Despite the timer having finished its countdown, Seraxus and his companions felt their eyes drawn up to the stands where illusory copies of Serenity began to duplicate, mimicking the movements of her real body with their enlarged forms.
“Magic is beautiful. Swords are clashing. Arrows are soaring through the sky. It can be so mesmerizing…” Serenity spoke, her voice amplified by her own voice amplification spell without the need for an enchanted item. Her instruments hit several deep bass notes that had well-timed pauses in between, following along with her words.
“There are powerful players all around us. Some good,” she motioned to Makaroth, “and some evil…” She motioned down into the arena at Seraxus. “But I’m selfish. I don’t want you to pay attention to them. I want you all…” She stepped forward seductively, waving her fingers delicately to play several more elongated notes, followed by her drummer NPC beginning his performance in the background.
“Look at me.”
Singing these words, the music kicked into high gear, and Serenity and her dancers made quick movements, followed by slow rolling movements of their bodies. They mixed these rolling motions and pumping motions to line up with the music being played by Serenity, which quickly captivated everyone's attention to the fullest.
“Look at me.”
She repeated in song. More seductive dance moves, followed by a shift in the sounds coming out of her pink, glowing instruments.
“Dragons, goblins, wolves, and trolls,
Shells, portals, swords, lost souls,
Ignore all that, and look over here,
I’ll make all your troubles disappear.
All that really matters is the music,
La la la la~
Keep your eyes peeled and move with it
La la la la~
Whatever happens, let me be selfish,
La la la la~
Don’t turn your head away.
Look at me,”
Another pause in between her singing was met by an uptick in her and her dancers' seductive dance moves.
“Look at me,” She repeated her chorus, and had the entire audience completely captivated by her beauty.
Herilon’s jaw dropped as he watched alongside the others within a Kordas tavern. “Damn…”
Quinn threw her hands over Ren’s eyes as he refused to look away from the livestream broadcast of the Tarolas arena. “You’re too young to be watching stuff like this.” He fought against her hands to keep watching.
"No, I'm not!" Ren protested furiously.
“We’re about to be rich…” Tommy said into a voice call with Shinji. “Keep it up.”
“I’m not used to editing for concert performances…” Shinji replied nervously, furiously waving his fingers around to keep up with Serenity’s movements by zooming in and out at the right times, and swapping angles in a timely fashion.
“You’re doing fine. Keep doing that.” Tommy reassured him.
As Shinji’s camera work zoomed into Serenity’s waist, she curved her hips in a seductively slow thrust, of which Aegis, Rakkan, and Darkshot all watched with wide eyes, quietly observing. Lina glanced from the livestream broadcast of the arena in front of them to Aegis. She saw his expression and threw him a sad, pouting look, which he noticed out of the corner of his eyes enough to stop himself from staring at Serenity’s performance in the way that he had been. He cleared his throat awkwardly and turned to look at an alternate display of the arena, where Seraxus was visible.
“It’s working.” Aegis pointed out, seeing the wings of Seraxus losing their substance. The aura of black mist that he’d brought into the arena with him was also dissipating.
“I’m gettin’ real tired of your bullshit’ singin’ and dancin’. This ain't a concert, this is a PvP arena!” Seraxus shouted up at her, but he was inaudible due to the loud sounds of Serenity’s singing and instruments.
“But, she is PvPing,” Hector replied on Serenity’s behalf, with a sudden, fast movement across the arena. Seraxus and his companions had been so transfixed on Serenity that they stopped watching Hector and his party, who took advantage of the darkened arena to surround them. “That’s how a bard fights, and this is how we fight.”
“Combatant Zuon has been defeated.”
Seraxus looked at Hector and his giant hammer in front of him before spotting that Hector’s party members had converged on Zuon and unleashed a combination of powerful attacks in complete synchronization to take out Zuon instantly, before they even noticed what was happening.
“Motherf-” Seraxus growled back furiously, drawing out all of his weapons and engaging with Hector. Hector, who’d fought Seraxus numerous times before, was able to tactfully dodge the first few swings of the sword of hatred. At the same time, Sylvia, Gambit, and Hajax jumped into action, moving into a defensive formation in order to manage the assault from Hector’s other party members.
All of this was happening in the darkness of Kenji’s illusions, and no one seemed to care as they were all still fixated on watching Serenity’s performance and listening to her upbeat dance song.
Hector repeatedly enchanted the flat half of his maul as he jumped backwards to avoid Seraxus’ attacks, and slammed the enchanted head of the maul into the ground. This sent out fissures in the tiled arena floor, with spiky chunks of earth shooting up from the ground around Seraxus’ feet.
An inexperienced player would easily get caught up in these fissures, or lose their balance - but Seraxus lived for PvP and had fought this tactic, and this player before. He nimbly jumped up over the fissures and carefully found footing on the rising spikey earth chunks to avoid falling or taking too much nature damage from the attacks.
Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.
Hector was not trying to knock Seraxus off his feet, though, as his movements were deliberately made to force Seraxus into not being able to ignore him and provide a clear window for his companions to deal with the rest of Seraxus’ party.
“Same strategy as always, eh, Hector? You never learn. Even if you kill all of ‘em, you clowns ain't ever gonna beat me.” Seraxus said, barely audible over the sound of Serenity’s music.
“We’ll see about that,” Hector replied, grimacing. The two orcs continued their engagement. Seraxus sent his floating weapons towards Hector from all sides. This forced Hector to stomp his feet down with brown glowing magic on the souls of his leather boots, causing each stomp to force walls of earth to rise up out of the sand-covered tile floor of the arena. These walls were tactfully placed to cut off the attack paths of Seraxus’ floating weapons.
In this time, though, Seraxus hadn’t noticed that his wings and aura had completely vanished - nearly all hatred for him was being overwhelmed by the emotions being drawn out by Serenity’s performance.
“She really knows what she’s doing,” Aegis said with an impressed look, making sure to avoid looking at the broadcast of Serenity dancing and instead focusing on the screen that was showing Hector and Seraxus’ fight despite it being incredibly dark and hard to see. He could feel Lina’s eyes burning into the side of his head as she watched him and made sure he wasn’t letting his eyes wander.
“Replacing hatred with love and lust. I mean, it’s not original, but if it ain't broke, don’t fix it,” Pyri said with a light chuckle. “Buncha teenage boys who watch Seraxus, this is probably their biggest weakness.”
“Hah. Yeah. Stupid teenage boys,” Darkshot mumbled without taking his eyes off the livestream showing Serenity.
Being ignored didn’t sit well with Seraxus, and he lost his cool, calm, and collected demeanor. This resulted in him not holding back and aggressively rushing at Hector. Despite Hector’s clever tactics, he was eventually overwhelmed by Seraxus’s floating weapons and his precise movements, resulting in his defeat. With Hector gone, the rest of his party members soon followed, ending the first match in favor of Seraxus’ team just as Serenity’s song was finishing.
“Alright. Nice trick, congrats, you made my wings disappear. But you can’t keep that shit up for this whole tournament,” Seraxus shouted out, his voice being heard finally due to Serenity’s song ending. He turned and moved back into the starting position for his party as Zuon respawned, while Hector’s party respawned on the opposite end of the arena.
“Bet,” Serenity shouted back at him aggressively, causing him to swerve around and glare up at her, a great distance between the two as she stood on the raised platform in the stands, far above the arena itself. With their eyes locked on one another, Serenity pointed towards him. She put up three fingers, counting down to two, one, then flipped her hand into a thumbs-down. These movements were done while matching the rhythm of a baseline that kicked in thanks to her free hand glowing pink, as she manipulated her instruments and started a new song.
“C’mon, really, ya’ll gonna watch that dumb old hag?” Seraxus called to the audience, but they were ignoring him. He then turned to his livestream viewership and saw the numbers plummeting below 2 million viewers. He took a moment to read his livestream chat, where everyone was talking about where to find Serenity’s live-streaming address, and some chatters were sharing it so others could click on it and watch it over Seraxus’ stream.
“Y'all motherfuckers… You really think I need these fuckin’ wings to crush you all?” Seraxus roared with fury, at no one in particular. Seeing him lose his cool like this, his party members cowered back and glanced at one another anxiously.
“When this shit is over, I’m gonna sink this fuckin’ island,” Seraxus hissed while grinding his fingers around the hilt of his sword.
“Yes… destroy them… they don’t respect you… You must make them. Teach them the meaning of hatred…” he heard the sword’s voice whispering into his ear, egging him on.
“They’re teaming up on him. They’re finally doing it.” Andrew rubbed his hands together as he watched the arena match unfolding from inside Nicholas’ office simulation. “You think this’ll be enough? Is this what Samantha was aiming for? Is it all gonna be okay now?” He turned to Nicholas with hopeful eyes.
“I don’t know. All they’re really doing right now is undoing the death of the Zeus prophet. It’s not gonna mean anything if no one is strong enough to beat the sword.” Nicholas replied calmly, keeping his eyes peeled on the second match between Hector and Seraxus, which was turning out to be much more one-sided than the first - Seraxus wasted no movements. He used an incredible burst of speed to cut down Hector instantly, seconds after the match had begun.
It wasn’t only Nicholas who was watching the match in this way, keeping their eyes peeled on Seraxus as he lost his cool and took it out on Hector’s party.
Synopse, Feng, and Aegis all watched from inside their respective waiting rooms, observing him with intense focus in complete silence. They continued to do this through Serenity’s following two songs, after which Seraxus' match with Hector concluded in a decisive 3-0 in favor of the Sword of Hatred wielder.
Seraxus made no further attempts to address the audience in the stands or his livestreaming audience. He silently and angrily stomped out of the arena to go back to his waiting room with his party members nervously following along behind him.
“Alright. That’s enough,” Calikgos moved forward once Seraxus was gone, and Serenity stopped her current song immediately. The sound cut out, and the audience erupted in cheers that shook the very stadium itself.
As Serenity turned to look at Hae-won, Kenji, and then Calikgos, they all saw her gasping for air desperately, with sweat droplets moving down her virtual avatar’s skin. Calikgos was caught off guard by this as Hae-won moved past him alongside Serenity’s dancers to give her words of praise and encouragement amongst the loud cheers of the audience.
Calikgos looked confused, stepping back to stand beside Makaroth. “She’s sweating from a performance?”
“Dancing, controlling all of those instruments, and singing - it's possible to do in this game world, but it drains an incredibly high amount of stamina. That she was able to keep it up for that long is nothing short of impressive.” Makaroth explained, and as he did, he met Serenity’s eyes briefly. Makaroth used his time to give her a nod of respect, which she met with a smile.
“Do I need to remind you she’s teaming up with your son? The whole reason we’re in this mess in the first place? She’s our enemy.” Calikgos growled at Makaroth after witnessing this exchange.
“Our enemy is the sword of hatred,” Makaroth replied as he turned to leave the raised platform, but Calikgos grabbed his arm to hold him in place. Much to Makaroth’s surprise, Calikgos’ grip was strong enough to stop Makaroth from moving.
“Don’t fuck with me. This isn’t a game,” Calikgos said in a deep voice, as Makaroth saw his livestream being cut forcibly away to a commercial break. A look of pure confusion fell on him as he turned back to look at where Calikgos was gripping him, then looked up to see an intense look of rage on Calikgos’ face.
“How’re you stronger than me? You’ve always been agility foc-” Makaroth tried to flick his arm free of Calikgos’ grip but failed.
“Keep making VGN look bad, and you’ll have more than my strength stat to worry about,” Calikgos interrupted him, tightening his grip and causing a sudden surge of pain to travel from Calikgos’ hand and into Makaroth due to his pain threshold being at maximum. A red damage number appeared above Makaroth, but so much focus was on Serenity as she was leaving the platform that very few people noticed it aside from the two VGN broadcasters who had been waiting off to the side.
Makaroth winced and pulled away as Calikgos released his grip, turning to the broadcasters.
“Get back to doing your jobs.” He shouted at them, to which they hastily pulled out their voice amplification staves and began announcing the next match. Makaroth remained confused about what just happened as Calikgos hopped off the platform and casually walked back towards the seats where other Sages of Destiny members were sitting, a smile on his face as Lilya waved to him from her seat.