Scarlet

It only takes about half an hour of painfully lying on the floor for the others to either kill the diviner, or shatter their core, sending me back to standing on top of our tower in the middle of an incredibly loud stadium. And it takes quite a bit of willpower not to complain to the others about taking too long.

Because that hurt. Not to mention the backlash from losing my blood shadow, which would’ve been much worse if I hadn’t already had the thing summoned for quite a long time and hadn’t leveled the skill to level six. Fortunately it just manifested in a massive headache. One that wasn’t actually that big in comparison to the hole that was in my gut.

Pain aside though, our tower suddenly begins to shift, moving towards the center of the once again black field of stone beneath us before expanding as Scott’s voice echoes throughout the stadium, “And we have our winners! May I personally congratulate team Last Stand for successfully winning the Tower Siege Class I Team tournament! The very first tournament of the year!!!”

A loud roar of applause fills the stadium, making me look around for a moment before my eyes lock on Scott’s.

I want to go rest please.

“Now why don’t we hear a word from each of our wonderful winners!!” he continues with just as much enthusiasm.

No, please just let me rest.

“How about you, Michael?” he asks while approaching the druid who is fidgeting slightly from my eyes that are drilling holes in the back of his head. “You managed to fulfill the promise you made! How do you feel about that? Your first tournament and you won!!!”

Michael manages to ignore my eyes as he grabs the mic and turns around, showing me his back in an act of turning towards the audience. He then begins enthusiastically speaking – way too enthusiastically if you ask me – as he says, “The tournament was hard fought, and we almost lost more than once throughout it,” my eyes narrow at that, “but we pulled through! And we owe it all to our amazing teammate, Scarlet Asger!” He then turns the mic over to me with a grin on his face that makes me want to slap him. Twice. “Why don’t you say a few words, eh Scarlet?”

Make that three times.

I take the mic from him before saying, “It was fun,” and handing it back to Scott again amidst a roaring applause, taking some joy in the shocked face Michael is giving me.

“You could’ve said more, ya know,” Tar mutters, sounding amused.

He said to say a few words. So I gave a few words. Just three.

Tar snorts.

Besides. The audience seems to like it.

“Ah, a woman of few words! Or should I say a wolf of few words?” Scott tries to make a joke that has me raising a brow, but the audience laughs anyways. He then turns to the others and gets interviews from each of them before floating up into the air while shouting, “And that’s it for the very first tournament of the year! But don’t worry! Tomorrow will start with our very first Prime tournament! The Class I Solo Primaries, where you will see this wonderful girl again!” he says that last part while indicating me. “But, of course, if a Demonic Assault were to happen during the middle of the tournament, then the tournament will be pushed back a day! Please be aware of this!”

Scott stops floating several dozen meters above us before raising a single hand to the sky and then pointing down at a random point in the audience, the massive screen floating above him showing him as he does so with various smaller screens around the stadium moving around to show us on the tower from various different perspectives. He then shouts, “That’s all for today! We’ll see you next time!” his voice echoing throughout the entire stadium for several seconds, the audience not calming down for even a single instant. Not even after the team and I are sent back to our private booth.

The moment I realize we’re in the booth, I slump down in the closest chair with a groan as I mutter, “I’m going to kill you Michael.”

He chuckles at that and says, “PR helps. You’ll be thanking me later for it.”

“I’m still going to kill you,” I say while closing my eyes with my head lying on the headrest.

The others all move about doing their own things, some of them sitting down to chat while others leave the room entirely after saying brief goodbyes for the night now that today’s tournaments are over. But I just continue lying on the comfortable chair, too mentally exhausted from the last few battles to want to move.

“You should probably leave the magical reality and go to bed if you’re so tired,” Tar suggests. “Especially since the Primaries will be tomorrow.”

Yeah… maybe. Although there’s a decent chance that the Primaries won’t start tomorrow, considering that the last Demonic Assault was on opening day of the Interschool Tournaments, and this will be the third day of the tournaments.

I continue lying in place for several seconds, not wanting to go to the trouble of getting up.

Eventually I manage to open my eyes and reach for the device before exiting from the magical reality and finding myself in my pod dock again. And I almost immediately find a few dozen students packed in front of my pod dock while whispering amongst themselves.

The fuck?

As soon as one of them sees me, they shout, “She’s awake!” and they all begin crowding around the pod dock like a wave of fans.

Oh, come on! Are you freaking kidding me right now?!

“Well, you’re becoming more and more famous as time goes on, so…” Tar says sounding quite amused by my situation. A situation that has me kind of wanting to just stay in the pod dock to sleep instead of leaving it. But that would be too loud with their unending chatter.

Ugh. This is going to be a pain.

Please just let me go home to sleep.