalty. Roughly half of the power I used to fight against the Berserker Giant in my round.
With that being said, none of her ether or mana is sealed… so she’s able to use her full power without being held back at all.
I can’t fully sense what is going on in the arena as I’m not there, but through a spectate feed, I do feel the warm vibrations of what Ava calls her “Instincts” rippling out. They clash with a sharp, hot pressure that comes out from the Mantis. It makes me positive they are both using the same energy that Nobles do, just a unique form.
Both are sent flying backward from the blast, but only one of them shows signs of fatigue.
There are small cracks that form in the Praying Mantis’ greater form upon impact. Ava’s hammer looks pristine, and ready to be pushed to its limits…
Though, when they collide again, sending shockwaves and green explosions through the ring, it’s clear this opponent won’t be the one to push her new Relic Class Soul Weapon to the limits she wanted.
That is because fractured shards of mana, ether, and divine energy fly off from the Mantis’ arms after its next attack, and its movements slow.
Ava is able to easily dodge its next counter, and slam her hot white hammer into its side, sending more fractures through the insect.
It lets out screeches and squeals, but doesn’t back down.
A full two minutes pass, as they destroy over 25 biomes in jagged patterns all over the dome, finishing in a brutal two-handed slam of Ava’s hammer through its head, splitting the massive avatar in two, then shattering into millions of pieces.
The crowds watching quickly get on this Goblin Queen’s side, just like the rogue human in the first round.
None of them understand how this is possible. Even the Admin group chats begin to go crazy, remembering that this Goblin was with the human when they were captured. The time logs for when these entries were processed are found, and it’s confirmed they were together, deepening the mystery further.
The announcer watches this Goblin Queen lift her hammer in the air, floating above the ground, watching the final seconds count down, and decides to go with the crowd’s sentiment. It is meant to be entertainment, after all.
“The Goblin Queen did it! That is what you get when you come to the Arena—the unexpected. You are here to be entertained, so we bring the show! Our Round 5 standout, with 61,449 points! Let’s hear some noise for the fight of the round!”
The stadium shakes as the timer reaches zero, and Ava disappears in a white light with every other Lord still inside at the edges of the dome.
She stores away her hammer into an ether storage, and the borrowed stats she’s using are immediately deactivated.
A few seconds later, white bursts start showing up in the holding cell before me, as just under two dozen entries are all teleported into the room.
My eyes lock on Ava as she arrives, and at the same time, the Griffon at the back of the room looks down at her with a sharp glare. She doesn’t bother to give anyone else in the room attention, and walks my way.
“Good fight. A shame you didn’t get to go all out,” I remark, and she halts beside me, looking up at the holographic glass display of the dome.
“Yeah, it was a good warm-up though. That Mantis was a lot tougher than anything I expected to find here. A lot stronger, actually…”
At the same time, the two wolfmen follow behind her. No one really pays them any mind—most of the gazes are on the Goblin Queen—but my eyes gleam with curiosity.
I walk over and stand right in between them. “Long time no see…” I whisper while making sure to hold contact with both their avatars, sending ether commands in to receive the data from the recording devices I planted days ago.
Comments
Colby Jordan
I wonder if there will be arenas in all the zones
Tim Scripter
TFTC Kae!
