33 Speech

"Alrighty! Now that all the competitors have arrived, we will now get a word from every team! Let's see how they think the tournament is going!"

Oh no... my worst nightmare, talking in front of a butt-ton of people. I honestly have no idea how this is going to go. Well, not much I can do.

"For our first team, we will be talking to the team who won first in the previous round! Come on up Jane Tear and Chris Flame!"

Was expecting as much, what were they going to do, alphabetical order? Well, I guess that would have made sense, but there are two people per team so I have no idea how alphabetical order would work.

Anyway, they said some generic thing, too tired to do anything extreme.

"Well... we will do our best and try hard to reach number one," is pretty much along the lines of what they said, except they were struggling to say anything being so tired. Each team passed by with their lazy speeches, weirdly one team wasn't that tired, I believe it was second place, they must have done the same thing I did.

Their speech was a lot more interesting and exciting, the crowd seemed a lot more pleased with it than the other competitors.

My teammate is too tired to say anything so the speech is up to me, now that is stressful. I have no idea what to say, and once I get up there I'm going to have to speak? Well, dig me a hole cause I'm about to be six feet under...

"For our next team, Jess Heart and Sasha Lano! How do you think the tournament has gone so far?"

"Um... I... well... uh... it... I..." My brain fries itself trying to think of something to say, I literally have no idea.

"It has gone... well... I messed up with the history questions last round... but we've done well in every other round..." Straining my brain I manage to get out a somewhat acceptable answer... ish.

"What do you think you could have done better in previous rounds?"

"I... could have better... preserved my MP I guess?"

"Well, how confident are you feeling about the rest of the tournament?"

"I think I'm doing prett-" Suddenly I feel a sharp pain in my side like I've been stabbed. I look over and there is a full-on cleaver in my side, blood seeping out of my body onto the ground. I blink and the pain is gone and the knife is nowhere to be found. The wound is gone like nothing happened.

"Excuse me, are you okay?"

"Y-yes, I thought I saw something..." I come up with a simple excuse. Was that an illusion, normally Illusion Magic can't cause pain, it is fake after all... Did someone place a spell on me, I didn't notice anything... This is so weird...

I somewhat answer all the other questions, the curiosity of what happened to me unwavering. I still have no idea what that was. I gotta find out who did that. It hurt like crazy!!!

Suddenly the pain is back, blood again drizzling down my side. By now I'm in the waiting room. I think it's an illusion, but when I blink the wound doesn't go away. Suddenly I feel ready to faint... the wound is real!

Okay stay calm... stay calm... stay calm... HOW CAN I STAY CALM!!! I'VE BEEN STABBED!!! People start running to me and trying to help, but by now I've lost a lot of blood. I see myself picked up by medics before the world goes dark.

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Jess' Mom's POV:

"Sorry the competition has been delayed, an incident has occurred and a participant has been wounded. They are unconscious but being taken care of. Please remain calm while the situation is dealt with. On that note may the family of Jess Heart please report the clinic as soon as possible."

Wait, why us? Was Jess hurt? She seemed fine a second ago! What is going on, we need to go there right now!

===

Jess' POV:

I Start to wake up and feel a sharp pain in my side, the wound is gone, thanks magic, but I'm still suffering from blood loss, and there is a huge scar on my side. That's not going away any time soon, is it?

Well, at least I'm not dead! I see my family around me and their worried faces, even my sister is here. How long have I been out for her to arrive?

"Jess, are you awake?"

"Yeah... what happened?"

My brother responds practically yelling, "You were stabbed somehow! Police checked the security cameras but couldn't find anything! One second you're fine, and the other you've been impaled by a knife!"

"Ugh... well is the competition still going on?"

"That is the last thing you should be worried about right now! Get some rest okay?" My mom is obviously worried about me, well I did pretty well, I wonder why I was stabbed though?

I mean the obvious answer would be that I was the only one who wasn't out of it in the tournament. Was someone trying to rig it? That explains why everyone was so tired because of a spell, and why I, the only one not affected, was stabbed. They're trying to remove competition!

I can't let this stand! I lower my weight with Gravity magic, so I can stand even right now while I'm weakened, and teleport into the arena, I can't worry about anyone seeing me right now, people are in danger! I think I have an idea of who's doing this too!

There is only one other person who wasn't tired during the speech, and they were in the team that got second place in the previous round! That is way too suspicious. They also, from what I know, weren't stabbed. This means that they are probably the one who did it.

At the same time though, they are also too suspicious. If I went through this much trouble to rig the tournament, I wouldn't make it obvious that it was me, in fact, if I could, wouldn't I frame someone else. I guess it's too soon to point fingers.