Ashtoreth rose into the air, scanning the seats that rose around the arena. They were almost completely empty, except for some scattered groups of a few people each.

She tried to find War. She wanted to fix him with an intense stare before she was warped away.

But she didn't find him quickly enough. The world darkened, rushing away from her before she was standing once again in the ballroom where everyone had seemingly aggregated.

A cheer went up from her particular group of humans, making it easy for everyone else in the room to find them and stare.

A new message from the System appeared.

{The second round of the election has been decided and will take place in 9:59.}

{Mark Santiago vs Volodymyr Petrov}

"Knew you could do it, Sunshine," said Kylie.

"Honestly, I didn't think it would be so fast," said Frost.

"Oh, I barely made it," said Ashotreth. "Another ten seconds and I'd have been toast. Or, I mean… I guess I shouldn't have used a food metaphor, but you get it."

"That bad, huh?" said Frost.

"It's not the draining aura, it was his unavoidable [Theft of Power] spell. Enough applications and I'd have had no way to stop him from just bleeding me out and then executing me." She shrugged. "War is probably going to take a lot longer."

"Looks like you'll get some time to wait," said Frost. "If this has anything like normal brackets, he'll be getting someone else who hasn't fought yet for his round."

"Which won't be pretty, I'm guessing," said Kylie. "Next round is just two normal humans—uh, you okay, Ashtoreth?"

"No," she said, frowning. "But I can't figure out why." A strange, discomforting buzz had begun to build inside her, growing more and more noticeable by the second. It almost reminded her of…

"Oh," she said, slapping her forehead. "I forgot to resummon Dazel after I popped him for some hellfire. Sec."

Her contract compelled her to summon him again whenever he wasn't around.

She held her non-gauntleted wrist up to her mouth, then used one of her canines to open up a vein like it was the slide of a zipper before dripping the blood onto the ground around her a circle before sitting down in the center of it.

"Gee," said Kylie. "What a completely normal thing to do in the middle of a conversation."

"I hope so," Ashtoreth said, flashing her a smile. "I'd be super embarassed if someone thought I was abnormal."

While she conjured her familiar, the others spoke about the fights to come.

"So are the different countries trying to control the monarchy individually?" Hunter asked. "Or are they just throwing a lot of humans into the mix to increase their collective chances?"

"My guess?" Kylie said. "The first one, but they're pretending it's the second."

"I'm not looking forward to watching people kill each other in an arena," said Frost.

"Yeah, it'll be horrible," said Kylie, sounding totally unmoved. "But also boring. I mean, the last fight ended with Ashtoreth ripping a guy's head off after impaling him with her magic scythe—what's some SAS douche who's been level 300 for two days going to do to top that?"

"I'm really curious, actually," said Hunter. "What are the other humans going to fight like? We've got… a year of practice along with all the knowledge we've stolen from eating people. They've got lifetimes of experience fighting, but in completely different settings."

"I hate to admit, but I doubt they'll be very impressive," said Frost. "A lot of their training is about working within a unit. Things like marksmanship and hand to hand don't really translate well to this new world. No doubt they're intelligent, hardworking people with whole lot of capability for violence in them… but they haven't had the time to translate those things into capability with the System yet."

At that moment, Ashtoreth finished summoning Dazel. He appeared on the ground before her, then started to stretch. "Oh good," he said, looking at Ashtoreth. "You won. Things looked a little tight there for a second."

"Question," said Kylie. "If Dazel's out here, then where are the horses? Wouldn't you think that War and Famine would have brought their namesake companions with them?"

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"Maybe the hotel doesn't allow horses," she said. "It's themed after the 20s, right? Not the most inclusive of times." She peered down at Dazel. "Actually, mention of the horses reminds me of something."

Dazel seemed to slightly recoil from her gaze. "Uh. What is, it, boss?"

"For our fight with War. How long would it take you to set up our trap?"

"I don't know," said Dazel. "Thirty seconds? But that's uninterrupted. What happens when War and his buddy Warhorse notice that I'm drawing a runic circle on the ground?"

"Yeah, I figured."

"Look, I can't blame you for wanting to eat his heart. Those sword skills…."

"It's not those," she said. Then she smiled and looked up at the ceiling, digging a heel into the ground. "Though, obviously, I mean those are pretty nice. I just want to check some things. I want to know what Heaven's up to." She frowned. "I keep thinking about the humans."

"What's that got to do with War's heart?" Dazel asked.

"Well, think about it like this. What would you say Famine's aspects were?"

"Uh… [Drain], obviously. [Companion], obviously. [Spellcasting], since he had a warp blocking spell and that area-of-effect drain was definitely a spell."

"Okay," said Ashtoreth. "So where was he getting his starting [Dexterity]? Sure, his race is granting high stats. But a high amount of evenly distributed stats, like mine. Archangels aren't [Dexterity] pures or we'd notice with the others."

"What are you saying?" Dazel asked.

"None of his class aspects are mainly [Dexterity], but he was starting off with speed to rival Hunter. I should have had more [Dexterity] than he did."

"You think he had [Nimble]?"

"He was alarmingly fast when we fought at the nexus," said Hunter. "Perhaps their companions come from their race like Dazel does, and not an aspect?"

"The horses are simple," said Kylie. "But they're not nearly as weak as he is."

"I appreciate you too, Ms. Addams," Dazel said.

Kylie scoffed. "How's this: I'll give you a grovelling apology if you solo War's horse when Ashtoreth fights him."

"Not how this works," said Dazel. "See, I provide Ashtoreth with knowledge, which she then uses to defeat both enemies by herself. Despite how it looks, knowing is half the battle."

"That's not what that last fight looked like," said Kylie. "See, what it looked like was that you ran away immediately, then got torn open at the end because Ashtoreth needed some resources."

"Let's get back on track while we've still got time," Ashtoreth said.

This garnered everyone's attention almost immediately; Ashtoreth was rarely the one asking them all to be more serious.

"A thought I had in the middle of my first fight with War," she said. "I remember thinking that his aspects were obvious [Companion], [Armament], and then either [Might] or [Protection]... but then I also thought that maybe somehow he had both of those last two." She frowned. "At the time, I was thinking more along the lines of what Hunter suggested. The companions were highly-upgraded abilities that might have come with their classes, or something. Every horsemen gets a horse."

"But now you're thinking they're like us," Frost said.

"Don't get me wrong—it's believable the other way, too," she said. "A strong companion ability from an S-grade class? Makes sense to me. Even so… what does it mean if they do have four aspects?"

"Earth is special to both Heaven and Hell," said Dazel. "You think maybe that could have something to do with why? That humans are related to angels, somehow?"

She shrugged. "Could be. It makes sense to me, at least. But right now I'm just speculating." She sighed. "I want to eat War's heart," she said. "I need to devour an angel's mind to know for sure."

"But they just poof away when you kill them," said Frost. "I didn't even think they have hearts."

"They're tethered," Dazel said. "Some people use the word anchored instead. Their souls are returned to a vessel when they die. Like a phylactery, but it's far costlier to resurrect them. Or at least, that's what we assume."

"The tether could be interfered with," said Ashtoreth. "Dazel figured out a way." Then she shrugged. "But honestly? As much as I want answers, I don't think I should be distracting myself with any bonus objectives. War is a harder matchup than Famine was, for me. He has more experience fighting me, too. I don't want to lower our chances any more than I need to."

"It sucks, but I agree with you," said Dazel.

"Of course you do. You hate risks."

"We don't even know that we'll see any more angels, either," said Dazel.

"That's not helping the 'don't do it' cause."

"I'm just saying," he said. "It's only been these four. Nobody else has seen any super-powerful angels showing up to trash some cities somewhere."

"I don't know if Matthews would tell us that, right now," Ashtoreth said.

"Probably not," said Frost. "I don't think the bossmen trust you too much right now."

"They'll find a way to like us when I'm the Monarch," she said. "Then we'll be back in the know. But until then we should probably assume that we have no idea if any more angels have shown up as a consequence of the first group meeting such… unencouraging fates."

Frost's face darkened. "Look, Ashtoreth. I still want to talk to you about Matthews."

"Again?" she asked. "Okay, but it's gonna have to wait."

"What—oh."

"Yep!" she said, looking at the System notification as it counted down toward 0. "We've got a deathmatch to watch!"

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