NOVEL NEXT Chapter 26: Monster Mash Matchups
The four of us arrived at a massive underground arena. It was shaped a lot like a colosseum but the fighting could only be described as a pit. It was set twenty feet down into the ground in the center of the arena.
The matches hadn't started yet. Victoria and I were dressed as ourselves, but Tommy and Dan were made up to look like zombie pirates. Victoria had done their makeup. Their skin was a pale blue and they had bloody bandages on various parts of their bodies.
Tommy and Dan were loaded up with concessions. They had hot dogs, churros, nachos, and beer. The concession people had to give them boxes and bags to carry all their food in.
Apparently, gold giblets were worth a lot in the monster world. The concession stands had to give me back a ton of silver sables and copper crabs in change. I was able to buy all of Tommy and Dan's food and beer with one gold giblet, and I still had silver sables and copper crabs leftover.
I had paid really well to get pit side seats to the fight. Each ticket was five gold giblets. I figured since this was our last night out together, and Tommy and Dan weren't going to be able to see anything this spectacular again, why not go all out?
And since I was going to be hitting more of these portals, it didn't seem like the money was going to stop flowing anytime soon. Assuming I finished more secondary objectives.
I was considering sending Tommy and Dan home with some gold giblets just as an apology for the loss of future band income. We didn't get a lot of gigs and we didn't make that much, but it felt like the least I could do after everything they had done for me.
They gave me a home when I ran away from the mafia. They gave me a job in the band, even when I sucked. And they stuck it out with me through thick and thin. They never once considered abandoning me. And here I was doing it to them.
We found our seats and got situated. We made sure to arrive early enough that Victoria and I could go sign up for participating in the fight. We went back into the corridors to find the sign up booth.
There were several booths and they all had a long line. I Victoria and I got in line behind what appeared to be a normal human. He was just wearing a hoodie and jeans and his face and body looked completely normal.
He was in shape, which was to be expected of someone signing up for a fight, but not monstrous in appearance at all. Maybe he had his sect bracelet set on all the way to human appearance. Or maybe he was one of those transformation monsters like a werewolf. Or maybe he was a vampire like us.
When I got to the front, the lady running the booth said, "Name?"
"Dylan Sanguis," I said.
"Power level?" She asked.
"Uh, I don't know. I'm new to this," I said.
"What monster type are you, honey?" She said.
"Vampire," I said.
"Ok, how far along your vampiric evolution path are you?" She said.
"I'm at the fifteenth level of the Vi Condensation Stage," I said.
"Ok, you're grade T," she said, putting a yellow bracelet around my wrist.
It looked high tech. It was metal and had a cinching mechanism similar to the transformation bracelets that I saw the dragons wearing, but these were metal. The ones the dragons wore were made of wood.
"Grade T?" I said.
"Yeah. The grades start at human level power at Grade Z and go all the way up to Dragon level power at Grade SSS. So while it sounds low, Grade T is actually perfectly appropriate for your level of power. Don't worry, vampires are rumored to be able to reach Grade SSS even, they just haven't existed long enough to reach that level. Where as Dragons have existed for millenia. You'll get there one day," she said with a kind smile.
"This bracelet is to prevent the use of lethal techniques like external blood manipulation and Vi weapon formation. You can still use touch based Vi blasts but that's the strongest you can go. While we love spectacle here at Monster Mash Matchups, we don't want any of our participants or audience members to die. Or die again in your case."
"You'll be in the low power level fight. All fights here start as a battle royale where everyone fights each other at the same time. Then the winner gets to fight the reigning champion of the power level to see if they can usurp the throne. The winner of the battle royale gets a decent amount of prize money, but the winner of the final bout gets more. If you kill any of your opponents or an audience member, you are immediately disqualified, so be careful out there." She gave me a wink.
I turned and walked away from the booth, just absorbing all the information she just threw at me. Victoria met up with me when she had gotten her bracelet.
"You ready to head back down to Dan and Tommy?" She said, with the fire of excitement in her eyes. This woman clearly lived to fight. She was having the time of her life, and I liked that.
When we got back to Dan and Tommy, Dan had already eaten three hot dogs. "These hot dogs are incredible! What do they put in them?"
"A djinn owns this arena. He's revolutionized the fast food industry down here with his creation of new spices," Victoria said.
"Creating new spices? What like magic?" Dan said.
"Yes. Djinn are magic incarnate. They can do things with magic that you can't even imagine," she said.
"Wow. That's incredible. I wish I lived down here," Dan said.
"Be careful what you wish for," Victoria said. "It's a hard life down here."
"I've lived a hard life. It can't be much worse than I've already experienced," Dan said.
"If you say so," Victoria said. "What about you Tommy? Do you think you could handle it down here?"
"No way man. Too many ways to die. I'll take my one night and cherish it forever, but you can only court death so many times before it kills you," he said.
"Well said," Victoria said. "I wouldn't be down here either if I didn't have to be."
"Me neither, but I'll make it work," I said.
I hadn't spent much time thinking about what would've happened if I hadn't become an omni-vampire and I really didn't want to. I was happier now than I had been before and I was good with that. No need to question fate.