Hakurai
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Chapter 286: Set the Stage
🕑 Added 2024-03-17 11:00:08 +0000 UTCDespite the timer having finished its countdown, Seraxus and his companions felt their eyes drawn up to the stands where illusionary copies of Serenity began to duplicate, mimicking the movements of her real body in their enlarged forms.
“Magic is beautiful. Swords are clashing. Arrows are soaring through the sky. It can be so mesmerizing…” Serenity spoke, her voice amplified by her own voice amplification spell without the need for an enchanted item. Her instruments hit several deep bass notes that had well timed pauses in between, following along with her words.
“There’s great players all around us. Some good,” she motioned to Makaroth, “and some evil…” She motioned down into the arena at Seraxus. “But I’m selfish. I don’t want you to pay attention to them. I want you all…” She stepped forward seductively, waving her fingers delicately to play several more elongated notes, followed up by her drummer NPC beginning his performance in the background.
“Look at me.”
Singing these words, the music kicked into high gear, and Serenity and her dancers began moving with quick movements, followed by slow rolling movements of their bodies. Mixing together these rolling motions and pumping motions to line up with the music being played by Serenity, it quickly captivated everyone's attention to the fullest.
“Look at me.” She repeated in song, followed by more seductive dance moves, following it with a shift in the sounds coming out of her pink glowing instruments.
“Dragons, goblins, wolves and trolls,
Shells, portals, swords, lost souls,
Ignore all that, and look over here,
I’ll make all your troubles disappear.
All that really matters is the music,
La la la la~
Keep your eyes peeled and move with it
La la la la~
Whatever happens, let me be selfish,
La la la la~
Don’t turn your head away.
Look at me,”
Another pause in between her singing was met by an uptick of her and her dancers' seductive dance moves.
“Look at me,” She repeated her chorus, and had the entire audience completely captivated by her beauty.
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“Damn…” Herilon’s jaw dropped as he watched alongside the others within a Kordas tavern.
“Wow…” Ren added.
“You’re too young to be watching stuff like this.” Quinn quickly threw her hands over Ren’s eyes as he refused to look away from the livestream broadcast of the Tarolas arena, and he fought against her hands to keep watching.
"No I'm not!" Ren protested furiously.
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“We’re about to be rich…” Tommy said into a voice call with Shinji. “Keep it up.”
“I’m not used to editing for concert performances…” Shinji replied nervously, furiously waving his fingers around to keep up with Serenity’s movements by zooming in and out at the right times, and swapping angles in a timely fashion.
“You’re doing fine. Keep doing that.” Tommy reassured him.
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As Shinji’s camera work zoomed into Serenity’s waist, she curved it in a seductive slow rolling motion, of which Aegis, Rakkan and Darkshot all watched with wide eyes, quietly observing. Lina glanced from the livestream broadcast of the arena in front of them, then looked towards Aegis and saw his expression and threw him a sad pouting look, which he noticed out of the corner of his eyes enough to stop himself from staring at Serenity’s performance in the way that he had been. He then cleared his throat awkwardly and turned to look at an alternate display of the arena, where Seraxus was visible.
“It’s working.” Aegis pointed out, seeing the wings of Seraxus losing their substance. The aura of black mist that he’d brought into the arena with him was also dissipating.
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“I’m gettin’ real tired of your bullshit’ singin’ and dancin’. This ain't a concert, this is a PvP arena!” Seraxus shouted up at her, but he was inaudible due to the loud sounds of Serenity’s singing and instruments.
“But, she is PvPing.” Hector replied on Serenity’s behalf, with a sudden fast movement across the arena. Seraxus and his companions had been so transfixed on Serenity, they stopped watching Hector and his party who took advantage of the darkened arena to surround them. “That’s how a bard fights, and this is how we fight.”
“Combatant Zuon has been defeated.”
Seraxus looked at Hector and his giant hammer in front of him, then glanced back to see that Hector’s party members had converged on Zuon and unleashed a combination of powerful attacks in complete synchronization to take out Zuon instantly, before they even noticed what was happening.
“Motherf-” Seraxus growled back furiously, drawing out all of his weapons and engaged with Hector. Hector, who’d fought Seraxus numerous times before, was able to tactfully dodge the first few swings of the sword of hatred while Sylvia, Gambit and Hajax jumped into action, moving into a defensive formation in order to manage the assault from Hector’s other party members.
All of this was happening in the darkness of Kenji’s illusions, and no one seemed to care as they were all still fixated on watching Serenity’s captivating performance and upbeat dance song.
Hector repeatedly enchanted the flat half of his maul as he jumped backwards to avoid Seraxus’ attacks, and slammed the enchanted head of the maul into the ground. This repeatedly sent out fissures in the tiled arena floor, with spiky chunks of earth shooting up from the ground around Seraxus’ feet.
An inexperienced player would easily get caught up in these fissures, or lose their balance - but Seraxus lived for PvP and had fought this tactic, and this player before. He nimbly jumped up over the fissures and carefully found footing on the rising spikey earth chunks to avoid falling, or taking too much nature damage from the attacks.
Hector was not trying to knock Seraxus off his feet, though, as his movements were deliberately made to simply force Seraxus into not being able to ignore him and provide a clear window for his party members to deal with the rest of Seraxus’ party.
“Same strategy as always, eh Hector? You never learn. Even if you kill all of ‘em, you clowns aint ever gonna beat me.” Seraxus growled at Hector, barely audible over the sound of Serenity’s music.
“We’ll see about that.” Hector smirked back, the two orcs continuing their engagement. Seraxus drew out his weapons and made them float behind him, sending them at Hector from all sides. This forced Hector to begin stomping his feet down with brown glowing magic on the souls of his leather boots as he did, causing his stomps to force walls of earth to rise up out of the sand-covered tile floor of the arena. These walls were tactfully placed to cut off the attack paths of Seraxus’ floating weapons.
In this time, though, Seraxus hadn’t noticed that his wings and aura had completely vanished - nearly all hatred for him was being overwhelmed by the emotions being drawn out by Serenity’s performance.
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“She really knows what she’s doing.” Aegis said with an impressed look, making sure to avoid looking at the broadcast of Serenity dancing and instead focusing on the screen that was showing Hector and Seraxus’ fight despite it being incredibly dark and hard to see. He could feel Lina’s eyes burning into the side of his head as she watched him and made sure he wasn’t letting his eyes wander to her seductive performance.
“Replacing hatred with love and lust. I mean, it’s not original, but if it aint broke, don’t fix it.” Pyri shrugged and followed this with a light chuckle. “Buncha teenage boys who watch Seraxus, this is probably their biggest weakness.”
“Hah. Yeah. Stupid teenage boys.” Darkshot mumbled without taking his eyes off of the one of three livestream displays that was showing Serenity. This caused Lina, Aegis and Pyri all to glance at him and roll their eyes.
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Being ignored didn’t sit well with Seraxus, and he lost his cool, calm and collected demeanor. This resulted in him not holding back, and aggressively rushing at Hector. Despite Hector’s clever tactics, he was eventually overwhelmed by Seraxus’ floating weapons and his precise movements, resulting in him being defeated. With Hector gone, the rest of his party members soon followed, ending the first match in favor of Seraxus’ team just as Serenity’s song was finishing.
“Alright. Nice trick, congrats, you made my wings disappear. But you can’t keep that shit up for this whole tournament.” Seraxus shouted out, his voice being heard finally due to Serenity’s song ending. He turned and began walking back into the starting position for his party as Zuon respawned, as did Hector’s party respawn on the opposite end of the arena.
“Bet.” Serenity shouted back at him aggressively, causing him to quickly spin around and glare up at her, a great distance between the two as she stood on the raised platform in the stands, far above the arena itself. With their eyes locked on one another, Serenity pointed towards him, then put up three fingers, counting down to two, then one, then flipped her hand into a thumbs down. These movements were done while matching the rhythm of a baseline that kicked in thanks to her free hand glowing pink, as she manipulated her instruments and started a new song.
“C’mon, really, ya’ll gonna watch that dumb old hag?” Seraxus shouted to the audience, but they were ignoring him. He then turned to his livestream viewership and saw the numbers plummeting below 2 million viewers. He took a moment to read his livestream chat where everyone was talking about where to find Serenity’s live streaming address, and some chatters were sharing it so others could click on it and watch it over Seraxus’ stream.
“Yall motherfuckers… You really think I need these fuckin’ wings to crush you all?” Seraxus shouted in a rage, at no one in particular. Seeing him lose his cool like this, his party members cowered back and glanced at one another anxiously.
“When this shit is over, I’m gonna sink this fuckin’ island.” Seraxus growled while grinding his fingers around the hilt of his sword.
“Yes… destroy them… they don’t respect you… you must make them. Teach them the meaning of despair…” he heard the sword’s voice whispering into his ear, egging him on.
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“They’re teaming up on him. They’re finally doing it.” Andrew rubbed his hands together as he watched the arena match unfolding from inside Nicholas’ office simulation. “You think this’ll be enough? Is this what Samantha was aiming for? Is it all gonna be okay now?” He turned to Nicholas with hopeful eyes.
“I don’t know. All they’re really doing right now is undoing the death of the Zeus prophet. It’s not gonna mean anything if no one is strong enough to beat the sword.” Nicholas replied calmly, keeping his eyes peeled on the second match between Hector and Seraxus, which was turning out to be much more one sided than the first - Seraxus wasted no movements and used an incredible burst of speed to cut down Hector instantly, just seconds after the match had begun. It wasn’t just Nicholas who was watching the match in this way, keeping their eyes peeled on Seraxus as he lost his cool and took it out on Hector’s party.
Synopse, Feng, and Aegis all watched from inside their respective waiting rooms, observing him with intense focus in complete silence. They continued to do this through Serenity’s following two songs, after which Seraxus' match with Hector concluded in a decisive 3-0 in favor for the sword of hatred wielder.
Seraxus made no further attempts to address the audience in the stands, or his livestreaming audience. He silently and angrily stomped out of the arena to go back to his waiting room with his party members nervously following along behind him.
“Alright. That’s enough.” Calikgos moved forward once Seraxus was gone, and Serenity stopped her current song immediately. The sound cut out, and the audience erupted in cheers that shook the very stadium itself.
As Serenity turned to look at Hae-won, Kenji, and then Calikgos, they all saw her gasping for air desperately, with sweat droplets moving down her virtual avatar’s skin. Calikgos was caught off guard by this as Hae-won moved past him alongside Serenity’s dancers to give her words of praise and encouragement amongst the loud cheers of the audience.
“She’s sweating from a performance?” Calikgos looked confused, stepping back to stand beside Makaroth.
“Dancing, controlling all of those instruments, and singing - it's possible to do in this game world, but it drains an incredibly high amount of stamina. That she was able to keep it up for that long is nothing short of impressive.” Makaroth explained, and as he did he met Serenity’s eyes briefly. Makaroth used his time to give her a nod of respect, which she met with a smile.
“Do I need to remind you she’s teaming up with your son? The whole reason we’re in this mess in the first place? She’s our enemy.” Calikgos growled at Makaroth after witnessing this exchange.
“Our enemy is the sword of hatred.” Makaroth replied as he turned to leave the raised platform, but Calikgos grabbed his arm to hold him in place. Much to Makaroth’s surprise, Calikgos’ grip was strong enough to stop Makaroth from moving which caught Makaroth off guard.
“Don’t fuck with me. This isn’t a game.” Calikgos said in a deep voice, as Makaroth saw his livestream be cut forcibly away to a commercial break. A look of pure confusion fell on him as he turned back to look at where Calikgos was gripping him, then looked up to see an intense look of rage on Calikgos’ face.
“How’re you stronger than me? You’ve always been agility foc-” Makaroth tried to flick his arm free of Calikgos’ grip but failed.
“Keep making VGN look bad, and you’ll have more than my strength stat to worry about.” Calikgos interrupted him, tightening his grip, and causing a sudden surge of pain to travel from Calikgos’ hand and into Makaroth due to his pain threshold being at maximum. A red damage number appeared above Makaroth, but so much focus was on Serenity as she was leaving the platform that very few people noticed it aside from the two VGN broadcasters who had been waiting off to the side.
Makaroth winced and pulled away as Calikgos released his grip, then turned to the broadcasters.
“Get back to doing your jobs.” He shouted at them, to which they nervously pulled out their voice amplification staves and began announcing the next match. Makaroth remained confused about what just happened as Calikgos hopped off the platform and began casually walking back towards the seats where other Sages of Destiny members were sitting - a smile on his face as Lilya waved to him from her seat.
Comments
Ousikai
"Bet"
