After Shadow disappears, the sky suddenly changes from a starry sky to a brilliant blue. The floor also changes into some sort of transparent screen, and below us we can see the entire arena.
“Woah, that's klacking cool!” Ray exclaims, dancing around on what looks like air. “It's like we are the rulers of everything in the entire arena. C’mon darling, let's dance!”
“As you wish, milady, your wish is my command.” I say, offering my hand to Ray.
She drags me in closely and we perform a short dance. We earned quite an applause from the soldiers, who were watching avidly. I bet we made their day, or rather year. They will probably tell their great-great-great-great-grandchildren about the day they watched the Moonlight Duo dance in person.
Almost as if it was waiting for our dance to finish, a menu promptly appears.
‘Legend Raid for Shadow, The Queen of Dragons' is now completed.
Contestants have been awarded 20,000 Ti, 5,000 Ri, and a total of 1660 equipment drops (Insane-level)
Moonlight Alliance contestants may now access Dragon Lord commendation.
ALL Other Moonlight Alliance members may now access Dragon Subject commendation.
Mystery Reward Condition Met: Defeat Shadow without directly slaying her. Reward: Kaidra, the pet dragon (available after trial)
Arena Stage: Final now initiated. Several changes will now be applied to the entire arena:
- 1 level to all beasts (~400% power increase)
- All Beast Trophy Rewards increased by 200%
- Manpower acquisition costs increased by 100%, Vessel purchase cost decreased by 25% (production unaffected), stored vessel weight reduced by 50%.
- All material node production increased by 500%, raw resource weight decreased by 50%, production facilities speed increased by 200%
- All Mk5 equipment blueprints available for manufacture. Mk4 Blueprint material cost reduced by 50%. Weight of all stored equipment and ammunition reduced by 25%.
- Contestant and core member respawn time increased to 16 hours.
- When a vessel is destroyed, the associated being will have a 2 hour cooldown until they can be reassigned to a new vessel.’
Woah, that's a lot of changes to the arena. It's almost like the game masters used this time to include a bunch of balance patches or something while playing it off as intended from the start. What Absolute geniusies.
To quickly summarize; beasts are stronger but give more rewards; our production facilities are better, we have more resources and new equipment; and our duck and stab strategy has been effectively nerfed.
Also, it seems like all of these effects have made vessels for our soldiers far easier to acquire and transport. Which makes me feel like they are really pushing us to fight a massive war on a scale we never thought was possible in this arena.
“Hey Ko, are you thinking what I'm thinking?” Ray says while wrapping her arms around my shoulders.
“That we can explode many, many, more things now?”
“Oh my gosh, you read my mind! You must be like, the best boyfriend ever.” She says, leaning in to kiss for an amount of time.
Afterwards, I take a look at the Dragon Lord commendation, and I ask Emil to tell me about the Dragon Subject one.
I don't think it's too important to remember every detail. The functions will be best shown in actual battle. But it's good to roughly know what we are capable of.
Dragon Lord: You have gained the right to rule over the power of the dragons. The toughness of your armor is greatly improved, and you are now allowed to freely fly at great speed. You are also completely immune to fire. Unfortunately, the dragon beasts refuse to accept your rule, and will not heed your command and will instead viciously attack you at any given opportunity. You are unable to select any other commendation.
{Dragon Lord’s Inheritance}: You may mimic any skill from any non-dragon commendation. The skill’s cooldown will be halved. After the cooldown is over, you may use another skill or the same skill again.
{Dragon Lord’s Scales}: your body is coated in a thick layer of dragon’s scales. This makes you practically immune to all damage as long as it lasts. However, your agility is greatly reduced. You can activate and deactivate this ability at will, up to a maximum of 60 seconds every 8 hours.
{Draconic Breath}: create a scorching wave that sets everything – friend or foe –in its range ablaze with an intense flame. Range: 50m, 120 degree arc. Cooldown: 4 hours
{Dragon Lord’s Frenzy}: Dragon Subjects in range will gain a great boost to strength, agility, armor, explosion resistance and a small amount of heal-on-hit. Core members may be excluded from this bonus. When this skill ends all who received the bonus shall be destroyed and subjected to a 8 hour reassignment/respawn cooldown. Duration: 15 seconds (low-level), 1 minute (medium-level), 3 minutes (high-level), 6 minutes (great-level). Cooldown: 24 hours.
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Dragon Subject: you are the subject of an almighty dragon lord. Your armor is slightly enhanced and you are partially resistant to fire. All flight based equipment will be greatly improved. As you are now the subject of a dragon lord, all other dragons will now ignore you unless provoked. You may not select any other commendation without permission from a dragon lord.
{Draconic Inheritance}: You may mimic one skill from another non-dragon commendation that is available to your faction. You may change this selection every 8 hours or upon respawn. The cooldown is halved. After the cooldown is over, you may use another skill or the same skill again.
{Dragon Scales}: your body is coated in a layer of dragon’s scales. This makes you partially resistant to all damage as long as it lasts. Duration: 5 minutes. Cooldown: 1 hour.
{Dragon Flight}: Temporarily grants the user the ability to fly like a dragon. Warning: there is no safety mechanism. You can activate and deactivate this ability at will, up to a maximum of 5 minutes every hour.
{Draconic Frenzy}: Improve your strength, agility and armor greatly for a brief period. When this skill ends you will be destroyed, and incur a reassignment cooldown of 4 hours. Duration: 5 seconds (low-level), 15 seconds (medium-level), 30 seconds (high-level), 1 minute (great-level), 90 seconds (core member). Cooldown: 48 hours.
Quite an interesting set of commendations. It seems that both skills allow imitation of other commendations to some extent, which is quite cool. It means that Ray can keep access to her {Devouring Blades}, and I can perhaps go back to using something like {Lightning Bolt} to power up my spear.
Now that we have taken a look at the commendations, there is just one more thing to look at. The so-called mystery prize. As I start thinking about it, a menu appears displaying information. It seems that we have been given some sort of pet dragon. The ‘child’ of the dragon queen apparently. It will be kept outside the arena and we can keep it and take it back to our home.
“Hey Ray, did you see? We've got a pet dragon now!” I say to a Ray that seems to be about to fall asleep in my arms.
“Hmgh, that's nice, a little friend for us to cherish and protect. I wonder if it's cuddly.”
“Why does it matter if it's cuddly? I can supply you all the cuddles that you could possibly need.” I say confidently.
“Well, if ya don't mind. Ima take you up on that right about now.” She says, and then promptly falls asleep. I managed to catch her and pick her up, bridal-style. She is super duper cute, so of course I'm going to give her all the cuddles I can.
I talk briefly with Emil and we decide to take a short rest, to allow everyone a break after such an intense battle. We don't have to fight anything, but the trek down the tower is still going to take a moment. So it's best to let everyone get rest, I am totally not biasing the issue with my desire to have Ray rest her head in my lap while she sleeps.
I carry her over to a quiet area and lay her head down in my lap, gently brushing her hair through my fingers. Headrubs are important after all.
At some point, I fall asleep as well.
A good rest full of many cuddles and headrubs later
I wake up with a super duper cute girl wrapped in my arms. She is so cute that I instinctually give her a bit of a squeeze, just to make sure she is real.
She makes a small noise that I think is some form of happiness, then suddenly she turns around so that we are face to face. We are lying on the transparent floor depicting an arena shrouded in the shadow of nighttime, a brilliant starry sky above us. It's quite romantic, I think.
“Do you want something, cutie?” she breathes.
“Hmm, there is a lot I want. But I just wanted to make sure you were real.”
She seems to think for a moment, her forehead creasing in a very cute manner. “This does seem like a dream, huh. Almost too good to be true, y’know?”
I squeeze her a bit tighter, drawing us in even closer. Our noses are only a millimeter away from touching, our breath mixing. “A really, really nice dream. One that I wish to never end.”
“Well then, Mr. Super cute awesome and foolish hero. How about you do your thing to make this dream last forever?” she says, leaning in closer and closer, until I give in and kiss her.
When she is finished, I give her a reply. “Your wish is my command, my darling Ray.”
“Oh my, what a sweet and loving boyfriend you are, Ko. How did I get so lucky?” She nuzzles against my shoulder, seemingly perfectly content there.
“More like how did I get lucky with you. You're practically a goddess.” I say, holding her tighter.
“I am a goddess, and you best remember that, darling. Give me all the worship I deserve.” I can hear the smirk in her voice, even though I cannot see it.
A bit of worshiping later
“Alright fellas, let's skip outa this joint, shall we?” Ray says in her super cute leader voice. Not that all her voices aren't cute, it's just that her leader's voice is especially cute. Something about it just makes you want to do whatever she says.
At her command, we promptly leave the former Queen’s arena. We quickly descend down the tower, along the way Ray seems especially clingy. She seems insistent on holding my arm for the entire journey. I obviously am not complaining, its always nice when she is a bit clingier, given how rare it can be.
After a while we reached the bottom floor. The grand doors sit closed, until Ray walks up and throws them open with a lot of dramatic flair.
The moment the doors open, a frigid wind blows in.
Outside the door is a snowy landscape, everything in sight is completely frozen over. It's almost as though a blizzard swept through.
But that's impossible.
Blizzards don’t happen in the middle of a volcanic biome.
I motion for the rest to stay behind while Ray and I step outside. Even with our suits, the cold still bites a bit. It's easily -20 degrees, enough to kill a normal human pretty quickly.
Our boots crunch as we step through the snow, and find nothing.
None of our troops, no encampment. Nothing. It's almost like the snow wiped out all traces of our forces being here.
Ray looks quite concerned and I am sure I have a similar look on my face.
I detect a presence to my left and immediately turn to face it, hand going to draw my pistol.
Then, from behind a spire of rock – or rather, ice – steps a girl. She is short, with pink hair, placed on top of her head in imitation of a crown. One of her eyes is grey and the other is a deep purple.
She turns to face us, and her lips bend into a smile. She speaks, her crystal clear voice effortlessly carrying across frozen landscape.
“Long time no see, dearest brother.”
End of Volume 3: The Great Expanse
Next: Chapter 127 | Snowflakes
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A/N: Hiya there, dear reader. It is I, the author, back once again to ramble a bit. Did you miss me?
Can you believe it's already the end of volume 3? I hope the Quartet-Arena Arc was fun and satisfying. I feel like I am finally starting to get the hang of this whole writing thing. At least I hope so, considering we are 300k words into this story.
I guess I can only say thank you for reading Ko’s (and Ray’s) journey this far. Realistically, this is still only the beginning. We've still got the rest of this trial, and all the rest. Plus, whatever comes after that of course.
I do hope you’ll decide to stick around for the long road, I have no plans to stop writing this story anytime soon, so settle in dear reader. The road might be a bit bumpy at times, but I can only hope that it'll be a fun ride.
If you've enjoyed, as always; ratings, reviews, comments, etc, are all appreciated greatly!
I hope you are excited for volume 4, fear not, for you only have to wait until Monday! Or, if you wish to support me and get access a bit earlier.. I do have a patreon where you can get chapters ahead of public release!
Anyways, I do hope you’ve been enjoying Humanity’s Game, dear reader. See ya the next time I decide to write a note.
- Cathrix, a writer that may know some things, might also be a little bit insane.