"Oh, Emperor above, this is going to be a massacre."
"I bet Red Team won't last three hours."
"Three hours? You give that yokel far too much credit. I bet Valerius can plant their flag up Eli's arse in one."
Blue Team's members mocked them without restraint, while everyone on Red Team hung their heads, their faces ashen. They felt that being assigned to Eli's team was the worst luck they could possibly have had.
Eli, however, seemed completely oblivious to the despair around him.
He looked at the handful of miserable "battered remnants" under his command, each missing an arm or a leg. Far from being discouraged, he clapped his hands with renewed fighting spirit, trying to raise their morale.
"Chin up, brothers!" His booming voice echoed through Red Team's assembly area. "It's just a battle! What's there to be afraid of? We might be short on people, our equipment might be rubbish, and our looks... might be a little distinctive, but you've got me!"
Everyone looked at him as though he were an idiot.
"I know you probably think I'm just some fool who can recite books." Eli scratched his head and flashed his trademark goofy grin. "But before I came here, I spent five years in the underground archives. Do you know what that place is like?"
"There's no sunlight, no fresh air, just endless pipes, narrow passages, and more mutant cockroaches than you can count, all bigger than your heads. To stay alive, you don't just have to learn how to steal filtered water from ventilation ducts. You also have to learn how to turn a piece of rusty wire into a trap that can pierce a cockroach's brainstem with pinpoint accuracy."
The look in Eli's eyes changed, taking on the sly yet tenacious gleam unique