Knights Apocalyptica

Chapter 116: Fun And Games

COMMUNITY NOTICE.

RE: CASINO HOURS.

THE BOARD OF MAGI HAS GRACIOUSLY AGREED TO EXTEND CASINO OPERATING HOURS ON THE STRIP TO ALL HOURS OF THE DAY.

AS A RESPONSE TO LISTENING TO ARGUMENTS FROM ALL SIDES, INCLUDING COMMUNITY MEMBER RESERVATIONS, THIS HAS BEEN DETERMINED TO BE THE FAIREST COURSE OF ACTION.

WE WILL STATE PLAINLY TO ADDRESS ALLEGATIONS OF CONFLICTED INTEREST IN THE BOARD’S DECISION ON THIS MATTER. DESPITE TIES AND OWNERSHIP WITHIN THE CASINO ON THE STRIP TO SOME OF THE COUNCIL OF MAGI, THOSE WHO HOLD GREAT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THIS COMMUNITY CAN SEPARATE THEIR BUSINESS TIES AND COME TO DECISIONS FOR THE COMMUNITIES BEST INTERESTS.

MAY WE REMIND EVERYONE WHO KEEPS THE BARRIER UP AND ADDRESSES OUTSIDE THREATS SO THIS WONDERFUL CITY CAN PROSPER AS THE JEWEL OF THE DESERT?

ANY COMPLAINTS WITH THIS DECISION CAN BE LODGED AT ANY OF THE MAGI OFFICES.

-Council Of Magi, Vega City Notice (275, 3rd Era)

All it took was a single second for the playful banter to shift. Once there was a percussive bang of a gunshot, the entire field’s atmosphere shifted. Enide morphed from a smiling girl to a feral beast, rushing across the group and smashing her foot into the ball in the center.

It wasn’t as if Erec was trying to let her take control of the match, but she moved far too quickly for him to do anything about it.

What was worse is she knew the ins and outs of the game. So when she kicked the ball, she aimed it to the right, outside of where Erec could intercept it. Right to Casey, who of course, was ready and prepared to catch the pass.

“Gonna have to better if you wanna win,” Enide mocked, already sprinting down the field towards the goal, not to where the ball was.

Erec frowned but didn’t let her lead get to him. He threw himself after her, figuring that if she was moving in this direction, she had a plan. Frankly, he didn’t know enough about the game or their strategies to figure out counter-tactics beyond reacting.

Yet he wasn’t the only one to come to that conclusion as Casey moved the ball down the field and flew back from a hit. Colin blasted him with a spire of ice, knocking the poor bastard flat on his ass.

It was an attack without any semblance of technique and the first direct assault of the game.

Everyone’s eyes traced the source—to Colin, who casually stopped the rolling ball. Everybody stopped moving, watching him. “What?” Colin yelled with a sneer. “There are no rules against hitting him. You told me as much!”

With that, Colin smashed his foot into the ball, sending it flying away, though towards no particular target.

Suddenly the field’s play was uncapped. A Pendragon threw out a glyph that directed the ball with a gust of air—flinging it back down the field, which Colin countered with a wall of ice.

Before the Pendragon caster could let off another spell, Garin tackled him from the side, breaking any chance of concentration and stopping any further magic. To seal the deal, Garin landed a clean punch on the poor guy’s face; Gwen was rushing towards the ball somewhere else.

Erec took way too long watching the chaos. When he looked to where Enide had been, the girl disappeared. She was off the course entirely until she wasn’t. As Soren had done before, she simply popped into existence near the ball, kicking it alongside the wall and out of Colin’s view. After that, it was child's play to break past it at a crazy speed.

Not that Colin could’ve stopped her anyway—Casey had gotten back up, and Colin was fending him off with magic and trying to stop the bruiser from pulling the same trick Garin did with the Pendragon’s mage.

Enide was free; she raced towards the goal and a lone Olivia. Without any fanfare, she kicked the ball, which soared through the air. It twisted past an unprepared goalie and right through the rock pillars.

“Goal!” Enide yelled out, welcomed by a chorus of cheers from her team.

All of the Initiates shared a look. This game wasn’t going to be easy, much to their surprise. As Enide ran off to collect the ball bouncing into the wasteland, Erec raised a hand to signal his team to come in for an emergency meeting.

Even as they gathered, they kept looking at the Pendragons, who’d decided to launch into a sort of ritualistic chant. The antics of them jeering and celebrating only further dragged down the rapidly plummeting mood of the Knights. “We can do this,” Erec said, clapping his hands together. They couldn’t sink into despair with the game just starting, and he wouldn’t let them. “We’re stronger than them.”

Garin flung an arm over Olivia’s shoulder, sporting a new bruise on his cheek. The maid wasn’t happy, even despite the physical contact. “I should’ve been able to block a simple ball. My apologies,” she said.

“Don’t beat yourself up. They’re more than we all gave’em credit for, but I guess spending your lives outside of the walls and playing this game for Goddess knows how long is worth something,” Garin pulled her closer and rested his head on hers.

Watching the two of them like that… Erec wasn’t sure why, but it made him feel a bit more off than usual.

“If you all held your end of the arrangement and took care of your enemies, we would’ve won. I took out mine, didn’t I? It’s Erec’s fault. He needs to watch the girl and tackle her next time. Use force. Why else do you have that obnoxious talent?” Colin stomped a foot on the ground and crossed his arms.

“You want me to use a divine talent that makes me lose control during a friendly game?” Erec asked, baffled.

“Yes,” Colin said, surprisingly followed by Gwen and Garin agreeing—Olivia was the only one who looked away and said nothing.

Erec worked his jaw and turned the idea over in his head. The fire had flared seeing everyone rushing about the field; with how adjacent this was turning out to be to a proper fight it wasn’t a mystery why. If he let loose, though, there wouldn’t be any turning back. His shifted to Enide as she returned with the ball tucked under her elbow.

If he let go… What would she think? What would the Pendragons think?

“Be yourself, man. You know you wanna win. We all wanna win. Are you really trying if you don’t give it your all?” Garin asked.

They broke apart and returned to their position, which meant Erec headed right back toward the center where Enide was. She tried to make some comments about her victory—they were self-congratulatory and teasing, but Erec barely heard the words. Everything around bled away as the fire inside burned bright, and he locked his eyes on the ball.

Losing without giving this everything he had… That was too pathetic; Garin was right. Even if it meant showcasing to these people who he was, he’d have to come to terms with that.

These people weren’t worth much anyway, just stepping stones on his way to victory.

“Whoa, what’s going on with your eyes?”

Her words held no weight. The only thing that did was gunfire going off, signaling them to begin again.

Erec threw himself forward, every bit of his Strength now pulled from his hell catching alight inside of him and going into his legs, throwing him across the ground. The girl was off-guard but tried to match him with her pure speed, but she didn’t stand a chance with the shock of it.

Before anyone knew what was happening, he’d reached for the ball and kicked it.

It careened through the air, far too fast for anyone to get off a spell or block, directly toward the goal. Their goalie threw himself in front of the ball, which was a mistake. It slammed into him and sent him flying past the goal, rolling over the ground and kicking up a cloud of dust at the hit. Erec puffed up his chest and searched for his next challenger.

“That—That isn’t a point! Our goalie caught it!” Casey yelled, and Erec’s eyes settled on him. He cut himself off at the sudden attention.

“No, that’s a goal,” Enide said, her eyes wide and a little awe in her tone. “Bit of a bullshit goal, but a goal.”

[Okay… Toning it down until the ball is in play again…] Erec’s limbs began to shake as VAL reminded him to cool off in the form of a dose of sedative. He pulled himself back, trying to control his breathing as he paced back and forth in the middle of the field. Enide gave him a wide berth as someone went to check on the Pendragon goalie and return the ball.

That goal tied them, and the nature of the game changed.

The enemy team played around Erec. Each time someone scored, Enide would rush the ball and play a deadly game of trying to get it as far away from him as fast as she could, using some trick to phase through space. Unlike Soren’s Divine talent, there was no illusion to it. She disappeared and then reappeared through space.

More often than not, she prevented him from getting the ball and ending the match with a single kick.

Her team did their best to play around Erec, primarily aiming to get past him and only deal with his team. The longer the match went on, the more wild Erec became. He pulled on measured doses of Fury and used VAL to regulate him between when the ball was in play and when it wasn’t. Seeing this rapid degradation, Gwen took charge and did her best to minimize the time the ball was out of play. As long as there was a ball to chase, Erec didn’t risk snapping and losing it on anyone.

With his temperament, the other team didn’t protest much and hurried to get the ball into play again. But they weren’t afraid. As the gear shifted into a more serious tone for the match, the Pendragons responded enthusiastically. Both with Erec’s unexpected status as a monster, and the rest of the Initiates learning and performing better, they put up an even fight.

Glyphs flew on the field; Divine Talents got used with abandon, all in the pursuit of victory.

Round after round, the game got more vicious. Blood spattered on clothes from nicks and cuts as everybody straddled the line for victory, struggling for an edge to the match and securing the win.

It was intoxicating and fell only just short of a battle in how satisfying it was to conquer.

Erec slammed his foot into the ball above Enide’s head—only for her to disappear and reappear downfield. She grimaced as she blocked the powerful shot and deflected it to the giant hulk of a person on their side. Garin and Gwen tag-teamed the guy, ripping the ball from his feet even as Garin took a punch to his side.

Gwen kicked the ball towards the goal, narrowly dodging as a spike of ice flashed by, and hit the goalie as a distraction.

Chaos. Every moment was a flash of chaos.

As his fire raged inside, a divine sense of joy burned too; Erec grinned like a madman as he embraced the shoving, punching, and fighting to take control of the ball.

He dominated the field, a tyrant among all of these people. The only one who compared to him was Enide—a demon of speed that seemed to vanish and appear all over the field. While they avoided him, she challenged him wherever she could, knowing there was no chance of beating him with raw strength; she stood a chance of reaching the ball first.

Scores didn’t matter. They vied to get one over on another. He lost count of how many times the ball flew from the field or through the posts. All he lived for were those moments of challenge. All the while, he let his inferno burn brighter and more violently, steadily spiraling out of control.

There was no judgment from the people around him; they didn’t fear it. No, they accepted and embraced it.

All too soon, the game came to an end.

With Erec going full throttle all the way through, most of the details blurred for him. Using Fury and trying to stem it off and on for hours wore away his psyche, though the sparsity of true blood made it a tad easier to keep things together.

Once it ended, Erec returned to himself slowly, sitting against a rock pillar, his shirt off and drenched with water. Someone threw it on his head at some point to cool him off in the desert sun. He took measured breaths, coming down from the high of the battle.

A notification blinking in the corner of his vision was equally surprising and reassuring, but mostly, he kept thinking back on the game.

Enide was a demon like him, but what kind of demon, he couldn’t tell.