NABC Chapter 850: Empty Board
Chapter 850: Empty Board
Kaiden committed her.[3v1 Clash: Luna + Aria + Nyx vs Champion 5 (The Bladed Stalker).]
"Gremlin and the yandere scissoring each other in the fanarts would be fun to see, but who’s ready for the threesome pictures?" Nyx mused as she arrived beside them in the arena, spatial pressure distorting the air around her. "I wonder how they’d draw it... Who is on top? Maybe the gremlin gets double teamed? Hmm... It’ll probably be me who gets topped, huh?"
One more piece vanished from the board.
[Board State]
[♚ Claimant]
[Row 1: [] · [] · [] · [] · [] · []]
[Row 2: [] · [] · [] · [] · C8(E) · []]
[Row 3: [] · [] · [] · [] · [] · []]
[Row 4: [] · [] · [] · [] · [] · []]
[Row 5: [] · [] · [] · [] · [] · []]
[Row 6: [] · [] · [] · [] · [] · []]
[♔ Successor]
[Active Arenas: Vespera + Bastet vs C2 + C6 + C7 | Calypso vs C3 | Luna + Aria + Nyx vs C5 | Alice vs C4.]
[ELIMINATED: C1 (Siegehorn). ENSNARED: Scarlet (off-board).]
[Defender: 0 on board, 7 in arenas. Claimant: 1 on board, 6 in arenas, 1 eliminated.]
The Kaiju roared. Rawer than the arrogant bellow it had used to recall the Ravager from Scarlet’s cage, this one was torn from the chest of a creature that had watched its board dissolve in a handful of turns and struggled to keep up.
All six eyes locked on Kaiden through the dimensional barrier.
He stared back.
Every champion it had was locked in combat or dead, all except one. C8. The Shade, drifting alone at E2, the last piece the Kaiju could move.
Kaiden could see the decision forming behind those six eyes, slow and agonized, because the creature’s brain had never been built for choices like this.
It had two options.
Send C8 straight down column E to Row 6. The finish line. Four turns of unopposed advance with no defender piece on the board to stop it, and the match was over.
The Kaiju wins while every one of his girls bleeds in an arena they can’t leave.
Or send C8 to reinforce Champion 5 against the three women who engaged it.
Kaiden kept his face still because the Kaiju was watching him.
The Kaiju’s massive body shifted behind its board. Its claws scraped the ground, grinding deep furrows into the surface, and a low rumble built in its throat that was half growl and half confusion.
For a long moment the creature swayed between the two decisions with the visible distress of a predator being forced to think in a way its brain was never designed for.
[Claimant Turn.]
[Champion 8 advances to D3.]
It sent the Shade diagonally forward, toward the arena where Luna, Aria, and Nyx were going against Champion 5.
[Defender Turn.]
Kaiden drew two more cards. He banked both without looking at their faces. His hand was fat with cards now.
He had no pieces left to move. The turn passed in silence while the viewing panes burned with violence.
On one, Calypso was losing. The Ravager’s buffed forelimbs tore through her guard with speed she couldn’t match, and blood ran from a gash across her collarbone as the insectoid pressed her backward across the arena floor. She swung back anyway, Carnage buzzing, grinning through it.
[Claimant Turn.]
[Champion 8 moves to C3.]
The Shade crept closer to the arena, dark vapor spreading across the empty squares as the Kaiju’s burning eyes tracked it forward with a frantic intensity, willing the creature faster than one square per turn.
[Defender Turn.]
No pieces. No moves. Kaiden sat with a hand full of cards and an empty board while the Shade inched forward and his girls bled on every viewing pane.
Bastet was on one knee in the 2v3 arena, dominion flickering as the Rampart bore down on her, and Vespera’s shadow lattice snapped between them a half second before the tusks would have driven through the catgirl’s chest.
On another pane, Alice’s golden light hammered the Obsidian in pulse after pulse, each blast cracking the volcanic glass only for magma to bleed through and seal the fractures faster than she could widen them.
[Claimant Turn.]
[Champion 8 moves to B3.]
The Shade drifted into column B, close enough now that it was nearly within support distance of Luna’s arena, dark vapor reaching toward the combat boundary.
On Luna’s pane, three women fought with a coordination they’d never shown before, each of them aware their friends had taken on terrible fights to hand them this chance.
There was no bickering, not even a single hiss from the gremlin toward a certain well-endowed girl.
Then, on the last pane... Scarlet drove her fist into the crystalline band with everything she had.
Fire erupted from the impact, hotter than anything she’d produced since the cage formed, flames that had been compressed and building for the entire match pouring through every hairline crack she’d carved over the last several turns.
She hit it again, then again, knuckles splitting against the crystal and healing in the same breath, each strike harder than the last, the veins in her forearms blazing gold beneath her skin.
"BREAK ALREADY!"
The fractures raced outward in every direction, branching across the crystalline surface faster than the cage could seal them, and the fire in the cracks burned hotter than the crystal could repair.
"PIECE! OF! SHIT!" she screamed, every word punctuated with a mighty punch until the cage finally detonated.
Crystalline shards blew outward as Scarlet’s flames erupted in a pillar of golden fire that scorched the dimension’s ceiling, and the Flame Monarch stepped through the wreckage burning so bright the viewing pane couldn’t render her image steady.
[Ensnare status: BROKEN.]
She materialized on the board wreathed in fire from head to toe, every flame she’d been denied roaring back at once, and the first thing she saw through the heat haze was C8 standing right in front of her with its dark vapor recoiling from the light pouring off her skin.
She grinned. Manic and incandescent, all teeth and heat, the kind of expression that made seasoned dungeon divers take a step back.
"Golden boy!" She pointed at the Shade with a burning finger. "Send auntie in! She needs to break a hideous monster skull in or she’ll go mad!"
"Gladly."
Kaiden smiled.
[Clash initiated: Scarlet vs C8 (The Shade).]
Two pieces vanished into the arena, and the grid went silent.
[Board State]
[♚ Claimant]
[Row 1-6: Empty.]
[♔ Successor]
And just like that, the board was empty.
The outcome of the match was in the hands of the ladies from here on out.
Or that would be the case, if Kaiden hasn’t been banking his cards almost religiously and if he wasn’t the Paragon of Sin with the newly acquired Lust Stance. It was time to go all out.