Game Over
Kaos felt his body reforming. He didn't know how long it had been, but there was only one thought on his mind:
By some miracle, were there enough people eliminated during his fight for him to get thirty third place.
His face reformed, and he saw that he was standing above ground in the arena as it originally was before the game had started, only the large central tower was still standing, displaying a new message.
[GAME OVER]
[DISTRIBUTING BONUS POINTS!]
After looking around, he saw a lot of other students laughing or looking dejected. Then he paused his anxious mind for a moment and thought to himself.
"Regardless of whether I get the 400 points or not… that was REALLY fun."
It was true, Kaos loved everything about the game, the tactics, the combat, and fighting against a myriad of unknown wishes. He had occasionally been able to participate in combat training sessions at previous schools, but this was different.
The arena bell sounded, snapping him out of his mulling over his enjoyment of the match, and bringing him back to that anxious hope for an impossible one hundred bonus points.
He heard a loud rush of sand, and saw the golden glowing sand begin circling around each individual student all at once. Looking around he saw a lot of students around him had messages displaying:
[+0 BONUS POINTS! TOTAL POINTS: 0]
That gave him the confidence boost he needed to look down at the message circling his own feet.
[+0 BONUS POINTS! TOTAL POINTS: 300]
His heart sank, and his mind flooded with thoughts of "if only I had gone to a different building", "if only I hadn't said anything to give myself away", and the voice in the back of his head was not happy.
"WIN! FIGHT! KILL!" the voice yelled at him, unable to fix the situation.
He had lost, and wouldn't be joining the Dek class.
He looked around, trying to find something to think about other than the fact that he had failed, then he saw Sepra walking towards him. He didn't want to talk to her right now, not without four hundred points, at least.
"Well, well, well. How'd it go?" she grinned and looked down at Kaos's score, "How in the world did you get 300 points?" she asked, quite surprised. "I figured you would at least get a hundred, two hundred maybe, but three hundred is pretty dang good"
"Still not what I was going for." Kaos replied, a little less dejected than earlier.
He looked at the words beneath her feet
[+100 BONUS POINTS! TOTAL POINTS: 1000]
"You took out nine people?" Kaos said, looking at her, only half surprised.
"Nah, two of them had bounties of a hundred and fifty, and one had a bounty of two hundred, so I think I only took down like seven total. I got a hundred bonus points so I guess there were still somewhere between twenty-six and thirty-three people left when I got knocked out." She looked at the sky thoughtfully, and then looked back at him as if she had given up on trying to recall whatever she was thinking of.
"So you got into the Dek class on the first day then!" Kaos said, trying to be excited for her, "It's somewhere around one in fifty people that are able to do that on entry day, and nobody gets a thousand points in their first game!"
Sepra was truly impressive, she had always had a powerful combat wish, but more than that, she seemed to have some kind of innate battle instinct, and incredible reflexes. It was no wonder that she was able to recklessly headhunt seven players, but for her to only get around thirtieth place, what kind of other first and second years were monster enough to take her down?
"So what now?" She asked Kaos, bringing him back to the line of thought that he was most trying to avoid.
"I guess it's general magic for me then." He replied, "I guess I didn't come up with a backup plan in case I couldn't do this."
"Why are you even acting like it's over and you're never going to have the option to join the Dek class?" She responded with mild sarcasm, "you said yourself that almost nobody gets in on the first try. You have to have 400 points to get into the Dek class in your first semester, but you only need six hundred points to get into the class your second semester. You got half the points you are going to need on the first day! You really think you aren't going to be able to get another three hundred during the entire semester?"
Kaos didn't feel better about not getting into the Dek class with Sepra, but what she said was definitely true, and it gave him some hope. But then he thought back to his final encounter and his opponent's words rang in his mind.
"Yeah I may be able to scrape together enough points to get into the class," he flicked his wrist, and a luminous golden halo, and shimmering wings appeared on Sepra as he continued to speak, "but this wish is the only one I've got and I might just be as good as I can get combat-wise."
Sepra looked at him and started to pick up on what he was talking about. She started to try and lighten the mood with some sarcasm but decided against it.
She reached her hand out and touched the warm, feathered wings which stretched out from her back and said a bit more softly, "Just do what you want, but don't ever constrain yourself to what you can do."
The voice in Kaos's head mentally snapped back, "EASY FOR YOU TO SAY, MAYBE YOUR WISH MAKES THE IMPOSSIBLE POSSIBLE, BUT MINE DOESN'T. WE CAN ONLY DO ONE THING SO GO. TRY! RUN! HIDE! FIGHT! ASDFNAPSEUFB…" The voice got nonsensical and garbled and just began yelling discontentedly at him.
Kaos had become good at keeping his so-called "intrusive thoughts" on the inside, so what seemed like a long time of anger and harsh words for him, only meant a few seconds of awkward silence for Sepra.
"Yeah…" he responded a bit quietly, "I guess I just need to figure out what I want to do."
"And then find a way to do it." Sepra said quickly following his sentence.
Aside from his mental freak-out, he felt a lot better. He still had options, and he could still get into the Dek class next semester, he just had to take some time to figure out what he really wanted to do.
No, he didn't need time to figure it out, he knew what he wanted to do.
He wanted to fight in the arenas.
He was GOING to fight in the arenas.