Chapter 301 - Pink Flatfish

Chapter 301 Pink Flatfish

Western Lancaster, the venue of the Twin City Cup semi-finals.
The rules of the final round didn’t change since the last eight, with each battle exceedingly fearsome and thrilling—which took a toll on the contestants even if it was a good thing for the spectating crowd.
Still, taking into consideration that the contestants require time to require stamina and strength, the bishop of the Earth Sect had been asked to combine the previously used arenas into one massive arena after the quarter finals. It extended the duration of each respective match, giving each contestant who wasn’t fighting time to rest.
And what followed the last eight was naturally the last four, which consists of Edward, Mufasa, one monk from the Brilliant White Church and another mage—a believer of Magic Purple and a specialist in morphing.
The semi-final fixture hence pits Mufasa against Edward, and the mage against the monk.
Meanwhile, Corinth, mayor of Lancaster who was watching the match on a temporarily built balcony had a grave look on his face.
There was a problem at the moment.
As mentioned before, the fixtures were actually slightly tampered with.
However, according to the idea in dividing the matchups, the believers of the God of Gamesthat is, the two strongest Players were suppose to fight in the final, and not the semi-final. But when one thought about it, the Players were either facing each other or some outstanding believer of another church in the third round, as if someone was deliberately trying to grind down the Players in spirit and strength (although it wasn’t actually a problem for them since they had honed themselves to farm dungeons overnight).
It could only mean that someone interfered when the Church of Games tried to tamper with their drawing lots, and there was a high chance that it was a turncoat on Corinth’s side. Therefore, despite its prosperous and stable appearance, Lancaster City was nothing other than a little boat caught in the heart of a storm, and was about to flip over in any given moment.
Be that as it may, as the captain of the boat, Corinth must keep himself from showing fear or weakness, or those bloodthirsty sharks beneath the surface would swarm towards the boat and tear it into little pieces…
Corinth became melancholic at the mere thought.
“Grandpa, what’s the matter?” His grandchild Gwendolyn asked softly then, tugging at his sleeve. “Your face looks scary.”
“No, it’s nothing.” Corinth recovered and patted the little girl’s head and smiled mildly, before turning towards the arena again with a frown and mumbling unknowingly. “It’s nothing.”
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Edward certainly wasn’t aware of such messy affairs at the arena below since Angora and old Vanke would handle anything political. Moreover, he was on the arena already—all he had to do was enjoy the fight.
Be that as it may, he still felt a little helpless whenever he looked at Mufasa—who was still wearing his pink flatfish head mask.
“I say… it’s the semi-finals now, so can’t you take off that head mask? At least look as if you’re taking this seriously.” “Well said, but I refuse!” Mufasa replied, drawing the long sword that was exclusive to the Swordmaster class. “I fight very seriously at any given moment!” Edward sighed. “Even if you say that, I don’t think I could be serious with you looking like that.”
“Is that so?” Mufasa paused for a moment. “I’ve already changed my forum nickname to Pink Flatfish, though.”
“What is that supposed to mean? Are you even in your right mind now…” Edward was confused now and not quite sure what Mufasa was getting at.
Mufasa, however, still spoke seriously. “Each match now is going to be announced on the System, right? Think about it—if you lose, the System would display: Edward, Explorer of the Seven Seas has been defeated by Pink Flatfish.”
“The forum would also get flooded three times in a row.”
“Tch…”
Edward inhaled sharply. He could feel a breeze in his scalp as the will to fight ignited in him, and even Happy Flame was ablaze in his hand, sensing its owner’s agitation. “Who would bear such shame?! Come at me then!”
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As the semi-final match raged on, Princess Leah had managed to interrogate the Level 3 cultists who survived and received some useful information.
After meeting up with her escort, she had promptly returned to the Lancaster Hideout and told the Players gathered there what she learnt after much trouble.
“To put it simply, they are Aojo cultists and they were up to some conspiracy.”
“In other words, Your Highness, your information is useless,” Marni said with a pained look. “Most cities tend to have a few cells of cultists hiding, scheming ritual sacrifices or what not, even though not many of them succeed since a believer of evil god would have their brains affected by their own object of worship… get it? Finding them is as difficult as finding certain special rat’s nest in the aqueducts.”
After all, this world was a host to many minor evil gods whose names were never even heard of. In fact, there were a lot of evil gods who earned a reputation and had actually fought the Seven Divine Fathers—by throwing shurikens at them every several hundred years in a divine war.
In reality, there was virtually no evil gods who could stand on equal footing against the Seven Divine Fathers, or they wouldn’t have become sneaky evil gods in the first place. Under such circumstances, there would only be a lot of cultists who believes in respective evil gods, and wiping them all out was just impossible.
“In fact, the Rotten Bones Cult we wiped out before was one of the larger cultist groups,” Marni said after explaining that reasoning. “Moreover, the name Aojo doesn’t sound like your typical evil god, and more like a title some powerful vile creature made up to charm humans. I really don’t think it’s necessary to follow up on it, and we should just leave it to the city guards…”
“That’s fine, I have nothing to do anyway.” Princess Leah appeared unconcerned with that. In fact, she was undeterred, and even went on to goad Marni. “Don’t you have nothing to do as well, Mister Marni? You couldn’t make it to the Third Round even with your Resurrection Ankh, Reviving Armor and stacks of Cola. Or what, are you going to go back up to watch the match?”
“You’re killing me, Your Highness…”