Bellagio raised her hands to the crowd to encourage their cheering, and when Tamako walked out onto the arena floor, Bellagio screamed to the crowd, “How would you like me to kill this cheating midget!”

The crowd started chanting, “Pain, Pain, Pain!”

Tamako was unsurprised when the arena quest appeared.

System Message:

Arena Quest: Make your opponent beg for mercy before killing them

Reward: 30 gold

Accept: Yes/No

Spectator Funding: complete

Opponent (s) Decision: accepted

Tamako had watched Jen’s mental “video” of Bellagio’s previous fights. She knew this woman wouldn’t show mercy. She enjoyed getting the crowd excited as she tortured her opponents. Tamako mentally accepted the arena quest, hoping Bellagio would feel the need to play up to the crowd in exchange for the quest the crowd just funded.

The match started, but Tamako didn’t move, keeping her sword in a defensive position with her left “injured” arm hanging down by her side. However, Bellagio slowly sauntered towards Tamako while grinning evilly, stopped about 10 feet away, and said, “You are sooo mistaken if you think I’ll take it easy on you. You’re going to beg for mercy repeatedly before I kill you!” She then coughed and snorted up and a large ball of snot and spit it onto Tamako’s chest. When Tamako flinched at being spit on, the crowd roared in approval. Bellagio raised her arms to the crowd, continuing her show. Tamako was ready to drop her act and try to bash the bitch’s brains in, but then Bellagio did what Tamako’s AI estimated, at a 30% chance, she might do again. Bellagio turned her back on Tamako, just like she did in an earlier match to mock her opponent and show the crowd her contempt for how weak and pathetic Tamako was. When Bellagio did this in her previous match, the man tried to attack her from behind, but Bellagio easily turned in time to block his attack, and then she kicked him in the balls so hard it caused him to double over and vomit.

Quicker than a breath, Tamako dropped her sword while pulling a spear from her storage ring, and with a grunt, threw it using every bit of her strength, aiming her throw for the opening between Bellagio’s helmet and the armor covering her back.

Bellagio was a much higher level than Tamako, and many opponents claimed her skin to be tougher than steel. However, Tamako’s spear contained enchantments by Sam for both extreme sharpness, piercing, and speed. A week earlier Sam had tried to explain to Tamako how one of his enchantments on the spear somehow redirected the air around it, almost eliminating any air resistance, and how he had to reinforce the strength of the spear because… but all Tamako heard was bla, bla, bla, as she had stopped listening to Sam and without warning turned and lightly threw the spear at the training dummy to test out its balance. Her jaw had almost hit the floor when her eyes could barely follow the trajectory of the spear as it flew so quickly to the target. Tamako had been surprised when Sam freaked out complaining they needed to test the spear outside of the city because if it broke the sound barrier everyone would hear it. Tamako had agreed to wait and test it more later, but she hadn’t really understood what Sam meant when he said it might make a lot of noise, but she grinned at the thought of how fast the spear would fly if she really tried to throw it hard. Tamako knew these types of enchantments were normally very expensive, but Sam’s were even more unique, because as long as she could channel mana into them, they didn’t have a cool-down before being used again. The down-side was, if you ran out of mana, they were no better than any ordinary weapon.

Tamako started to charge towards Bellagio with her full speed and force immediately upon throwing her spear, but just as she started to move a loud “BOOM!!!!” split the air, and a pressure smashed into Tamako, but she pushed through the distraction, lowering her head and shoulder, continued her charge to tackle Bellagio at the level of her butt. Tamako used her arms to reach around the front of Bellagio’s knees, and forced the big woman to fall to her stomach. As Bellagio was crashing to the ground, Tamako reached up feeling the mush of blood and bone, but Tamako wasn’t taking any chances keeping her head turtled into the center of Bellagio’ back, and as they both landed on the ground, Tamako pulled out a large heavy hunting knife and repeatedly stabbed Bellagio in her back, until she realized just a moment later ,that the woman wasn’t moving and her neck and head were mostly gone.

Tamako knew she could only use the spear one time in the tournament, without bringing too much unwanted attention to her, but for two reasons, that was no longer an issue. One, everyone was now paying way too much attention to her and her spear, and two, the spear was shattered into pieces all over the area floor with bits of Bellagio’s head.

“Holy shit Sam! Did her spear just break the sound barrier?”

“Don’t blame me! I told her we needed to first test it way outside of the city!”

"Why did you let her keep it, if you hadn’t tested it yet?”

Sam snorted in frustration as he replied, “Don’t blame me for this! After I showed it to her, she refused to give it back to me.”

The entire fight lasted less than 30 seconds, and most of that was Bellagio’s taunting of Tamako. The crowd had been cheering, screaming, and watching Bellagio so much, they almost completely missed what happened. The crowd was now stunned into silence, but only for a second while the realization of what just happened sank in, then there was an explosion of excitement as everyone was trying to explain what they just witnessed. Sam and Jen watched as Tamako stepped off the back of the giant woman with a giant bloody hunting knife, and saw her look forlornly at her broken spear for just a moment, before she quickly turned, and walked off the arena floor.

As Tamako left the arena, the crowd was screaming for her blood. Jen heard the lady with all the jewelry complaining to the guards, “That little woman cheated! She stabbed Bellagio in the back before the match actually started!” The guards ignored the woman and all the other complaints. Everyone knew The System wouldn’t allow any of the contestants to break rules in a City-arena recall tournament.

A man dressed in fine robes said, “I can’t believe the small woman destroyed such an enchantment! This isn’t even that important of a tournament!” Many in the crowd around him nodded in shocked agreement.

Sam glared at Jen for blaming him for the unwelcome attention, but then leaned over to her with a smirk and said, “Tamako sitting on top of that big woman, and stabbing her with that giant hunting knife, reminded me of that horror movie with that little doll “Chuckie” running around killing people.”

Jen cracked up with laughter at the visual of “Chuckie” and little Tamako stabbing the giant woman. Her laughter caused several in the crowd to give her the evil eye, which caused both Sam and Jen to laugh even harder.

Jen finally said, “O.K., O.K., we’ve got to stop laughing. We’re drawing too much attention!”

Sam pulled it together and said, “You’re right, boss. Let’s move to different seats.”