>>6237432“The time for battle is here!” Melanie cries out. “Let the fourth round of the gauntlet marathon…begin!”
Somehow, Son of Ogre had been intelligent enough to wait until Melanie’s command before charging in. Whatever mad mage had experimented on this creature would have surely been proud. While you were sure this beast would have been a terrifying foe to face alone or even in a group, your selection of companions for the gauntlet proved to pay off far greater than you could have ever imagined. Nadia, like many of the mages of Ithaca, had been trained in magic specifically designed to annihilate Terrors. All Son of Ogre is able to do is lift its huge club high before it is beset by a beam of magic that tears its arm right off.
The beast falls to its knees, a massive spurt of grisly black blood coloring the inside of the arena. Nadia follows up her attack, flattening the creature with a second beam of light, this time from above. Son of Ogre no longer roars with rage. Instead it produces a pitiable mewing sound, unbefitting of a monster of its stature and renown. If this all seemed rather unfair to you, you didn’t voice your opinion. When in Morfis, fight as the Morfisians do.
You place Son of Ogre out of its misery, launching a fireball at the prone Terror. It alights instantly, producing a huge plume of smoke. The threat that the Terror’s burning flesh poses to your lungs is far greater than that of which it posed to your life when it was alive.
>Tristain d’Rusalka>Level 33/50 Wyvern Lord (EXP: 50/100)HP: 66/66 (120%) + 1 = 67
Strength: 34 (65%) + 1 = 35
Magic: 21 (40%)
Speed: 25 (30%)
Defense: 27 (60%)
Resistance: 16 (40%) + 1 = 17
Luck: 15 (55%) + 1 = 16
“Uhh…” Melanie says, unsure if what she’d just witnessed was real or not. She appears to give it a few moments, perhaps to see if Son of Ogre might reveal it had merely been pretending to be dead. Only after the stench of burning Terror becomes much thicker does she call the fight. “I guess that’s it folks! Son of Ogre is off to join papa! We hardly knew him! Trystain and his friends have only one fight left!”
“Well, thank the Goddess for that.” Cuthbert says, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. “I thought for sure that thing understood what I’d said earlier.”
>“Probably not.” You shrug.“Listen to them.” Nadia says, cusping one ear in the direction of the crowd, which was equal parts cheerful and belligerent. “They’re growing restless! We deprived them of what they’d hoped was a good fight!”
As you begin to wonder just how you’re expected to do battle with the ogre’s burning carcass producing endless plumes of smoke, the Wheel of Fortune activates, and with a spin, the corpse vanishes somewhere. You’re reminded as to how Adeline was teleported earlier. It seemed once the gauntlet started, the Wheel would somehow do anything needed to facilitate a fight.
