Chapter 465: Mamba
Michael opened his eyes and saw himself back in the underground bunker as before. Standing opposite him was Claudia, whose body slowly dimmed as her power winded down.
Once the duel was decided, the Sanctum’s existence was no longer needed. The milkyway-like portal dissipated out of the air, closing the door to the unique battlefield forever.
Claudia looked at Michael and saw his clothes in completely normal condition. It didn’t even look like he had gone through a grueling duel.
Compared to that, she looked down and saw Kobra’s body laying still, bleeding out and barely clinging to life.
With how his condition looked, Claudia knew that the battle ended not through surrender, but a knockout instead.
"You won...," she said, with her voice a mixture of joy and disbelief. She didn’t think that the outcome of the duel would be so one-sided that one of them received almost fatal wounds, while the other didn’t even have a single scratch on their body.
"There’s something you have to know," Michael said to her.
He immediately told her about what Kobra told him during the battle. He told her that the newly established Serpent’s Wash was actually just a shell company from the much larger Basilisk Ores.
Claudia bit her lips, anger slowly filling through her head. She couldn’t believe that they had such an audacity to pull this kind of thing right in front of her nose.
The worst part was that they almost won. If they had killed Michael in a duel and became the winner of the tournament, she wouldn’t be able to take it back.
They were meticulous enough to plan murder during the duel. Claudia had no doubts that once they won the prize for the tournament, they would erase all kinds of evidence in their books to prevent her from finding out what happened.
They were this close to getting away with it. And they would have, if they hadn’t been unlucky and fought with Michael—a boy with unexpected talents.
"That damned company. I’ll reign hellfire upon their business," she proclaimed. "Don’t worry, Michael. There are strict rules in Metropolis that make sure crimes of this kind are well punished. They’ll lose everything they have."
She couldn’t help but scoff. Basilisk Ores were willing to risk their entire business just to gain a small part of land in Main Street. She couldn’t believe the idiocy in their decision.
"What is a shell company anyway? And what’s the difference between a shell company and a sub company? Aren’t they the same thing?"
Michael wanted to know the difference because he had multiple sub companies of his own. And he had ambitions to expand all of them in Metropolis as well.
"A sub company is something that is managed independently by a different person, most likely a descendant of the parent company. A subsidiary may be given resources, but they operate largely on their own.
Meanwhile, a shell company is something that only exists on paper and has no business at all.
Think of it in human terms. A parent company is an adult human, while a subcompany is their child. Both have similarities, but they are two completely different persons.
But shell companies are like disguises. It’s like an adult human putting on clothes to seem like a different person. But in reality, they’re just the same one.
In this case, the Basilisk Ores should have sent one of their ’children’ to the tournament. Instead, they just put on a disguise and entered it themselves."
The Serpent’s Wash should have disclosed their relation to Basilisk Ores. That way, the Association could have correctly estimated their strength and put them on the mid-class tournament.
"We should go to the other tournaments. We have to warn them about what happened," Claudia said.
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...
Meanwhile, the mid-class and the high-class tournaments continued to take place throughout the Upperwood District.
And surprisingly, the Basilisk Ores completed an upset and defeated the Pyramidic Cuisine in the semi-finals, allowing them to reach the final stage of the tournament and face the favorites: the Quench company.
Michael and Claudia both ran through the Association headquarters and headed out towards a secluded location away from Metropolis.
Just like his duel with Kobra, the Basilisk Ores also requested a completely private arena with absolutely no spectators.
Claudia went on horseback while he resorted to flying as they traversed through the plains until they eventually reached a cave on a small mountainside.
After running through the tunnel, they reached a large dome-like cavern with stalactites and stalagmites covering the surface.
And in the middle of this room, they saw Dicky and an unknown man, who Michael presumed to be an Association member because of his white toga.
"Miss Claudia?" asked the Association employee.
"Stop the tournament," she demanded. "Basilisk Ores has violated the rules of the tournament."
Dicky noticed Michael with her, and he immediately asked for clarification. "What’s happening, Michael?"
"Basilisk Ores has created a shell company by the name of Serpent’s Wash in order to participate in the low-class tournament."
The Association employee’s eyes widened before he immediately rushed to forcefully stop the Sanctum Duel that he created for the two fighters.
He closed his eyes, with a strange light overcoming his interior body and slowly seeping out of skin. His body started to levitate before he mumbled a few unintelligible words.
Suddenly, a white powdery portal appeared in front of him. It almost looked the same as the one Michael entered before, but the formation of the ’stars’ in this portal was completely different.
The portal started to rotate before spitting Chucky out of the Sanctum Duel. The tall, stocky man tumbled a few times before he found his footing. He quickly stood up, raising his axe in the air as if waiting for an opponent to ambush him.
But once he saw the familiar cave around him, he realized that he wasn’t in the Sanctum anymore.
"What....what happened?" he asked, almost exhausted.
Michael noticed Chucky’s less than ideal condition. His left leg was noticeably limping, while his right arm was broken and barely even able to hold on to his weapon.
Blood trickled from his forehead, dripping down to his already blood-soaked clothes and armor.
He was losing, Michael realized.
A few seconds later, another person was shot out of the portal. The man sported a violet mohawk hairstyle on his head and a spear on his hands. The sudden ejection out of the Sanctum surprised him as well and he was unable to stop himself from tumbling a few feet out before colliding with a girthy stalagmite in the ground.
He, too, looked to have a few broken spots on his body. But compared to Chucky, the man didn’t look to be injured all that much.
"What happened?!" the mohawk man asked.
And it was only when he noticed Claudia Montgomery approaching him did he realize what had happened.
"Ha...so you found out."
"That’s right, Mamba. You will pay for the fraud you committed under my tournament," Claudia said, glaring at him. Her disdain for Mamba couldn’t have been more clear.
"HA...HAHA....HAHAHA! It’s already too late for you. At this point, Kobra would have won the entire tournament and rightfully claimed Main Street as ours!"