The office space was filled with disgusted mutters as everyone had their eyes on the large monitor that was still focusing on Auclair. On the monitor it showed him bending over Hall's corpse again, cutting open their chest.
Hero entered the office with a pale face as he walked over to his son.
"Turn it off."
"What?" Alex looked over at his father.
"Turn off the recorder, and delete all the footage." Hero spoke urgently.
"Why?"
Hero grabbed his son's arm and dragged him into Alex's new office. He pressed a button and the room became soundproof.
"Yohr escaped. The board absolutely cannot find out about this, or we will go under."
"What?! How the hell did that happen?"
"I'll tell you later, for now, delete the footage from the match and delete any security footage from the vault. We need to delay them finding out about Auclair for as long as possible. Wait! Show me the footage from that fight, he was standing over a dead body, right?"
"Yeah." Alex quickly walked over to his computer and pulled up the recorded footage.
They played the games for the world to see, but because blood sports weren't exactly advertiser friendly, they generally only showed matches that focused on the treasure rather than people killing each other.
But that didn't mean there weren't exceptions to the rule. People were obsessed with high ranking matches, death battles or not.
"Here." He turned his screen towards his father who began absorbing every detail. After the short fight ended, his father finally seemed to relax as he fell back into a chair in relief.
"It worked. It fucking worked!" He began laughing with pure joy.
"What worked?" Alex questioned.
"When you were growing up, do you remember the question you used to always ask me? What happened to your body? How'd you get those scars? Where'd your arm go? On and on? Well its time I finally told you.
"The board doesn't believe me. Auclair is forgotten to time itself, but my body is a proof of his existence. Before now, his final appearance was in the age of fire, where the gods blessed their creations. We expanded far and wide until we eventually searched for the missing Auclair. Even the gods were helping us to find him, they wanted him gone.
"Years passed, and the gods kept blessing my body to become their warrior. Eventually we found him and even after all that time, even with the combined help of the gods, we failed miserably. So we changed our tactics and sealed him. We were all on the verge of death, but we were successful. Before he was sealed completely, I used a specially crafted weapon made by a long dead dwarf. I stabbed him in his heart, right where his core was. At the same time he ripped off my arm."
"His core?" Alex asked.
"The true heart of a god my son. Do you really think it'd take three hits for a god to kill a stronger than average mortal? He is weak, very weak, and it's our chance to smother him in his crib using the trials."
"Why don't you just go and kill him?"
"I am old and frail, and have long since lost the blessing of the gods. But enough of that. Delete the footage. I have no doubt that he'll continue the trial once he finds out about the champion's wish."
"He has already."
Hero stood up and grinned at his son.
"Then we will have ample opportunities to kill him, once and for all."
***
Auclair stuck his hand into hall's chest after cutting it open and dug around a bit.
'Has being in that abyss really made me so hungry that I need to eat this mortal's heart?'
As Auclair walked slowly to the city on the horizon, he bit into Hall's heart.
"Bad people still taste as awful as I remember though. Guess some things never change." He muttered as he began lamenting about his past where he'd eat stars for breakfast. After eating the whole heart however, he still felt famished.
So after cleaning himself, he began investigating. He looked into his soul dimension at his core.
"That little pipsqueak- it wasn't just a physical attack?" Back when he was sealed, he had gotten stabbed. He was more preoccupied with repairing his physical heart than noticing his cracked core. The abyss also seemed to stop his hunger so he never really had a reason to look at it either.
'It must've slowly been sapping my strength. I need to fix it as soon as possible.'
He stopped peering into his soul and found the city was finally getting closer as he started walking into it's outskirts.
'I hope you're still alive out there you ancient bastard. I'll make sure you don't even get to go to the afterlife.'
He stopped thinking about the future and focused on the present. He was infinitely weaker than he was before, so he needed to start thinking about the trial, lest he get kill by his own hubris.
The townsfolk around him were all wearing clothes from his era, it was obvious that they were all commoners. They eyed him with suspicious faces, despite his clothes not being much fancier than theirs.
He had taken too long in getting here so they had probably seen all sorts of people wearing clothes far better than theirs. In other words he wasn't the first contestant here.
"For the last time, there's no goddamn treasure here!"
Auclair stopped walking and looked across the street when he suddenly heard someone yell. It seemed they were arguing with two contestants who had yet to enter the city walls.
"You."
Auclair felt someone poke his back so he turned. Before him stood an old woman with dirt all over her face.
"You foreigners best clear out. I don't know what you've been told, but there's nothing here. No treasure, just stale bread and dirt."
"I'm not here for a treasure, I'm from up north." Auclair lied, since his clothes were similar, it wouldn't be hard to blend in.
"From Cliffton?"
"Yes, it seems a lot of people are traveling to your city. I'm just here to visit an old friend, but what's this about treasure?"
"I dunno much myself." The commoner admitted, "But there's nothing but poverty and famine here. After the new king took over, we've had nothing but problems."
"How so?"
"Like I said, poverty and famine. There's also talk of the king starting a war! Damned fool."
"Mother! Watch your voice, you can't trust anyone these days." A younger lady yelled in a hushed tone.
"I'm too old be bothered with that. Throw me away to rot for all I care, its probably better than out here." The old lady turned to Auclair, "It's better in the city walls but not by much. You know, I bet there really is a treasure and the king's gone mad."
She laughed.
"Thank you for your time, my friend is waiting for me so I must get going."
"Oh, of course, of course. Heh, heh, heh." She turned away and continued cackling.
Auclair frowned and when he turned back across the street, the two other contestants were gone. So he decided to make his way towards the wall's entrance to the inner city.
Soon he saw a large gate with plenty of people going in and out. There were currently some merchant carts being investigated by the guards. Auclair got into the long line of people without any complaint since he wanted to remain inconspicuous.
While waiting, he saw the two contestant's from earlier blending in with a crowd not to far from the line. Now that he was looking closer, it seemed to be a man and a woman.
'They probably formed a team.' Auclair concluded when they suddenly started moving.
They stealthily began following a couple as they walked out of a small tavern and headed down an empty alleyway, presumably to their house. Soon after, the two left the alley wearing the couple's clothes.
They headed to the back of the line that Auclair was in and patiently waited as well.
As Auclair got ever closer to talking with the guards before entering the city, he began forming a simple plan to skip over the questions.
"Oi. You there, come 'ere." Like clockwork, a chubby guard called out to Auclair.
"Sir, I've no doubt you've heard of all the foreigners?" Auclair spoke politely.
"Eh? What of it?"
"Back in the line, there are these two people I saw follow a couple into that alleyway over there. When they walked out, they were wearing their clothes."
"Who? Point them out."
Auclair turned and lifted his finger.
"Hey." A lady wearing a hat spoke quietly to the man beside her.
"What?"
"That person over there just pointed us out to a guard." She frowned.
"I see, I thought we were more subtle. Plan B?"
"Exactly what I was thinking. Grab my hand."
Not a second later, a chain of fire shot out from the crowd and hit the side of the city's walls. It began retracting into the woman's hand and it lifted the two of them up into the sky.
"Guards!"
"Oh the heavens!"
The crowd instantly erupted into a confused frenzy. But they weren't the only confused ones.
While Auclair slipped past the guards who were now chasing the others, his mind was lingering on their magic. They absolutely shouldn't have been able to use magic if the world was still the same as before his sealing.
"You! Stop! Show me your citizenship card!" Suddenly a group of guardsmen came out and shouted at him. Most ran past him to try and find the other two, but a handful stayed.
'Guess my clothes were a still little too noticeable.'
He quickly debated between killing the guards and just going with them. Ultimately he didn't want to cause a scene any more than he had too until he was familiar with his surroundings. The fact that they were in the middle of the street didn't help either.
"I don't have one." He admitted.
"Then show us your city pass."
"I don't have one of those either." He admitted once more.
"Geoffrey, place him under arrest and put him with the rest of the foreigners." A guard commanded.
Everyone looked towards Geoffrey when he didn't move.
"O-oh."
He quickly moved ahead of the rest of the guards and arrived before Auclair. He began softly speaking to him while purposefully fumbling the handcuffs..
"Hey, you're a contestant right? Tap your foot if yes."
Auclair's eyes narrowed in suspicion but he tapped his foot.
"They're starting to catch on to me. Kick me and run down that alley. There's a way to climb to the roof, from there-"
"What's taking so damn long?!"
"Tsk. Just kick me and go before I have to arrest you."
Auclair sighed before swiping his leg under Geoffrey's feet, causing him to collapse to the ground. He turned and bolted down the alleyway that he had mentioned.
"Ugh…"
"Stop him!"
"Go!"
"Someone stay behind and help Geoffrey!"
As everyone began chasing Auclair, a single guardsman picked Geoffrey up.
"The hell's wrong with you lately?"
Geoffrey straightened himself before hitting the guard in the throat, causing them to fall to the floor choking. Afterwards, Geoffrey started running away while all the citizen's stared wide-eyed at the scene. They quickly scrambled to call for more guards.
"What a clusterfuck." Auclair mumbled as he reached the end of the alleyway. There was in-fact a ladder there to the roof, but Auclair didn't take it.
Instead he turned and spoke to the guards. They were a much more obscure place now.
"I don't know what's happening in this city, but whoever that Geoffrey guy is isn't who you think it is."
"Don't try to weasel your way out of this with a silver tongue."
"Weasel my way out?" Auclair laughed, "I'm just letting you all know. Fate is telling me that 'Geoffrey' is a good man and his role hasn't been fulfilled yet. As for all of you, fate is telling me that you're all disgusting pigs, and coincidentally your threads of fate are ending."
With a grin he spoke, "Meaning I get another meal."