Read Novel Full Chapter 589: Having a Blast
Chapter 589: Having a Blast
The first game they found was called Ruinball.
Nobody explained the rules properly. A man at the entrance handed them each a dense sphere of compressed energy and pointed at a massive rotating arena of floating stone pillars, some moving fast and some slow, all of them rigged to explode when hit hard enough. The objective, as far as anyone could tell, was to destroy more pillars than the opposing team before the whole structure collapsed into the pit below.
Simple enough.
Gopu hurled his first sphere before the starting bell finished ringing and took out three pillars at once, the chain reaction blasting a shockwave that knocked two players on the opposite team clean off their platforms. The crowd behind the barrier glass went absolutely berserk.
After that it stopped being a game and started being something closer to a controlled disaster.
Fraisea moved through the arena like she had springs in her legs, hopping between platforms that were actively crumbling, hitting pillars on the way past without even slowing down. Ainen took a different approach — he found the single largest pillar remaining in the structure, the one everything else was anchored around, and hit it so hard that the resulting collapse wiped out a third of the arena in one go. The other team’s captain turned to look at him with an expression somewhere between fury and admiration.
Almond and Lily worked together without needing to talk about it, moving in opposite directions around the outer ring and funneling the remaining pillars toward the center where Benedict stood waiting. Benedict did not throw anything. He just hit the pillars with his halberd when they drifted close enough, each swing sending rubble cascading down into the pit with a sound like a building coming apart.
The arena lasted six minutes. Their team won by forty-two points.
The man at the entrance looked at his score board and then back at them. "You lot are banned from the competitive bracket."
"Respectfully," Galvaren said, wings folded, still smiling.
They found the Mirrorfield Maze next, on the far side of a bridge that arched over a river of slow-flowing light.
It was enormous. A three-dimensional labyrinth built entirely from shifting reflective panels that rearranged themselves every thirty seconds, the whole structure suspended in mid-air and roughly the size of a city block. The objective was to find the core at the center and press it before anyone else. Teams of four. Twelve teams total in the current rotation, all dropped in at different entry points at the same time.
Lily and Clovelle went in together. Almond followed with Ainen.
The inside was dizzying in a way that took a moment to process — every surface reflected not just your image but slightly wrong versions of it, angles that didn’t match, reflections that moved a half-second behind. The panels rearranged with a deep resonant hum and suddenly the passage you came from was a wall and the wall beside you was a path.
Clovelle figured out the pattern in four rotations. She watched the panels move, tracked the intervals, and started calling directions quietly and precisely while Lily followed without question. They cut through the maze with the calm efficiency of two people who’d learned to trust each other completely.
Ainen got separated from Almond inside the first two minutes.
"I meant to do that," he said loudly, to no one.
Almond reached the core second, behind a young woman from another team who burst out of a side passage at a dead sprint and slapped the core with both hands and screamed triumphantly at the ceiling. He arrived two seconds later and laughed.
Ainen emerged from an exit panel on the complete opposite side of the maze seven minutes after everyone else and said absolutely nothing about it.
By then the sky above the entertainment district had shifted to deep evening, the dome illusions rolling out twin moons and a star river so dense it looked almost solid. The air was warmer somehow, or maybe that was just the crowd, which had thickened on every bridge and platform until the whole upper ring of the city hummed with a kind of low shared electricity.
They found a stretch of food stalls tucked between two arenas and ate standing up — grilled things on skewers, small bowls of something warm and deeply spiced, pastries that dissolved strangely on the tongue and left behind a faint sweetness that lasted. Saffa found one vendor selling cups of a chilled drink that glowed faintly green and tasted, somehow, like a thunderstorm. She bought one for everyone and refused to explain how she knew it would taste like that.
Nyssara held hers and looked at it for a long time before drinking.
"It’s not poison," Saffa told her.
"I know." She drank. A long pause. "It’s very good."
The dancing found them more than they found it.
Three platforms connected by short bridges, each with a different music current running beneath the floors. The floors themselves responded to movement, patterns of light blooming up through the glass under your feet wherever you stepped. The crowd was thick and warm and already deep into the night’s energy by the time the group arrived.
Saffa walked straight in without breaking stride.
Gopu lasted about thirty seconds watching before he followed, and then it was impossible to look away from him because he danced with the same complete commitment he brought to everything — technically uncertain, entirely joyful, absolutely impossible to ignore. The floor lit up gold wherever he moved.
Clovelle resisted for a while, arms folded, watching with an expression she clearly meant to read as unimpressed. Fraisea appeared beside her, said something, and Clovelle gave a single quiet laugh before she was walking in and she was actually good, light on her feet, moving with a precision that made sense once you knew who she was.
Benedict danced with the careful deliberateness of a fortress that had recently decided movement might be worthwhile. His floor section lit up in deep red. Someone nearby gave him a wide berth and then decided to stay and watch instead.
Galvaren just spun once, wings catching the light from below in eight long arcs of silver and storm-grey, and a small circle cleared around him that was not from fear but from people wanting to watch.
Almond and Lily drifted to the edge of the second platform where the music was a bit lower and the lights beneath the floor cycled slower, and they stayed there for a long time, dancing in their own world before joining with others and going wild.
There were many groups, but one group consisting of mixed races of human, elves, and blue-trunked beastfolks near Almond and others saw them going wild while taking more space and challenged them.
"Y’all suck at dance!"
"What? How dare you spout such nonsense?!" Galvaren roared.
"People are witness! Let’s see who dances better!"
"Get your ass on the stage." Drunk Sylvia made a large wooden platform of braided vines and stood akimbo while staring them.
Hiccup
"Well well well, what am i seeing here?! ANOTHER DANCE BATTLE!"
Suddenly, a two-headed pink pig-faced guy sitting on a disk-like vehical arrived while surrounding by colorful prismatic balls.
The balls suddenly shifted in colores as the music suddenly changed and became more of a deep house music.
"Let’s go! Who goes first?!"
Suddenly, two blue-trunked elephant beastfolks jumped on the stage and began grooving real smooth, hitting all beats with their footwork, and moving their upper body smoothly, while their trunk added to the groovy style.
Neon shadows on your skin
City breathing slow within
Velvet silence, hearts collide
Feel the current pulling tide
Footsteps echo, close to mine
Lost inside the aftertime
No tomorrow, no excuse
Just the midnight between us
"Well damn, this is going to fun." Almond grinned. "We need more drinks for this."
"I’ll cook a batch fast!" Ainen flew up and began brewing while grooving.