Scarlet

My eyes widen in shock when the wound I dealt to Necro begins to glow. Specifically, the black cracks running through the wound. So I draw my other arm’s claws across his back before jumping backwards myself to avoid whatever skill he’s using.

Only to be shocked when I see the black cracks begin to explode across his back in tiny explosions, making the wounds much bigger as he drops to one knee.

The hell?

“So that was the drawback of whatever skill he was using…” Tar mutters in my head, making me frown. “It’s likely that he got a massive boost in all of his stats, both magical and physical, in exchange for a powerful penalty for taking any sort of damage. Something you normally only see in void related…” Tar trails off, making me curious about what he was gonna say. But the sight of the man struggling to his feet while stumbling a little distracts me from that.

“You can still stand with those wounds?” I ask with a raised brow.

He coughs out a mouthful of black blood on the ground, which has me raising my other brow.

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“He really does have void spawn genes…” Tar mutters, seemingly at the sight of the blood, shocking me in the process. “Just who decided to experiment with void spawn anyways?”

Who cares about that. It’s pretty clear how the government treats human experimentation. And It’s just as clear how obvious it is that a void spawn – a creature that doesn’t reproduce – didn’t give birth to him.

I shiver slightly at the thought of those disgusting masses of flesh, claws, talons, and tentacles that enters my mind. Humanity didn’t really know what we were dealing with the first time a Fracture core grew corrupted and ended up linking Earth to the void instead of Tartarus. But it didn’t take long to find out that the creatures were quite a bit weaker – and stupider – than demons.

The main issue Guardians took with them though was that they didn’t have any life force to take, since they weren’t from the mortal plane themselves. So Guardians can’t gain EXP from killing them.

Which is a big downside to a lot of the Guardians and a demotivator in regard to dealing with the creatures.

Anthony drops down to his knees again, only to faceplant on the ground before we’re both sent back to reality again.

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And the first thing I see when getting back is Anthony grinning at me as we unlock our hands that were still clasped together from before entering the duel.

“You’re interesting,” he says, only to wave at me and turn around. “I’ll catch ya later then. Wouldn’t want to fall behind in points because of this.”

I can’t help but raise a brow at the irony of his words. But he really does start challenging people at random, as can be seen on the screen above, so I just glance up at Viper instead.

“Looks like she already knew about his void spawn genes,” Tar suddenly says, raising my intrigue enough that he quickly answers the question he knows I’m about to ask. “Void spawn are known only by the Guardians who have hunted them before to have black blood, since the Guardians in general don’t care much for the creatures and didn’t bother answering any researchers questions about their specifics beyond calling them ‘eldritch masses of flesh, claws, tentacles, and talons’.”

Oh.

And the Fracture cores becoming corrupted is extremely rare from what I read, so I doubt they’ve been able to study it themselves, much less hire a Guardian to do it for them. Not when only three cores have ever become corrupted.

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“Right,” Tar says before adding, “but a Class IV instructor at a Guardians University should know about that aspect of them, and despite that, she didn’t seem to display any strong reaction.”

Yeah. So they probably already know about his little secret.

But what about me? Is there any chance they might know about me as well?

“No, there’s not,” Tar answers without any hesitation. “You know how your genes are. Humans have tried injecting demon genes into another human before – illegally mind you – and it always resulted in the human dead. The only reason you’re alive is because you were born half demon with your genes suppressed, and when they were awakened, you were inducted into the System to calm it with the reality warp.”

Okay, that’s good.

Wait, genes suppressed?

“Yeah,” Tar says as I begin to press the random challenge button again, ready to go back to challenging everyone remaining in the room. “You’d have died soon after birth if someone – likely your demon parent – didn’t suppress your demon genes.”

Oh. I guess in hindsight I should’ve already expected something like that to be why I had to be awakened as a demon for it to show or for me to even realize I was half demon, but still…

Doesn’t that mean my parents cared about me at least a little…?

Tar doesn’t say anything, likely not wanting to get my hopes up.

The earpiece quickly tells me that my challenge was declined as I’m still waiting for an answer. But when no answer comes, I just sigh and press the random challenge button again. And again, after that one is declined. And again.

Damnit, is everyone just going to decline my challenges?! I understand they might not want to die, even if it’s only a magical reality, but I can go easy on them since the rest of the people here should be weaker! Or I could just avoid using blood boil… maybe that would make more of them challenge me?

Then again, they might not trust my word on that.

Surprisingly, Tar doesn’t say anything in response to my thoughts like he usually would. So I guess he’s just left for somewhere and isn’t just blatantly ignoring me. More like offhandedly ignoring me by leaving and avoiding any questions I might have over the previous subject.

I look up to see Viper looking at me with a face full of amusement.

Yeah, laugh it up.

These challenge declines are all making me lose two points that I could’ve gotten by beating them for each decline! Damn it!

It’s just such a disappointing waste…

I continue pressing the random challenge button over and over again until someone finally bothers to accept it. Then I completely wipe the floor with them, making sure not to use blood boil and to knock them out instead of killing before returning to the dome to continue my spamming of the button.

But in the end, most of the students remaining decline my random challenge. Even Denise declines. But there are around seven or so that accepted out of the remaining students. And right when I get my last challenge declined, I get another message from my earpiece which I hear through my wolf ears instead of my human ones. Because I ended up realizing that it was pointless to use my human ears when I can hear it with my wolf ones as well even with the earpiece in my human ear.

[One point has been awarded for your opponent declining your challenge. You now have a total of 303 points.]

But then a second announcement echoes through the loudspeakers in the dome, making everyone hear it, followed by another one in my ear from the earpiece, not being heard by the others.

[Scarlet Asger has successfully challenged every student in the dome and either defeated them or had them decline her challenge. As a reward, they are given a bonus of 50 points.]

[You now have a total of 353 points.]

Every gaze in the room turns to me.

Seriously?