GREED: ALL FOR WHAT?



Lady Amari scoffed. "You know what I am talking about. Get me released now, or I'll say it."

"Unfortunately for you, I cannot do that. You're the child of the plane's prisoner, so I cannot release you. I believe that you should be punished even harder for your offense against the child of the plane." Salvin said. Then she turned to Soverick. "I think you should up the pain somehow. She obviously isn't in too much pain, or she wouldn't be so chatty."

Soverick looked at Salvini with intense scrutiny for a while before answering. "Maybe later. I want to hear what she has to say."

He has been alternating his gaze between the two of them earlier. He knows that there is something going on here, and he would very much like to find out. It seems Salvini is trying to hide something from him. So he watched Salvini's reaction to his rejection intensely to clue him into what was going on.

Salvin shrugged. "Suit yourself."

Lady Amari smiled. "I know that you're pretending not to care. I will say your secret either way. You love the child of the plane."

Lady Amari can tell that Salvini is pretending, but she doesn't know what she is pretending about. So she told the secret that she knew and hoped to see something interesting. 

Nothing happened. Salvin didn't change or react, and Soverick continued to look between the two of them, trying to decipher the hidden game that these two her playing on him. He knows that Lady Amari can see secrets. That doesn't mean she is speaking the truth or that she isn't trying to trick him. He knows that she has tricked others with half-truths before, so he must take whatever she says with due vigilance.

He finally spoke, "You talk too much." 

He returned to cutting her when he couldn't figure out what was going on. And no, he is not paranoid. He knows that something is wrong. He started feeling it as soon as the call for support was activated. The consciousness of the plane didn't tell him much, but it gave him enough to intuit that what he was doing would help the plane and also that he was in danger.

Unfortunately for him, he can't do anything with the little information he has, at least not with Salvini constantly stalking him and the arena spirits always aware of everything he is doing in the Arena. He doesn't know his enemies and his friends, so he has to be careful. For now, he will torture the leader of the rebellion against him.

He wasn't enjoying torturing her. In fact, he found it time-consuming, but he had to do it to serve as a warning to others. The entire plane is watching right now, and he wants them to know the consequence of acting against him. If they think his killing them is a sin, then they should prepare themselves for more because torture is not beyond him. 

The third challenge ended on that note. Lady Amari didn't make a sound throughout the ordeal. He loped off her limbs even as his troops rounded up the last of her army. Her reaction to the treatment is commendable. She flinched whenever his blade cut into her thin, weak body, but she didn't cry. 

She may be trying to undermine the severity of what she is going through, or she may be trying to show herself as unbreakable and unremorseful. He doesn't care. What matters is that others will ask themselves if they can go through what she is going through without crying.

The end of the third challenge was her salvation. The world around them greyed out and disappeared. The competitors were teleported against their will again. For a lot of people, the end of the competition couldn't have come sooner. Soverick was glad when it ended. He got the last key to create the vulnerability he needed to crack the core as soon as the 3rd challenge ended.

For others, the third challenge was too short. One of the people that groaned when the third challenge ended was Ghaster. Two bullies ganged up on him and prevented him from escaping. One of them had a cloud of phantom weapons that surrounded him. He couldn't escape, so he had to entertain them with physical violence.

You would expect that to be a bad thing, but it wasn't. They took turns beating him up, and he fought back with everything that he had except for his divine abilities. His bullies didn't use their divine abilities either. They wanted to let the fight last, so they challenged him to a brawl, and he accepted their challenge. 

They fought for a long time. Then they became friends. Something about Ghaster's straightforward personality and his hatred for Soverick endeared them to him. They spent the rest of the time chatting until the third challenge ended. The end of the third challenge cut short their pleasurable discussion, so Ghaster complained as he was teleported away.

POV OF THE CO-ADMINISTRATORS.

The serpentine world god snorted and mocked, "It is about time your side finished. I thought I would be here forever."

"Your side was early by just a few hours. They were not that early." The first sage argued.

"Whatever. My point still stands. My side finished first while yours finished last."

It was the sage's turn to snort. "That doesn't prove that your side will win. It only proves that your side is lazy."

The two of them didn't look at each other as they threw jabs at one another. They have been doing that recently, and usually, the first sage wins their exchange. But victory went to the serpentine world god in this round of exchange. It is an undeniable point that the serpentine world god's side finished the 3rd challenge and has been ready for the 4th challenge for hours now. It is due to an advantage that they have over the battle sage monkeys.