Chapter 700 - Strike a deal

Love delicately pulled a thin bone out of a pile, and it all collapsed.

“NoOoo- So close!”

“Want to play something else?” Sofia asked, “That’s your third loss to Pareth in a row.”

Love sighed and let herself fall back. “No, I’m done. I’m too bad at this stuff, you win.”

“Yes!” Sofia rejoiced, pumping her fist, “you better keep your end of the deal.”

“It’s fine… The seraphs won’t be happy but I get the final say. I’ll let you use the system spectator mode for your friends’ trials, but that’s it!”

“That’s all we want.”

“Would you take pity on this poor goddess and still build me a small temple?” Love begged with joined hands.

“Well, not for free,” Sofia answered with a smirk.

“Come oooon that’s sooOo not worth an essence and you know it!”

“Tssk. Sure. How about you help me get one more piece of the Saint set, then?”

“Hmmm… You already have four, right? I don’t know where the others are, but I could ask Zoth to find them.”

“Is… Is that really a good idea?”

“Hmm? Why would it not be? My Zoth is veeeery reliable you know?!”

“A- Alright then. You get me one more piece of the set, I build you a temple in my city.”

“Let’s goooo!”

“Is it really going to help you that much, though?”

Love shrugged, “Maybe not, but everyone has been shunning me ever since I took my cute Zoth under my wings! Can you believe that? All because she likes to sleep in my temples!”

Oh. That… That was something I would have liked to know before agreeing to build one…

Ahah… Well… How bad can it be…

To hide her discomfort, Sofia changed the subject, “By the way, I have been wondering, why the appearance of a fairy?”

“Don’t you find it cute? The fae are all so lovely and cute, it’s too bad that they don’t do love very much…”

“That’s it? Huh, I mean, you’re not wrong. Pestle is the cutest though.”

“I think you may be a bit biased.”

“Can’t say I’m not… It’s starting to get long, are you sure they’re going to manage to get us out of here? Any chance this was external sabotage from the same people who tried to ruin my last trial?”

“No, no. No danger, I don’t think. It’s taking a bit longer than I thought but surely nothing is wrong! H- Here let me teach you my rune to pass the time!”

Sofia spent about an hour stuck in the black backup instance with Love, before she was sent back to her room suddenly, without even a chance to say goodbye.

“Ah!? I guess it’s fixed?” 

It was night on the ark, and there was nobody else in the room, just Sofia and Pareth.

“Well, that wasn’t too bad. Let’s check if we got the scores…”

[Last man standing: Event rankings]

[Rank 1 - Sofia Aphenoreth & Pareth (twin ruleset)] 

[Rank 2 - Ezerid Rodes]

[Rank 3 - Saria Aphenoreth]

[Rank 4 - Lindon]

[Rank 5 - Merinda]

[Detailed results:

Tier 2 event - Maximum point reward : 145 000 000 TP

First place reward: 15 000 000 TP

First place completion time bonus: (7 min 32) : 15 000 000 TP

Hidden Objectives Completed :

Aura farming - Kill someone without even being aware of it : 1 000 000 TP

Double kill - Kill two people within 15 seconds of each other : 10 000 TP

Triple kill - Kill three people within 15 seconds of each other : 100 000 TP

Quadra kill - Kill four people within 15 seconds of each other : 1 000 000 TP

Pentakill - Kill five people within 15 seconds of each other : 10 000 000 TP

Monster - Kill more than 10 people : 1 000 000 TP

Absolute Monster - Kill more than 25 people : 20 000 000 TP

Balanced - Kill more than 50 people : 50 000 000 TP

Tourist - Visit every biome of the island : 1000 TP

Revenge - Kill someone who damaged you in a prior battle: 5000 TP 

Speedster - Obtain the first Major Unlocker : 500 000 TP

New boss in town - Kill a biome boss in a single hit : 10 000 000 TP

No you don’t - Kill someone while they are using an unlocker : 10 000 TP

Lucky - Somehow complete the event without going through a biome event : 1000 TP

Sacrifice - Someone killed themselves to give you a better score : 10 000 TP

Monopoly - Earn more unlockers than you can possibly use : 1 000 000 TP

Extinction - Wipe out more than half of the island’s monsters by yourself : 25 000 000

Uncapped total : 149 637 000 TP

Total earned (MAX): 145 000 000 TP]

‘You have received rank 1 reward : Ark’s Gold Star Pin *1!’

‘You have received 145 000 000 tournament points!’

‘Current balance : 449 101 126 points’

Still barely half of what a single master item costs…

Wait, this was a tier two?

Huh. I suppose it’s not usually as easy as it was for us. Getting the demon form early just broke everything.

It looks like telling the thralls not to kill the real people paid off, Merinda managed to get fifth place, not bad, glad I could help.

To think we barely made it to the maximum points despite how much we dominated. That’s crazy. And most of the points were just from the Thralls killing everything and everyone.

Well. All group events so far have been tier three, so the next one will be the same I assume? I wonder what they still have in store for us after all that.

Sofia and Pareth left the room, deciding to keep searching for the last of the hidden shops.

Just as they began their search, they both received a system notification.

[Ark Notice: Due to unexpected fatal errors, the next event will be replaced by backup group event - ‘Panic on the Ark - Crazy ride into the sunset’ - this event may start at any moment, you will be given no warning. Staying with your group is advised.]

Sofia looked at Pareth, “Looks like we need to go find the others.”

Finding Kuli and Mornn turned out to be an easy task, as they were both on the main deck, much like most of trialees, fake or real. It turned out that three ‘Tournament masters’ had appeared on the deck. They were mechanical people in gray armor, each wearing a different master item that people could challenge them for. Similarly to every other master item, just beating them at their game was not enough to get it, it was just one of the requirements to be allowed to buy it.

With nothing better to do, everyone challenged the masters to wait for the next event, notably, most people were watching a certain elf try and fail several times to get past the challenge of the swordmaster.

“Aaaagh, no!” Mornn shouted as her sword was sent flying out of her hands by the master. Another sword appeared in her hands, and she reset her stance. “Again!”

The sword master nodded, took a step back, and resumed attacking the elf saintess.

One had to stand their ground in the tiny circle drawn around the swordmaster for a full minute without being struck or losing their sword, no magic allowed.

“What is her best time?” Sofia asked Kuli after the guildmaster had finished explaining what was going on.

“Fifty two,” Kuli answered, “Almost there, but that thing gets a lot faster at the end of the timer,” she explained, “I’ve not seen anyone else get past the thirty second mark, but I have only been here half an hour.”

“What about the other two?”

“The shield is trickier,” Kuli said, “It’s a single attempt per person, you are allowed to strike the shield once, and you win if you manage to damage the master without taking damage yourself.”

“That sounds simple?”

“Should be, but the shield seems to reflect damage in a weird way, and anyone who’s struck it strong enough to damage the master got hurt in return so far. Myself included.”

Before Sofia could even turn to Pareth, he was already in front of the shieldmaster, raising his weapon, making it take the shape of a gigantic hammer.

Hey hey! Wait for my buffs! And don’t forget the bone armor!

With bone armor covering Pareth’s skeleton, his hammer struck down, banging loudly against the shield. The shield master’s life, displayed above its head, went down from 100/100 to 99, and a wave of strange cursed mana was blasted back towards Pareth.

This, it seemed, was meant to damage him back. It must have been damage lesser than 10% of his health, however, as it did absolutely nothing to Pareth.

“See,” Sofia said, turning to Kuli again, “It was simple.”

Kuli rolled her eyes and returned to spectating Mornn. “No wonder they need a backup event,” she said with a smirk.

Mornn managed to finally beat the swordmaster not long after, leaving only the Necklace master undefeated.

Seeing everyone look at her while she was checking the description of the master sword, Sofia giggle and walked toward the last master, which Ezerid had been struggling with for a while, “I get it. This one is for me.”