by Iliev, Neven
The spectators exploded in cheers as the gladiator that most of them had come to see walked out onto the field from the entrance directly opposite the quartet of criminals.
She sported a custom top that hung from one shoulder, concealing her well-rounded breasts and little else. Her waist had two separate belts wrapped around it, each holding a heavy leather pouch. A pair of baggy shorts hung down to her steel knee pads. She had a tool-carrying bracelet on her right forearm, a cursed shield permanently affixed to her left, and both hands firmly held a massive blood-stained wrench. Her metal hair was forever styled into a pair of voluminous pigtails, and her shiny face sported a disturbing, wide smile with a strange look in her eyes. Her skin, once made of polished steel, had been upgraded into series of lustrous, almost blindingly white mithril plates after her first real Rank Up, much to her Hero’s delight.
“Haah haaaaaaa!”
Fizzy raised a loud cheer of her own as she waved her signature weapon around. Nothing made the metallic woman feel alive like such moments. Thousands of people’s eyes were fixed on her new-and-improved frame, feeding the inherent narcissism found in all golems. Not only did she get to show off, but she also got to please Boxxy by earning fight money. She was currently the only one of the shapeshifter’s minions that actually enjoyed her assignment.
The guards undid the shackles of their prisoners and left a collection of basic steel weapons at their feet. They and the announcer then retreated to the sides of the arena, as Fizzy carefully sized them up. Two of them armed themselves with heavy, two-handed warhammers, the third with a pair of smaller maces and the last one picked up a plain-looking staff. According to what Fizzy had been told beforehand, these guys were a pair of Warriors, a Rogue and a Pyromancer, respectively. A few tense minutes passed as the two sides sized each other up and prepared. Once they were ready, they took their starting positions some twenty meters apart, as was tradition.
“Our combatants are in position!” declared the announcer. “Let the match… Begin!”
He barely even finished saying the words when Fizzy shot out from her position. She used her Armored Charge to smash shield-first into one of the Warriors with enough force to send him flying backwards. He bounced twice, tumbled head over heels and slammed into the far wall with a heavy thud. Although he didn’t lose his life outright, he broke a shoulder and several ribs.
Fizzy then proceeded to swing her heavy wrench sideways, hitting the stupefied Rogue in his thigh. There was an unpleasant cracking noise, followed by a piercing scream as the leg bent in a completely unnatural way. The Pyromancer backed off and started throwing Fireballs at her. Fizzy blocked them all with her shield, deflecting most of the roaring flames. This left her wide open to attacks from the rear. Something the other mace-wielder took advantage of as he landed a direct blow on the back of her metal skull.
The golem’s head rang out like a gong, yet she barely suffered even fifty points of damage. Rather than reeling or recoiling from the heavy strike, she instead returned the blow with a one-handed swing of her own weapon. The Warrior tried to block the attack with the haft of his hammer, but Fizzy’s wrench snapped the steel handle in half as if it were a twig. The business end of her oversized tool buried itself into his side, causing him to keel over and blackout briefly from the pain. She then swung the improvised weapon once more and flung it at the Pyromancer’s head. The dwarf just barely managed to avoid the hunk of enchanted steel hurtling towards his face by flinging himself to the side.
He was just about to get up from his precarious position when he felt a sharp, stabbing pain in his shoulder. Fizzy had run up to him while he was dodging her attack and skewered him with the broken handle of his friend’s weapon. She then stepped on his back, pinning him under her massive weight. She withdrew the jagged metal rod then used it to repeatedly stab into his fleshy bits. Her unflinching, toothy smile grew wider as his blood gushed all over her. There was no technique, accuracy or finesse to this act. Her movements were repetitive and forceful, like a Miner trying to make a stubborn stone yield beneath their pick.
And then Fizzy did something that no merciful being would ever consider.
“Holy Light!”
She used her divine magic to heal his wounds. And then continued stabbing him. She kept alternating between healing and violence, keeping him on the edge of death for what felt like hours, but was actually closer to a few minutes. The other three dwarves had more or less regained their footing, but the horrifying sight of their comrade kicking, screaming and literally begging to die had made them freeze with fear.
The elven officials that condemned them knew full well that this fight would not be anything even remotely close to fair. The only reason they agreed to this trial-by-combat was because they were certain it would turn into a drawn-out public execution rather than a quick beheading. Justice would still be served, but the bloody spectacle would no doubt greatly appease the citizens of the Stone District who had suffered most from this particular cartel. The golem herself was more than happy to comply with their wishes, making this a win-win-win for those involved.
Well, aside from the prisoners themselves, but society had already deemed them deserving of whatever fate the psychotic Paladin had in store for them.
By the time the Pyromancer finally passed away, Fizzy was covered head-to-toe in his blood. Both the audience and her opponents watched in silent shock as she stood up from the corpse and looked over the remaining survivors. She held a hand in the direction of her fallen wrench and activated her Magnetize Skill. The heavy steel tool vibrated, then leapt into the air and landed in her waiting, open palm. She pointed the weapon towards one of the dwarves at random.
“Eeny…”
Then to the next.
“Meeny…”
Then to the third.
“Miney…”
Back to the first.
“Die.”
It took her less than ten minutes to finish administering justice on behalf of the city’s authority. The three dwarves put up a desperate struggle, but they had no chance. The only reason they lasted as long as they did was because Fizzy was having fun playing with the hapless meatbags and gloating over their mangled bodies. When the last criminal died by having his body pummeled into goop, she raised her blood-and-brains-soaked weapon above her head and showed the most disturbing grin yet.
And then, of all things, she started singing.
“Oh, do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man? Do you know the muffin man that lives inside my head?”
It was an upbeat, cheerful tune that seemed to well up from her very soul and was completely out of place. She swayed her entire upper body back in forth in rhythm with her words. And, much to the surprise of the entire stupefied Ranger class, a large portion of the crowd, including Lola, sang back to her with an equally cheery tone.
“Oh, yes we know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man! Now we know the muffin man that lives inside your head!”
The golem repeated her first verse, while the crowd once again replied with the second. The odd exchange repeated itself a third and final time, by which point even those who had no idea what was going on ended up singing along. It was as if everybody forgot there were a number of bloodied and mangled corpses strewn around her. The bizarre spectacle finished with a round of applause, and Fizzy’s manic smile was replaced with a much calmer, sweeter one.
“Stay safe out there!”
She shouted her goodbyes while walking off the ‘stage’ and waving back at the still-cheering audience. The announcer came out afterwards, stating there would be a brief intermission while they cleaned up and fixed the arena.
“What… just happened?” Lia asked in disbelief.
“Oh, she always sings that song after a fight,” explained Lola.
“But… why?”
“Dunno. It’s good fun, though. Helps calm down the troubled heart.”
“Now that you mention it, I do feel a lot less
on edge. Huh? Keira, you okay?”
The catgirl, who had been staring wide-eyed and open-mouthed at the spectacle, wiped the drool from the corner of her mouth. She regained a bit of composure and gave her green-haired friend a weak smile and an embarrassed laugh.
“Hahaha, sorry, I got a bit too into it. I mean, I could really go for a muffin right now.”
“Yeah, me too, actually,” Lia said with a chuckle as Lola nodded in agreement.
“I hope you people were watching carefully!” Faehorn shouted, his voice was clearly audible over the riled-up crowd. “Because you’ll be sparring against her later this afternoon!”
Part Eight
Fizzy followed after Boxxy while fidgeting slightly. It was the first time in four days since they’d met face to face, so she was a bit nervous. The spider-chest was currently leading her towards the newly created Dryad’s Domain hidden within a certain hylt tree. However, it still lacked a good entry point, so they had to make their way there through the sewer. Xera and Kora had already mapped out the route so it wasn’t like they would get lost, but it was still a long trip.
“Di-did I do good, Boxxy?” the golem finally asked the question that had been on her mind.
“Yeah, you did okay.”
“I’m glad. I didn’t get a chance to tell you in advance, so I was a bit unprepared.”
The offer to assist a bunch of guilds with their training exercises for a day was a bit sudden, but she accepted it, because her orders were to make nice with the locals. The extra paycheck was good to have as well. The real issue is that she failed to realize that one of the guilds would be the Hidden Arrow, the one Boxxy was attending, until it was too late to let it know.
“I just… I wasn’t sure how you’d react so-”
“I said it was okay,” the shapeshifter insisted. “You didn’t treat me any differently, so they don’t seem to suspect a thing. It was a stupid exercise anyway.”
It was a total farce in Boxxy’s opinion, although Faehorn seemed rather pleased with himself at the results. The ‘spar’ that the old elf had told them about turned into nothing but a glorified game of tag, whereby the unarmed golem had to chase down and capture her opponent. All of them were caught within a minute, regardless of how they tried to run or jump around the Consortium’s training grounds. The bow-wielding Ranger students also found themselves completely unable to hit the small target that rapidly changed direction and could close the distance between them in an instant. Even if one of them managed to get a lucky shot in, the arrow would just bounce harmlessly off her skin.
Her lustrous, flawless, sparkling mithril skin.
“So shiny…” the monster mumbled, causing Fizzy to squirm a little in delight.
She knew that Boxxy was actively probing her insides, marveling at the tough-yet-light metal called ‘white gold.’ Having the attention of thousands of people felt good, great even. However, that couldn’t compare to being laid bare to the extreme before her Hero. It was a sensation that felt positively divine.
“Y-your acting was way too good though,” she said after a few more minutes of trudging through sewer tunnels. “I wouldn’t have realized which one of those meatbags was you, if you hadn’t told me in advance. Even then, I almost couldn’t believe it. It was downright freaky.”
“I’ll take it as a compliment,” Boxxy responded in high spirits. “My performance still needs work, though.”
The monster had practiced intensively with Snack during its weeklong trip from the Republic’s southern border to its capital. As both a doppelganger and a mimic, it learned best through imitating the actions of others, so it had the succubus take on various forms and guises as she interacted with various people. This allowed Boxxy to rapidly pick up what sort of behavior and mannerisms were and weren’t accepted in a civilized society. The problem is its knowledge essentially boiled down to a set of rules that could be summed up as ‘when that happens, to this.’ It struggled to improvise, and as such came off as awkward and weird when confronted with an unfamiliar social scenario. Those experiences also helped it realize the most important thing when trying to convince the enlightened that it not, in fact, a monster that would eat them whole in a heartbeat.
People, as Boxxy learned, were inherently flawed. They had concerns and worries, things they liked and disliked, motivations that drove them to seek specific goals and fears that made them act in illogical and irrational ways. A real person would be able to do certain things naturally, but would perform poorly at others for seemingly no reason other than ‘they just weren’t good at it.’ They would then shrug and move on with their lives rather than trying to correct what they perceived as an immutable flaw. They also had strong opinions on certain topics, which were not always formed based on facts or logic. Opinions that they would remain firmly rooted in even after they had been shown objective and undeniable proof that their beliefs were quite false.
These were, for the most part, foreign concepts to a thoroughly inhuman and instinct-driven monster like Boxxy. A genuine enlightened personality, as it turned out, was a complex mesh of such quirks and oddities, both ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ This meant that whatever public persona the monster chose would invariably appeal to a certain type of people, but infuriate and annoy others. The shapeshifter had unwittingly stumbled onto one of the biggest hurdles that plagued every artist and performer—it was impossible to please everyone.
The often-overlooked flip side was that it was impossible for any person to feel completely happy every second of every day. Anyone who suggested or advocated otherwise was either dishonest or not right in the head. This notion was something Boxxy easily agreed with. Its main problem with this nugget of wisdom was that it was born without a face. It was a complex body part with a ridiculous number of muscles and nerves that could be arranged in countless expressions that differed in subtle, yet perceivable ways.
Hence why much of Xera’s acting classes had been focused on the face in particular. Her master had been embarrassingly terrible at keeping its true intentions and emotions from floating onto whatever face it wore. Ranking Up into a doppelganger helped tremendously in that regard, though dozens of hours were still devoted to explaining which expressions were appropriate to which situations. It was almost a science in and of itself, and something Boxxy still struggled with. Thankfully, the appearance it had chosen for its public persona was an attractive and non-threatening one. This, combined with its rather substantial Charisma (CHR) Attribute, made its stiff and awkward moments seem endearing rather than creepy.
None of that was relevant down here in the sewer, which was why it walked around in the spider-chest form it was most comfortable with.
“Uh… Are you sure we’re headed the right way?” Fizzy asked while following Boxxy through the old sewers. “I’m pretty sure we made six consecutive right turns just now.”
“The ground is actually slanted at a barely noticeable angle,” the shapeshifter casually revealed. “You probably don’t feel it, but we’ve been going up a spiral for a while.”
The shapeshifter felt rather proud of itself for delegating the task of mapping out these labyrinthine passageways to its familiars. There were a million other things it would rather do than skulk around these tunnels for days on end. This wasn’t because they were damp, dark, and claustrophobic. It actually liked those parts. However, there was nothing to be found down there that could be considered shiny or tasty, literally or metaphorically.
“I hope you don’t expect me to take the same route every time,” the golem grumbled. “I don’t even want to think what that brown stuff we’re walking on is.”
Though personal hygiene was hardly a worry for her, it would not befit her glorious frame to be sullied with such filth. She was also glad to be spared the disgusting sensations and odors that normally accompanied a trek through the sewers.
“It’s just temporary,” Boxxy explained. “I’ll figure out another entrance eventually, but until then you need to memoriz
e this path so you can come and go freely.”
This was also the reason why it hadn’t thrown Fizzy into its Storage and transported both of them into the newly established dungeon with the Transfamiliar Spell.
“Yeah, okay, good plan,” the construct agreed. “Is- Is it much farther, though?”
“No, we’re practically here.”
A half minute and a few turned corners later, and the shapeshifting box brought Fizzy before the giant, half-eaten tree root that Xera and Kora had found the night before.
“Oh, is that it?” the golem exclaimed.
“That’s it. I’ll go in first, you climb in after me.”
Boxxy and its devout follower went into the tree root and started clambering up the cramped tunnel. It took them another few minutes, but they eventually made it out of the timber tunnel and into the former termite nest.
[You have entered the Dryad’s Domain.]
[An intruder has entered your dungeon.]
“… Oh, right.”
Boxxy only just now realized that, although its familiars were considered extensions of itself, Fizzy wasn’t. She was a completely separate entity, and was not welcomed into the dungeon with open arms. This meant that the newly appointed dungeon master would probably not like her presence here.
“Who dares?!”
And indeed, the dryad in question practically leapt out of the nearby bark-covered wall, her face twisted with anger as if she were ready to strangle someone. She then saw Boxxy, which made her expression soften considerably.
“Milord,” she greeted it with a deep bow. “‘Tis good to see thou art in good health.”
“Hey, Ambrosia,” it replied. “I see the dungeon is growing steadily.”
“‘Tis so, milord. It hath almost completely encompassed this hollow crevice within mine body. Both the Surveillance Net and thy servants have been extremely effective in finding and culling the vile vermin that have inhabited mine bark for millennia. ‘Tis a most refreshing thing.”
