Sam gave Jen a cocky grin and messaged her, “It fluctuates between 30 and 40 depending on my gambling bets. It’s my highest stat! Jealous?”

“No! Yes… a little maybe, but that’s not the point. We need to talk about this. I can’t believe you haven’t mentioned to me that you’ve gotten your luck stat so high!”

Sam started to reply, “I didn’t…” when Jen cut him off, “Love you boomer, don’t mean to cut you off. My fault for getting distracted and bringing this topic up now when I should be more focused on Tamako and these arena fights.”

“No worries millennial,” replied Sam as he was happy to avoid the topic. Sam did feel a little guilty for not mentioning it to Jen and Tamako, but he wanted to wait till his luck stat hit 50 and then shock them with how high he’d gotten it. His Luck stat was all the way to 43, but then he made a couple of bad gambling quests on how fast he could complete the see-through door-window, and now it was only 36. He knew Jen was going to start theorizing on The System again, and whether it influenced their minds, free will, etc… etc…, but he just couldn’t find the inspiration to care. He knew that The System hadn’t changed his goal of getting Kelly back, but he also understood that Jen needed someone to talk to about The System, because Tamako, who’d grown up with The System, just didn’t understand Jen’s perspective.

***

Lucky-Heart pushed open 10-foot tall double doors that opened out onto the main arena, and announced, “We’re here!”

Poker explained, “We get a private arena manager’s podium since Bot Battle day was initiated in our recall arena. Some will pay to have their own as well, but most of the other contestants will only get to use one of the other manager podiums during their fights.”

Sam asked, “What about the gnomes, dwarves, and elves? Are they going to compete?”

Lucky replied, “The gnomes and dwarves will, but the elves never compete.”

As Poker and Jen walked towards Lucky as he was connecting with the manager’s podium, Poker asked Lucky, “What do you think?”

Lucky let out a deep surprised breath, turned to Poker and Jen, and said, “She’s here!”

“No way!” replied Poker.

Jen didn’t know who they were talking about, but it was clear they weren’t talking about Jen or Dicey, and said, “Who’s here?”

“Bellagio!” replied Lucky.

At Jen’s lack of response to hearing Bellagio’s name, Poker explained, “The City’s gamblers love Bellagio. She is the highest ranked fighter, that participates in bot battles, on the Second Deck. She is cruel to her opponents and can’t be trusted by her allies in the arena. She once tossed one of her own guild-mates under the wheels of one of the gnome’s bots, just to give her a few extra seconds to get out of the way. Groups will want to fight her for payback, while other people will want to be paired up with her and ride her coattails.

“Which means there will be a lot of gambling today, and even with our share of the gambling rewards reduced to 2%, after the City Lord activated Bot Battle Day, our share of the winnings will be significant!” added Lucky.

Jen realized that her and Sam’s questions were showing their ignorance in something they should be familiar with and messaged Sam about her concerns, and they decided to just stay quiet and quit asking so many questions.

***

It was almost midnight on the Second Deck and The System was preparing the final fight. Jen had learned that Bot Battle Day was a mix of unrelenting gore and chaos. Fights were ultimately coordinated and managed by The System. However, podium managers would request fights with other podium managers. If the podium managers were in agreement, The System might accept the proposed fight or demand a payment in gold from the managers and spectators if they wanted to see the fight. It appeared that The System was balancing whatever interests that created the maximum amount of gold for each fight. The System didn’t rank the fighters based on their level, but based on whatever information it must have had available. Out of the nearly 500 fighters present, Dicey was ranked close to 100 and Tamako was ranked at almost 300. Rankings were also not on a straight-line basis. Bellagio could defeat the bottom 150 ranked fighters by herself. Of course, the bottom 100 fighters were all gamblers with levels between 1 and 10. The System had simply sent out a gambling quest offering a free recall and euphoria for their participation. If they lost their fight, they received one euphoria and for every fight they won, they would receive 3 euphoria.

Tamako had only been in two fights the entire day. The first one involved her and two other fighters close to her rank. Their opponents consisted of 25 fighters ranked between 350 and 400. The fight seemed lopsided with 3 against 25, but the spectators knew better. The spectators then crowd-funded a gambling quest offering 1 gold each to Tamako and the other two fighters for every killing blow that took their opponents head off. Jen wanted to vomit at the memory of the fight. The fight didn’t take long. The lower ranked opponents were so outmatched, it looked like adults slaughtering two-year old toddlers. Tamako used skill to behead her opponents, but the other two fighters on her team took a more profitable tactic by dismembering as many of their opponents as possible, before returning strike the heads off of their bleeding, crying, screaming, and now defenseless opponents…. The crowd loved every minute of it as they gambled on every aspect of the fight you could imagine. They gambled on who would win, how long it would take to win, which fighter would take off the most heads, etc… To create a bet, a spectator simply accessed the system through the enchantments in their seat, and other spectators could accept the bet, make counter-bets, or ignore the bet and choose bets made by others or The System.

The System constantly adjusted the rankings of the fighters depending on the events, but some fighters, like Bellagio, ranking never changed. Tamako was ranked 225 by the time she was called for her next fight. She was paired up with 8 other fighters with similar rankings, and another fighter that was ranked 83, named Dimeback. Their opponents turned out to be 6 dwarves all ranked between 100 and 150. This was the first fight that involved any race other than humans.

The gnomes, dwarves, and humans all sat in separated sections within the arena. The cultures and languages were so different, that it would lead to a significant number of unintended insults. The different races could sit together if they wanted, but it was apparently an unspoken rule not to.

The gold the dwarves paid and crowd raised to pay The System for the fight was astronomical. Before the fighters were allowed onto the arena floor, it changed. A maze of tunnels rose out of the ground. The tunnels were six feet wide, but only 5 feet high. Tamako’s head just did touch the ceiling of the tunnels, and most of the other fighters on her side were severely hampered with bending over or even crawling on their knees. It kind of resembled Sam’s one-way door window. The audience could see through the roof and walls of the tunnels, it looked like the maze of tunnels were made of glass. However, Jen learned that from the fighter’s perspective inside the tunnels, everything was pitch dark.

Apparently, Dwarves had exceptionally good dark vision, all of their fighters were less than five feet tall, and were extremely experienced fighting in tunnels with these dimensions. Jen learned that their mountain tunnels were built this way giving them the advantage when fighting against humans, elves, orcs, and trolls. The human fighters were not incompetent, they knew spears and shields were the only weapons they could hope to wield in the tunnels.

As the fight started, the dwarves moved through the tunnels as a group with speed and comfort. It was obvious the dwarves had worked with each other before. While all the humans, except Tamako, were crouched or crawling and getting in each other’s way. The dwarves stayed together in the tunnels, but some of the humans split apart in groups of 2 or 3, leaving one larger group of 5.. Jen believed that some split apart hoping they could move better with more space if others were not around them. She knew that others split apart because of individual gambling quests they received promising them more gold if they got the first kill, killed the most dwarves, etc… Tamako was in the lead with her group of 5, which included Dimeback. Jen’s heart sank when she saw this, because she and all the spectators were aware that Dimeback took a gambling quest to kill all six of the dwarves himself. Jen was furious at all the gambling quests rewarding Dimeback if he killed “Tiny” after she engaged the dwarves, but before she killed any of them, but there was nothing Jen could do but seethe with anger.

The dwarves spotted Tamako before she saw them, and threw a spear she was only partially able to deflect, which knocked her sideways and causing her to turn half way around. This was partially fortunate because it allowed her to spot Dimeback who was in the process of thrusting his spear towards her back. She dodged his thrust, which surprised him since he was expecting an easy kill. Dimeback’s surprise allowed Tamako to counterattack with a thrust of her own spear, lacerating his thigh and fracturing his bone. Unfortunately, the dwarves were not idle and their next spear pierced through her back, punching through her heart, and out the front her chest. She died instantly… before being recalled by The System.

With Dimeback injured, only two of the dwarves were killed before they were able to overwhelm and kill him. The remaining dwarves easily found the remaining fighters in the tunnels and dispatched them efficiently.

***

The Final battle was a matchup between the gnome’s undefeated battle-bot, they called Bladeroller, and the fighters ranked 2 through 16. It was a round ball with a 15-foot diameter. The ball was covered with razor sharp ridges running all around and over it. The gnomes could be seen operating it with a “remote control” from their manager’s podium. There was some mechanism inside of it that was powered with steam that caused it to roll in any direction. Jen imagined it was something like a hamster running inside a ball making the ball go any direction. The ball was made of what Sam guessed was enchanted metal that had resisted any damage so far during the fighting. The ball would crush and cut up anyone or anything in its way.

For some reason, Bellagio refused to accept the fight, no matter the amount of gold she was being offered in the gambling quests, and Jen asked Lucky, “Even if Bellagio loses, she would still get all the gambling quest gold that is being offered her to just participate. With her background in the arena, she can’t be afraid of the pain or being killed?”

Lucky replied, “You’re right about one thing, she is definitely not afraid of pain or the threat of being killed. I think she has a strategy to beat the Bladeroller, and she doesn’t want to show her hand before the next annual BotBattle championship tournament. The gold has been great for us tonight, but Bellagio will make way more winning the championship. Additionally, she would ruin her reputation if she participated in any fight where she didn’t give 100%.

The final fight was interesting, but not very exciting. It was just a giant ball shrugging off every attack while crushing and cutting anyone in its way. Some of the fighters tried to just run away constantly, but after about 20 minutes passed, the arena started shrinking in size preventing them from escaping.

The aftermath of the tournament was disgusting as the drunk and drug-fueled spectators started orgies, fights, or gambling on the orgies and fights around them. Eventually the City guard pushed everyone out of the arena.

Tamako was down in the bull-pens with the other fighters and messaged Jen that she and Dicey would just meet them back at the Highland Guild compound instead of trying to fight through the crowd to meet up with them.

Poker asked Lucky, “How much did we make?”