Chapter 25: Game Start

“The rules of the tournament are simple: beat the challenges without dying. Other than that, there’s no rules unless I say otherwise, so feel free to be as rough with your opponents as you like.”

A few curious souls tried to walk out of the yellow starting area into the green play-zone. They bumped against an invisible force-field and flew back from a zap of some kind.

Delta continued speaking.

“For this challenge, all you have to do is reach the end. Remember, winner gets a prize while losers suffer all throughout. May the best meager little human win, and let the games begin!”

Another blare of trumpets rang out. A few weird looking flesh-canons poked out from the floor and shot out confetti. It was clear it was time to begin.

The course was straight from one end to the other, but many obstacles were visible. The billion+ humans ran off ahead.

The first pitfalls were minor, but deadly. Holes dotted the course and ranged in size from human in diameter to large enough for buildings to fall through. The first few were easily avoided, but others were surrounded by comparatively narrow paths. Millions of people ran side-by-side in the winding stripes, and its here where most of the first causalities were. The fastest cleared it easily, and those crafty enough to wait at the back managed to travel along the paths when they were less crowded and safer.

Nevertheless it made for the perfect time for the unlucky or clumsy to trip to one side or the other and fall through the holes into the acidic sea below. Those areas also let the cruel gain some advantage. Those determined to win here shoved people down into the various holes as they passed them. Only one could win, after all.

Anyone who died found themselves reformed into the walls of Delta’s stomach. Their heads poked out of the rugae lining, covered in slime and wailing in the distance. Her stomach was so vast, and the losers so comparatively few, that the other contestants were unaware of that fate as of yet. Their senses of hearing were vastly inferior to Delta’s own, of course.

The contestants were keenly aware they were within Delta’s gut. Droplets of acids fell from above to randomly crash down on the competitors below. The fluid was potent enough for even the splashes to melt through flesh, but being caught under the drops directly made for a near-instant and certainly agonizing demise.

Delta noticed some of the competitors gasping at the ‘rain’.

“It’s my stomach after all, don’t expect me to just turn it off to make things easier. On that note, it’s important you all stay on the move~”

Those who’s strategy thus far was to hang at the back felt their feet to the fire. The ends of the course farther back began to quake, tremble, then fall right off into the acidic sea below. Now all the sudden there was a timer. Over a million people lost at once to this mechanic as the enormous padded rectangle beneath them fell down. They plummeted into the acidic sea, screaming all the while.

After what felt like a mile of running, the next obstacles came in the form of those crushing hammers. Fangs dotted each face of the hammer’s sides, and each dripped acid. The ‘players’ had to dodged the gigantic mallets as they slammed down.

Many were not so dexterous or lucky to maneuver properly in the crowded fear-driven swarms. They were crushed and silenced, and when the shed-sized instruments came down for their slams, they splashed the blood of the losers on those still in the game. The stains persisted on their white clothes, and it became clear why she choose that color.

Soon, spinning blades started to show up interspersed among the hammers. The sharp ends bisected competitors as they passed. Torsos flew up into the air, trailing their blood and innards over the others as they soared. They laid on the course, pleading for help as they were trampled by the people still in the game. Everyone had to keep moving and stay fast to avoid the collapsing blocks behind them.

It soon became the home stretch. The last obstacles were just a few more of those holes, but the blocks kept on collapsing behind. By now millions had died and their combined tortured wailings were enough to be faintly heard as they dotted the stomach walls of Delta, trapped in her flesh. The noise did not sound pleasant, and a few more shovings occurred till at last the survivors reached the finish line.

The ‘winners’ watched as the last block fell behind them. from their safety, they saw hundred of thousands scream in unison as the ground fell beneath them. A faint splash was heard a few moments later, then Delta’s voice roared.

“Great, time for the next game!”

Everything was reset. Before the competitors knew it, they were on another padded arena now, still within the confines of Delta’s stomach which seemed a bit smaller. Attached to their palms was some portion of a very long rope.

They were divided, half of the competitors had starkly green skin, and the other half had yellow. They stood on opposite ends of a vast chasm. Though a few figured out the next game, they found the rope too heavy to move at all, for now, and groaned as its weight had them barely able to stand.

Delta’s voice rang out.

“On the first challenge we lost just over half the competitors, let’s divide it again. I’m feeling a bit hungry, so I think I’ll digest at least half of you in this team game. It’s simple really, just a game of tug of war. I’ve shrunken myself and my realm *just* a bit, so you might be able to see the losers thus far writhing in my stomach walls, heads *just* poked out. You don’t want to end up like them, right? Don’t let your team down. Game start~”

The rope became much more easier to wield now, and everyone tugged. Although only one team could win, that still meant causalities on both sides. Whether green or yellow team, if one was unlucky to be at the front of the rope they surely fell at some point. Bare feet tried to grip hold themselves steady, but invariably they fell off the edge of the padded floor. It’s at that moment their hands could disconnect form the rope and they plummeted into the acid below.

Occasionally, Delta would comment on death with a reverberating “yum~”, but for the most part they could focus.

Two quarters of the world were pitted against each other. Delta had made the team’s as even as possible, so it wasn’t so much the strength of each side but how they used it that lead to victory. Green held the lead but there was a moment they lapsed, and yellow exploited it.

The yellow teamed tugged hard and took tens of thousands of the green team off the edge before the opponents could react. At that point, the difference in strength could never be made up and it was a slow but inevitable period till the entirety of green team got yanked right off.

The stomach shook as Delta gave her abdomen a pat.

“Good, next challenge!”

The arena reset, Delta and her realm shrunk so the environment grew more confined. Clusters of tormented people still lined her stomach walls, their jutting-out faces almost visible as stomach acids and mucus dripped past them.

The competitors were teams again, shuffled once more but with relative skills kept the same. Both sides were within a giant basin like arena with a large and flat middle. The empty-basin was padded and colored half green, half yellow. Two large holes were at the center of each halves of the circle. There were indents about a quarter of a human in height to keep the terrain from being fully level all the way through. Above the arena were three screens. Two smaller ones with team scores stood side by side with the larger one showing a digital timer set to 10 minutes.

“One more team challenge. I’m a bit famished, and what good is a bit of sports entertainment without some snacks? I’m setting a timer for 10 minutes. Whatever team gets the most food into their hole wins.”

They heard the sound of crunching, chewing. Then, a swallow up above as two lumps of mashed yellowish foodstuffs slammed down into the arena, one per side. Many recognized the smell from back when they lived in the real world: potato chips.

“Game start!” she shouted. The timer started counting down.

Delta watched on her TV screen, and was utterly amused as the competitors humiliated themselves by taking lumps of her chewed food in their hand. They were covered in the mash, clutching it tight in their arms as they ran towards the hole to chuck it in. Many slipped on the edge and fell in to plummet into the digestive tides churning below. Sadly, they didn’t add any points on the screens with their raw bodies.

Delta chomped on just a couple more chips and swallowed, though this batch came down as tiny little rain drops of food mush. Each was enough to envelop a person of course, as ‘tiny’ to her was an entirely different thing. People opened their arms to catch it.

Crueler competitors noticed that while people didn’t count if they went in the hole, any residual food mush stuck to their bodies still did. So, it became a strategy for some to shove more messy teammates into the hole as the timer ticked down more and more.

Of course, it was also entirely viable to bare-handed fight the opposing team. The team with less people carting food mash to the holes was less likely to win, of course. Plus, you could throw them into your own hole for some extra points if they had a decent amount of bolus bits on them.

Delta chuckled at the sights. They were getting awfully violent, and she enjoyed it. The timer hit just 2 minutes left.

Her voice rang out. “Ok, these last pieces are worth a bunch of points, do your best~”

They heard no chewing, only swallowing as two massive home-sized pieces of chocolate-covered popcorn slammed into the arena. Each was smooth thanks to the chocolate coating making it spherical, but that started to rapidly melt. Both teams struggled to push one into their score holes. This is where the indents messed things up. Covered in chocolate and bits of food-gunk still, hands were awfully slippery.

To make matters worse, acids still dripped now and then for random eliminations. Yellow managed to score theirs, then quickly pivoted towards trying to stop green from getting their own piece of popcorn in. The strategy paid off and they won by a large margin.

“Oooh team yellow wins again. Exciting.”, said Delta

The yellow team had a brief moment of relief, quickly quashed as they saw all the green team members froze up, unable to move anything but their heads. Above each of their heads a single droplet of acid fell from the fleshy ceiling to envelop them. The yellow team watched in horror as they melted. Flesh seared off mushifying bones. Screams silenced once the tongues dissolved. This acid burnt through the floor of the arena itself to send the liquefied remains of the green team members into that omnipresent sea. The stomach walls got many more faces on them.

Delta spoke. “The remaining challenges will be free for all~”

The arena reset as the games continued.