Rise of the Living Forge-Chapter 401: Za World

“No!” Reya yelled, grabbing onto the edges of the edges of the railing. She was already halfway through leaping over them before Arwin’s hand snaked out and grabbed her by the back of the shirt. She jerked to a halt and sent him a sharp look. “Let go! What are you doing? I need to go down there! Olive is—”

“Fine,” Arwin said. “It’s okay, Reya. Look at the arena. The fight is over.”

Reya’s eyes flicked back. Olive laid near the edge of the arena, the final coils of smoke slithering away from her armor. A ring of healers surrounded her and her skin was awash with the gentle glow of their healing magic.

Even as they watched, Olive pushed herself up into a seated position. There weren’t any apparent external injuries remaining on her. Her armor was damaged and scarred, but she was fine.

Reya relaxed slightly, but only just enough to let Arwin pull her back over the railing. Her eyes didn’t budge from Olive, and the tension in her clenched fists was clear.

“They lost!” Reya exclaimed. “They weren’t supposed to lose! They were going to win! They deserved to win!”

Arwin let out a small chuckle. “What makes you think that? Nobody deserves to win anything, Reya.”

She shot him a hurt look. “How can you say that? They’re your team. Didn’t you see how hard they were practicing? And Olive had your gear. They all did, but hers was extra special. She wasn’t supposed to lose this. Not after all the effort they all put into making sure they’d win.”

“It’s never enjoyable to see someone you care about lose,” Arwin said through a slow breath. He couldn’t deny the feelings of disappointment welling in his own chest as well. He’d wanted to see Olive win the tournament.

Not just so that Elias would get to ask the Secret Eye his question, not just so his armor would get more fame, but because she really had been training incredibly hard. She and Phoenix Circle had put in an enormous amount of effort to get this far.

He was proud of them.

To have it made it all the way to the finals was an incredible feat. And more than that — they’d put up a damn good showing in the last fight. There was no denying how strong Setting Sun’s team had been. Given Maeve and Elias’ restraints, Arwin simply hadn’t seen any way for them to win the fight when it had started.

Not without giving away more than they could afford to show. But he’d be damned if they hadn’t come so close to winning that he’d nearly thought they’d pull it off for a moment. The fight had been incredibly close, far closer than it had any right to be.

And I didn’t miss what Olive did at the last second during her charge. She chose not to kill the Setting Sun’s mage. If she had, they’d have won the fight… and lost all respect that anyone could have had for her.

Setting Sun housed Jessen. I don’t think much of them at all. But this team seemed like decent people. Unlike the bastards from the Kererus Coalition and their assassins, these adventurers didn’t do anything to deserve death from a tournament.

“They lost the fight, but they gained far more in doing so,” Arwin said. He ruffled Reya’s hair. “Don’t worry. Even if the Secret Eye doesn’t answer Elias’ question… I’ll find a different way to help him. I’ve gotten a lot better at making Cores recently. With a few more iterations, I might be at the point where I can repair him. They’ll be fine — and you shouldn’t focus so much on winning or losing.”

Reya’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean? What else matters? If you don’t win, everything you did was worthless.”

“Would you really say that?” Arwin looked back to Olive with a small smile on his face. The roars of the crowd still filled the air, so loud that any attempts Kraven made to talk over them were lost. They shook the room around Arwin like the physical manifestation of some massive wraith.

The healers helped Olive to her feet. More healers flanked Elias and Maeve as the two of them joined her. And, across from them, Setting Sun’s team gathered. The six of them stood there in silence as the crowd thundered above.

Even though they’d been fighting to an inch of death mere moments before, there was only a single discernable thought in all three of Setting Suns’ team members. It was not of smug victory or gloating.

It was respect.

Arwin couldn’t hear anything that passed between them. He didn’t need to. The Setting Sun’s mage extended a hand to Olive, who studied it for a moment before shaking it.

“She should sucker punch her,” Reya muttered. “It’s not fair. If Olive hadn’t shown mercy, she would have won the fight.”

“Do you really think that it would have been better for her to kill someone that didn’t deserve it just to win the tournament?” Arwin arched an eyebrow.

Reya looked away. “No. Of course not. She obviously made the right move. One that most people might not have had the balls to make. It would have been easy to say it was an accident. Nobody would have been able to blame her. Winning a tournament like this one is a really big deal. But losing it like this… it’s a bigger one. I still wish she won, but she’s really something else, isn’t she? I won’t be able to complain about deserving the win once she’s back here. That would be really dismissive of what she gave up, so I’m getting it all out now.”

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Arwin chuckled and flicked Reya in the shoulder. “Then don’t let me get in the way. I’ll have a chat with Elias to see just what I can do for him once the tournament is over. I hope Lillia had a way to watch all this, because we’re definitely throwing some sort of party. Don’t forget this was the Menagerie’s first ever time in the Proving Grounds. Together with Phoenix Circle and all their restrictions, the chances of making it this far were astronomically low.”

“Yes,” a vaguely familiar voice said from behind them. “They were.”

Arwin and Reya spun as one.

Standing near the door of the room was a woman with long swathes of black hair that fell from her head like a river. They obscured the vast majority of her face and large portions of her body.

It was the woman that had spoken to him in the Devil’s Den — the one that Lillia hadn’t been able to detect.

“You,” Arwin said, his eyes narrowing.

“Who the heck is that?” Reya asked. “How did you get into our room?”

She set her hand on the hilt of her dagger and lowered into a fighting stance, eyes narrowing.

“Can we skip this part?” the woman asked, her voice weary. “I can’t explain how tired I am right now. I really can’t be bothered. Today has been such a hassle. I just want to sleep… but I’ve got to take care of this first. I know nobody ever takes me up on the offer, but if we could just cut to the point where—”

“Sure,” Arwin said.

Reya and the woman both stared at him in surprise.

“What?” Reya asked.

“I know who this is,” Arwin said. “Vaguely, at least. You’re with one of the teams in the tournament. And if I had to take a blind guess… Setting Sun. I take it you want something with me.”

The woman’s lips twitched in what could almost have been amusement. “Sharp. Not entirely true, though. It’s more accurate to say the Setting Sun team is with me. They aren’t official members of our guild, yet.”

“Maybe you say what it is you want and how you got in here without any noise,” Reya said. “Because I’m finding I enjoy the whole sneaking thing a whole lot less when I’m the one getting snuck on.”

A small laugh slipped from the woman’s mouth. She brushed her hair away from her face for long enough to send a glance at Reya before turning her eyes to Arwin. “Most tend to. But I’ll hold true to my word. My name is Eleven. I have information you want. A lot of it.”

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“And what do you want in exchange?” Arwin asked. He stood in a casual stance, but Caldera was only a thought away. This was Jessen’s guildmate. And, no matter how tired she sounded, he didn’t trust her.

“You to be alone,” Eleven replied. She paused for a moment. “Wow. I sound suspicious, don’t I?”

“Unbelievably so,” Reya said.

“Eh.” Eleven shrugged. “Whatever. Shouldn’t have chosen me for this. Not my problem. Here’s the deal. I’m going to walk out of this room in a moment. Reya will do the same.”

Arwin let out a snort. “You think I’m sending her out with you?”

Eleven continued talking as if he hadn’t said anything. “She can choose to follow me if she’d like. I will reveal the information in the room beside this one. It is up to her whether she wants to be present for it. I do not care. All that matters is that you — Arwin — are alone in this room.”

“Why?” Reya asked, narrowing her eyes. “What do you want?”

“Arwin can tell you once this is dealt with. And it isn’t what I want. I really don’t care.” Eleven pinched the bridge of her nose. “That’s all. I’ll be in the room beside this one. If you want to hear how what Necrohammer did to Elias, you’ll follow me. There will not be another chance.”

With that, Eleven vanished. There wasn’t so much as a trace of her passing. She was simply gone.

Reya exchanged a glance with Arwin.

“I’m going,” Reya said.

Arwin’s lips thinned. He’d known she would say that… and he didn’t like it much at all. Eleven was clearly trying to separate them. He just didn’t know why. It wasn’t likely that they’d figured out the Menagerie had been the ones that killed Twelve, but it was possible.

But Eleven is definitely powerful. Very powerful. If she can move so undetected, she could have attacked before we ever knew she was here. It doesn’t seem likely she’s trying to kill us. So what does she want?

“I’m going,” Reya said again. She tapped the bracer on her wrist. “It’ll be fine. I’ve got this, and you’re right next door. I’ll just hop through the wall if something goes south. If she knows something about Elias, then we have to hear it.”

Arwin grimaced, then inclined his head. Reya wasn’t a child. She was capable of making her own decisions. And, if he was honest, he wanted to know what it was that Eleven had to say.

Reya jogged over to the wall. Her body rippled as blue energy washed over it — and she slipped clean through the stone as if nothing was there.

And then Arwin was alone. He stood in silence for several seconds. A part of him expected Eleven to pop back up now that he was isolated.

She never did.

More seconds dragged by. Confusion was just starting to build up in Arwin when there was a slow, ponderous knock on the door. A quiet pop echoed through the room before Arwin could even take a step forward.

The lock twisted on its own volition. A moment later, the door swung open.

Into the room stepped a heavily armored man. He was so short and stout that his stature marked him as a dwarf instantly — but Arwin needed no help identifying who this was. It hadn’t been that long since he’d last seen him, after all.

“Ifrit,” Necrohammer said, closing the door behind him before turning to peer at Arwin from beneath the shadow of his helm. “We must talk.”

“Must is a strong word,” Arwin said. “But I won’t say no. I’ve got some questions for you. More than a few.”

“I suspect you have more questions for me than you realize,” Necrohammer said with a raspy laugh. “After all, you don’t belong here.”

Arwin’s eyes narrowed. “I’d say my team has earned their place just as well as yours did. Better, some would say.”

“Perhaps,” Necrohammer agreed. “But I wasn’t talking about them. I was talking about you.”

“Bah. That’s what you’re going to harp over? Really?” Arwin rolled his eyes. “The Secret Eye invited me. Technically speaking, that is.”

“I was not talking about this tournament. I was talking about this world.” Necrohammer’s eyes bore into Arwin’s. “You are not of it.”