PANDORA. Hope Dies Last: ToG

A Higher Blade

Chapter 5

It has been almost two months on the airship and things have been progressing slowly; mostly because of the cowards who were holding the positions from ranks 3-16.

The cowards who were afraid that the first two, Arie Victoria and Atanasia, holed themselves in their comfortable hole and decided to wait it out as long as possible. After seeing first and second ranked' performances, they decided to not even try. To maximize their chance of survival, they formed a group to delay the time as much as possible. Unfortunately, it was quite effective.

Each one of them issued a challenge to the other in which they would wait an entire day before surrendering and as soon as the surrender was confirmed they would already have another challenge by their fellow coward to answer to.

This slow and disgusting cycle continued as week after week Victoria's hunt of lower ranked competitors piled up. I personally wanted to fight...and I was nearly there! As rank 17, the previously mentioned cowards avoided me like a plague. No matter how early I got up and send a request through my pocket, the only thing that showed up was the request being declined due to long waitlist or something like that.

All I could do was train. I watched the higher ranked candidates spar with each other and tried to grasp their skills as much as possible. I ran and ran and ran, continuing to develop my shinsu body reinforcement technique. It wasn't as effective as I wished it would be but in this situation, it was the best I could do.

Until finally...the day came. My pocket rang early in the morning and I got up in shock as I saw the message.

Arie Victoria (Rank 1) has issued a Challenge.

You may not decline or surrender

I've seen how she fought...it might as well have been a death sentence but after nearly a month without a proper fight, in all honestly I was anticipating the fight as much as I was scared.

There were still plenty of other candidates to pick off but I understood why Victoria picked me. I may not have been the strongest among the other candidates but I was the last real threat.

Atanasia wanted the position of princess but she wasn't blind enough to try and challenge someone who outclassed her. The cowards even formed a system to specifically avoid clashing blades with her. Of the ones who still wanted to give it a try, I was the only one who was any real danger at all...thus it seemed like she decided to take the steps necessary to remove me.

It was still a full day until I needed to face her but my heat was beating already, uncomfortably hot in my chest. I've watched Victoria fight a number of times and each time it didn't end well for the opponents...through an overwhelming difference in skill and power.

Flashback:

"Someone actually did it! Number 6 challenged Victoria!"

"Is she crazy? What's going on? When's the fight taking place??!"

"Right now! It's about to begin any moment!"

Hearing the commotion from outside, the doors on the hallway were opened almost immediately as the candidates (including myself) began making our way to the arena to see what would happen.

"Does she not know how strong Victoria is?" A candidate said

"It's pretty much already decided. As long as Lady Victoria doesn't decide to step down herself, nobody's going to take her place!" It seemed like this candidate was one of the servant factions of the family.