## 242: Mercy Killing
Uma and Ethel both stood frozen in place, processing the irreversible damage that was done to their team by the ruthless action of one of their own.
“No… Why? George…” Uma muttered.
“Well, you were the one who wanted to die that badly, right!” Ethel shouted at George’s body after recovering first from her shock as she rationalized her new position on the team. “Who gave you the right to command us to our death!? You felt like you had the right to choose in our place who lives and who dies!? Only makes sense then that someone decided for you as well!”
“What have you done, Aldrich?” Uma asked quietly without even looking at Aldrich as she slowly walked with unsteady steps toward her fallen dead teammate.
“Woah there!” Aldrich grabbed the fallen crossbow before Uma was close enough to take it, despite the fact that the distraught leader did not so much as glance at the crossbow even once since George’s death. Aldrich then took aim at Uma’s head and with a smirk from underneath his handlebar mustache said, “George said that it’s fine to attack others without killing, right?”
Uma did not react to the threat in the slightest as she walked toward George’s corpse. Aldrich scoffed, lowered his aim, and shot an arrow through Uma’s left naked thigh.
“Ah!” Uma grimaced and fell to her knees, right at George’s lifeless face. She caressed her loyal teammate’s beard and moved a few locks of his red hair off his face.
“Well, looks like George was right,” Aldrich smirked as he loaded another arrow. “No rains of fire, no lightning bolts to strike me down. Don’t worry, though—I won’t kill you!”
Aldrich pulled the trigger and shot the second arrow through Uma’s other thigh. The arrow went through her right leg and impaled her lower leg that was under it, completely crippling the grieving girl. Uma did not even give Aldrich the satisfaction of a pained scream. And even though tears rolled down her face, those tears were not from the physical pain that the traitor inflicted.
“Hey, Ethel! What are you waiting for?” Aldrich called out to the other girl on his team while he loaded the third and last arrow into his crossbow. “Now’s your chance!”
“So that you can shoot me as soon as I kill Uma!?”
“To be honest, I don’t even need the crossbow to deal with you,” Aldrich chuckled. “I’ll cover you so that Uma doesn’t try anything funny. She’s only good at sword-fighting. With her legs crippled, even you can’t lose!”
“Everyone… Always… Underestimating me…” Ethel muttered with shaking fists at her side. “I’ve always been a disposable tool in all your eyes, haven’t I?”
“A tool? Hardly!” Aldrich shrugged. “More like a disposable cum-dumpster!”
“Don’t take me lightly!” Ethel screamed. “I’ll kill you both! First the arrogant bitch and then you! I’ll shove that arrow up your ass before I throw you over the edge!”
“You only ever were good at working your mouth,” Aldrich laughed.
“Work this!” Ethel screamed and dashed at Uma, only to change direction at the last moment and jump at Aldrich.
“AHHH!?”
“WHOAH!?”
Aldrich fired and missed the shot he fired at Ethel’s shoulder at near point-blank range. He screwed up so bad that he nearly shot Ethel right in the face. The arrow just nearly missed, nicking Ethel’s left cheek. But Aldrich did not miss it because he was surprised by Ethel’s sudden attack. He expected it. What neither he nor Ethel expected was for blinding bright light to beam out of Uma’s back, disorienting them both.
Aldrich and Ethel covered their eyes and averted their gaze from Uma who was still on her knees, with arrows embedded into her thighs. But out of a large, pure-white circle on her back, along with the light, a pair of majestic brown feathered wings emerged. A sudden, high-pitched cry followed, and a glorious bald eagle flew out of the light and circled the arena.
“Well, well, well, ladies and gentlemen, it looks like our games have attracted a summoner!” the announcer’s voice echoed through the mines as the eagle made another lap around the arena. “And that birdie does look delicious if I do say so myself! Unfortunately, don’t bother salivating as summoned animals cannot be eaten even if you tried to take a bite out of a live one. That summoner is just a cruel tease!”
“A-a-a summoner!?” Ethel screamed in disbelief as she tried to follow the eagle with her half-blinded eyes. “That’s impossibl—WHAAAAARGLH!!”
When Ethel finally located the bald eagle, it already descended onto her and sunk its claws into her thin neck, snapping it like a twig.
“That was a mercy killing,” Uma said as she finally lifted her head and glared at Aldrich with the eyes of a killer. “Do not expect to be gifted such a quick death!”
“FUCK YOUUUU!” Aldrich swung the crossbow like a bat to kill the immobile summoner while he still had a chance. But the crossbow was easily ripped out of his hands by Uma’s eagle.
“Ghah!” Aldrich fell on the ground from the sheer force of the impact while the eagle flew over the edge of the arena and threw the accursed weapon into the abyss.
Meanwhile, Number Fifty grabbed the arrow that went through her thigh and pierced her lower leg and pulled on it just enough to pull it out of her lower leg. She then slowly rose to her feet, with arrows still in her bleeding thighs. As Uma rose to her feet she looked at Aldrich and declared, “I, Uma Sophia Anderson, do solemnly swear that your unforgivable treachery against one of your own will be repaid tenfold in indescribable agony! Repent and beg for mercy! For you shall receive none!”
“If you think that your little—GRAH!”
The eagle knocked Aldrich back on the ground before he could rise up, sunk its hooked beak into his back, and pulled a piece of muscle, tearing it out with a loud snap.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!” Aldrich screamed in pain, unable to imagine that the true torture had not even begun.
## 243: Punishment Until the End
“Oh my!” the announcer gasped theatrically as she and the others watched Uma’s bald eagle rip chunks of flesh out of Aldrich, her former teammate, and clansman, in all the gory detail on the big screen. “Adding to what I said about not being able to eat a summoned creature: you best be careful when you find yourself on the wrong side of a summoned beast, lest you find yourself to be the one on the dinner plate!”
“Yeah, no mercy for traitors!” some cheered in the crowds.
“Traitors!?” someone asked in surprise. “This is a death game! Everyone for themselves!”
“How is he still alive though?”
“He’s still trying to fight back, too!”
Aldrich indeed desperately tried to defend himself from the eagle, rolling on the ground, flailing his limbs, screaming, and kicking. Not that it helped. Between both his hands, Aldrich already lost four fingers. The eagle simply bit the fingers off one at a time. It did not so much toy with its prey as it seemed to methodically torture the man, never landing a lethal strike that would kill or incapacitate him.
But even as the crowds cheered the brutality of Aldrich’s undoing, while the fighting went on across the arena, as minutes passed, each time the big screen returned to show Aldrich, still alive and still mutilated, piece by piece, several spectators looked at each other with signs of unease.
“And we already have our first winner of this round!” Thelicia announced.
A pale-skinned girl in a fancy dark blue outfit, with dark shoulder-length hair and crimson eyes, popped a pink bubble at her lips and looked up when she heard the announcer. Number Forty stood in a puddle of blood, looking over a pile of guts, meat, and limbs that were all smeared across the rocks.
“Number Forty! Please sit down and take a rest by the fire!” Thelicia said. And as soon as she said that, a line of fire spread from the nearest masked man to Number Forty and made a circle around the girl, rapidly growing in height. The ring of fire was about twenty feet in diameter and the wall of fire surrounding the girl was high enough to completely obscure the girl from other competitors.
However, despite the proximity to the fire that completely surrounded her, it did not look like Number Forty was in any major discomfort, once again confirming the magic nature of the flames in the Forge of Champions.
As time went on, while others in the arena fought for their lives, Aldrich’s screaming and crying attempts at self-defense grew more pathetic, driven purely by his body’s automatic response of self-preservation and desperation to do anything to alleviate the pain.
“Bwahah! Look! He literally pissed himself!”
“Isn’t that just more blood?”
“No! Are you blind!? Look closer!”
“I… I rather not.”
Before long, Aldrich’s resistance devolved to feeble attempts to crawl away from the eagle toward the nearest edge of the arena. But the blood-thirsty torture eagle would have none of it. It sunk its claws into Aldrich’s legs and kept him pinned down, dishing out more damage as he broke his remaining fingernails against the rocks, trying to pull away.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Uma asked, taking unsteady steps toward the traitor while her legs continued to bleed. But the girl ignored the pain. No, she blocked it off. And not just her own pain. She wanted to be close to Aldrich, she needed to see and hear his punishment. “Do not think that you can escape this that easily!”
The eagle let go of Aldrich’s leg, an opportunity that Aldrich latched onto as he tried to get up and run, without even the ability to think or realize how impossible it was that he would be allowed to go anywhere. He just wanted to escape the pain. But the false hope was dashed, he was pinned down again and the eagle used its beak to pluck one of Aldrich’s eyes out right out of the socket and swallow it whole.
“AAAAAAAAAAAAARGGHHH! Pleaseeeeee! Stop!” Aldrich wept as his tears mixed with blood. “I’m sorry! I was wrong! I’ll do anything!!”
The cheers slowly turned to nervous chuckles amongst those in the crowd that followed this scene.
“Take a look at the time above our heads while you still can,” Uma said without the slightest hint of unease or compassion. The fire numbers showed that a little more than twenty-two minutes remained until the end. “Until that time runs out, you will not be granted the mercy of death.”
Uma’s voice was colder than ice, her eyes looked lifeless, despite the fires around the arena reflecting in them. She did not get off on the torture, neither was she sickened by it. She simply was determined to inflict as much pain on the back-stabbing, cowardly traitor as was possible.
## 244: Inspired Solutions
“Congratulations to those that predicted correctly one of the first winners of this round!” Thelicia announced. “Though a little unexpected that anyone would outpace the crowd favorite, Number Seven, considering that he wasted no time in dispatching his first opponent. But we can’t blame the man if both of his other potential opponents turned out to be sniveling cowards! And they looked like somewhat promising warriors! You really can’t judge a book by its cover.”
“It’s… It’s fine!” the tall and slender leopardkin tried to reassure his duel opponent, the bearkin, though it wasn’t clear which of the two needed the reassurance more, and whether there were any words in this world that could help them regain their courage. No matter which of them would win the duel, they would have to face Number Seven. “Fighting to the death to see which one of us dies by his hand while the sick fuck watches!? Fuck that! As long as our duel doesn’t end, he can’t do shit!”
“If both of us would die by his hand anyway, might as well take him down with us, huh?” the bearkin reasoned. “You hear that, you big fuck! We ain’t gonna be some cheap show for you!”
“I see,” the mountainous Number Seven said calmly while he looked at the torturous agony that Number Fifty’s bald eagle delivered to her teammate. Number Seven then picked up the large square shield off the ground and moved toward his two beastkin teammates.
“The fuck you doing?” leopardkin asked and took several unsteady steps back. “If you kill us, you’re dead meat anyway!”
“I know,” Number Seven said and swung his long ‘Cleaver’ weapon across the leopardkin’s kneecaps with blunt side forward.
“KYAAAAA!!” leopardkin fell over.
Despite the casualness of Number Seven’s swing, the power behind the attack was enough to break a knee. Number Seven swung around and delivered similar treatment to the bearkin’s kneecaps with the square shield, slamming it repeatedly against the bear’s knees even while the bear was on the ground. With another swing of the cleaver, Number seven ruined the leopardkin’s other knee, before the coward could crawl away.
“This doesn’t have to be more complicated than it is,” Number Seven said as he grabbed the leopardkin’s leg and dragged him closer to the bearkin. “I will stop torturing you as soon as either one of you decided to fulfill your duty and kill your respective opponent.”
The bearkin attempted to bite Number Seven’s leg, but “the fridge” slammed his square shield across the bearkin’s jaw, breaking it, and countless teeth along with it. He then picked up one of the broken teeth and jammed in under a fingernail of the leopardkin, beginning the torture of his potential opponents, inspired by a certain righteous girl.
In parallel to those gruesome events, Olivia kept dodging attack, after attack from her beastkin opponent that she selected precisely for the reasons that she now struggled with him: he was damn strong, if not as fast as her. But speed alone was not enough, as could not approach him to deliver a fatal blow, and her ranged attacks were easily defended.
Olivia bent backward, as the sword wielded by Number Thirty-three swung over her head. In this compromising position, she did not even have enough chance for a counterattack unless she pointlessly expended her dwindling arsenal for a shot that her opponent had already proven to be capable of easily deflecting. Instead, Olivia kept her distance, hoping to tire out the stronger opponent.
“Stop running around and fight me like a man!!” Number Thirty-three screamed in frustration, swinging his sword around like he would try to swat a fly.
Taking possession of the sword proved easy enough for Number Thirty-three, the biggest of the three beastkin that Olivia ended up teaming up with. The other two beastkin, Number Three and Number Forty-five, as formidable as they looked, ended up lacking in resolve. Even though they both looked like they could have a chance against Number Thirty-three, one thunderous roar was enough to make them hesitate and rethink their chances. They did not dare to get injured and end up in an unfavorable situation for their own duel. And such hesitation was all that was needed for Number Thirty-three to secure the single weapon that was left for their team.
Even now, Numbers Three and Forty-five kept changing blows in a hand-to-hand brawl that left them both scratched up and bloody. As Olivia kept avoiding her opponent she never strayed too far from her other two “teammates”.
“AARGH! Annoying!” Number Thirty-three screamed, increasingly frustrated. He had the strength to crush Olivia like a bug, he just needed to catch her!
____
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Source: reddit.com/r/eroticliterature/comments/ttydan/new_life_as_a_lewd_futanari_succubus_ch_242244