Tournament: Finale

After talking it out and pulling out "the rules he had laid out for the match" card, it allowed Maddox to prevent the girls from complaining any more than they were already, thankfully.

It was almost noon, so Maddox decided to give everyone two hours to rest while he went out to get something for lunch since no one wanted to make anything which no one complained about. Maddox returns with some take-out from a nearby Panda Express since he was feeling something a bit more fresh, unlike the In N Out burgers they had the day before.

Everyone enjoyed their food; they really couldn't complain about it; most of them just put in their preferences on what they would like for dinner since most of the food thus far had just been some form of fast food which was filling but not healthy.

Once done, it was time for the show to continue so that Maddox could see if there were any further uses of essence.

Launching themselves at each other, Maddox watches from the side as both Dog and Angella are going at it this time around with which everyone was just blankly staring into the arena as no one expected this from Angella at all, much less to do this to Dog...

Still, both seemed happy as the fight had turned into more of a wrestling match at this point, with the two of them rolling around in the hay as if this fight had degraded into a video at a zoo about a zookeeper fighting off a wolf.

It was anarchy, but the resulting winner was Angella since she could get a hold of Dog and throw her out of the arena, resulting in her immediate win.

"You okay, Dog?" Maddox asks, seeing as she was thrown out of the arena and onto the warehouse's concrete floor.

Dog gets up and shakes off some of the hay in her fur before simply sitting upright and nodding at Maddox to show that she is okay.

Seeing that she was alright, Maddox paid no more attention to her and focused on Angella, who had her hands on her knees and was breathing heavily.

"Well done, Angella, you win. Go ahead and relax off to the side now," Maddox tells her.

She nods as she walks off to the side to get something to drink while Maddox brings the next two into the ring to see some more essence usage.

Eventually, the tournament comes to a close, with the ultimate winner being Angella; due to her no-holding-back attitude and savagery, she pulled out the win, and as a result, she was able to ask Maddox anything that she wanted. Though for now, she said she wanted to ask for it later since she was not expecting to win and called those who faced off against her 'chickenshit pussies' her words, not mine.

Thankfully this had killed a lot of time, and as a result, it was now five in the evening. With a dinner of pizza and pasta from some Italian place in the city, the girls all collectively called it a night as they were too tired and bruised from the day to care much for anything else but sleep.

Maddox didn't turn in for the night; instead, he opted to truly experience the major shine and draw-in of Las Vegas, the nightlife.

Keeping his head down and avoiding anything unsavory from the people that tried to bring him off someplace led to Maddox wandering the city while keeping a low profile so he could get a grasp on the hold that miasma had on the people of Vegas during the night.

If the daytime was terrible with the amount of miasma and infected roaming the streets well, then the nightlife was even worse, with regular people being abducted by infected individuals in shady alleys to casinos having sections for those who were infected being put up.

It was sickening what was happening in the city, but Maddox knew right now he couldn't do anything lest he was immediately killed.

So he instead brought his focus away from miasma and infected and instead on enjoying a pleasantly warm evening stroll.

Eventually, after random thoughts, Maddox's mind goes off to essence and what he had seen from the fights in the tournament.

From the tournament, Maddox had gathered that essence was best used for only a few things.

Unlike miasma, essence is not all that versatile, which is understandable as, from what he gathered, Maddox could see essence can be used to strengthen one's body and or weapon.

Other than that, there was no further utilization of essence that Maddox had observed from the girls in the tournament. Unless there was some other way to utilize essence, the girls did not know it. Considering he had their memories available to view at any time, he knew that there was nothing hidden from him permanently, so unless there was some technique that they did not show off, then he saw essence as something lackluster compared to miasma.

Essence had its uses; however, Maddox was hesitant to utilize it in his body since he had no idea what would happen since he could use both essence and miasma with them being held in a delicate balance.

So if Maddox wanted to fight the infected himself, he would first have to gauge his limits of his body to see how far he could go before reaching the limit of his dual-powered nature.

With those thoughts solidified in his mind, Maddox turned back to his mother and two sisters as he could not help but worry for his sisters while cursing his mother.

The sound of glass breaking in front of him causes Maddox to look away from his thoughts and instead at a drunken man being thrown out of a bar and out onto the street, where a broken bottle of alcohol lay a bit away.

Maddox raises an eyebrow at this but doesn't say anything as he looks at the time to see it is almost one in the morning.

Frowning, Maddox looks back to the warehouse and begins walking back to his home away from home to get some sleep and review a few things from the girl's memories.

Returning to the dark exterior of the warehouse reveals Dog waiting for Maddox in front of the door awaiting his return.

With his return, a small thump of the tail signifies that she was happy Maddox returned but seeing Maddox's neutral face, only one thump of happiness ensues from her.

"You really would make a good guard dog," Maddox says out loud as he walks off to his room within the place.

Dog's ears droop, and she whimpers at Maddox's comment as she begins to think that he will be tossing her aside cause she did not win in the tournament.

She skulks over to the front of Maddox's door and lies down in front of it before she eventually drifts off to sleep.

The next day Maddox leaves his room in the mid-morning to see that most of the girls are still asleep, minus Persephone, but that is understandable considering that she had a bit of an afternoon nap with her being knocked out and everything during the tournament.

She was crouched down, smushing Dog's face together and rubbing it while giggling at how silly Dog looked.

"Morning, Persephone," Maddox says as he walks over to collect the trash bags from the day before taking them out.

"Morning, Maddox!" Persephone says joyfully while she stands up

"So, what are you going to do today?" She asks Maddox, following him out of the common area into the warehouse itself

"Don't know, but I think I am gonna go buy some more stuff for everyone since everything here is... less than ideal," Maddox says as he opens the front door to the warehouse only to get blasted with the heat of the Nevada morning

"I am never going to get used to this heat, am I..." Maddox says to himself as he walks over to the dumpster

Persephone does not follow as she prefers the relaxing breeze of the AC within the building rather than the heat.

The rest of the day consists of Maddox driving around the city, buying more things, and using some miasma to make others see something he wants them to see.

Meanwhile, back with the girls in the warehouse, a few of them were playing a few of the games that Maddox bought them the night prior; however, no words were being said between the group as they kept to themselves.

As for what they were playing, it was a monopoly, and tensions were brewing between everyone.

That is until Maddox showed up again, this time with the truck loaded up with bunk bed frames and other items that he could easily acquire through the power of money.

However, as Maddox looked upon the group, he saw high tensions among the girls, which was understandable considering they were cooped up together within the warehouse and generally could not leave.

That was not good since, if left alone, it was essentially having a ticking time bomb between everyone in the group, and Maddox was sure that a few of them would question his motives if they were not already.

So he was going to rectify that and cover all bases by creating a false memory in all their minds making them believe that they were given orders to help protect him while setting up a new base within the city for the Coalition to utilize.

This would dispel any suspicions about who he was and calm them down, as they would believe this to be a sort of bodyguard/security role for him and the warehouse until the place was finished.

With that memory added into their mind, Maddox could solve a few problems that may occur with him trying to stay within the city's outskirts.

The first would be personal safety since Maddox didn't know how to effectively fight infected with either miasma or essence, so having the girls and Dog as his first line of defense was good enough for the time being.

The second was in-fighting and suspicion towards him, which was good since the Coalition was shit at teaching these girls to be wary of people, though now that he thinks about it, Maddox is gonna have to take a look into the Coalition more, seeing as so far they have been doing a terrible job of fighting infected.

The third and final point of this memory being added into the girl's memory would be that he would be able to have an excuse to look a bit into each of their minds a bit more since the last time he was in the only took specific memories which could be summed up as each girls training technique.

Maddox had been looking at each of their techniques; however, he had only been able to see their beginnings since it would be more efficient to see them progress so that he could see what they had encountered and had to go through to reach their level today.

With that, though, Maddox created a fake memory by manipulating a few briefs that the girls had before and weaved them into a brief that made it so their superiors told them that they would be working under Maddox after whatever mission that resulted in them being caught and sold in the infected underground market.

With that, Maddox also copied some more memories of interactions with Coalition higher-ups and other instances of working there.

Eventually, everything had been taken care of with the bunk beds and memory altercations in the girls that it was evening by the time they were done.

Everyone turns in for the night, with the girls enjoying their new beds and Dog sleeping outside Maddox's door.

While Maddox was physically sleeping, mentally, he was viewing the countless memories from all the girls as best he could since there was so much he had to consider and look at. It would probably take about a week to go through everything.

However, while Maddox was looking over, one of Vannessa's memories was weird...

It was her talking to one of the senior officials of the Coalition about work-related bullshit he was half paying attention to before he said something to her and then walked off. That description of it would not be too odd, which is understandable; however, there were a few things about this interaction.

For one, the guy looked flushed and was sweating before he walked away from Vanessa, then there was his clothing which seemed to be a bit wrinkled after a certain point in the memory that they almost seemed to appear out of nowhere.

Then there was the location; each memory forms either a complete or semi-complete area. The person involved in the memory can create this when viewing their surroundings with people being shown around them as they have a general clue into that.

However, with Vanessa's memory, her location shifts at a certain point in the conversation, and it is not like moving to the right or left a step back. No, they were both suddenly ten feet away from where they were from before.

Maddox didn't notice this at first because the hallway they were in was one of those dull ones that looked the same everything seemed to look and feel the same, so he had to double-take it a few times to see that something was weird in the memory.

Unfortunatly whatever the problem was, he could not figure out what it was with just his copy of it, so he would have to figure it out by tapping in and viewing the original. However, it was late, so for now, Maddox was going to try and make sure that there were no more memories like this with the other girls, and hopefully, this was not as bad as he thought it was.

Alright, I'm back now, so don't worry, I did not die as I just stepped away from Webnovel to post random shit on Wattpad because I could, essentially, and I also did some stuff in real life that is good now. Now that I pack after a while, know that I have grown to become more insane, which is what this book is about, and for those who don't know, I am trying to base this world off of a hentai manga by Fan No Hitori who has some... unique works.

The more you know, I guess...

After this chapter comes out, I will review some of my previous chapters to see if there is anything I want to change or update, so bear with me on that.