The final battle for the tournament is the escort team free-for-all. A small portion of the inner wall forest was reserved for this, with watchtowers and bridges providing a safe viewing area for the spectators to watch the battles unfold below. Sis had decided to forgo all the other adult competitions to have the best chance in this event. With the ruling given by the officials, she could participate in any event, and after some bargaining, she convinced the judges that meant she could bring whomever she wanted into a team event.

  Before the event we got a general idea of how and why this event was the biggest. Escort services are often the early work taken by warriors, and this event served as a safe means of proving someone's ability to safely escort someone who hadn’t invested in self-defense. It also helped younger warriors identify weaknesses in their escort strategies.

  The easiest example of this I can remember was when we were little, a high stealth rat snuck into a nearby carriage and slaughtered the occupants. While the losses on that leg of the trip were negligible in the grand scheme of things, the team had a weakness to stealth that had been exploited, resulting in the escort failing multiple people.

  Early in the morning, Callia, Nixie, Crescent, Reesia, and I all left and moved to the preparatory grounds for the events. I easily noticed an increased alertness from the guard team. Word was that a number of competitors and merchants had gone missing in town, but whoever had done it hadn’t been found yet. It’s a chilling thought when I think about how we live in a world where murder is incentivized by nature. I had even heard from Dad that a number of knights are murderers who evaded capture long enough to apply for service to nobility and earn their knighthood.

  Callia and I watch as the competing teams begin to show up normally, a total of 4 teams making 20 participants, but Callia was added on as an additional team with special permission, so this event was a 5-team free-for-all. To make matters worse, our starting point was the middle of the battlegrounds because the organizers hadn’t planned for an extra team. We observed the other teams and began to make our assessments. We watched each team register and declare their group names.

  Beastbane - team 1: A hulking brute of a man wielding dual axes, someone in robes reading a book, an archer with what appeared to be a similar specialty to Callia, a swordsman with light armor likely focused on speed, and the apprentice blacksmith who had been in the stall next to mine.

  Runic Rodrick’s escorts - Team 2: twins who both wield knives, a scarred man covered in runic weapons and a tool that looked like a flamethrower, someone who looked like a soldier from the town guard but with personal adjustments to their gear, and a visiting earthkin rune smith who I suspected armed the flamethrower man.

  Gaki and friends - Team 3: a pack of four barbarian-looking warriors with a variety of improvised weapons, and their merchant was a nervous-looking baker from the town.

  Farsight - Team 4: 2 archers and 2 swordsmen, all of whom look like they recently reached adulthood, and an elderly local fish merchant who looks suspiciously like one of the swordsmen.

  As for our team, Sis for some reason decided to name us Family Business. Which felt really awkward for me, but everyone else seemed to love it. Soon we were positioned in the middle of the forest, and above us in the treehouse-style platforms, I could make out the sight of Mom, Dad, Grandpa, my masters, and Grandmaster Slate all among the spectators. Grandmaster Slate was busy chatting up Mom and Dad while Master Yoren awkwardly rubbed the back of his head and waved down, seeing me looking up at him. Callia, next to me, eagerly waves back and then turns to Nixie.

  “Nixie, it's time to show them what we’ve got!” Immediately the two of them got to work. I waited in place like a good helpless merchant with Reesia and Crescent as my guards. Having been the main target of Nixie’s trap-making, it was a whole new experience as I watched her climb all over the trees tying ropes and cutting off branches or on the ground rigging tripwires. She was working at full speed, and whenever fatigue set in, she popped in next to Crescent to have her stamina healed. After all, she didn’t know any magic, so she didn’t need her mana for anything, so using it to stay at top form only made sense.

  Once the basic traps were set, I started taking out the arsenal of traps Nixie and I had brainstormed in our preparatory time. Landmines, invisible tripwires, automatically spinning saws, mana suppression fields, and many others. Each set of weapons was packed in a box to save me mana, as it burned up around 8 mana, leaving me with 79. I’m a little concerned someone might get seriously hurt, but it’s not like any of this gear is nearly as dangerous as Callia, and above the Grandmaster’s personal medic has been volunteered to handle any injuries near us. The only drawback of that is that we can’t rig traps to attack people coming in to help injured comrades.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Up above I could hear the Grandmaster cheering in excitement as more runic/enchanted traps were laid all over the area. Nixie eventually settled into her control post nestled in a tree behind a camouflage cloak. My mana sense could feel a vast number of invisible strings rigged across the clearing as an invisible set of triggers for the bigger traps.

  In the distance I spot what looks like the barbarian squad. The poor bread merchant is tied into a bundle with the rope, looking more like a captive than someone being escorted. They spot me from a distance, and the ‘scout’ points and begins screaming as the others follow suit, and all charge right for me.

  The first to reach the traps gets to experience a gravity flip as a rope pulls out his legs from under him, yanking him up into the sky. Once suspended, a dozen magic gun-type dart launchers pelted him, but not for long, as the biggest one jumped up, cutting the scout free before chucking him further and into another trap.

  Meanwhile, the other two who had just continued running—one had fallen into a pit trap, and as he climbed out, runic positional locking hooks bit into his skin and cut long gashes all across his flesh. The other was hit in the face by a rocket-propelled log. He hit the ground knocked out and was fished up by the spectator medic for treatment.

  The scout whom the boss had thrown ahead didn’t even make it to the ground as Nixie manipulated her strings to tie him up again. The bleeding one pushed on, determined to reach me, but as he set foot outside of the pit, a landmine froze his leg solid. It would’ve been his whole body, but in a feat of strength he ripped himself free and continued hobbling forward. The boss threw one of his axes trying to free his scout again, but Nixie just shifted the dangling scout into the axe's path. The scout was then also medically evacuated.

  Already down two men, the boss was getting very upset, and the merchant tied to his back was absolutely terrified. I notice another group appear in the distance watching the carnage unfold. It looks like half of the fisherman's team. Though from their expression, they just intend to watch the show for now.

  The Boss takes matters into his own hands, and by that I mean he grabs the lacerated and slightly frozen minion and uses him as a meat shield to push through. With a crazy charge, he forcefully pushes through a number of traps, turning his companion into a shredded mess. I really can’t figure out why he's going to such lengths, but I pull out my wand of pushing, and before he reaches me, I pour out 40 pts of mana, creating a blastwave of force knocking the boss onto his back and squishing the merchant.

  Dad jumps down from above with the retrieval team and declares the team defeated because the merchant was too injured. The boss tries to resist, but Dad is way too strong, and with a quick whack, the trio was pulled out for medical treatment. In the distance, seeing the berserkers fail, the archer takes a pot shot at me. However, I've long developed a dependable means of resisting surprise ranged attacks, and the arrow is voided. It takes 5 times more mana than moving normal objects, and using 5 mana leaves me with 34 left. I pull out another pair of wands. One makes a mist obscuring my location, and the other creates a small hole for me, Crescent, and Reesia to take cover in, leaving me with 14 mana left.

  Overhead I hear a number of arrows whizzing by when a soldier jumps down, declaring the archers' merchant eliminated. We climb back out of the hole while Nixie gets to work restoring the traps. Crescent's face is bright red, but Reesia doesn’t seem to be affected. I give her a reassuring pat, promising that she isn’t in danger now. I turn my thoughts off to my sister and idly wonder if she is finally getting the fight she wanted.

  Hive Worms

  15 disappearances in the night; however, with the presence of important dignitaries, he couldn’t dispatch his best investigators. That’s not to mention the guard force is already stretched thin as it is. Eventually Mayor Korin gathered a number of concerned citizens to patrol the town in pairs with panic whistles. Korin had guards stationed a reasonable distance across the town to respond if a whistle was blown. He even started joining the patrols.

  The only reliable link between attacks is isolation and darkness. At night and during the day, disappearances continued. A lot were still likely unreported, which made the urgency of finding the culprit imperative. However, the festival was only one more day, and after that, the full town guard could be mobilized to sweep the town to dig up the murderer.

  Korin looked off in the direction of the forest where the last event was being held. It was a particularly dangerous event, so the town's guard was at its lowest point. That's why Korin had insisted on joining the town watch. He had been speaking with friends of the missing and had found a key detail. A number of the people who were suspected of disappearing during the day often used back alleys.

  Thus, Korin held his torch aloft as he ventured into the back alley. It wasn’t long until his instincts screamed danger. Just ahead of him, he saw three people, but even in the torchlight, Korin could tell they weren’t ok.

  “Hive Worms!”

  Korin slashed down the bodies with extreme prejudice, slicing countless worms into pieces. After cutting down the bodies, he tried to leave the alley, but worms burst from the walls of the adjacent buildings. He fought with fury but was gradually overpowered and succumbed to the swarm. However, his struggle wasn’t completely in vain, as another member of the town watch witnessed his end and blew his whistle while running for his life. The town would soon know, and the hive burst into action with a vengeance.