Despite proclaiming that she was going to handle the four of them, Arisa found it quite challenging to accomplish. These weren’t the run of the mill Succubus assassins, they were expertly trained for this kind of situation.

Their positioning and tricky maneuvers made it difficult for her to deal with them head-on, and the worse part was that there was no way to expect for some solid backup. Belle was down for the count, Kiri and Keyral were at the frontlines, and Shizuka took command of the robot army while she was preoccupied with the assassins.

If the pressure the robots made stopped then the Inzektor army would have an opportunity to make a comeback. Inzektors are creatures that are full of vitality, their bug-like resistance makes even an ant colony difficult to destroy.

The assassins were relentless in their assault, their blades clashed with Arisa’s as they rotated positions after each attack making it difficult to read the pattern. Fortunately, all four of them slightly held back, they didn’t want to be the one that ended up killing her as she may be their future boss. Arisa who noticed their hesitation smiled as she intentionally exposed an opening causing one of the assassins to stab at her leg. The assassin hesitated and thought, ‘Will I be the one that ends it?’

That attack failed as Arisa who exposed the opening vanished and appeared behind the dumbfounded assassin and stabbed her straight into the back. She used a national movement skill that vampires had, the ability to disperse her body into a mist. The only downside to this ability is that after leaving the mist, it could only be used again 10 minutes later.

With one of their sisters defeated, it was no problem for Arisa to clean up the rest. It seemed that their three-man formation was exponentially weaker than their four-man formation.

Having defeated the assassins, Arisa received a status report from the frontlines to find that they were still in a stalemate. She took command of the army and continued to press onward, as she was doing that she sent a robot to recover Belle. When she found her she was lying outside unconscious, almost immediately Arisa sent over a robot to take her to the command room to check her condition.

Although it was only a virtual battle, hypnotic suggestions and mental trauma still persist, she wanted to know if her friend was truly okay.

Just as Arisa was warningly picking her up a nearly silent sound resonated in the room which was followed by a deafening silence. Arisa turned around to see the last remaining member of their opponents team right behind her.

“You…” Arisa muttered as traces of blood dripped on the side of her lips.

The Succubus smiled as she pulled out the sword from Arisa’s stomach. A gush of blood emerged from the wound and Arisa quickly use her control over blood to maintain her condition, however, she found the blood to continue to spill as she was unable to manipulate it. It seems that the blade was laced in poison.

A train of thought came to Arisa’s mind as she said, “How! How can you be here? Weren’t you commanding the Inzektors at your base?”

The Succubus looked at Arisa with a dumbfounded expression before laughing madly, she then said, “Of course I was just at my base. I knew about your little spy and intentionally overexposed myself, leaving you unguarded until the very last moment. You people at Nexus are still bound by your normal sense of logic, thinking you have the best technology despite having to contribute most of it every year. You must have seen or heard about it, its this thing right here.”

Arisa used her BMPU to analyze the device, the properties it had surpassed what a level 2 engineer could do.

[Le Relic]

[Rank - Unique]

[Defense - 200]

[Durability 100/100]

[A device which allows the user free reign around the world. With the ability to teleport and go invisible anyone can become a phantom thief! The range is limited, and an excessive amount of mana is required.]

[Perk 1 - Teleportation]

[Perk 2 - Invisibility]

To think they would use such a relic, it was a miscalculation on her part not even consider it. Engineers had their own quirks and way to do things, products like this were rare as they weren’t mass produced, so who knows what kind of tools people carry on them.

The Succubus toyed with the relic before tossing it into her intraspatial bag, she looked at Arisa with a playful look as she skipped around her.

The Succubus said, “How does it feel Arisa? To be only a step away from victory, to be defeated so easily. Your overconfidence and lack of insight brought you to this situation. Why were you so distracted? Why was your performance so poor? No matter, because from today onwards...”

With a devilish smile, the Succubus continued, “You will be my sister.”

Arisa’s lips trembled, she was unwilling, she wanted to overturn her fate, and yet Arisa had fallen into a trap ever since she heard about the arrangement. If only she properly paid attention to the match, she might have predicted this outcome.

Filled with rage, she knew that the only way to make a comeback here was to either kill the person in front of her or summon a being to heal her from the Commander Table. She took a step forward and with vigor dashed towards the Succubus who replied with her own blade.

The two exchanged blows and were entirely even, no, instead Arisa felt that her power was much weaker than usual and the Succubus was merely toying with her.

Arisa despaired, as she swung madly at the Succubus who frowned as Arisa’s response. The Succubus thought, ‘To think she would lose her cool, looks like she needs some training.’

The Succubus smiled thinking of what kind of activities she would be teaching Arisa after today, excited she ended the fun quickly as finished Arisa off. Her words echoed into Arisa’s head as her eyes closed letting the darkness seep in.

“Welcome to the family,” the voice faded as a single teardrop slid down from Arisa’s eyes.

…

Arisa had lost her match from the perspective of the crowd she looked like she was winning, but in the end, she had lost by a 5 man assassination attempt.

Arisa who entered the Nexus lobby room was silent, the chatter which was there several moments before was completely non-existent. Zythos stood up knowing it was his turn to go soon and just as he walked by Arisa, she took him down with a kick and slammed him into the wall as she yelled, “It’s funny, isn’t it! Outside you may appear uncaring but inside you must be laughing at me.”

“Why would I be laughing at you? We win some we lose some, right? I lost my first match, we just got to better next time.” Zythos said with a smile. Indeed he was laughing inside. Only the room had a very stiff atmosphere so he couldn’t openly display it.

“You… you don’t know how important this match was for me! I put everything on the line, for each battle I tried my best to do everything I could to win and yet you… how can you be like this! Do you know what it’s like to have everything in your life decided for you from the moment you were born? How aren’t you able to change any of it? How those who had great expectations of you feel disappointed when you let them down? Do you know how I feel!” Arisa screamed as kicked him hard once more.

Zythos groaned as her words echoed into his head. He tried his best for his father and yet he was never good enough. When he was born he was forced to kill his brothers and sisters to live, in fact, he was made to do so by that very father. The Mythos clan had him locked like a dog with a leash, he had no free will, and his father had no expectations for him. In fact, disposal was a word that came into the discussion.

Zythos became lost in thought, no longer responding to Arisa’s pounding.

Seeing Zythos lackluster response, she let him go and sat in the corner waiting for her fate to come. Zythos stood back up after he recollected his thoughts before looking at Arisa once as he was leaving the lobby room.

He thought about the words she said before, how her life was determined after she was born. How her fate was difficult to change with her own hands, and how shit reality was, and somehow he felt like he could relate.

What did he need to do right now? His father said to do as he pleases, but for the first time in Zythos’s life, he wanted to do something for himself, as his own choice.

Zythos entered the map selection screen with his teammates that appeared in the second match. Janet energetically got to the board, and just as she was about to select a water type map, Zythos’s butted in and chosen a forest typed one. She pouted as she said, “Hey! I thought you weren’t interested in command. Do you want to lose that badly? You’re really mean.”

Zythos’s smiled as he said, “I’ll be commanding this match, and I say we do a rush strategy, and we’re going to win.”

Janet looked at Zythos who made such a bold and assertive statement, she smiled as she said, “Wow, did we have a full moon last night? Aren’t you hyped up for today.”

“No, there was no full moon last night. However, there is one right now,” Zythos said as they reappeared in a dark forest type map.

Immediately everyone disappeared leaving Qi Ren behind. Zythos’s words echoed into Qi Ren’s mind as he began to summon an army of ordinary wolves. Compared to buying humans, an army of wolves was much easier to accomplish since the ratio was nearly 1:20. Within the first minute, Zythos had an army of 400 ordinary wolves at the level 30.

These units could be considered mobile cannon fodder, but it was still a force that could take down a regular human army that had no hot weapons like rifles.

Zythos dashed throughout the forest uninhibited, the heavy armor he wore was no longer there as only a small pair of pants covered his public decency.

Janet and the others rode wolves half-way through to catch up, and their storm rush nearly took 3 minutes to arrive at their destination.

The demonic beings were dumbfounded by such a quick attack. They assumed that Zythos wanted to end the battle right away. One of the demonic creatures appeared to be a mage as he conjured a makeshift wall while another operated the command table and summoned an army of goblins to make up their numbers. Unlike elves and orcs, goblins were several times cheaper for more number and were multi-talented.

In packs, goblins were scary creatures, and under the command of a talented general, they could overturn many battles.

Zythos and the army of wolves dashed forward causing a bloodbath on both sides. As the battle continued Zythos pulled out an amulet that had a shiny white gem in the middle of it. Fueled by the power of the moon, it caused the surroundings to go dark. The goblin’s vision had weakened causing their archers and soldiers as to act recklessly. They swung madly as the wolves who were buffed by the darkness hunted them down. Ashgro roared causing even more panic within the group of goblins while inciting more power from the wolves. The demonic soldiers quickly responded as they mowed large sections of wolves. It was at this moment Janet, and Naiz appeared killing off a few of them with Ashro as the vanguard.

This busy bloodbath caused the enemy commander to panic, he quickly summoned as many forces as he could before he was lifted a few meters off the ground. Surprised he turned around to see Zythos appear out of nowhere and a stinging pain shook his senses.

Zythos then pulled back his claws before making a dumbfounded, ‘Was commanding this easy?’

It wasn’t that it was easy, it just that he was strong, but always fell short before a few individuals. Their enemy this time, however, was somewhat weaker than the rest, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise.

Zythos had won the match with both tactic and strength, Janet who had lost the center of attention for merely a moment gave him a high five in attempt to regain it all back.

It was a turnout that nobody had expected, Zythos personally won the battle for his team.