Weapons of Mass Destruction

Chapter 557: Enormous

Back in the living room, I find Dennis and Aaron sitting by themselves. They seem to be working on their training, but that’s not what catches my eye. It’s the two items on the floor that they’ve clearly taken pains to keep their distance from, as if they were worried that the slightest misstep might set them off.

A gift from my beautiful sister. Two thermonuclear warheads, each in its own wooden box, each standing around half my height and about the width of my arm.

Glancing at the twins who are carefully watching me, I move toward the box and then kick it.

Immediately, they shudder and leap to their feet.

“Jesus fucking Christ, Nat!” Dennis shouts in a tone I’ve never heard from him before.

So I kick it again, eliciting the same reaction.

A bit of my stress fades, soothed by seeing their reaction, but I also notice a different part of me, hoping it does explode. Vic said she survived one, right? Could I do the same? I’ve already thought of a few ways I might be able to face-tank them, but for now, they remain only theories.

“Don’t worry. Vic said they weren’t designed to be used without the missiles that carried them, and it took months for those Hell difficulty soldiers to come up with a way.”

“Yup, that didn’t help one bit.” Aaron shakes his head.

I shrug and open the box. “How did Lily and Jean do?”

“That muscular Baldie? Well, it ended up 1:1. Lily lost the first one but beat him in the second one. I think she would’ve won the third bout as well, but that little shit Lucien grabbed Baldie out of nowhere, and they left,” Dennis explains.

Aaron nods, “Lily and Jean totally destroyed the sparring area. I think a dozen or so people from Easy and Normal died from the shockwaves, and they weren’t even anywhere close.”

“Did you record it?” I ask.

“Yup!” Dennis confirms. “We did as you asked and bought as many cameras, phones, and memory cards as we could. We even offered a bunch of upper-rare and low-epic items to any people from Easy who still had some, and I could just about swear their eyes almost dropped from their sockets, heh. There was a bit of a problem with Adam trying to do something similar, but Gareth made him stop before Lily could get to him.”

“I’m just surprised they still have any.” I finally get the box open, revealing a compact metallic case. It’s made up of smooth, reinforced, thick plating and a lot of warning labels. I try to lift it up, and I can, but it’s surprisingly heavy. Probably as heavy as Jean? I can use that man as a metric for weight, right?

I close the box again.

Aaron exhales in relief, “We think most people from Easy difficulty wanted to keep their phones and cameras, but the further we get into the tutorial, and the more they see of it and the abilities of the people from Hell and Beyond the more it seems like they’re trying to create a good impression and join the stronger groups. At least Channeler said so.”

“It makes sense,” I agree. “Do you need more items to trade in?”

“Not for now. We already have plenty, and Channeler got his ‘harem’ to record everything so he can blackmail our beautiful country when he gets back. Something along the lines of: ‘You see this shit? Kill me or mess with me, and this crazy guy will make a living hell out of your existence.’” Dennis giggles.

Aaron smirks as well, “I told him to just give it to the media if our country doesn’t want to cooperate, and he said he might ‘leak’ some things here and there if he feels the need.”

“Sounds good.”

“Nat?” Dennis’s voice becomes a bit more careful. “Is there even a need to hide our names anymore? People were recording stuff even during the first tournament, and sooner or later, especially once they get out, I’m sure they’ll be able to match our faces to our names.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised if it already happened. But we don’t really gain anything by going by our real names at the moment, and using aliases will just lower the chances that others find out. I think we should keep them hidden, at least until the end of this tournament, so Channeler and others can have a chance to return and protect our friends and families, and when the third tournament rolls around, you can do whatever you want.”

“Sounds reasonable. By the way, do you want to use a warhead during the tournament?”

His trust in me, believing I can find a way to activate it in just a few days when it took the entire group months, warms my cold heart, but I still shake my head.

“Even if I could, I won’t. These babies will be going back with us to the 7th floor for further examination.” This time, I slam the top of the box with my palm, making both twins jump up once again.

While listening to their immediate string of curses and complaints, I can’t help but revel in the sound.

The second half of the 1st event will start in 1 hour!

The rules will remain largely unchanged. All five rounds will take place on a single map, each with its own fortress to defend.

The event will span 24 hours, divided into 12 hours for preparation and 12 hours for the battle.

Your objective is to either eliminate all participants from the other rounds or accumulate the highest number of points.

The winner will be decided in two possible ways:

1st - Only one group remains standing with no other round member alive.

2nd - The group with the most points after 24 hours have passed.

Note: Any round that has its King killed and its throne room captured will be eliminated, and its members will be removed from the event.

To take over your opponent’s throne room, you have to hold the space for 1 hour. Doing so will see you rewarded with 10,000 points.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

All winners of their round’s first tournament will be classified as [King]. Defeating the King will award you 5,000 points. If the winner of the tournament isnʼt present, the position of [King] will be passed on to the next in line according to tournament placement.

Points will also be given for defeating your opponents as follows:

Easy difficulty attendee – 1 point

Normal difficulty attendee – 5 points

Hard difficulty attendee – 10 points

Hell difficulty attendee – 20 points

Beyond attendee – 100 points

Just in case, I reread the rules to see if there’s anything I’m missing and head toward the center of our common area.

Just in time, a notification that the sale of my 1st wave of items has ended rings.

Congratulations, your items have been sold through the tournament shop! You have gained 93,264 shards. Ten percent will be taken by the system.

First, fuck the system and its 10% cut, and fuck the rule that only lets me use materials from the system shop to sell items.

Second, the next wave of items should bring in similar numbers, and after that, I can shorten the auction’s duration.

There seem to be plenty of people interested in my items, and just from checking, there is no one pumping out even half as many of them as Tent Creep. Even Miwa is in 5th place at the moment.

I’m in first, but I’d say it’s thanks to the sheer number of items I’ve produced; the second one is someone called Mateo, and last I checked, he only had four items in the shop, and each of them is upper epic. The last one was placed there, likely a few minutes ago. Unlike me, his auction duration is set for 1 week.

Curious strategy. I will do something similar with a few of my better-performing items.

“Noname,” Samuel prods, sliding closer to walk by my side, jarring me from my thoughts, “can we talk?”

I glance toward the center where the last meeting is currently taking place, then stop and turn to the former soldier guy.

“If you could be quick about it…” I gesture at him to continue.

“Thanks. I wanted to ask if you could talk to Grumpy. Ever since the start of the tournament, she’s been…”

It’s at this point that I decide to interrupt, “I know, I told her to do it.”

Samuel blinks a few times, “You… did?”

I nod, “Yup. If it were just up to me, she would be worse. But hey, you can’t have everything. Plus, it’s good for you as well. If it weren’t for her, it would be me.”

“You do realize we have to work together to beat the other rounds, right?”

“Look,” I wave at him and start walking again, “if Sset were here, she would be going about things differently, just like in the 1st tournament. I would scare people, and she would use me to threaten the others. But I’m not Sset, as you can see. As the twins would say, your wannabe coalition, other groups, and whoever else are all swinging their dicks around to see whose is bigger. But Samuel, group 4’s dick is fucking enormous.”

I stop walking. “OK, that might have sounded weird, but you get the gist of it. You probably have some info on me, and maybe you know a thing or two. But as long as you don’t provoke us, I’ll just do my own thing, but you should realize that in this tournament, I’m going to be real easy to provoke. It would be different if it were me who was in danger, but this time, it’s someone I care about.”

Samuel sighs, “We got it. Your group is pretty tight-lipped, but we figured something had to have happened to Sset.”

“Who knows? Just enjoy your tournament and don’t do anything to could cost us the event, and we’ll all be good.”

“Sure, we can drop this subject here. I also wanted to give you a warning. Some of my people checked in on the other rounds, and a few have some fairly skilled veterans. They even spotted a highly modified set of anti-materiel rifles, inscribed and made with altered metals, they’ve likely been enhanced with skills and special bullets as well. I expect that they’ll tear through barriers with ease and move far faster than standard ammunition.”

“Got it. Thanks for the info.”

After that, he separates, and I reach group 4, who are slightly to the side, together with Brainiac and Lootenant. Both of them are noticeably stronger than before and even seem a bit older, even though not much time has passed. Especially Brainiac, who actually doesn’t feel much weaker than Gareth at this point, likely sitting somewhere around Min-Jae’s level.

“Is this the [King] in the flesh?!” Brainiac shouts excitedly, grinning brightly, “How the fuck did you break that barrier? They spent 10 hours on it and had dozens of people powering it!”

Acting like his handler, Lootenant pokes the young man, but Brainiac ignores it. Immediately, I can see why the twins, Min-Jae, and these two spend so much time together.

“Trade secret,” I answer.

“Sure. By the way, you remember that thing where we were paying you to teach some of the others from our round, right? I think you wanted ten thousand shards to teach 10 people for an hour. Well, I think I could find plenty of people willing to pay now!”

Is he naive, or what? This world is cruel.

I answer, “That was back then. Now I would have to ask somewhere around…” I pause to calculate the value of my time based on the amount of trading and training I could do while giving lessons compared to crafting. Then, I also consider the mental damage I would take from said interactions, and the price jumps by a lot.

“Probably around 10 thousand shards per person per hour.”

“What the fuck! That’s 10 times more! Dennis and Aaron said they’re getting lessons mostly for free.”

“But you aren’t Dennis or Aaron.”

“Fuck. You know what’s crazy? I think I still could find some people who’d go for it.”

That makes me shake my head. Just who the hell would pay that much?

“Did you guys learn any info on the remaining tournament winners?” I ask, turning to Dennis and Aaron.

Dennis nods, “Yup! The 1st round is CarrotCake, obviously. By the way, did you know that even though CarrotCake may be the strongest, he’s probably like 5th in rank when it comes to decision-making?”

Aaron giggles, “Even that little shit you call SpacePup has more say in his decisions, though CarrotCake doesn’t seem to mind as long as he can find someone to fight. It seems like they have some smart people, or at least people more reasonable than CarrotCake, though that’s not exactly a high bar.”

”He and the 2nd [King], that redhead in armor with the giant ax, fought, but he won in the end. She apparently has fairly high strength, but seems to have some kind of strange skill. Sometimes it looks like fire, sometimes itʼs more like smoke or some kind of liquid. It’s blood red and sticky, likely mana-based, and it corrodes everything it touches, and it seems fairly difficult to remove. She also has this extremely fancy suit of armor and collects a lot of equipment. Apparently, she was using axes, bows, swords, and daggers. We’re still trying to find out more!”

For a moment, I feel a rush of pride for these two. They truly are good at this kind of thing.

“What about the other rounds?”

Dennis looks around and checks on the barrier I made to keep people from listening in. “Your sister threw one of her fingers into the enemy fortress, captured the throne room, and killed nearly all of their Beyonders and Hell difficulty fighters by herself. Meanwhile, the enemy [King] was taken down and killed while attacking her fortress, at the same time she attacked theirs. There were rumors about him being tricked or lured into a trap.”

Aaron waves to get my attention, and I turn to him. ”It seems like the 3rd round [King], who went against her round, uses void energy, something to do with disruption. Itʼs apparently much stronger than normal mana-based disruption and can even interfere with primordial energies.”

Yup, another thing I want to learn about is disruption that isn’t mana-based and can affect primordial energies.

Count me in. I want to see that.