Magical Engineering

Dave

A group arrived early the next morning with plenty of time to spare. Pryte had made sure of it. He wanted absolutely no chance of them trying to disqualify us for being late. And considering I remembered what happened during our first arena match, I couldn't blame the Gnome. There's always that chance someone was waiting to screw with our chances, even if it seemed unlikely.

“Welcome to your competition world, Treloonol Seventeen. I'll just need your faction heads to step aside with me for a brief meeting, and then you can get to your designated starting areas,” a small squeaky voice said as we finished stepping through the gate.

“Brault? I didn't know you were involved in this. How'd you end up running a competition world?” Pryte asked, a mild surprise to his voice.

A figure about the size of Pryte stepped up onto the platform in front of us. Outside of their clothing, they looked nearly identical. Was this another member of Pryte's species? I had met other Gnomes before, but none of the exact same type as him.

“Huh, it is you, Pryte. I'd heard you joined up with some small backwoods faction. Didn't really believe it and kind of figured your name on the list was just a coincidence. What the hell could have caused you to do that? Don't tell me you're that bored already. You're not that old,” the other Gnome replied.

I rolled my eyes as I had been expecting to hear this quite a bit, but still, it was annoying. We'd gone through a lot, and still, for people just to resign us to some nonsense faction rubbed me the wrong way. Despite that, I did know it gave us a little bit of a competitive edge. It meant they were underestimating us. So as much as it annoyed me, I wasn't about to stop them.

“Let's not insult my new faction, Brault. It's rude. But yes, I was bored. And now I'm very much not. Sometimes I'm stressed, though, so there is that trade-off. But come on, let's go discuss what we need to discuss. Dave's got that look on his face like he might do something dumb if we stay out here too much longer,” Pryte said.

I didn't think I had that look going. I hadn't even been considering anything. Sure, some of the food tables looked tasty, but beyond that, nothing else had hit me yet. What had Pryte noticed that I hadn't?

“Alright, follow me,” Brault said, hopping back down off the platform. “Oh, and the rest of you, please head over there to section number eighty-two and wait for us to return.” Brault pointed to an empty pavilion in between several other full ones.

I caught a nod from Elody just before Pryte, and I hopped down off the platform while the others took the ramp in the opposite direction. That nod said, don't worry, Dave, I'll keep them out of trouble. At least I was going to pretend it did. The truth was, I was the one most likely to get in trouble in most places, so what it really meant was you'll be fine.

Brault led us past dozens of tents of varying sizes, some full of screaming people, others completely silent until we reached one of the smaller ones. He held open a flap and pointed to a couple of chairs in front of a desk. I caught Pryte rolling his eyes as Brault walked to the other side of the desk and took a seat before saying anything else to us.

“Pryte, why did you let your faction enroll? You've got to know that was a dumb idea, exciting or not. There's no way you guys can win this. It's stupidly dangerous to even try. Come on, man, you're putting me in such a hard place here.” The squeakiness of his voice had vanished. Instead, there was now an almost friendly tone as he stared at Pryte.

“You're an idiot, Brault. Brother or not, you're still an idiot. Of course this is dangerous, but did you look at the actual full faction that registered? Did you consider what's up for grabs here and what it might mean to the Twinoges?” Pryte countered.

“Wait, you two are brothers? That explains the resemblance. I just kind of figured you were the same species or something,” I added.

“Seriously, Pryte? Do you even hear this guy? There's some really strong contenders here. You're going to get killed or worse. You had to know this was a terrible idea, even if one of their home worlds was up for grabs. Didn't you all just win your own home world?” He turned to me as he said that last question.

My temper flared just slightly. I was tired of the insults. “Hey, I'm good with a lot of jokes at my expense, but we've been through a lot. I think we can handle this. So how about you treat my faction with at least a little dignity, please?”

Pryte scrunched up his face before replying. “Brault, seriously, man, I know it's been a while since we've seen each other. But we are family, even if we've beaten the crap out of each other many times in our youth. Dave's got a point, don't be an ass for no reason. What exactly is it you're so damn scared of for me?”

Stolen from NovelFire, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“You know there hasn't been a new System expansion in a long time, right?” he asked, looking from Pryte to me.

“Yes, and I'm pretty aware that's obviously why this is happening. It's an attempt to calm some of the fraying nerves out there of the upper echelons, as well as give away a little bit of territory in an attempt to stop pending wars. I'm also pretty aware that things like this never work. But that doesn't explain why you're so scared directly about our faction. When this all explodes, whether we were involved or not, we're still going to be affected,” Pryte answered, giving his brother an odd stare.

Brault sighed as his face creased into a frown. “They've added a sixth event, and no, I can't tell you what it is. I don't even know what it is. But anyone who makes it to that event and loses in it forfeits their empire's home world as another prize to the final competition pool. That's the real way they're feeding in prizes for the big lordlings that are being secretly funded by their family's empires this was never about giving the smaller factions a chance to actually grow. This was about getting rid of as many of them as easily as they could.”

And that was the other shoe dropping. We had known something else had to be here that we weren't predicting, and now we knew what it was. The big problem there, though, was it changed nothing. The Twinoge world was up for grabs, and that meant we couldn't back down.

“Dammit,” Pryte replied, looking to me. “And no, you don't have to say it. I already know and agree that we are not backing down just because of a few threats. But this makes everything a lot more difficult. We don't know what that event is, so we can't plan for it. Brault, what other rules are there? How exactly is the scoring going to work?”

“Pryte, what if you just withdrew now? Take this shame, lose your entry fee, and just go back home. Everything would be okay then,” Brault replied without answering any of the questions.

“It's not gonna happen. Even if I wanted to and to be clear, I don't, there's no world Dave agrees to it. He's committed to helping his friends get their homeworld, so answer my damn questions.”

“Fine. But I hope you understand how ridiculous an idea it is that you could go anywhere near the finals. Getting past just these preliminary events is going to be hard enough, so I'm sorry to say this, but I do hope you lose before the sixth event.”

“Again, we understand. Honestly, Brault, I kind of appreciate the warning, considering the last time we saw each other I broke your arm. You're being a little more friendly than I'd expect. But please, just tell us.”

“Yeah, well, I might have deserved that. Sorry about what I said then. She didn't deserve that.” Brault paused for a moment, took an exaggerated deep breath, and resumed. “So the first big thing is each person that does an event is stuck in that event. They cannot be reused or swapped out, and that includes the mystery sixth event. So if you use your whole team before then, you're stuck. You just automatically lose if you qualify for it.”

“That's going to hurt people who didn't bring enough people for six events. In theory, we can probably handle it. We brought enough extras, but that alone is going to cost a lot of people their home worlds. Who the hell actually planned that level of evil?” Pryte's question was obviously rhetorical. There was no way he expected Brault or me to know the answer. But he was right. That was devious in its insidiousness.

“And that's just the first part of it. As soon as you start, you don't really get to make the decision on when you quit. Each event is scored by a panel of independent judges, and because of what's going on, they're probably going to try to push everyone toward the last event. But since your total score will matter at the end of that mystery event for just how many people move past the preliminaries, everyone's still going to want to push their score as high as they can. It's a damn double-edged sword.”

“Is there anything you can tell us about exactly how the scoring works, or any hints you can give us? Anything at all, Brault?” Pryte asked. He had that look on his face he got when he was trying to plan out an impossible situation I'd gotten him into. I had seen it on him many times before. That meant he was going to give me quite the talk if he got the chance after this.

“So the total score you get for an event is divided by the number of people you used for it. I assume you can see how to game that pretty effectively.”

Pryte's eyes lit up. “Oh, yes. That could very easily be used to our advantage. There are a few events where we can cut it down to a single person, I think, though it's dangerous. Dave, what are your thoughts here?”

“Did you remember it existed? Don't answer that. Obviously, Rabyn can probably handle cooking himself. That's the easiest one, maybe followed by Connie. The other three are pretty hard to judge.” I answered, quickly jumping past my dumb joke.

“Maybe we hold you back from the dungeon for whatever the sixth event is. You or Elody are the most versatile person we have, and we're already holding her back too. That might mean we throw Corey into the dungeon core competition. I don't see why Trolke can't do construction alone. Befriending might be our biggest problem,” Pryte said, producing his usual notepad and scribbling away as he spoke.

“Well, you guys have got about five minutes to figure out your first event, and I don't really have anything else I can tell you, so come on. Let's go get you back to your other people. Try not to die, Pryte.”

“I mean, this isn't the stupidest thing I've ever done. Certainly, it's the most dangerous, so I guess I'll do my best. Also, just so you know, I am kind of seeing Yorela again, so keep your mouth shut the next time you see her,” Pryte replied with a wink.

There are times when an army of badgers can do the work of one ancient master. Never doubt the humble badger.

The Lesser Used Tactical Options by Sir Lemsworth Fenil