“Wrath! Devil! Wrath! Devil!” The chanting continued while we stood with our hands raised toward the sky.
“How does it make you feel?” I asked, knowing that she likely never experienced anything like this ever before.
Iris remained silent for a bit, but then managed to gather her thoughts, “I thought I would hate being the center of attention, but it’s not so bad… It feels strange. I can’t describe it very well.”
Find more chapters on empire
I smiled at the words of this poor, tortured soul. “Good. I’m happy that you get to experience new things.”
“Should we bow? I once saw a theatre play while I was in the army and the performers bowed at the end.” She asked very innocently.
Her currently displayed adorable antics pained my heart in a way. In this moment, it was so damn clear to me just how much loss this woman had gone through. She might be a ~27 years old adult in body, but her mind was robbed of many opportunities to develop due to her extreme failure of a father.
In a way, she was still the same little girl who was imprisoned in the basement and then tormented for a decade straight. The fact that she was so lost on what to do in this very basic social situation displayed this perfectly.
Even after she managed to kill her father, she was still just a lost, orphaned girl who was entirely alone in this cruel world. She somehow had to find her way in life, which led her to the army. I imagine that such a place is not the most ideal to develop one’s sense of self.
“I decided to become a criminal in part so that I would never have to bow to anyone. However, there’s no shame in doing so in this instance. Go ahead if you want.” I told her.
She seemed reluctant to bow after hearing my words. “… But it feels strange to just stand here.”
“Future wife, can we take a few moments more of center stage?” I asked while turning toward a certain dashingly sexy woman wearing a ceremonial dress and high heels.
“Hmm? Would you happen to be talking to me, dearest Devil?” Vex asked with a raised eyebrow and a heavily amused tone.
“Yeah,” I nodded shamelessly.
She eyed me for a bit before simply shrugging her shoulders, “I have an event to run, but sure, the highest scorers can enjoy some leeway I suppose. 10 seconds should be more than enough, right?”
“Yes. Thanks, I appreciate it a lot. [Airwalk]” I grabbed Iris and plopped her down on my right shoulder, after which I quickly ran up into the air and started waving at the crowd which was going into a frenzy.
“… You just called a Veil Walker your future wife and she had no problem with it…?” Iris was flabbergasted.
“Yes, but we all know that Vex is a rather strange woman, and that’s me putting things gently. I wouldn’t have said this to any other Veil Walker. By the way, you should wave your arms at the crowd, or otherwise you will seem like a prudish person. “
She reluctantly did as I suggested, but her motions were rather robotic, her mind was clearly occupied with something else. “You know, I can’t help but notice that you’re flirting with three women one after the other, and in front of all of your lovers at that. Because that’s what this is, right? You flirting with me?”
“What can I say, I’m a man who is harboring incomprehensible ambitions.”
Iris deserved the very best partner in my mind, who coincidentally happened to be exactly me.
It was my self-appointed duty to heal this unfortunate soul. She was a very alluring woman, but as I said, she was dealing with some severe mental trauma, thus I was more so interested in helping her grow as a person before even thinking of doing anything naughty. It wouldn’t feel right otherwise.
Iris merely scoffed at my statement after which she remained silent. Our quick little celebratory tour ended in the allotted time Vex gave generously us.
“Now then, ladies and gents! The team with the second-highest score is none other than the one made up of Ambition and Ice, two mighty young ladies with a total of 628 points! A round of applause is very well deserved, so let’s hear it.”
Both my sexy 6-packed elf crafter-tanker and the woman called Ice were reserved people who didn’t seem to enjoy the spotlight, so they didn’t step forward like me and Iris did. Kaelira was an elf to boot, so it made perfect sense that she wanted to attract as little attention to herself as possible. Being a free elf in the Vraven Kingdom was illegal, after all.
To be fair, she was technically my slave since I used [Subjugation] on her already, but without a collar to show, the authorities would not treat her as an enslaved elf. It would likely be smart of me to get her one, a snug little wooden piece like what I got for Seraphiel so that she doesn’t hate it.
The applause Kaelira and Ice got was lackluster in comparison to ours. I’m afraid to say that we kinda stole the show with this round.
“Now then, a truly curious thing happened! We have two bronze medalists. Whirlwind and his master archer partner, Arche, scored 585 points, which was perfectly matched by the team of Selene and uh… Rudy is the name, yes!” Vex seemed to struggle mightily with remembering the name of Selene’s utterly irrelevant bodyguard, or more precisely her melee partner.
Her scoring this high was reasonable despite having to carry a loser, after all, she was very high leveled with her 24 levels, most of which happened due to her act of betrayal at the start of the Trials. Her Pyromancer class was the perfect one to have in this round to boot, giving her a big advantage over the competition.
I eyed the big dude with the ginormous cleaver. I thought he would finish in the top three, to be honest. Such a crude tool was perfect for massacring hordes of dumb monsters. He seemed to be very furious with his placement in the rankings as well, evidenced by his ominous glares sent to his ranged partner.
“You useless piece of shit…!” He growled in a tone that resembled that of an orc more than a human.
I’d since then learned that his chosen alias was Massacre, a fitting one I must say. His partner in question was one of the few Wizard-classed participants in the competition, so he was rather lucky. Despite this, they were only the 5th in the ranks.
“I-I did my best…” She replied with a quivering tone. Massacre was taller than me and much wider with grotesquely bulging muscles, so he must’ve been a truly frightening sight to this fragile mage girl.
However, it was none of my concern, so I refocused on Vex’s heavenly lips as she started detailing the next event.
“It’s time for the finals! The Phenom Trials take place only once a decade, thus after this round, we will have our newest phenoms of the next ten years!”
Excited cheers welcomed her statement from the audience.
