219: The Masked Announcer

Thelicia? Beatrice grimaced when she heard the beastkin’s overt attempt at hiding her identity. Beatrice recalled the eccentric girl parading her S.E.C.R.E.T. guild badge, announcing her full name and title in public. There was no possible way for anyone who met the hair ball in person to not know that she was the same person as this masked announcer. Which left Beatrice wondering about just what game “Thelicia” was playing at.

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As Thelicia said that, Beatrice saw eighteen masked men, shirtless and in kilt walk onto the arena. The masked men were split up into six groups of three. Each group used a different bridge to get to the arena, which resulted in them appearing from all sides at once. In each of the six groups, two men were muscular and carried a giant chest by the handles, while their scrawny leaders carried nothing and walked with an aura of self-importance and hands behind their backs.

The masked men put the large heavy chests down just by the bridges and opened them for their respective leaders. The scrawny, dirty leaders reach into the chests, pulled out a small woven bag, and proceeded to the participants. It quickly turned out that the masked men had pieces of weathered, black cloth in those bags. Each piece of the blood-stained cloths had a different red number on it. One by one, the masked men tied one of those cloth pieces around the right arm of every participant while Thelicia continued to address the crowd.

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Beatrice looked up and saw that indeed many wooden barrels were rolled out and placed on the edges of the platforms while the citizens of Klapsus lined up with mugs to fill.

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Sixty-nine, huh? Beatrice looked at the number on her new armband that one of the masked men just finished tying around her arm.

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As soon as Thelicia said that the masked men that stood by the open chests sat down in lotus position and clapped their hands in unison as all twelve of them started mumbling some kind of spell. And it was a spell. Beatrice saw blue auras form around the men. Their magical auras grew out in all directions until they combined with the aura of their neighbor. Just a few seconds after that happened, those magical auras shot up high into the air and all flew over the arena toward the center until they combined together in a spectacular firework-like blast, high in the air, at the same level as Thelicia’s platform.

However, that blast of magical energy did disperse as a firework would. The magical sphere grew, and as it grew, Beatrice saw something unbelievable within the sphere. Herself. The image then switched to one of the pathetic-looking participants. As if looking into some gigantic crystal ball, Beatrice, as well as every other person in the mine, could watch the participants in high resolution. As seconds passed, the image only got clearer, and soon Beatrice felt as if she was watching one of those gigantic, led, center-hung display cubes.

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YuujiEveryleaf

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