Chapter 76 – First Contender Scrap

The world flickered, and Tom found himself in a very familiar arena. He was standing dead-centre in a circular, paved area that stretched eighty metres in every direction, right up to the massive walls that rose from the arena floor. They were composed of granite slabs, each of them two-by-two metres square and stacked four high. Above that was the audience.

He shuddered when he remembered the clicking and their bloodlust. Tom did not like that he had to fight in front of them again. He had never wanted to see this place again.

A figure appeared in front of him. It was the same arena manager as last time, a creature that could have been a devil conjured right out of the depths of hell as pictured in the Earth mythology. Unlike with his first encounter, Tom resisted the urge to strike out at it.

Not that he could hurt it. Previously, his hammer had failed him, and back then he was many times stronger than he was currently, so his fists probably wouldn’t even be noticed.

Tom waited patiently, as this was empty time, and he was happy to waste it. No time was passing in the outside world. While his precognition mana stores were full, as was his mana, his fate was empty. A point of fate took a little over half an hour to regenerate. He didn’t think he could stretch the fight out for that long, but every potential advantage was worth pursuing.

The devil’s eyes narrowed as it examined him. Theatrically, it paced around him like it was measuring a prize bull, which in the context of this place, that was probably what he was doing.

Having completed the circuit with a flourish of his hands and a twirl of his trident, he looked up at the stands. “We have a special one-off fight for you. This strange creature here is a contender who must prove his might. A rank zero nothing that is being pitted against a rank four. And it gets better…” the devil shouted with overflowing excitement. “This is a child, one barely out of the womb and he is going against a criminal adult – and, most importantly, it’s to the death. For both of them. Yes, the lives of both are on their line. There are no safety nets here. There’s no GOD’s shields to protect them. We know it. They know it. The only outcome is glorious. It is the death of one or both.”

“I thought you could… that you could fight to submission.” Tom objected.

“The contender wants to show mercy. He wants to spare the criminal. Isn’t that sweet and naïve and selfishly weak? He might want to, but I say no, there is no room for mercy. Today, one of them will die. Will it be the child? Will he fail, and his loss set the criminal free to murder again? Or will the contender bring justice to the arena floor?”

The excited clicking was growing louder.

“This is to the death,” the devil screamed. “To the death. To the death!”

The entire crowd started chanting the words.

Hidden by the noise, the devil turned to him. “Child, I hope you haven’t made a mistake by coming here, but I can’t protect you. The fight will take place, and all I can say is good luck. I’ve seen two adults of your species fight on these stones. They vastly outperformed expectations and I hope you’ll do the same. The first,” the devil chuckled. “He cost them a lot. You won’t have any friends in the stands. They don’t like humans, especially not after the trick that the second one pulled.”

The clicking and chanting reached a crescendo, and then stopped abruptly.

The entire atmosphere of the place changed. It went from excited to hostile. Between one blink and the next, the devil vanished and, thirty metres away from him, a new person appeared. They were separated by a clear pane of magic shielding.

Tom studied his opponent. It was an energy being of some kind. Fifty spheres, all of different colours and sizes. None were larger than a softball, and those were spinning on an inner orbit with the fist- and golf ball-sized ones spinning out wider.

The person’s appearance wasn’t the only change to have occurred in that moment. Tom felt the armour appear on him, and a spear shaft filled his hand. April had done something similar to him enough times he didn’t even react to its manifestation. Instead of jumping in surprise, he did a brief spear kata in order to familiarize himself with the armour. Only then did he examine what he had been given to protect himself. The armour wasn’t very good, its coverage only slightly better than the breastplate he had worn against the orcs. There were some slight improvements, however. The upper-body piece was extending far enough to cover his upper arms, and there was a skirt-like addition that allowed flaps of leather to fall down to protect his thigh area. The rest of him, including his head, was not protected.

He checked his weapon. It was only tier-zero, but that was better than nothing, and he used his excess mana generation to allow Living Wood to fuse some minor stress fractures in the shaft together. Two points of mana that were only going to take a minute to regenerate materially increased the durability of the item.

To his immense frustration, Danger Sense had grown in volume in reaction to his opponent appearing. This fight was going to be as challenging as the gap between their ranks suggested. There would be no outrageous skill mismatch like lightning vulnerability to allow him to win by default. According to Danger Sense, there was a very real chance of dying. Naturally, none of that concern reached his face.

“A weakling to play with,” the balls of energy taunted. “I’m going to enjoy finding how much your flesh and skin can be separated while keeping your key biological systems functioning.”

Tom ignored the weak attempt to psych him out, and concentrated on understanding what he had to fight. He had honestly never fought anything like it, and it looked powerful. Given the way the coloured balls were orbiting, and the traces of magic that followed their perpetual motion, he suspected he would face magic-based attacks. However, he knew that it was only rank four, and, once you had a class, getting the early levels was not difficult. It being so ranked lowly meant it must have a serious flaw in its makeup. That did not gel with it having magic-based attacks, because ranged magic attacks supported safe levelling. Something was wrong with it.

“Will it hurt when I cut... When I cut… um… what is it called again? Will it hurt when I cut your hair?”

He ignored its deranged prattling.

There was no way to tell what it could do before engaging. Hopefully, it still being rank four suggested a lack of ability issue rather than age. Though, if it was weak because it was young that spoke of a minimal experience, which he could exploit.

Tom licked his lips. Delay and information-gathering could only help him. While a bipedal form was not common, carbon-based biological ones were. Functionally, it already knew most of his limitations, and the reverse did not apply. He needed to try to get more information before engaging, and from how it was carrying on, it might actually be dumb enough for such an attempt to work. He cleared his throat. “Sir, Mister. I think there’s been a mistake. You’re too powerful to fight me.”

The thing laughed.

“You’re way, way too powerful. Please, spare me. Give me a chance.”

“And how would I do that, little flesh bag? Give me a leg to play with and we’ll talk. The way tendons and bones work has always been fascinating.”

By telling me your weaknesses, Tom thought, but he couldn’t give away the reason he was delaying. “I don’t know. Maybe by not using your magic, that will equalise things.”

It chuckled. “That wouldn’t help you, because I already don’t do magic - well, at least not offensive magic.”

Tom pretended to open his eyes wide in wonder. He doubted it had a skill to help interpret body language, but it was worth trying. “Wow. That’s amazing. If that’s the case, then how do you kill things?”

As he watched, one of the golf sized glowing balls came out of close in rotations and then slammed into the ground about three metres from its centre of mass. It smashed into nothing and then reformed back inside the creature. Tom knew that it was the same one, because he was tracking the unique colours and had already counted all forty-six spheres that made it up. It had only taken a second for the ball to reform. If they had a ten-minute countdown before being recreated, or even a one minute one, he could have baited all the balls out and then killed it, but that, unfortunately, wasn’t happening now.

“I’m awesome, right. Look at how strong I am.”

Before doing anything more, he mentally analysed the collision. There had been a loud thump, so the attack packed some force, but from what he could see, the blocks were not cracked, which told Tom that it was, relatively speaking, a weak blow. The stone pavers might look imposing, but they were surprisingly fragile. From experience, individuals who were only a few ranks higher than what faced him could do significant damage to the stonework.

“You’re so strong. To make it fair, I think you should only do one of them at a time.

“I’m not going to handicap myself, because if I do so, I might injure you more than I want. Which, long term, threatens the amount of fun I can have. Your tendons don’t stretch themselves and I understand they die if your liquidy stuff can’t reach them.”

Tom tried to look scared. If he understood the enemy right, fighting the creature would be a lot like having stones thrown at you. Individual blows from those balls would not kill him. Defensively, it almost certainly had shields protecting it, but his special Power Strike ability should get through them easily. The fight was going to be a long one. Unless he was greatly mistaken, he was probably going to have to crack a significant number of the odd balls of light that made up its structure to disable and kill it.

With a frown, he strode forward, spear in hand.

It focused on him, and time immediately slowed significantly. Two balls left its orbit and were coming at him from opposing directions. The decelerated time from his trait allowed him to easily track them and, even with his now barely responsive body, he was able to sidestep one of them before he deliberately allowed the other to smash into his thigh. He did it because he had to know how hard they hit in preparation for when the fight escalated in response to the other person realising its own life was in danger. Tom was certain it could use more than two balls at a time. He just hoped that the number was less than ten. For this first encounter, he even slid the leather armour aside to better measure the force of the impact. That was a decision he immediately regretted.

The blow hurt a lot but not enough to demand immediately healing. Just like when it had hit the ground the ball of light broke and then reformed near the main body. The one that missed him rotated around and restarted the orbit close to its primary structure.

“Are you really that slow? I wasn’t even trying, and I hit you. Meat bags are useless”

Tom ignored it as his brain calculated how many of these blows he could suffer before he would have to start healing them. He probably couldn’t tank any to the head, but anywhere else he was probably safe. Direct strikes to bones would hurt and might cause stress fractures, but those could be easily patched.

Another two came for him. He allowed one to strike his back to buy him time to intercept the other with a Power Strike-infused blow. It shattered instantly, and he grunted as the other slammed between his shoulder blades. The hit was almost hard enough to lift his feet off the ground, but the armour did its job by spreading the force, so he wasn’t hurt badly.

An idea to manipulate its stupidity occurred to him, so he squealed in pain and pretended to be far more hurt than he was.

He watched as, two seconds later, close to its main body, both the one he had speared and the one that had struck him reformed.

Tom frowned in annoyance at that outcome. It was what he had expected, but it was still annoying. Breaking the ball with his spear had slowed the reformation, but not sufficiently enough to matter. He was going to have to charge the creature and attack the main body. Potentially, the only way to kill it was to break the bigger spheres. 

“Too slow, you can’t beat me. Can’t even get close. What evil did you do to be here? I butchered these meat bags with big eyes and lots of fluffy fur.”

From that description, Tom could imagine what had happened. The psycho, even if it didn’t realise it, had experimented, or more precisely tortured babies, it was no wonder he had been sentenced to death. “I cut up my siblings. You need to hear this. It was amazing.”

“Are you serious? Are you trying to monologue mid-battle like you’re strong?”

Tom shrugged. “I’m proud of my work. I was able to stretch the skin of one for over ten metres.”

“Really? That’s so much more than I could do with the little ones I borrowed.”

“Yes. You have to pay attention to biology.” With a deep breath, he then launched into a speech, using his extensive medical knowledge to explain the process in excruciating detail. He made a point of talking about how his head was nearly indestructible and the care he took around the chest area so he didn’t accidently kill them while making his flesh sculptures. The dumb creature didn’t even question why this random person had the same hobby that it did.

What he was saying was being replayed to the crowd and, from what he could interpret from their reactions, half of them loved what they were hearing. They were almost as deranged as his opponent, who was hopelessly enthralled by his story. It must have also thought he was an idiot for giving away the roadmap of how to kill one of his kind to his opponent in a death match. 

“That’s so amazing. You said you stretched the living body over ten metres. I wonder if I can do that with you?  So, when doing surgery, I start with the what you flesh bags call feet.”

Tom didn’t answer. It was clear he had distracted it for as long as he was going to get away with. He had successfully wasted almost ten minutes, and was that much closer to getting another point of fate to use. 

As he closed, the coloured balls of light came at him at ridiculous speeds. Its range, unfortunately, was more like ten metres than three. There were only four coming at a time because that seemed to be the limit of its control and it was focusing on his legs and arms. It had obviously believed all that shit he had said.

Once he was close enough, he used Spark, but it was like targeting plastic. There was no way to run the current through it in order to hurt it, and it was also clear this was one of the body types his stun wasn’t going to work against. He shelved the idea and decided to dedicate his magic to healing, a trump card he would use only when the beating he was receiving became too much of a liability for him to continue to fight at his normal speeds.

Tom ignored the projectiles unless Danger Sense flared a warning or if it targeted his chest - only then did he dodge. The first was because he didn’t want to die, and the second to preserve the illusion of his armoured chest area being a weakness.

It was like he was being struck repeatedly with fast balls in a professional baseball game. They hurt, and welts formed at the impact points immediately where they hit bare flesh. Then he was right next to the monster, and he instantly lunged forward to target one of the larger internal spheres. Power Strike, with a point of precognition mana invested to help with shield-breaking, covered his weapon in an aqua glow.

An inch-thick shield popped up to protect the targeted sphere, but his power strike burst it just as it always did against the magical shields in his training with April. Then the spear tip dug into the large ball and it exploded fragments.

“What the hell? How did you do that? You’re weak and pathetic, you’re not supposed to be able to hurt me.” it cursed in response and its relentless assault against his legs briefly halted. By the time it had finished its spiel, he had shattered another two of the larger spheres.

What sort of idiot stopped to monologue mid battle, Tom thought dismissively. It had just stopped fighting and had stood there while allowing him to attack. It was unbelievable to someone like him, who had spent years in life and death contests. But not so surprising that Tom hadn’t been able to take advantage.

Then it realised it wasn’t fighting, and all of its attacks immediately switched to focus on his torso. Internally, he smiled and concentrated harder. He wanted to push his advantage while he could, and he had another three strikes before skill exhaustion would become a problem.

As he went for his fourth, a purple ball, the enemy reacted with magic. Three different shields shifted into position between his target and his spear tip. Precognition-enhanced shield breaking or not, that was too much. Each of them broke as his weapon hit them, but they each bled off a bit of his weapon’s momentum. By the time the spear tip hit the surface of his target, it was moving too slowly to break it. The purple shell shuddered, and a crack spread briefly over it before it healed.

Those cracks were a weakness, and he instantly redoubled his efforts. He struck at it again, and, just like before, it responded with multiple defensive shields, but this time he used Spark in front of his weapon. The lightning broke the first shield, and the next two didn’t slow his spear enough.

The ball shattered.

Knowing that skill exhaustion was close to kicking in, he retreated. The balls of energy smashed hard into his back. Tom smiled. If it had gone for his legs, he might not have made it, but the momentum imparted by each strike actually got him to safety faster.

The monster, because even though it was sapient that was what it was, was swearing at him and tried to follow, but it was clear that its main body moved too slowly to match Tom’s.

A fast jog allowed him to avoid its attack range.

“Come back, you coward.”

Tom ignored it and instead focused on measuring it to see what the destruction of four of the larger balls had done. None of them had reformed yet. It was hard to tell, but he was pretty sure it was weaker. 

He stayed away for ten minutes as the crowd became more and more irate.

The devil was suddenly next to him. “You’ve had your fun. If you don’t close with it, I’ll have to reduce the size of the arena you have to battle in.”

Tom nodded and recognised that a change like that was not something he could afford. He went in for the kill. His chest and back were pummelled, but it bought him the time needed to break another two of the larger spheres.

He pulled away and regenerated his willpower and his mana.

“Five minutes are up. Go fight.” The devil whispered in his ear.

Without hesitation, Tom did as ordered. Half an hour later, his spear destroyed the remaining large ball, and there was a shattering sound as all the minor ones broke apart.

Tom stood there, panting, while he healed the latest set of bruises. The fight had been painful even if it hadn’t felt particularly deadly. The creature’s offense had, however, come from the smaller orbs, which had remained at full strength the entire time. At the end, they had still been hitting as hard as they had at the beginning, and his ruse around weak spots had been discovered for the last two times he had closed, because it had stopped focusing on his armoured chest and gone back to targeting all of him, and that had hurt.

If it had not fallen for his stupid gambit, the result might have been different, but probably not. With his shield breaking expertise and ability to tank the blows, the fight had never really been in doubt.

It was all academic. It had been tricked, and the important thing was that he had won and stretched the fight for as long as the arena manager had allowed him to. A single point of fate had regenerated, and he was halfway toward getting another. He was incredibly proud of that small achievement.

The devil appeared next to him and tried to talk up his victory, attempting to rev up the crowd, but Tom ignored it as he analysed the battle to see what he could have done better.

Then the world changed, and, a moment later, he was back in the same hall as before with the other contenders. They had arrived at the same time as him, and all of them were staring in horror at the four empty spots, just like he was.

The presenter had warned them of the dangers, but it was something else to see them.