The Arena Begins

The arena was massive, he didn't understand the true scale of it until he was standing in the middle of the sandy desert floor.

Still, he thought that the arena might be too small for a battle royale of this size, there were at least a hundred other students here, probably more. There were way too many for the two-hundred square yards or so that arena was in size.

His heart was beating fast, he closed his eyes and started going over his options.

Firstly his wish, "angel's halo" was going to be useless. It was a powerful wish that granted the designated person wings to fly with, and a floating halo above their head that quickly healed wounds at an almost unprecedented rate.

The only problem with this wish, was he couldn't use it on himself, making it not even usable for this competition unless he wanted to heal his enemies.

"I'm decently strong though" he thought to himself. It was an honest assessment too. If you wanted to make it as support you had to at least be able to dodge attacks and hold your own against the average person.

He looked around, because this was an entrance day arena game, there were a lot of fantasizing wannabes who weren't going to be any stronger than him. All he had to do was know who not to pick a fight with.

He heard the distinct bell-like sound of the arena, how it knew how to start the competition was beyond him, but he had other problems to worry about.

He looked to his right and noticed Sepra grinning and walking towards him.

"Scoping out the competition?" she said, raising an eyebrow.

"I gotta do everything I can here if I actually want to get into the Dek class," he responded.

"I'll be honest" Sepra said, tilting her head to the side, "I didn't really expect you to give this a go, I figured you would stick with the support class."

This caught him off guard, he had been avoiding thinking about the reason behind doing this… but why? Was this something that he actually wanted to do? Did he really need this?

"YOU NEED THIS" came his answer from the voice in the back of his head. "YOU WANT THIS"

He guessed he had just been listening to his subconscious or whatever that voice was, it had been around his whole life, and he had always dismissed it as intrusive thoughts.

Then he remembered why he went along with the voice, he didn't want to be left behind again.

His friends had all gone to different arena colleges, and the only place that saw value in him was Wondant. Sepra was his last friend, and he was going to make sure that he wasn't going to fall behind like last time.

He needed that much at least.

Although it seemed like he had been thinking for a while, in reality it had only been a couple of seconds before he responded to Sepra.

"What? Can't have dreams of my own?"

It wasn't the honest answer, but playing it off as a joke was the best option he had.

"Well don't lose out there, especially to me!" She stuck out her skeletal hand.

Kaos went to shake it, but then paused right before and looked at her suspiciously.

Sepra rolled her eyes, and sighed, "Relax, I'm not gonna use the wish to knock you out before the game starts, but during the game is a different story!"

Kaos chuckled to himself and shook the skeletal hand.

As soon as he did, he heard the second arena bell ring, and the desert floor dropped out from under him.

He had fallen into some kind of pit, it was dark everywhere and evidently the ground had closed above him. Streams of glowing golden sand shot up from the ground, illuminating the small sandy cube he was inside of. The golden sand rushed from every direction, eventually converging on one wall and forming words.

[ANALYZING PARTICIPANT]

After a moment the glowing sand shifted into new words.

[SCORING SYSTEM]

[1 KILL = 100 POINTS]

[1 BOUNTY KILL = HALF THE ELIMINATED PLAYER'S POINTS]

[A PLAYER WITH THREE OR MORE KILLS RECEIVES A BOUNTY]

[1ST PLACE = 2000 BONUS POINTS]

[2ND PLACE = 1000 BONUS POINTS]

[3RD PLACE = 700 BONUS POINTS]

[4TH PLACE = 600 BONUS POINTS]

[5TH-7TH PLACE = 400 BONUS POINTS]

[8TH-10TH PLACE = 300 BONUS POINTS]

[11TH-25TH PLACE = 200 BONUS POINTS]

[26TH-33RD PLACE = 100 BONUS POINTS]

The scoring seemed pretty simple: stay in the game longer, get more points, get kills, get more points. Kaos paused while reading the bounty system, thinking of how lucky he would be if he got points from that, but then realized that if he came across someone with a bounty then he was as good as eliminated.

[KILLED PLAYERS WILL BE RETURNED ALIVE AND IN THE STATE THEY ARRIVED IN]

Kaos had seen enough arena games to know that death in an arena never meant actual death, but now that he was here, he wasn't so trusting of the life-saving arena. Maybe through some form of skill or luck he wouldn't be killed at all… but probably not.

[RANDOMLY SELECTING WEAPON]

A short-sword slid through the ceiling and stabbed into the floor. Kaos snatched it out of the ground and stepped back, just in case anything else came through.

[CURRENT PARTICIPANTS: 131]

[BEGINNING THE GAME]

All of a sudden Kaos felt the floor rushing upwards, he almost fell over but then shakily regained his balance just as the ceiling opened up and he was flung a few feet into the air before landing on his stomach.

When he got back to his feet, the once-flat arena was entirely different. He had seen arenas change on magic broadcasts before, but never from this side. The flat sand had become hills, forts of sandstone, watch towers, and rocky ravines.

A massive rectangular tower of sand exploded from the ground about half a mile away from him. The glowing golden sands swam from every corner of the arena and converged at the top of the tower displaying the words:

[ONLY ONE MAY REMAIN]

[CURRENT PARTICIPANTS: 131]

This last message stayed displayed at the top of the tower. This was bad. He would need 400 points to enroll as a Dek student, which meant it was going to take a lot more than one elimination.

"High ground" Kaos said to himself, snapping out of his deep thought, a tall watchtower on his left seemed like the best place to get ahold of the situation. He started sprinting to the tower, hoping no one would make it there before him.

Once he reached the opening at the base of the tower, he peeked inside. It seemed to be empty as far as he could tell. After listening for noises for a moment, he began quietly climbing the spiral staircase on the inside of the tower. The stairs ended, leading to a trap door directly above the staircase.

"Okay…" Kaos breathed slowly reaching up towards the handle.

"Almost forgot to take out my sword" he mumbled to himself.

But where was it? He wasn't holding it, and it wasn't at his side, he didn't have a sheath of any kind.

Kaos groaned at his own stupidity, he had dropped it when he got launched out of the ground and forgot about it in the chaos!

He turned to go back down the stairs to retrieve his sword, but then heard heavy footsteps fastly ascending the base of the stairs.

"Nacta!" he cursed to himself in a whisper. He had no option but to try and hide at the top of the tower.

He quickly opened the trap door and climbed through it. The room at the top of the watchtower had openings to walk through on three sides, and nothing to hide between except the fourth wall. It would have to do. He closed the trap door and dashed to the other side of the wall, crouching down and catching his breath. He poked his head up momentarily to see over the sandstone railing, noticing the vast landscape that was now inside the arena, then ducking back down and listening quietly.

The trap-door clanked open and he heard someone grunt as they climbed through. He heard their boots tapping on the sandstone as they rushed directly to the balcony.

He didn't have any weapon, but this might be his best shot at any kills the whole game and he didn't have the luxury of letting any opportunity go. He crept and poked his head around the wall slightly. It was a tall-skinny boy who was craning his neck looking off of the railing.

Kaos didn't know what he was going to do, but this was a perfect opportunity! He began sprinting directly at the boy, who whipped around right before Kaos's hands reached him. He didn't have a plan, but one push was all it took. The boy toppled over the railing, falling for what seemed like minutes but in reality was only a couple seconds.

When he hit the sand, his body immediately turned from flesh to sand, and everything except the spear he was wielding disappeared and was instantly consumed by the ground.

"So that's how it works" Kaos said to himself, surprised more so by the fact that his attack had worked than the boy vanishing into sand.

Glowing sand appeared in a circle around his feet, displaying:

[+100 POINTS! CURRENT POINTS: 100]

He caught his breath again, and glanced back down towards the ground.

"Jackpot!" he yelled, seeing the spear. He hopped down the trap door, and descended the stairs much less quietly than he had come up them. He snatched the spear off of the ground and gave it a spin in his hand, almost dropping it.

"Hahaha!" He laughed to himself, "This gives me so much more range than that crappy sword!"

Another bell sound came from the arena, and he looked at the main arena tower, noticing that the words displayed were now different.

[100 PARTICIPANTS REMAINING]

[THE ARENA IS NOW SHRINKING]

[ONLY ONE MAY REMAIN]