207 – Fans

Finally, the fights had arrived at the main stage of Meridian. The orichalcum-rank qualifiers weren’t being held in second- or third-rate structures like the previous matches, but instead in the premier facility. The Royal Coliseum was gigantic—it had once been the main arena of the capital, and thus the Human Kingdoms in general.

Which meant it was big. Very big.

How many people does it fit? Vivi thought, standing on the ground floor alongside Suyin, gazing out across the ocean of seats. I don’t even know how to estimate it. Tens of thousands for sure. A hundred? More?

She didn’t know what sort of seating Earth’s stadiums had boasted, but while this world didn’t have modern engineering, it had magic and a society even more passionate about combat as a sport than back home. The numbers probably weren’t far off.

At any rate, it was big. And more importantly, at least a third of the seats were filled.

“I don’t think I understood what I was signing up for,” Suyin said with a low whistle, as stunned by the sea of people as Vivi. “That’s a lot of people that’ll be watching us fight.”

“And the real tournament’s not even here,” Vivi muttered, astounded. “It’s this full for qualifiers?”

Suyin shrugged. “Some of these fights might be as good as the main ones. Not likely, since most of the real titans had free passes in, but…” She glanced at Vivi and smirked. “There are edge cases.”

“Still.” She shook her head in amazement.

“Makes sense why Meridian is building a whole new arena for it, now.” Suyin leaned an elbow onto the stone railing and propped her chin on a hand. “Never spent much time in the major cities. The scale of it all is… something else.”

Vivi agreed. The Dragon King’s Palace put the arena to shame architecturally speaking, but that wasn’t the point: it was the crowd that had them both in shock.

She and Suyin stood there to take the sight in for a while longer, having gotten distracted from their previous mission.

The conversation of a boy and girl passing directly behind them caught her attention.

“—you are out of your mind.” The girl sounded about sixteen, and she spoke with the sort of confidence that rivaled Ember’s, which was saying something. “The Golden Lion has won six championships, idiot. He’s going to crush whoever this—what?—druid guy is. He won’t drop a single round.”

“You don’t even know who that mage is,” the boy insisted. “How can you be sure?”

“The Golden Lion won’t lose,” came the sniffed reply. “Do I have to repeat myself? Six championships. And his team made the finals in the other two he didn’t win.”

The bickering duo stopped and shuffled to the side as their argument grew in volume. A glance their way showed Suyin was listening in on them too—her lips had curled up in amusement.

“But these are duels. One-on-ones,” the boy stressed. “It’s not the same thing at all.”

“It’s still fighting, isn’t it? Who cares if there aren’t bonus objectives? Besides, he’s the best at one-on-ones too, so you extra don’t have a point.”

“I’m not even saying that he won’t win,” the boy said, somehow both exclaiming his words and attempting a reasonable tone at the same time. “But there’s obviously a chance someone new gives him a problem.”

“Nope.”

“He—”

“Nuh-uh,” the girl enunciated, drawing both syllables out. “The Golden Lion is going to win. That’s the end of it, and I can’t believe we’re still arguing about it.”

Suyin turned her face away from the teenaged duo, biting her lip and clearly trying to stop herself from laughing.

“That’s another thing I didn’t think about,” Suyin commented to Vivi as the boy threw his hands into the air and gave up on trying to reason with the girl. “We’re going to be picking up reputations the deeper we get. People rooting for us. Fans.” She shivered. “I don’t know if I like that idea. Master has gotten me used to walking around as a nobody.”

Vivi sympathized, though the prospect wasn’t quite as weird for her. She’d been the top-ranked player of Seven Cataclysms and had uploaded videos as a way to pay rent. She’d had a following of sorts already—though her antisocial ways had meant she barely interacted with them.

That said, despite having grappled with the idea in the past, she found it disorienting. Especially since there wouldn’t be screens and a digital world abstracting it all. People would be watching her fight down in that arena, in the flesh, her only sort-of defense being the transmogrification she was wearing. For whatever reason, that felt different from dealing with her reputation as the Sorceress.

“Guess there’s no avoiding it,” Vivi said. “Let’s go get registered?”

Suyin pushed off the railing and joined her.

It was a short walk. A guard checked their cards before they were allowed in. The event had gotten large enough that the arena had installed dedicated security even at the administrator’s room, if just to filter out the obvious, low-rank troublemakers.

There were four desks and around ten orichalcums inside sorting out their business. At this rank, equipment had long ago stopped being generic sets of armor; each individual had a defining aesthetic and high-quality gear, which Vivi began scanning with interest.

Suyin faltered a step at Vivi’s side, interrupting the survey. Vivi followed the disciple’s gaze and found…

…an even more colorful individual than usual?

Her eyes snagged on the black face paint portraying a skull—then on the cloudy white irises that were returning her gaze. The woman’s gear was black and white and bone-styled throughout, a necromancer’s getup. A massive white cleaver poked over her shoulder, its handle a femur.

A huge grin split the petite woman’s face, revealing white teeth nestled between the black paint above and below. She waved effusively at Vivi, hand stretched far above her head and moving in full arcs left to right, a comically exaggerated motion.

Bewildered, Vivi returned the wave by reflex. The necromancer seemed to find that hilarious; she burst out laughing. She didn’t move from her place in line.

“Suyin, you know her?” Vivi peered at the woman more closely. Something was off about her.

Suyin hesitated before replying. “Not exactly. But Lady Vianora, you should really be—”

Vivi realized what felt weird to her senses. The woman’s soul. It was leaking? There were a lot of things a soul shouldn’t do, but leaking sat pretty high on that list, she figured. ‘Figured’ because she didn’t know what it meant. She’d never seen anything like a leaking soul before, nor did a theory pop into her head to explain the phenomenon.

‘Leaking’ probably wasn’t the right word at all. It was just what her surface-level perception told her.

She would need to take a closer look.

With a curious magical conundrum catching her by surprise, Vivi didn’t stand a chance at suppressing her knee-jerk instinct.

She activated [Soul Sight] and took a peek.

“—careful,” Suyin finished.

The glowing blue wisp-like material at the center of the woman’s chest burned brighter to her senses as passive perception became active—then blinked out as it was forcibly masked. The concealment happened so fast she couldn’t glean anything.

More importantly, Vivi realized she’d been caught.

The woman stiffened, and her cheerful disposition evaporated. She stomped over, glaring balefully at Vivi.

“Is this whole city full of perverts?” she demanded as she arrived. Her fists landed on her hips, and she leaned forward with blazing white eyes. “Should I strip for you too? Is that what you want? To see me exposed? Every inch?”

Vivi scrambled for a response, half due to undeniably being at fault and half due to the outrageous phrasing the woman was using. “Sorry,” she said automatically, “but it’s not like that.” Not that Vivi thought the woman meant the allegations.

“I’d expect it from that creepy old bag of bones, but you?” She scanned her up and down. “He at least had better instincts.” Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t even look scared of me. You saw something… so why?”

The woman took two more steps forward, now closer than Vivi liked other people being to her. She fought the urge to lean away, afraid the action might be taken as rude—and she’d already crossed the line in that regard. By a lot. Using [Inspect] on other people without permission was frowned upon, and while far fewer people had access to [Soul Sight], Vivi didn’t need to be familiar with the niche customs of the world to know that digging into a person’s unusual-looking soul without asking had to be even more rude.

“Creepy old bag of bones?” Vivi asked, her mouth on autopilot as she struggled to get her bearings. She connected the dots later than she should’ve. “Xun,” she realized aloud. Suyin had recognized the woman, after all.

“If that’s what he’s calling himself.” She peered at Vivi. “You really aren’t afraid? Are you an idiot, or just clueless?”

This whole interaction was a bit abrupt, not giving her enough time to sort through what was happening. She wasn’t certain how powerful Xun was, but if he’d been worried about this woman, basic logic told her the necromancer was also strong.

As in: top twenty in the mortal lands strong.

During the brief silence in which Vivi was putting her head on straight again, some of the fury in the woman’s eyes drained away.

Of all emotions, confusion replaced it, which Vivi didn’t understand.

“You… look familiar,” the woman muttered, her brow furrowed—and like all of her expressions, in an exaggerated and unnatural way. “Who are you? What’s your name?”

Familiar? Vivi thought. That was bad news, seeing how she was disguised as someone else. Did this woman know Vianora Enren, the elvish blademaster?

She could hardly give a different introduction. She’d signed up for the tournament as Vianora, and had adopted the woman’s identity. It was the only way to have a disguise that stood up to the scrutiny that would come with climbing the brackets.

“Vianora Enren,” Vivi replied. “And really, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. Can I ask your name too?”

“Vianora? Vianora. Vianora…”

The woman’s eyes—which had drifted down to the floor as she muttered the name over and over—suddenly snapped up. She staggered away, mouth opening and closing like a fish’s. Vivi couldn’t tell whether the shock was part of the melodramatic act or not.

“Ha… haha… hahaha! Vianora. Vianora Enren!” She clapped both hands in delight. Her whole body wiggled around as she twisted side to side in nearly schoolgirl-like glee. “Interesting! So interesting! I know I shouldn’t get involved, I know I can’t! But wow!”

The woman closed the gap, suddenly inches from Vivi.

Even faster than Xun, she noted. Though the old man might not have shown his true strength, back then.

“Are you really her?” the woman whispered.

Vivi was distinctly aware of Suyin staring at her. And for that matter, most of the administrative room. The commotion had not gone unnoticed.

Suspecting incriminating words soon to arrive, Vivi threw up a sound barrier—just in time for the woman to stand on her tiptoes, lean her chin past Vivi’s shoulder, and murmur into her ear:

“Why are you wearing a dead woman’s face?”

A chill went up Vivi’s spine. The elvish blademaster shouldn’t be dead. Rafael had said she was ‘retired,’ and had ceded her identity as a favor to him—or something of that sort. They hadn’t discussed it at length.

The woman pulled back and grinned at her. “Oooh. You’re curious now. But not mad? And still not worried? Look at those dead eyes of yours. How spooky!” She began giggling. “And don’t try to lie to me, I know I’m right. But I won’t tell you how I know.” She batted her eyelashes and hid her mouth behind a hand. “You’ll have to guess. Think super hard!”

…is the implication she’s the one who killed Vianora?

Vivi couldn’t tell if she was being goaded. Vianora might not even be dead. The necromancer might know the elf couldn’t be attending for some other reason, and was trying to provoke her.

The whole insanity act—which could only be half fake at best—made the woman extremely hard to read.

The woman peered closer at her. “Seriously, though, I can’t get over it. You haven’t flinched once. Are you a loon?” She reached out as if to grab a lock of her hair.

“Please don’t touch me.”

The hand paused an inch away, then withdrew. The necromancer tilted her head several degrees too far. “So polite. What happened earlier then, you little pervert?”

“…as I said, it was a reflex.” The strangeness of the woman’s soul had been too enticing. “And I’m not a pervert.” She had never needed to defend herself from that accusation before. The word felt weird leaving her mouth.

The necromancer hummed, tapping her lips with her pointer finger.

“Mina.”

“Sorry?”

“You asked my name earlier.” She winked. “Now leave me alone, I’m busy. Talk to me again, or ogle my insides, and I’ll kill you.” She skipped away, waving a delicate hand in farewell. “Or maybe something way worse than that! Who knows?”

She returned to the administrator’s desk like nothing had happened.

Vivi glanced at Suyin. The disciple was staring extra hard at her now.

Even with the sound barrier, she thought, this is going to be tricky to explain.