Chapter 352 - Amused Smile
"King, why is this human not scared of us?" The High-Ratman asked as he turned to his right, but the Half-Dragon simply kept staring at the old man in front of him.
"Surely they are just an idiot, yes? But we cannot leave this space, so who knows what is going on out there..." The High-Goblin pointed out, before Eisen raised his brows with a larger smile on his face.
"Oh, so you can’t leave here? Is there any reason why?" Eisen asked them, but was swiftly ignored when the High-Lizardman stood up and cracked his knuckles.
"Mens not need to know. Mens die now." Right now, the Lizardman was about a meter taller than Eisen, and was probably thinking of him like a literal ’Small Fry’, but Eisen didn’t have that.
Slowly, he increased his size to the max he could muster while transforming into a Demon as well. "Ah, what a shame, I would have liked to speak to your King a little longer. Then how about we start a little bit of a contest?" Eisen suggested, and it seemed like his transformation managed to get the monsters’ attention, so the old man quickly continued.
"One after another, you all show us your strength inside an arena prepared by us. If we manage to kill you or push you out of the arena somehow, we win that round. If you manage to kill all of us, you win." The old man said with a smile on his face, running his hand through his rock-beard, but it seemed like the four Lords didn’t want to listen at all.
"Mens think that we are dumb. We not dumb. Mens dumb! No arenas in room!" The Lizardman exclaimed while the others stood up as well, surrounding Eisen one after another, but they were quickly stopped by their King.
"Stop it." The Half-Dragon told them, and the Lords looked over toward him before the Half-Dragon just began to smirk, placing his head down onto his palm, "This sounds interesting. But as my dear friend here just said, this room is no arena. We are unable to leave here ever since I became the Boss, so we cannot visit another one either.
"Haha, that really won’t be an issue. Sky, if you will?" Eisen asked with a smile as he turned around, and the young Fey-Kin stepped up with his Grimoire in hand, before flipping to the right page. "Hell’s Collosseum." He exclaimed, and quickly, the letters from the book flew outward and seeped into the ground and the walls, slowly shifting everything around before increasing the size of the room a bit even, and now, the the group stood inside of a Collosseum with a large man standing in the center, who was probably the one Sky would have summoned using his regular spells.
"Interesting. Then let us start this fight. You four, choose your own order. Follow their rules. If one of you dies or is pushed out of the arena, the next one moves on. Although, I don’t truly know the reason behind giving up after being pushed out. This should still be quite fun." The Half-Dragon pointed out, and immediately the four Lords looked at each other and began to speak to each other about the order, while Eisen deactivated his transformations and made his way back to his group, all of which were waiting for him to explain what just happened.
"Eisen, why did you just go and do that? And why did you say ’Or is pushed out of the Arena’? If one of them is nearly dead, he can just leave, and then later they can kill us together!" Jyuuk complained, but Eisen shook his head with a smile on his face.
"Well, I have a bit of a different idea, actually. And it starts by not killing any of them." He said with a broad smile, but the others were simply confused at what he was trying to say, before Eisen continued to explain.
"As I said, the actual ’Boss’ is a Half-Dragon. He seems reasonable enough as well, and his Draconic Parent is a Bronze Dragon, so a side that we’re working together with. Then, his other side is obviously a person, just judging from his form. He’s Rank 5, so he shouldn’t know transformation yet either, at least according to what Kiron told me. But this one seems to be seen as a complete monster, judging from how it managed to become a boss. And when it comes to convincing Monsters, we have one person here that can’t be beat at that, isn’t that right?" Eisen asked with a wink as he looked at the Beastperson, but he just looked back at the old man confused.
"Y-You want me to tame him?" He whispered, and Eisen chuckled with a nod. "Well, if possible, at least." The old man replied, but none of the others really understood why they would do that, so Eisen let out a deep sigh.
"He has full command over these four lords. Four lords which correspond directly to the four races in this town and on this island. I doubt we managed to even kill 5% of the monsters in the ruined town, except if all of you went forward and tried to actively hunt them. So, if we manage to tame the Half-Dragon, we proxy-tame the four lords, and with that proxy-tame a large part of the monsters on this island." Eisen told them with a grin, and immediately, they began to smile in a similar way to the old man, although Sky was just standing there, still quite nervous about everything, which Eisen didn’t miss either.
"You can stay in the back and just let your Inkheart Creature fight for you, don’t worry." Eisen told him, so Sky slowly nodded his head and rushed into his position, before everyone else also got ready.
"Remember, try to restrain them if they try to move forward, and then push them back away. And then, we just need to brute-strength them out." Eisen said with a smile, before he cracked his knuckles and looked at the other side of the arena, where the first opponent was already waiting. The High-Lizardman Lord.
"Me be mens first opponent. Me kill mens quickly." The Lizardman exclaimed as he cracked his knuckles and stepped forward toward them, so Eisen immediately sent out his Golems to start everything off, with Tank doing his best to hold the Lizardman Lord back, even slamming his shield into the ground before activating the rock-layer. Ranger was shooting out the large arrows at him with as much power he could muster, while Croco cast de-buffs on the Lord and Supp cast buffs on everyone in the group, not only the golems, and Deedee began to run around the Lord to damage him as much as possible.
In the meantime, Jyuuk summoned his Overgrown Giant Spider Zombie and tried to push the Lizardman to the back as much as possible, also summoning his heavyweight monsters, while Xenia tried to cast high-tier gravity spells that were supposed to push him to the back a bit more. Evalia tried to cast strength buffs on everyone in the group while casting a weakness de-buff on the Lizardman, and Brody attempted his best to use his Outer Energy to push him away as well.
And of course, with so many different people not trying to kill the Lizardman, but instead attempting to push him away with as much force as possible, even such a strong creature couldn’t do much but try to resist.
And while he managed to do so for a good while, that was all he could do. He was unable to attack them in any way, and considering that he was suffering damage from multiple sources, he was just getting weaker by the moment.
As such, this was just a battle of pure endurance, and the Lizardman seemed to lose out on that end. Soon, he began to be pushed back toward the edge of the arena, and when this started, he couldn’t help himself but stumble a bit here and there as well, and was soon thrown out of the arena, with literally none of the others damaged beyond a few scratches here and there.
Sure, they were quite exhausted, but if that was all there was to it, they would be fine. After all, they just beat the one with the most physical strength. The Goblin-Lord was apparently a Mage, judging from the amount of MP he had, and just judging from the build which Eisen was able to coincidentally inspect pretty well within the dungeon, the Kobold-Lord was seemingly set for speed instead of strength. They might be slightly annoying to get a hold of, but once they were restrained at all, it wouldn’t be an issue to push them away.
But as for the Ratman-Lord, Eisen really wasn’t sure what he had to expect. He had no knowledge about what they were like at all, and his HP and MP were split evenly in the middle. Hopefully it would be easy to deal with him.
"Alright, next one, please!" Eisen exclaimed with a smile as he stared across the arena directly toward the Half-Dragon, while the Lizardman sat back down angrily, and the Kobold jumped down into the Arena. And exactly what Eisen expected happened next, the Kobold began to run at incredible speed, wildly around the Arena. It seemed like not even Brody would be able to catch up to him, but on the other hand, that probably wasn’t really necessary either.
"Ah, good job, bud." Eisen said as he looked down and saw Sal down at his feet, a thin thread attached to his abdomen. With a smile on his face, while everyone was trying to figure out what the Kobold was trying to do, Eisen picked Sal up and stepped to the point in the arena directly opposite to where the other end of the thread was attached to.
And it wasn’t any thread either, but it was a special thread that Sal just recently learned how to create. It was far harder than usual, and sure, while it wasn’t as tough as the thread that Sal’s mother could produce, it was enough for what Eisen was planning.
"And now, Caria, Jyuuk, if you please?" Eisen asked them both, and they nodded their heads before touching the ground around them, and while numerous roots and vines started to extend from around Jyuuk, Caria rather grew a bunch of small mushrooms that were slowly spreading across the arena. Either way, it was enough to mess up one’s footing.
All of this was happening while everyone that was able to defend relatively well managed to restraint the Kobold to one half of the arena, one of the two only areas that weren’t covered in either roots, vines, or mushrooms. And with a little ’Slip-Up’, Eisen told Tank to step away to create a path for the Kobold to ’Escape’.
And the Kobold did just what Eisen expected, and in order to avoid tripping over the vines and mushrooms, he chose to jump, aiming for the second open spot.
Although, while doing that, the Kobold missed the fact that there was a very strong and thin thread in the center of the room, just at the height that the thread could be found.
But even then, it wouldn’t have been strong enough to stop the Kobold’s Movements. Instead, the thread was supposed to carry a certain other, very light creature, which the Kobold directly jumped into.
And before the Kobold could react, he was restrained by Xenia’s summon, Ragna. That gave the group just enough time to push the Kobold away and out of the arena.
"I’m so confused... How the hell did that plan just work..?" Sky asked as he stood there next to Eisen, and the old man just chuckled in response. "Because we have proper tactics. Usually, I’m sure we were supposed to fight them all at once, but we would have died immediately. But because we can fight them one versus many, we’re at an immense advantage. Although..." Eisen explained with a smile and then turned over toward the Half-Dragon, still sitting on his throne on the other side of the room, simply showing an amused smile.
"Maybe I wasn’t the only one calculating a way to win."