Scarlet

I close my eyes as I listen for the others, only to find one person in Rebound’s section quickly moving to the neighboring section of it belonging to Tempest, where I also find someone calmly walking around the top of a mountain.

My eyes open again, and I let out a sigh.

Looks like those two are going to fight it out without me… that’s disappointing, but what the heck. If one kills the other, which is likely, then I’ll be fighting the winner regardless.

Anyways, you were asking something earlier?

“Yeah,” Tar says as I simply sit down on the ground as I wait for the two to have their battle. Because it would be rude to interrupt them when Lucas is obviously on the hunt. Plus I want a one on one with him since our last battle wasn’t exactly a good one with me missing an arm at the start of it and him vanishing due to a shattered core. “You said that your armor scaled according to your mana? How does that work?”

From what I understand, the skills used to create the armor make it passively absorb the mana emitted by the wearer. And the armor will use that mana to empower itself.

“Then why don’t Guardians just have stronger Guardians empower the armor with their own mana before they use it?” Tar asks, sounding genuinely curious.

I lie flat on my back with my arms spread out on both sides, just flopped on the swamp floor ignoring the mud that I’m in and briefly wishing I had more of a chance to use that blood lake. But at least it helped a lot in that fight, since I was able to push my skills a lot harder than I’ve ever done before thanks to it. Even if there is still a vast majority of the lake left in my storage.

And they can’t have another Guardian fill it because it only accepts the passive mana. The armor will also reset after it’s taken off, meaning a stronger Guardian can’t just put the armor on then take it off and give it to a weaker Guardian.

Because that would make things too easy, and the System doesn’t like that apparently. And the System is the one giving us these skills, so…

“Yeah, I suppose that would make sense,” Tar mutters, agreeing with me.

I continue lying on the ground for a bit until I hear the two begin fighting.

“Aren’t you worried the arena will randomly teleport you?” Tar asks, but I just shake my head while resting my arms underneath my head to prop it up.

Nah. They said it would only do that if you were in your own section. And I’m in Plaguebearer’s section of the arena.

Plus I killed Plaguebearer, so I meet the minimum requirement of having beaten someone in this round already.

“Ah, right,” Tar says before appearing and trying to lie down on me, only for me to reach out and grab him by the scruff of his neck and fling him away while saying, “You have the worst memory ever. Didn’t I tell you that you’re not allowed to do that for another couple days?”

The tanuki starts pouting at me.

“That won’t work,” I state with a stoic look on my face despite the cuteness of the tanuki. And I really mean it.

After a few seconds of pouting, the tanuki gives up and vanishes, apparently not wanting to lie on the muddy grass. Which, in hindsight, makes sense.

Actually… I look around before finding a tree.

That’ll work.

I get up and quickly use clean to get the mud off me before jumping up into a tree and resuming my relaxation on a thick branch.

Much better.

“You understand that this is probably going to be turned into some sort of ‘meme’ – that is what your generation calls them, right? Memes?” Tar starts speaking, only to end up questioning me instead.

I don’t exactly keep up with my own generation if I’m being honest. So there are a lot of things that I don’t understand myself, such as their slang for example.

But yeah, I think it’s called a meme.

“But there’s not really much I can do about it,” I state out loud for the benefit of the audience with a shrug. “I’m pretty sure Shifter would get mad if I tried to interrupt their battle.”

Doesn’t mean I’m gonna like finding memes and videos of me lounging around during a tournament, but they can’t be much worse than the images I found of me online in a skirt, so…

At least Belle never crossed the line and made me wear any dresses. So that’s a plus.

“Why do you hate wearing skirts and dresses anyways?” Tar asks seemingly out of curiosity.

I tilt my head slightly while catching what sounds like a loud explosion of thunder from the other side of the arena.

Do I really need a reason? I just hate wearing them. Period. Even more so now that I’m so used to fighting. Because it’s not very easy to fight in a dress or a skirt.

Although I guess I do have one other reason. For skirts at least.

They’re too revealing.

“You know, for a pride demon, you sure don’t like showing off your body,” Tar comments, making me raise a brow.

I’m a half pride demon, not a lust demon. Why would I want to show off skin?

I take pride in my skill, intellect, and the image I maintain. Not my body. My body is what it is.

“I guess that’s reasonable,” Tar admits, making me nod my head in agreement. “Even though a lot of people still complement your body nonetheless?”

I blush at that.

Tar chuckles, making me realize he did that on purpose.

Before I can retort and get my payback, I feel a wave of shock run through Tar that somehow spreads to me. But I have no idea what the shock was from.

I sit up slightly.

Are you okay?

It takes a moment before Tar answers, “Yes. I was just… surprised. You’ll understand why after the tournament when you leave the magical reality. It’s not a pressing matter right now though, and especially not for you.”

I blink at that only to eventually lie down again.

If you say so.

I can’t help but wonder what it was about though.