3 Season End Tournament (Part 1)

An hour later, Helen found herself controlled by an unseen power that made her drive all the way towards the Land of Fire. This place was once where clans of the oasis battle against each other in a Holy Duel to gain position and resources. After the establishment of kingdom of Neverwinter, the king improved the infrastructure of the whole area, built roads, buildings and lighting. The main reason for this is because the primary resources of the area is being exploited to a great extent : Black water.. or more commonly known as crude oil, the same substance that drives the industrial revolution of the modern world, and just in recent years they started mining sand to extract silicone, as a resource of modern CPU based computing.

However sadly, this part of the desert remained unfavorable as a residential area. Thus one can only see activities during daylight. Once the sun sets, despite the streetlight, the whole place gets very quiet and desolate. Once in a while one will hear news of some gang fights or other petty crime circulating around, which made the place even more notorious. Last month there were even labourers coming to work and find a corpse of an apparent murder attempt. This prompts the main governance of Neverwinter kingdom to dispatch more security patrol going round the place to keep things under control.

Knowing no other vehicles around, Helen drove her hover bike top speed. It was already very late at night, and the final tournament has probably already begun. As how Lilly had guessed, she wouldn't miss it for the world.

"Beep .. .. .. Beep .. .. .."

Her hover bike panel bleeps softly at an increasing frequency indicating that she is nearing destination. Helen is grateful that Lilly leaves her sigil of tracking turned on, probably deliberately, since she knew that Helen will come eventually. Other wise there is no way she would know where the tournament is held, and thus risking herself into an obvious danger.

After the management of clans of the oasis is taken over by kingdom governance, the Holy Duel is made obsolete. Only a few random people still use the arena to fight physically. Those are mostly gang wars and small thugs fighting for their silly pride. The code of conduct that once was considered Holy now become rouge verbal rule of the road.

These petty gang fight lasted a few years in the open, before being disbanded as forbidden activities, since it only promotes violence and illegal gambling. Since then the fight became something like an underground movements, where every competition always takes a different venue, and only select few know of its whereabouts. Despite the secrecy, participants has grown in numbers, both of supporters and of fighters.

"Bleeeeeeep"

Helen knew she has reached her destination. She stopped just outside an abandoned building half in ruin. Apart from the hover bike headlights, there were only a few distant street light, barely able to let her see the situation around. This time she had to hid her hoverbike behind a huge trash bin, covers it with quilt so no one can find it. Her bracelet gleams in place for the finer GPS location tracking. She hurriedly paced following the direction shown on the gem.

The entrance to the arena was a small tunnel opening inside a dry ditch at the southern border wall, which was well hidden behind a thick shrubs. In the quiet night, she once again heard the faint sound of the bell rings three times. This made her skin crawl involuntarily. She knew there is no way possible to have any ice cream peddler in this area no matter what.

She pushed the thought aside, and brush through the shrubs and quickly enter the dark tunnel ahead, groping on the tunnel wall to follow the trail.

"Damn you Lilly, what have you got me into this time?" inside her heart she started regretting her decision on coming such a long way down, just for a chance to see the love of her life again. "I should've just gone to the language class! If not because of following your location, I wouldn't be here in the first place!" Helen mumbled grumpily.

Yet she still keep walking, hoping to be able to reach the tournament ground quickly.

After a while she saw a gleam of light ahead. She knew she is near, so she started pacing up into a small run. Not long she found the light source, a couple of torch lit at the end of the tunnel. To her great dismay, the tunnel is a dead end!

She was close to tears when her bracelet started vibrating.

"Lilly where are you?" Helen exclaimed as she turned around from the dead end wall, facing the only exit out.

"Haa! I know you will come. Wait right there"

A minute waiting in a creepy foreign place felt like an hour. Suddenly a cold hand grabbed her arms pulling her sideways. Helen let out an involuntary shriek, just to find Lilly standing there grinning.

"I would never.. EVER.. do this again!"

Lilly simply grinned at the remarks without saying anything, and then started walking through the narrow cleft in between the dead end wall. Helen got no choice but to follow her friend closely from behind.

Not long walking in, she started to hear cheering voices. Soon after she saw two gigantic bouncer guarding entrance. Lilly gave them a simple nod, and both of them stand aside to give way for the two girls.

Just like as how it was seen on the projection, the stadium where the season end tournament is held is within a huge cavern, adorned on all sides with banners and artificial lights. Looking around, Helen estimated at least a hundred plus people gather there to watch. In between the shouts, a loud clang of metal against metal was heard loudly from up the arena.

"You are at least half an hour late.." Lilly said while pulling her arms to reach their seat. "I've reserved this seat for you, but you have already missed half the battle"

Both hurriedly sat at the two empty seat, no one seems to be giving them any attention. They are all focused on the battle grounds cheering at the top of their lungs.

On the arena, ADAM the humanoid robot seems to be having a hard time parrying its enemy's attack. The opponent is a huge robot equipped not only with circular saw and chains, but also has four limbs that works together swinging threatening weapon at its enemy.

"You can do it ADAM!! give that giant a good whack!" Lilly suddenly shouted out loud.

Instead of cheering, Helen simply sat there frozen. Her mood is still not very much into the battle, as she was still upset at the waiting happened earlier. Besides battle arena like this is simply too violent for her taste. She was fully aware that once before when actual human were standing at the arena, tearing each other limbs out, bathed in blood, the scene would be way more gory than it is now. Its really thanks to Reid that robots got introduced into the fight to take place of actual human fighters.

In the center of the arena, the two robot faced each other. ADAM holding a spiked club, against three different weapons that the opponent wield : a circular saw, chains and a giant axe. The imbalance of strength is already clearly seen, both in stature and in weapon count. Yet spectators cheered for ADAM since he has a track record of winning impossible fights before.

A gush of jet wind burst from ADAM's backpack, as it dashes with high velocity swinging its club. To everyone surprise, the opponent simply swing one of its arm, and the spiked club went flying away. This clearly demonstrate the strength that giant robot possess. Not wasting a second, the giant robot then lunged forward crashing against ADAM head on, and directly use another two arms to swing its axe vertically from the bottom up, ready to split ADAM in two.