F Grade Healer Becomes Strongest Biomancer-Chapter 65: Choose Your Champion

Mio

The shimmer spat them out onto concrete.

[Entering Incursion]

[Ajinomoto Stadium — Grade: C]

[Type: Overflow]

[Hostiles: 1,001]

The stadium had been hollowed. Seats ripped from the stands, the pitch replaced with packed dirt and firelight. Torches lined the upper concourse, burning green. The sky above the open roof was gone. Just darkness where Tokyo should have been.

"What’s the Engine say, Mio?" Kaito asked. Sword at his hip, eyes already scanning the concourse.

"Over..." She blinked. Read it again. The number didn’t change. "Over one thousand."

He didn’t react. Nodded like she’d told him the weather.

"You didn’t tell me you had the Engine," Mori said from behind. "So it’s true. All champs have it."

"How do you know?"

"Yenling-sama trained me. Duh."

Mio turned. Mori was still dragging her feet, mask fogging, eyes half-shut. She said it like she’d told Mio her blood type.

"This is gonna take a while," Kaito said.

They moved through the lower concourse. Empty vendor stalls, overturned benches, scorch marks on the walls. The corridors stretched longer than they should have. Incursion architecture.

Then the drums started.

Low and rhythmic. A pulse that traveled through the concrete and up through Mio’s shoes. It echoed down the corridors, bouncing off bare walls until it sounded like it came from everywhere.

"You guys hear that?" Mio said. "They’re celebrating."

"Sounds like it." Kaito shifted his weight.

They kept walking. The drumming grew louder. Voices underneath it now. High-pitched chittering layered over low, guttural growls. A chant, maybe. Or a war song. 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

"Is that normal?"

"Some monsters are sentient. Well, as sentient as can be." He glanced at her. "What did you say this was?"

"A battalion."

"So they’d have a hierarchy. Formations, like Mori-san said."

"Yay," Mori said, deflating. "Doesn’t matter, does it? We clear it and it’s done."

The drumming got louder. The corridor opened ahead, firelight spilling across the floor. Shadows moved against the far wall. Big ones.

In Mio’s pocket, Jii had both daggers drawn. Her tiny body was rigid, listening.

The corridor spat them onto the upper concourse. Mio’s feet hit the railing before her eyes caught up.

Below, the stadium bowl was full.

A thousand bodies packed into the stands. Orcs in the lower rows, shoulders touching, fists pounding the armrests where seats used to be. Hobgoblins crouched along the upper tiers, shrieking in clusters.

The green torchlight caught their tusks and teeth and the crude iron hammered across their chests. Drums at the base of every section, four orcs per drum, striking in rotation.

The pitch was cleared. Packed dirt in a wide circle, ringed with torches driven into the ground. Nothing in it yet.

Above it all, on the far side of the stadium, a platform jutted from the upper deck. A throne carved from what looked like the press box, ripped out and reassembled with welded rebar and concrete slabs. An eagle’s nest. The figure seated there was too far to make out, but the crowd roared toward it between drum cycles.

[Unique Scenario Triggered: Choose Your Champion]

The text hung in Mio’s vision. Kaito and Mori read it too. All three of them staring at the same words floating over a pit full of monsters.

"I’ll go," Kaito said.

Mio looked at him. His hand was already resting on the hilt.

"What if you have to use your sword."

"It’s a C-grade."

"We both know how that ended up."

The last C-grade that "ended up" had cost him three years and put him in surgery. His jaw worked once. She watched him run the same math she just did.

"What does it matter to you anyway?"

Mio didn’t answer.

She turned to Mori.

Mori was leaning against the railing with her mask pulled down, nose red, eyes glassy. She coughed once into her fist. Then again, louder, with her whole body behind it.

"Oh no," Mori said, voice flat. "I’m too sick. I could never."

Grade A. Two hundred thousand bloom. Could probably sneeze and clear the pit.

Mio looked back at the arena. The empty circle. The roaring stands. The drums.

"I’ll go."

Neither of them argued.

In her pocket, Jii climbed out and dropped onto the railing. She sat cross-legged, daggers across her knees, and watched the arena below. Already scouting.

"Jii," Mio said, walking away. "If I’m dying, I’ll call you."

Mio found the stairs. Concrete steps, cracked and warped by incursion growth. The drumming got louder with every floor she descended. By the time she reached the tunnel entrance at field level, she could feel it in her sternum.

The tunnel was dark. Twenty meters of shadow, then the arena’s torchlight at the end. She walked through it alone.

She stepped into the light.

The crowd went silent.

A thousand faces turned. Yellow eyes, black eyes, red-rimmed sockets. Tusks and scars and crude war paint. Every drum stopped mid-stroke. The only sound was the torches crackling and the dirt under Mio’s shoes.

Then they erupted. Fists hammering. Shields banging. A wall of noise that hit her chest like a shockwave. They didn’t care who she was. They had their show.

Mio looked up.

Mori was leaning over the upper concourse railing, mask down, grinning. She cupped her hands around her mouth.

"You got this, Mio-san~!"

Next to her, Kaito sat on the concourse floor. Back against the railing, sword across his knees, eyes closed. He raised one hand without looking.

Are you watching, Mori?

On the far side, the figure in the eagle’s nest shifted. An arm rose and tapped the armrest three times.

The crowd fell silent again.

A gate at the base of the stands groaned open. Vertical bars made from something that looked like teeth, interlocking canines the size of Mio’s forearm. They rolled upward with a grinding shriek, and the dark behind them moved.

The troll came out sideways, shoulder scraping the frame. It cleared the cage and straightened to its full height and the arena shook when its foot hit the dirt. Then the other foot, and the tremor knocked dust from the rafters two stories up.

Over seventy thousand bloom.

This ugly thing alone would fill half her Reservoir and almost complete the objective.

Oh, fuck.

She wasn’t sure if it was the hunger or her own voice.

[Abrasive Cave Troll — C-grade]

[HP: 25,000]

It carried a slab of concrete in one fist. Rebar still jutting from the edges. A piece of the stadium it had ripped off and decided to keep.

The Putrid Knight had been big. This thing was twice that. Its head nearly reached the second tier of stands. The orcs in the front rows scrambled backward, shoving each other for distance.

It could use Mio as a toothpick.

Keep watching.

You too, Kaito.

The figure in the eagle’s nest stood. Scrawny arms, a crown of twigs and stone too big for its head. A kid. It raised both fists above its head.

"BLOOOOOOD!"

The stadium answered.