Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
According to the Game of the Brave’s rules, being hit out of the ring meant failure.
Although Bear Slayer was still alive, only sustaining a bruise not suffering any substantial damage…
Before the eyes of many witnesses, his face was bruised and red. He gritted his teeth for a long time, but he could only kneel on one knee and bow to his opponent.
“Elephant Thrower, your bravery reminds me of the heroes who once glorified Picturesque Orchid Lake. Please allow me to fight alongside you in your upcoming journey. I will listen to your commands at all times and seize supreme glory for our most ancient and common ancestral spirit!”
According to the rules, if there were no old grudges… “Bear Slayer, you are the most powerful opponent I have ever met in my life, and you will be my best comrade in the Battle of Glory. Let us fight side by side and challenge the Gold Clan. We will unite all the armies in Picturesque Orchid Lake and march north, all the way. Let those cowardly rats in the land of Holy Light tremble under the iron hooves of Picturesque Orchid Lake’s warriors!”
His witness also praised, “This is truly a great unprecedented battle. The ancestral spirits will definitely be happy about your bravery and bless you!”
A happy ending like that could be considered a standard, classic, textbook Game of the Brave.
Following that, many of the witnesses would have an unbearable itch and jump into the weapons circle to challenge the other witnesses.
The two gladiators from earlier would become the new witnesses and watch more thrilling fights.
According to the rules, the loser would submit to the winner.
The winner would humbly say that it was a really tough battle and that he had to put in a lot of effort just to subdue the loser.
The witnesses would use flowery language to describe the fierce, grand, and thrilling fight—that way, the embarrassment and frustration of the loser would be minimized.
The most ideal ending would see the Turan warriors become friends after more than ten rounds of the game and have a clear understanding of each other’s strength.
If they had the same taste, they would drink and gamble wildly before gradually forming an intimate battle group. They would enter the battlefields and challenge other battle groups.
Once they were on the real battlefield, they would gather their resources and servants together and form a combat group that could effectively command and coordinate with each other.
Upon returning to their families, the names “Bear Slayer” and “Elephant Thrower” would be spread, allowing the Blood Hoof warriors from all directions to know about these people.
In the clan era that lacked modern means of communication, this method of passing on information by word of mouth and getting to know each other without fighting was perhaps the best way to make millions of unruly advanced orcs… organize themselves quickly.
It was probably the reason why the Turan people’s ancestors played the Game of the Brave.
However, just like any rule, law, and strategy, after a long period of erosion and infiltration from the highest level to the lowest level, they would definitely be distorted and even look completely different.
There was more than one way to play the Game of the Brave.
The classic game that was played on the crossroads, where everyone was happy, was only suitable for those who came from the local areas. It did not involve deep backgrounds, any family interests, and new or old grudges. There were just young warriors who simply wanted to make a name for themselves and make friends.
In order to fight for the water source, mineral veins, the habitat of totem beasts, the mandrake tree that could grow the highest grade golden fruit… many prominent clans had already formed a complicated grudge as early as a thousand years ago.
Whenever warriors from rival clans met each other on a narrow road, it would not be as simple as it seemed.
The ring of weapons was the luckiest outcome one could get.
It was not uncommon to have broken bones, broken heads, and even broken brains. It was not rare to be beaten to death by an opponent with intense techniques.
Once one stepped into the weapon ring, which was formed by knives, spears, swords, halberds, axes, and tridents, one would disregard life and death. No matter how miserable one’s defeat was or how serious one’s injuries were, the loser had to admit defeat.
At most, they would send someone onto the stage again with red eyes and issue a second challenge to the winner.
To be fair, they also had to provide the winner with sufficient totem beast flesh and secret medicine to recover their strength so that the winner could rest long enough—at least, under the witnesses’ watchful eyes, they had to do so.
Meanwhile, in the depths of the poor streets and shabby alleys beyond the tribal warriors’ view…
Some people disregarded all rules and attacked with underhanded methods, using everything they had. They would ambush every silly prey within their range of vision.
Some people formed cliques and engaged in large-scale armed combat with their mortal enemies.
Some people were ambitious and eager to snatch other people’s totem battle armors so that their own battle armors could continuously upgrade, evolve, and become stronger.
Others actually stole a few pieces of totem armors and impatiently integrated them into their own totem armors. However, they could not withstand the overly complicated totem power and could not go back thousands of years. The battle memories that were too brutal.
Their spiritual defense line was broken by the totem power. Their flesh and blood were hijacked by the totem armors, and they turned into monsters that seemed to wriggle and twitch crazily as if their flesh and blood were mixed with metal. In the form of Origin Warriors, they wandered the streets and alleys of Black-corner City and launched indiscriminate attacks on all living creatures that were detected by their killing intent.
In order to control and seize these Origin Warriors and make them a secret weapon, countless major clans sent their most elite forces to search for and seize the Origin Warriors.
There were battles between totem warriors and Origin Warriors…
There were battles between powerhouses from different clans in order to seize the Origin Warriors.
In these battles, new and old grudges were recalled, and new battles were born.
It was like adding fuel with secret medicine to the already burning Black-corner City.
Just like that, in just one day and one night, many places in Black-corner City were blasted into ruin by the powerful Blood Hoof warriors. These places were covered in blood and rotten meat.
In the whole of Black-corner City, the vast majority of the areas had been transformed into huge, high-speed, permanent arenas or meat grinders. The only exceptions were the temples of the great clans, the great arenas, the camps where the outsiders lived, and the slums where the rat people lived.
Mince flesh and bone spewed out of this dreg called “glory,” and it reeked of blood.
All the weaklings had fled to the temples, the arenas, the slums, and the labyrinth-like sewage pipes that covered the city’s underground area.
Those who still dared to act tyrannically and swagger through the city were probably groups of noble warriors.
They were vicious and merciless, carrying at least three to five lives on their backs. They even had strings of fangs, which had been pulled out of their opponents’ mouths, hanging on their waists. They were truly strong.
At this moment, Black-corner City had completely become a paradise for the strong and a paradise for the brave.
A trump card such as Ice Storm was like a fish in water in this paradise for the brave.
Since last night, she had taken her Mithril Ripper and left the Blood Skull Arena to go hunting.
However, Meng Chao had encountered some small problems.
Of course, he would not stay in the Blood Skull Arena and wait for death.
The Game of the Brave was simply a godsent opportunity to fish in troubled waters and take advantage of the situation.
He could not wait to sneak into the depths of the shabby streets and alleys to experience the local customs of Picturesque Orchid Lake.
The problem was, he had placed the remnants of the totem armor that he had snatched from Big Buck underground, below a rat residential area. It was in a very secretive abandoned sewage pipe.
Now, however, this rat colony’s abode had become a battlefield for two groups of clan warriors to engage in large-scale armed combat..
“Are you kidding me?”
Meng Chao was wearing a hooded cloak and an ebony mask, covering himself tightly. He hid in the shadows at the corner of a wall, staring intently at the group of Turan and wild boar people who were fighting each other. It was as if he was looking at two groups of naughty children who could not control their desire to destroy.
God knew how much effort he had to put in to avoid those clan warriors who had gone crazy.
It seemed that from the moment the smoke blew and the war drums sounded, all the clan warriors had gone crazy. They were more or less affected by the totem power, and their offensive strength had increased by several times.
Meng Chao did not want to be entangled with a group of heavy armored warriors without a totem armor.
The location he chose had originally been perfect.
It happened to be at the edge of a slum, where the rat people lived.
The rat people who lived there appeared to be “garbage bugs.”
As a result, the slum was smelly, and the sky was shrouded in a suspicious mist all day long.
Such a filthy place was not favored by clan elders, and very few powerhouses would go there.
Even if Meng Chao really encountered some mishaps during the process of installing the totem battle armor and leaked even the slightest bit of totem power, he did not have to worry about being discovered by the powerhouses.
After successfully absorbing the totem battle armor into his body and gaining the capital to participate in a higher level of the game, Meng Chao could also ask the garbage bugs there for information about the children of Bright Shell Village.
If he was lucky, perhaps he might find a few children of Bright Village there?
Who knew that after venturing through half of Black-corner City, he would discover that this place had become a playground for the clan warriors.
Maybe it was because there were not many strong people in the area, and there were no nosy people who would jump out to be witnesses.
That was the only way they could remain unbound by any rules. As such they were able to fight, destroy, kill, and destroy without any scruples, letting out their burning bestial nature to their heart’s content, right?
Hundreds of wild boars and wild Minotaurs were brandishing their maces and meteor hammers, dancing around the entrance of the abandoned sewage pipe. So, how was Meng Chao going to pass through the shadows of their blades and swords and enter the sewage pipe? How was he going to get his totem armor?
One should know that although the highly intelligent ancestors of the advanced orcs had left behind a sufficiently developed sewage system for them under the city…
After thousands of years of erosion, many areas of the underground space had been out of repair for many years. All of them had collapsed and become blocked.
Even if the area was barely maintained, the overall structure was getting weaker and weaker. Hence, it was on the verge of collapse.
Looking at the ground, which had been heavily smashed by the maces and meteor hammers, crisscrossing spider-web cracks were growing larger and wider. Meng Chao suspected that if these wild boars and Minotaurs continued to fight…. it was very likely that the entire ground would collapse and bury the totem battle armor that he had stored underneath in the bowels of the ruins