The Team had been given an expansive room at the top of the area. It took a special restricted lift to get to which made Johan embarrassed but, as Dave had noted, it had better security which they badly needed. All the top contenders had been given one, The rooms ringed the very top of the arena and were laid out with a viewing window that allowed a far seeing enchantment, a lounge, a bar and a small practice area.

  Johan adjusted the empathy band and gave it a quick test before he took his coifed great helm from Dave and placed it upon his head. Dave was looking a little morose so Johan reached down and put his hand on Dave’s shoulder.

  “Is something bothering you, Dave?” said Johan with tenderness.

  “Oh, I was just wishing Sam could be here, you know?” said Dave with a little half-smile. “She’d really love all this, wouldn’t she?”

  “Yes, she would,” said Johan, smiling beautifully.

  “Indeed, she would,” said Hugh through a bushy smile similar to Dave’s.

  Johan put his other armoured hand on Hugh’s shoulder.

  “Then it’s a good thing she has three friends here who can tell her all about it,” said Johan, his aura of friendliness radiating out from himself.

  “Well, let’s get you down that tunnel and go win a fuckin’ trophy,” growled Dave.

  “Language!” said Johan.

  “Oh, for fucks sake,” said Dave, rolling his eyes. “You’re about to stab six nobles into submission, let me swear!”

  With one final check of helmet straps, Johan nodded to the staff as he passed and led the way through the arena halls, the dim light and echoing footsteps sounding unnaturally loud until they were encompassed by the noise of about thirty thousand people as they got closer to their destination. They reached the end of the tunnel and paused, the roar of the crowd loud enough now to vibrate the heavy tunnel doors.

  Dave placed a reassuring hand on Johan’s shoulder and shouted into his ear.

  “You’ve got this, mate.”

  Johan nodded back and turned to Hugh who nodded at him, his bushy smile full of confidence. Johan took a deep breath, thanking the gods for good friends. The doors began to creak open and the noise of the crowd was a physical thing. It occupied the ears and wouldn’t let any other sound in.

  Johan just strode into the arena like he owned it. Just like Master Greenwood had told him to. Paternoster was already there, having been announced first. She was facing away from him and looking to her arena-side supporters. Continuing with his master’s advice, he summoned his sword and shield to his hands and raised them to the crowd, turning as he went to acknowledge every single person who might wish to see him. He made it to his designated starting circle and the enormous hourglass floating over the arena began running down, indicating when the fight would begin.

  Master Greenwood had told him once that it was very important to be seen and acknowledge the crowd. After all, they’d paid to be here. The least he could do was to let them get a good look at him. And, they were so nice to cheer for him. Eventually, the great hourglass was almost done and he took up a guarded position in his circle. Knowing that the magic of the arena would carry his voice, Johan, ready to duel Emeline Paternoster, The Cindercloud of Lutetia, spoke for all to hear.

  “I am Johan Schmidt, Chosen of Hero, here by the divine will of Warrior.” The bell sounded indicating the start of the match. He released the valve of the bloodletting device Dave had installed in his shield arm and began running at her. “I come with the counsel of Knowledge by my side, clad in armour entrusted to me from the gods.” Paternoster released a series of magical, burning projectiles that Johan calmly raised his shield against and ran through without flinching. “To those who hold Them in irreverence, know that today, I am Their instrument,” he leapt over a pit trap Paternoster summoned in his path. “And know that they are insulted.”

  Back in the posh viewing room, Dave leaned forward, eyes glued to the arena.

  “Oh,” said Dave. “Oh, he doesn’t give a fuck does he?”

  Beside him, Hugh worked his mouth soundlessly, going through several expressions before finally reaching some kind of conclusion.

  “He’s… Is he better now that magic’s allowed?”

  They watched from their well appointed room as Johan announced his piece and simply charged down Paternoster. She tried to stop him, she really did. Dave found himself nodding in approval at her use of Ember Volley at the head and then a level change to put the pit at the feet. Most people would still have their chin in the air when the pit came but Johan had jumped the two metre pit and continued sprinting at her like she’d stolen one of his mum’s biscuits.

  Dave saw it when Johan put his shield arm against his tabard and squeezed the sponge part of the device Dave had gotten an artificer to make. He smirked to himself in satisfaction. The rules forbade going into the arena with anything consumable that made your abilities better. Ice essence users weren’t allowed to carry in buckets of water, plant essences users weren’t allowed to show up with a backpack full of leaves, and so on and so forth. There was, however, no rule against showing up with a venipuncture kit already in your arm, some tubing and a bladder with a sponge inside it. So long as there was no blood in it before the match.

  Paternoster retreated and cast Binding Chains causing chains to leap from the sand around Johan but as she cast the spell, he was already doing his practised jump-spin-clap manoeuvre. Trailing bloody crabs and a couple of flowers shooting from the ground, Johan used Ram’s Charge to close the last of the distance but was forced to hunker behind his shield in response to Paternoster’s Inferno Burst which shot a wave of fire in all directions from her. Behind his shield, he squeezed the contents of the bladder onto his tabard and several more crabs fell away from him while a flower bloomed to his right. He quickly shoved a dollop of summoned honey into his mouth.

  Johan advanced on Paternoster once more. Paternoster shook off her slow start and began the combination of arena-wide apocalyptic abilities she was known for. She managed to cast Summon Storm. Dave looked at the ability’s details in his UI. Not bad. It summoned a cloud that covered the area in stinging wind and rain and she could spend extra mana for a lightning strike. Then she started to cast Volcanic Eruption, which would put a small, magic volcano in the centre of the arena. Dave checked that ability too. At iron rank it’d be about two or three metres tall, belch toxic smoke and small, hot cinders that’d burn if they landed on you.

  Johan used Ram’s Charge again to rapidly close with Paternoster, rapidly sprouting flowers all around him due to the amount of effects Paternoster was placing on him. He used Cat Swats The Mage to quickly smack a spell from her lips with his shield but Paternoster was an expert with the halberd she carried and soon had Johan back on point, out of range. Johan responded by touching several flowers and filling up his mouth with honey pieces for a moment before rushing back at her.

  The furious pace was not much like the bouts at all and felt more akin to the fight game Dave had learned in the MMA octagon. If he’d had to guess, he’d say that Johan was the one setting the pace of the fight. It wasn’t that Paternoster wasn’t having any successes, in fact she got a few pieces of the Volcanic Eruption on Johan already along with most of her other elemental damaging effects, but from what he’d heard described about her usual defensive strategy, Dave figured Paternoster was having a harder time of it than usual.

  There was a knock at the door to the oversized, fancy locker room.

  “Oh, do come in,” said Hugh, managing to take his eyes off the action and rush to open the door. “Yes, yes, we’re expecting you, Lords Ainsworth. To the viewing window, the match is underway.”

  “Spiffing!”

  The footsteps of three people behind him announced the arrival of Rupe, Harry and Hugh beside him at the viewing window.

  “Rupe, Harry,” said Dave, nodding at them briefly which they each returned, barely looking at him. “How about those groups, hey? Stacked?”

  “Not even hiding they cheated,” muttered Harry, watching Johan intentionally allow Paternoster’s halberd to knock his shield down and impact lightly on his shoulder so he could made an attempt at trapping it there with his sword arm but she very cleverly stepped in and fired another Ember Volley, point blank, at Johan’s hip, forcing him to abandon the move.

  “Spiffing!” cheered Rupe. “No, I mean the play, not the cheating. I’ll have you know, Dave, my good fellow, that neither Harry nor I shall be attending the gala nor any other formal event of this tournament in protest.”

  The top six had been distributed across the tournament in such a way that none of them would meet each other before they met Johan. It was so improbable as to be an admission of conspiracy.

  “Well, I dare say,” ventured Hugh, “perhapsyou could still attend a few beers with friends to celebrate Johan’s victory at the end of the day?”

  “Yeah, or mine!” said Harry with bravado.

  “Confidence is good,” said Dave, nodding his head at the fight. “But, here and now, tell me what we’re looking at Lord Harry-who’s-going-to-win.”

  Harry's bravado was as real as any teenager’s but he’d been matched up against Abelard Perrot in the first round and was unlikely to win. Still, he put a cocky grin in place and gave a rundown of the fight in front of him.

  “Look, I’ll admit it, they’re good fighters,” Harry squinted his eyes at something in his view. “Wait, how’d she injure his shield arm? Wasn’t that blood?”

  “Self-inflicted,” said Dave. “He squeezes his blood onto that tabard to make little crab minions so that his ally protecting shield and retribution aura can work.”

  “Oh, that’s wild!” said Harry, his grin returning. “Yeah but, I think he’s killing it. He’s got really slick sword work. Most fencers are taught to take a break and reset after an exchange, but he’s just in her face the whole time, like Perrot’s style. Relentless.”

  “Okay, said Dave. “And I was wondering earlier, the back and forth of the duel seems more present here than in the bouts? More reckless?”

  “Magic healing,” said Harry without taking his eyes off the action. “It lets you take more risks. Can afford a cut to get a powerful ability in, you carry?”

  Dave grunted in understanding.

  “Whose strategy do you think will work first?” asked Dave.

  “Well, your boy’s pushing the pace but he’s not getting in,” said Harry with a wicked grin. “Paternoster’s going to slowly burn him down once she gets her full set of spells going. Just burn and poke to victory. Her usual.”

  “Looks like she’s poking his shield,” said Dave, smirking.

  “Yeah, but - Oh, his shield ability -”

  “I say, Harry,” said Rupe, twigging to what was going on. “Don’t you think he’s eaten a lot of those honey lollies?”

  “Yeah, every time he -” Harry twigged. “Oh, she’s forgotten his shield and - and everything.”

  Johan sheltered behind his shield once more. Paternoster had gotten lucky and her spell that made a net of shadows had stuck to him this time. While he was held fast, he squeezed more of his own blood into the tabard and chewed on the honey in his mouth with gusto while Paternoster used the time she’d bought holding him still to conjure a floating cloud platform. Johan used Hold Your Heidels! on her and the net stuck to his opponent who wasted no time in casting a spell that added small but powerful whirlwinds to the miniature storm that was hanging over the arena. The whirlwinds collected the damaging cinders of the mini-volcano and carried them towards him.

  The net ability was released on Johan and he sprinted back at her. Tap, tap, tap, went the halberd against his shield and Johan felt three more stacks of People’s Shield develop to protect him. He’d noticed early that Paternoster met his advance not with a brace to receive his charge but with nimble feet and multiple probing thrusts with her halberd to keep him back. He jinked to the side and advanced again. Tap, tap, tap. Another three. She was charging up his shield very nicely.

  Paternoster broke her defensive pattern by attacking with her halberd before Johan came in again but he parried and used Kingfisher’s Riposte to hit her wrist. Her gauntlets took the blow but he could tell it’d hurt her through the armour and he quickly shoved another portion of honey into his mouth, feeling the stack of Potent Bees rise even higher. The health regenerating boon from the honey as well as the two stacks of Kingfisher’s Riposte were not out-pacing Paternoster’s damage but with the reduced damage from the already dozens of People’s Shield stacks, Johan could feel that the overall loss had slowed to a trickle and would reverse if she let up.

  He pushed the attack once more, alternating between blocking with his shield and parrying for Kingfisher’s Risposte. She’d learned very early not to try and cast a spell unless she had Johan on point or else he’d knock it from her lips with a Cat Swats The Mage shield attack. So he constantly zigged and zagged on the attack to keep it available.

  Johan kept the pressure on her, he’d remembered what Master Greenwood had said about opponents that needed a lot of abilities to chain together; keep the fight pressure on them and half the time, they’ll forget where they’re up to. The amount of crabs in the arena was piling up now and he was starting to use them with Shield Ally for extra manoeuvrability to avoid Paternoster’s partially-directed whirlwinds full of fiery destruction. Then, Johan made a mistake and winced in realisation. She’d hidden her mouth behind her halberd–she’d used a short guard–and used the noise of a whirlwind going past to cover her casting Binding Chains and he was unlucky enough that his boots didn’t manage to resist the effect like the last three times. He was bound in place.

  “By the fury of the heavens, let the stars fall and ignite the earth in flames!” incanted Paternoster triumphantly.

  It was actually quite impressive she’d made it through the incantation without stumbling over the words because Johan had thrown his sword at her, which had slapped into her raised vambrace with an alarming ringing noise. Strong As A Grazer allowed Johan to throw heavy objects at enormous speeds.

  A meteor rock arced down from the sky, right at Johan. The ability had a few moments of impact delay, hence the need to bind him with the trap essence ability, but he used the moment of time to quickly squeeze some more blood onto his tabard, throw one of the resultant crabs at Paternoster and swallow a mouthful of honey before bracing himself behind his shield.

  “Ha!” shouted Paternoster in triumph but the joy of the attack was soon lost from her face as a Hold Your Heidels! net emerged from the smoking impact area and Johan’s silhouette came flying out backwards a moment later.

  Johan figured she’d clearly expected more from such a powerful ability and he didn’t blame her. It had really hurt! Probably caused a lot of that internal bleeding that Dave was always looking out for. Johan mentally shook himself. He should have trusted his shield more. It was one thing to know that he had damage reduction. It was another to disregard safety and use it.

  He landed close to Paternoster after the small flight the Squid Ink Gauntlets had taken him on and brazenly walked through her every-direction-flame ability and steeled himself to ignore the burning trap she’d just cast in the path of his next step to buy herself time. He’d eaten a whole bunch of honey, touched an entire bouquet’s worth of flowers and certainly been attacking with a pointed weapon for some time now. He figured it was time for a good smite and a health race to the end of the match.

  Paternoster still had the Vulnerable debuff from just now when she’d casually swatted Johan’s blood bubbler crab out of the air while the meteor was coming in. Stepping through the flaming trap on the ground, Johan used Ram’s Charge to rush in shield first, batter her halberd aside and slash once again at her wrists with his sword, but this time he smited. A transcendent edge with sides of disruptive and resonant force discharged itself upon impact through and into Paternoster’s wrist as all of Johan’s stacked boons powered the hit.

  “Fucking hell!”

  “Spiffing!”

  “Goddess!”

  “Wild!”

  The viewing party in the fight team room was stunned. They’d seen Johan smite practice dummies but it didn’t compare to what the ability did to a person. The smite attack had been nothing short of devastating. The energy discharge from his sword had flashed as it struck Paternoster’s wrist, cutting through the gauntlet and severing her hand off. Although the cut was clean, there’d also been some force discharge into the surrounding flesh which rippled through it like a wave, crumbling the severed hand brutally and distorting the shape of Paternoster’s wrist-stump.

  A gasp rippled through the spectators, followed by a stunned silence as the implications set in. Paternoster staggered back, clutching the stump where her hand had been, blood spattering across herself and Johan whereupon little crabs fell to the ground.

  With only one hand and in immense pain, Paternoster’s control over her halberd faltered. The weapon that had so reliably kept even Johan at bay with quick thrusts and warded him back with heavy, precise swings was now too heavy for her to use properly. As for Johan’s condition, he was pretty beat up. He was down perhaps half of his health, maybe a bit less, most of which had been removed by the meteor.

  Johan battered Paternoster with strong blows until the inevitable happened. With a final, powerful swing, Johan knocked the halberd from her grip, sending it thumping to the sands and then thrust his sword into her sternum.

  As expected, Johan’s killing blow was accompanied by Paternoster’s Immortality ability activating. A healing light blazed from under her skin, all through her body and her wounds closed, pushing Johan’s sword out. For a moment, it seemed as though she might rally, but Johan, no doubt taking a nugget of wisdom from Greenwood, decided that if he couldn’t hurt his opponent, he’d just make them ineffective. In the paralysed moment of Paternoster’s Immortality taking effect, he reached out and grasped the haft of her halberd with his shield arm.

  So, Paternoster came out of her moment of immortality at about half health, staring up at Johan’s noble figure, sword in hand, surrounded by flowers with sweets falling from a strong hand that was holding her own weapon fast and completing the picturesque scene, a magical apocalypse of her own making that still raged around them although, inside his great helm, Johan was aware of his comically loud chewing noises.

  The crowd, both in the arena and in the viewing room, went silent as Paternoster, to her credit, made the smart move and immediately released the halberd and tried to run. Johan used Ram’s Charge to make her stumble and swept his sword in low and deep using the hilt to catch an ankle and sent Paternoster sprawling. She used her AoE Inferno Burst but Johan walked through it and used Hold Your Heidels! to tie up her limbs and make it harder for her to rise from the arena sands. He kicked out her arm she was using to push herself up from the ground and used a toe to flip her onto her back.

  “Surrender!” demanded Johan, foot on her chest, sword levelled at her neck.

  “Flames rise and shield me!” was the response he got. She’d cast Fire Shield. A defensive ability that encased the caster and burned attackers. Alas, not a surrender.

  So, with his arm on fire, Johan pushed his sword into Paternoster’s chest.

  “WINNER, MISTER JOHAN SCHMIDT OF WARRIOR!”

  There was a fanfare of trumpets that came after the announcement. Both Johan and Paternoster were encased in that silver-rank force field and were being infused with healing magic that returned Paternoster’s hand. As soon as the force field dropped, Johan bowed formally to Paternoster who returned the gesture with an awkward nod of her head and she immediately started walking towards the arena tunnel, leaving her halberd for the arena staff to pick up. Johan, however, lingered. He took off his helm and raised his sword to the crowd, taking everyone in and smiling like he wanted to personally thank everyone for being there. He gestured repeatedly to the increasing pile of treasure he was accumulating that was pushed out on a hovering platform, displaying everything he’d taken so far.

  Hugh and Rupe had already left the viewing room to go and meet Johan at the arena tunnel leaving Dave to reflect on what he’d just witnessed while the arena staff cleaned the sands and the next match was announced. Baudouin Fosse against Sophia Morales who, according to Dave’s notes, was some chump from Spain. Harry had stayed behind to make sure that the room was never empty and thus nobody could come inside to sabotage anything.

  Right on cue, there was the sound from the door of someone roughly trying the handle followed by a loud, insistent knocking.

  “Open up!” came a leonid’s voice.

  He quickly looked at Harry with a finger to his lips and wrote ‘attack immediately if they break the door’ on a spare bit of paper. Harry nodded. They both took cover behind some furniture.

  “I didn’t think you could lock these doors from the outside,” said a non-leonid voice.

  “Well then, there’s obviously somebody in there,” replied the leonid. “Hey, open up! We just want to talk.”

  Dave rolled his eyes at Harry who looked a little scared. Dave was scared too but was also feeling the confidence of someone who had an inventory full of incendiary grenades so the emotions evened out. The two thugs bickered about breaking down the door before abandoning their quest.

  Johan, Hugh and Rupe returned a minute later looking righteous, troubled and fuming, respectively.

  “Ran into the thugs?” asked Dave.

  “They tried to intimidate Johan,” said Hugh. “It didn’t work.”

  “I will tell their mothers what they have been up to,” muttered Johan, going over to the bar and putting the kettle on. “Even if I have to apologise for disciplining them so.”

  Dave looked at Hugh and Rupe.

  “I say, I’ve never heard such vitriol from a young man’s mouth,” said Rupe. “Now, now things get a bit bawdy on hunts, let me tell you, Harry here has heard some things his ears are too young for.” His nephew grinned. “But their behaviour was unconscionable! I don’t blame you in the slightest, Johan, my good fellow!”

  Dave looked questioningly at Hugh who groaned.

  “Two sons of minor lords accosted us in the hallway, Johan was polite but Rupe called them out on their lack of honour. They started insulting our mothers and fathers but then they suggested something unfavourable about sisters and… ” Hugh looked at Dave who indicated he should keep talking. “Johan - ahh - lost patience.” Dave’s eyes bored into Hugh. “Johan suplexed the leonid, slapped the man across the face and then took off his belt and spanked them.”

  In the quiet room, Dave burst into laughter, soon followed by Harry and then everyone else.

  “Oh, nothing will come of it,” said Dave. “You could have stolen all their stuff and nothing would have come of it. This top floor needs an aura-imprint to get to, right? Unless they’re on the list, they weren’t supposed to be up here, and if they were on the list, they’re with another team and weren’t supposed to be near our rooms.”

  “Heaven’s and surges, I’m glad you think of things like that, Dave,” said Johan, steeping some tea. “I thought I would surely get into some trouble for losing my temper like that.”

  “Nah, you’re a big shot duelist now,” said Harry with a mischievous grin. “You can do anything you want. Smash bottles on the wall, swear at people, don’t pay for stuff. Nobody’s going to kick you out of the tournament.”

  “But, I don’t want to do any of that,” said Johan, looking at Harry with concern.

  Rupe cuffed Harry around the back of the head.

  “We’re going to have a talk later,” said Rupe.

  Harry scowled.

  “I think the point is that you can bodily remove people from your area and nobody will care,” said Dave, also looking at Harry. “And, I’ll be joining that talk, Harry. You have very dark, concerning ambitions.”

  The next fight was being announced and the room, tea and all, were brought to the viewing window. Baudouin ‘The Iron Lion’ Fosse was introduced first, and Dave thought that was a pretty cool fight name. He jogged into the arena with light armour and two short scimitars and didn’t say anything remarkable, just announced himself and his teachers. Sophia ‘Everliving’ Morales came next with a similar vibe to getting onto the sands and saying nothing remarkable.

  The hourglass ran out, the fight started and it was, Dave considered, a one-sided beatdown. Dave’s notes had Morales as a confirmed sickle and life essence user with an unknown third essence that gave the harvest confluence. Probably a harmonic or balance essence. Dave supposed that perhaps Fosse was just a bad matchup for Morales because from the start, Fosse just turned into a giant, metal lion, ran at her and pounced. After that, The Iron Lion basically shook her until the force fields came on.

  Dave used Stop And Think to go into his UI and use the full screen combat log that had just scrolled by at blurring speed. After a good while going through it all, he figured it out. Fosse hadn’t used a single ability twice and he’d burned through a full three quarters of his mana in the dozen-or-so seconds that the match had lasted. Dave respected the strategy; mana inefficient but high burst damage followed up by continuing to attack with a high base DPS. In contrast, Morales had tried a couple of control abilities, both resisted, and mistimed a movement ability while being held in The Lion’s mouth. It was definitely a bad matchup for Morales.

  “I think Fosse has some equipment similar to Johan’s boots,” said Dave, coming back into the stunned silence of the viewing room.

  “Oh, that’d make sense, yes,” said Johan.

  “Oh? Yes?” said a mystified Hugh.

  “It looked like she tried a couple of spells but nothing happened,” said Johan, shrugging. “I thought maybe they were delayed healing abilities like Sam’s and she just expected to survive longer but if the spells were resisted that also makes sense.”

  Nobody questioned it. Johan seemed to have a sixth sense for knowing what people were doing in a fight. After all, he’d just come out of a duel with one of the best iron ranked duelists in the whole empire and only made a single bad guess during the match.

  While the arena was being raked and set up for the next match, Dave filled everyone else in on the details he’d gleaned from his UI and they confirmed his initial impression that it was just a bad matchup and what it meant for Johan’s upcoming match with Fosse. It was a short discussion.

  “He’ll fight completely different against me,” concluded Johan after everyone had contributed their thoughts. “He’ll have to. Just with the armour I’m wearing he won’t do half the damage he did to Morales. Unless we believe he is a false duelist?”

  “No, no, no,” said Rupe. “Those top six have all fought each other a few times. He wouldn’t be in the conversation if he had only one strategy.” He shook his head. “No, my new friends, I’m afraid this match we’ve just seen isn’t going to help our Johan here one bit!”

  “It’s alright,” said Johan, beaming at everyone. “Without you all, I wouldn’t even know what essences he had or what kind of abilities to expect until now. Thanks to you all, I’ve had an entire day to think about it and I think if I just fight the way that Master Greenwood taught me and pray to the gods with all my heart. I think I’ll win.”

  “You are just too much sometimes, you know that?,” said Dave, flatly.

  “That sounds like a compliment, Dave,” said Johan, smiling down at him.

  Dave rolled his eyes and just hugged the blond giant. His friends chuckled.

  The next match was about to be underway and everyone made themselves comfortable at the viewing screen.

  Much of the morning rolled by with match after match being decided quickly. It was, honestly, Dave thought, a little dull. Most of them seemed to be duelists too scared to engage. They’d mostly just stay back unless trying to land a magic combination of powerful strikes/abilities. It niggled at him. He held the niggle in the back of his mind while watching some matches and then, the penny dropped and he figured it out.

  “Ohh, shit!” he said loudly. “Everyone’s doing fuckin’ bullshido!”

  Everyone in the room looked at him.

  “Yeah, I’d better explain that, huh?”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Basically, where I’m from there are martial arts that don’t fight. Some of the names of those martial arts end in ‘do’ and in my native language ‘bullshit’ is a rude, slang term for nonsense. So, nonsense-martial-art, you get me?”

  “Oh!” said Harry grinning. “Like Mad Mari?”

  “Ha! Spiffing!” cried Rupe. “I’d forgotten about her.” He turned to the blank faces of Executive Services. “This mad adventurer from a few years ago who had this idea about ‘strengthening her body’ and threw herself against trees all day as ‘training’ and enters the staff competition at the county fair every year unarmed.” He shook his head. “We ended up having to ban her from the fair. She still lives in the woods training to this day!”

  “In the woods? Into the woods, at great speed…” quipped Harry quietly.

  “Yeah, yeah, that!” said Dave, glad to have found a cultural touchstone. “That, but kind of starting with a good idea. I mean - yeah, down there. Look at that pose? What’s going on there?”

  Everyone turned to the arena below where one of the fighters was standing, spear in hand, on one leg with her arms raised, bellowing out a spell that shot snakes at the other fighter, who went into a horse stance with shield extended in front and warhammer pointed directly at his opponent. The warhammered fighter received the snake projectiles on his shield and bellowed his own spell. The warhammer shot like a rocket into the chest of the posing spear wielder, knocking them over. The force fields kicked in as the back of their head snapped into the ground.

  “WINNER, LUCA PETROVI?!”

  “Yes! That!” said Dave loudly, gesturing at the sands. “What the fuck was that? Those ridiculous poses. Harry? Johan? I haven’t seen either of you posing like a statue.”

  “Ahh, don’t look at me,” said Harry. “I do bows, you carry?”

  “You most certainly do not just ‘do bows’, you little scoundrel,” said Rupe, ruffling his nephew’s hair. “The amount we spend on swordmasters for you!”

  “Baah!” scoffed Harry. “My father taught me more about melee than those losers.”

  “Wait!” said Dave, raising a hand to ward off Rupe’s ire. “Why do you say that, Harry?”

  “I dunno!” replied Harry with the full-body shrug typical of gangly teens everywhere. “They just, you know? Do nothing. You carry? Like they’ll spend half an hour getting you to turn your wrist or something and then you try it with the village kids and they just smack your sword away and stab you -”

  “You hadn’t got up to the fade and riposte!” said Rupe, going red in the face.

  “Let him speak,” said Dave, raising his hand again but smiling at Harry.

  “So, this swordmaster taught you something and it didn’t work?” said Dave. “Show it to Johan.”

  Harry walked over to the weapons racks and picked up a rapier.

  “It was something like; this,” he said, doing a thrust and emphasising a wrist turn throughout the motion.

  “Oh, yes, La Vega’s vine hand,” said Johan, lighting up. “Master Greenwood said that it’s favoured by the masters from the Tarraco region. It has its uses!”

  Dave turned to Harry.

  “The swordmaster didn’t tell you the uses, did they?”

  “Nuuuh,” Harry teenage-moaned in complaint. “He just caned my hand when I did it wrong.”

  “Hugh, tell your Lady Goddess that I’m disappointed with this - these people’s teaching techniques,” said Dave.

  “No, she’s already with you,” said Hugh, nodding.

  “Harry, spar a little with Johan,” said Dave. “Just play fighting. Johan, show Harry a use case of that… twisty-thrust.”

  “La Vega’s vine hand,” said Johan, “Or, more generally, a pronate thrust.”

  Harry and Johan saluted and began duelling lightly, going back and forth but within a handful of seconds, Johan had blocked to his upper right and instead of moving back to his centre, had fallen into a lunge and twisted his hand over while thrusting into Harry’s belly.

  “Ah, touch! You got me!” said Harry with a bashful grin. “I advanced with my point offline, didn’t I? Argh! I always do that.”

  Dave gestured at them both.

  “Neither of you did any posing, I notice,” said Dave.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  “Yeah, well, that’s because my father taught me to just get stuck in, you carry?” said Harry.

  “Was your father taught in Friuli by any chance?” asked Johan, open faced curiosity shining forth.

  “His instructor was, yes!” said Harry.

  “Cor, I knew it!” said Johan, snapping his fingers. “I should have known since yesterday. The way you fight favouring strong movements. Lots of beating your opponent's blade aside. Master Greenwood always said that’s a signature of Friuli schools.”

  “And what was that shit we just saw on the sands with the high spear punch-me-in-the-face pose?” asked Dave. He gestured again to Harry and Johan. “Clearly, the posing isn’t needed? What the hell were they doing, Johan? Without Greenwood around, you’re the expert here.”

  The gentle giant fidgeted awkwardly. He didn’t like speaking badly of others but he answered the question.

  “That pose is from a style favoured by some Walsh tribes,” said Johan. “It’s perfectly functional.” He winced at Dave's sceptical glare. “But, yes, yes, yes, steady on. She wasn’t using it right. Master Greenwood taught it to me as something she calls a transition pose.” He selected a two-handed sword off the rack and walked up to a training dummy. “See, you approach in high guard, get your opponent off balance somehow - maybe with a feint - but go into boar rushes down the mountain instead.

  He accompanied his narration by advancing on the dummy with his sword high, handguard level with his face, faked a downward slash with his shoulders and footwork but instead, rose up onto one foot with his hands well over his head, momentarily in the exact same pose as the woman in the area had been in, and then crashed down into the training dummy with all of his weight in a strong blow. Johan turned back to everyone.

  “Master Greenwood did say when she was teaching it to me that some of the Walsh like to take and hold the pose to ward back their enemies with the threat of a strong attack,” said Johan, speaking mainly to Harry who was listening to Johan with rapt attention. “but she said that they fight in groups. She finds it’s not good for bouts or duels because, as we saw with that poor woman, you’re very vulnerable to ranged attacks.”

  “It wasn’t even the hammer that finished her,” said Dave. “I saw it and double checked with my combat log, it was the fall that stopped the match. Cracked the back of her head on the sand.”

  “Tally ho, hold up a square minute there, old boys!” said Rupe pompously. “Are you telling me my family has wasted hundreds of silver coins on useless masters?”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say -” began Johan, kindly.

  “I’ll say it,” interrupted Dave. “If I have to. Especially if what the master that Harry just mentioned is typical?”

  Harry nodded, rolling his eyes with as much long-suffering disrespect as his body could express.

  “But I looked him up!” said Rupe, indignantly. “He was a regional winner in Pontus through iron and bronze ranks! Competed and placed well in tournaments for twenty years before opening a school!”

  “He probably has a few genuinely good tricks or combinations that actually do work well,” said Dave. “That’s how these things work where I’m from. I trained with a few guys from - ugh, how do you say? Lesser styles? Anyway, they’d always get off their trick in training but because we did unarmed fighting, it didn’t finish you, so after whatever trick they’d done you could play defensive, find ways to counter the trick and a minute later, you’d just dominate them.”

  “Master Greenwood calls them a one-minute-champs,” said Johan nodding sagely. “Lots of talk and done after three thrusts.”

  Dave clenched his jaw to keep his face straight. Rupe’s moustache quivered dangerously. Harry grinned and opened his mouth to say something but from behind Johan, Hugh came to everyone’s rescue and shook his head vigorously at Harry.

  “What is it?” said Johan, who’d noticed the silence.

  “Oh, nothing, Johan,” said Harry quickly. “Just odd phrasing for us city folk. Hey, can you help me with my two-sword fighting? It’s a pretty wild style and I’m thinking I’ll try it against Perrot.”

  Suitably distracted, Johan’s innocent mind remained intact just a little longer. Point made, Dave, Hugh and Rupe returned to watching the arena fights. The current fight had two duelists who were clearly more interested in casting magic at each other while hiding behind shields and playing who-runs-out-of-mana-first. Dave watched with mild amusement until one eventually fell over.

  Now that they’d talked about it, they couldn’t stop seeing it and pointing it out to each other when one of the fighters did some obvious training poses during the coming fights. They also noted when, as Dave predicted, they often had those one or two good combinations or tricks that had fight ending potential and kept spamming them, over and over.

  He had to admit, having a single, super well-drilled move that ended with something pointy in your opponent's chest wasn’t the worst idea in armed combat. He was particularly impressed by one fighter whose trick-move was a simple and effective one-two where they’d blast their opponent with winds powerful enough to make them stumble and then hurl a spear, that accelerated with the wind, at their off-balance opponent. Very good magic-physical synergy.

  Everyone watched the other top six have their fights. Glovis Garson fought against someone with a shape-changing powerset. Clovis was extremely mobile, using shields to deflect ranged attacks while constantly casting control spells from his flute and faun essence. Fighting Clovis looked frustrating. Like you’d be chasing illusions before being suddenly attacked.

  Georgette Brodeur fought a crocodile-themed ranger, that was Dave’s impression; A runic with solid defence abilities who attempted to advance behind shield abilities, distract with crocodile themed spells of ambush and then swing down with a two-handed sword. Brodeur led him on a slow death as she loaded him up with afflictions, some were cast as spells and more applied with the touch of her weapon, and just fought with her rapier while going backwards and using genuinely impressive awareness and reflexes to avoid the worst of the ambushing, death-rolling spells from the crocodile essence.

  Johan and Harry ended up practising together, refining melee escapes until Harry was summoned to the tunnel by the arena staff. Everyone from Executive Services wished him luck and stayed behind in the viewing room.

  Harry was announced as “Lord Harry ‘Trollslayer’ Ainsworth”, apparently that meant he’d tracked and killed a troll without assistance, and Lord Abelard ‘The Arsenal’ Perrot. Their speeches were simple.

  “I am Lord Harry Ainsworth of Shuckletonshire, here to test my mettle humbly before the gods.”

  Curiously, Perrot’s speech was also without bravado or classism.

  “I am Lord Abelard Perrot, I came to fight before Warrior and win the tournament prize.”

  Perrot then put his oddly-shaped helm on his head and started pacing within his starting ring. Harry grinned and started bouncing on the balls of his feet at the back of his own ring, nocking an arrow. Dave wondered for a moment about Perrot’s helm that looked entirely made of enchanted glass but put the thought aside for later.

  The sand ran out of the great hourglass, the bell sounded and the match was on. Perrot had stopped pacing and started running at Harry just as the sand was running out and left his circle at a sprint with his shield up. Harry had done something similar but had started running around the arena circumference. He fired arrows as he ran which all thunked into Perrot’s shield except one which missed. Dave’s combat log let him know that Harry had used Rebounding Shot. It went over Perrot’s shoulder on purpose, bounced off the far wall and started coming back. As Perrot closed in, Harry used Piercing Shot against the shield just as the Rebounding Shot came in.

  Perrot jinked to the side slightly, away from the arrow coming in from behind, which Harry used to escape from being pinned against the arena wall but he’d come in range of Perrot’s abilities. Perrot cast Infinite Blades which made clones of the sword that Perrot was holding multiply in a fan out of his real blade and the copies flew at Harry who had to use Elusive Maneuver to avoid all but three of the blades, which gave him superficial cuts to his legs when they hit.

  “Ah, that’s not good,” said Dave.

  Harry was supposed to save all his escape abilities for exiting melee, where Perrot would be able to grind him down.

  “Ah, he’s putting on a spiffing show, though,” said Rupe. “Spiffing!”

  And, it was true. Having escaped from being pinned against the wall by Perrot, Harry was now circling the arena anti-clockwise but was soon reminded that being anywhere in the arena with someone who has the vast essence was dangerous. Perrot used a spell called Arsenal Barrage which summoned a series of spears, javelins, arrows and other projectiles onto the sands which started launching themselves at Harry, one-by-one like a machine gun. While Harry was dodging those projectiles, Perrot cast Galactic Barrage and a rain of swords fell from the sky as well in an area-wide attack.

  In dodging Perrot’s combination attack, Harry accidentally moved towards Perrot who used Weapon Storm to make an area of violently spinning weapons behind Harry, boxing him into melee and then - Dave had to use Stop And Think to keep up - Perrot used a series of magically-enhanced strikes in order:

  

  
• Guardian's Strike: A shield bash that temporarily disables the target's abilities.


  

  

  
• Armoury Assault: Calls forth an array of weapons for a multi-hit combo attack.


  

  

  
• Cosmic Slash: Draws power from the cosmos, delivering a strike of immense energy.


  

  

  
• Stormbreaker: Channels a lightning-infused strike that shocks and stuns targets.


  

  

  
• Swift Cleave: Executes a rapid, powerful strike that cuts through armour.


  

  

  
• Aegis Bash: Smashes enemies with a shield, creating a shockwave that knocks them back.


  

  Dave looked at his notes. A six-ability combo. Seven really, considering that Aegis Bash knocked Harry back into the Weapon Storm. It was basically a stun-lock combo: Guardian strike, hit, hit, Stormbreaker, hit, hit. Nasty. Dave let time return.

  Harry ran out the back of the Weapon Storm looking worse for wear - he was at about half health - and activated his own combo. Dave winced. He was supposed to wait until he’d baited out a couple of Perrot’s damage reduction abilities. Still, maybe Harry figured he didn’t have enough time left to wait.

  Harry put Predator’s Mark on Perrot, making him easier for Harry to track and detect and then cast Hunter’s Bond on himself with Perrot as the target, forcing Perrot to see out of Harry’s eyes. Harry closed his eyes and started shooting at Perrot.

  He opened with a Tracking Arrow which he deliberately shot high into the air and let its tracking property guide it to his marked target and then shot two more arrows which lodged in Perrot’s armour taking off a bit of his health but then at the next snap of the bow, Perrot activated Barrier Surge which was a long cooldown, body-encasing shield that reduced all same-rank damage to nothing. Harry cast Silent Hunter and ran to a different angle while he waited out Perrot’s shield.

  When Barrier Surge ran out, Harry used his biggest ability, Enchanted Arrows, selecting ‘explosive’ from the effects, with Eagle Eye Precision and Slow Aim to get the best shot possible. He aimed the perfect shot, right where the gorget of Perrot’s armour met the helmet. He shot and immediately swore as Perrot used Reflective Guard, and reflected the damage right back, taking a good chunk of Harry’s health. The shock was enough to shake harry from Hunter’s Bond and the boon went away. His own vision returned, Harry shot two more ordinary arrows, one into Perrot’s leg and one into his shield before Perrot collected himself.

  Perrot was on about half health but Harry was much lower and couldn’t afford to take any more damage. Perrot took advantage of this and boxed him in with AoE spells before walking Harry down and finishing him off in melee. The force field came up, freezing them with Harry’s back against the wall and Perrot’s sword halfway through his guts.

  “WINNER, LORD ABELARD PERROT!” said the announcer with the usual fanfare of trumpets.

  “Spiffing!” cheered Rupe at the viewing glass, clapping loudly. “He put on a good show, didn’t he now? Just spiffing! Practically pincushioned Perrot before falling. Bravo, me lad! Spiffing!”

  Dave, Hugh and Johan clapped along with less exuberance but full support of Rupe in his familial pride.

  “Excuse me, I must get the boy,” said Rupe, rushing off. “Spiffing!”

  He came back a couple of minutes later with a sweaty Harry and three other uncomfortable-looking nobles.

  “Friends of yours?” asked Dave, standing at the door.

  “Ah, Dave!” said Rupe. “These peers, Marqués Hernando de la Vega, Duchess Livia di Moretti and Baron Jacques de Saint-Pierre. They have been asked to leave the social club! Can you believe the cheek?”

  Dave paused for a moment doing the mental maths on any of these aristocrats being a spy of some kind but the warm glow of Johan’s presence radiated from behind him.

  “All gods-loving people are welcome here,” said Johan with his perfect smile. “Please come in.”

  Dave reacted quickly, pulling the door open and bowing them inside.

  “We only have the comforts that came with the room,” continued Johan. “So, please, forgive the lack of leisure suitable for those of your eminence.”

  Marqués Hernando de la Vega swaggered in, vibrant in red and yellow, demanding attention. His left hand rested confidently on his rapier and he smiled like one thinking of a joke, possibly one that deserved a coy wink at any moment. Behind him, Duchess Livia di Moretti glided in, her emerald gown trailing in the air upon winds of magic. She gazed sharply about the room radiating an air of quiet command, serenely assessing everything down her nose. Baron Jacques de Saint-Pierre came last, his deep blue coat barely containing the tense energy beneath. His jaw was set, eyes blazing, as though ready to cut through any frivolity with a single glance. The baron was bronze rank and immediately started imposing his presence over the room.

  “With that invitation said,” said Dave, giving Johan and then the nobles a meaningful look. “This is our space, our rules. The purpose of this place is to provide Johan somewhere where he can prepare for his fights so, if you please, there’ll be no aura jostling in here. In this place we’re all equal before the gods.”

  “You dare -” began de Saint-Pierre.

  “Of course he dares!” said de la Vega with a big smile. “This is his house!” He walked up to Dave and kissed him on the cheek. “It is that kind of thinking that has created this whole mess!”

  “He’s right, Jacques,” sighed di Moretti, extending her hand to Dave and curtsying. Dave bowed and brushed his lips against the back on her fingers. “We have been selected by the gods to rule the common folk but that doesn’t mean They’ve put us in Their hierarchy.” di Moretti gave a matronly smile at the room. “Baron de Saint-Pierre was the most vocal of us before leaving the club. I fear his blood is still up.”

  Johan approached the bristling man with hand extended.

  “Then I must thank you, Baron, for we are like minded in our love of the gods. Your Dominion-given place is not in question. My friend Dave comes from a society of direct speech and means no disrespect. We merely beg your help in seeing the will of Warrior, who has been invoked for this tournament, made real. Know that you are among agreeable friends here,” said Johan, sincerity coming off him in waves.

  The baron straightened his back, took Johan in and shook his hand firmly.

  “Thank you, young man, thank you,” said Baron de Saint-Pierre gruffly, shaking Johan’s hand vigorously. Behind him, Rupe and Harry stopped sweating bullets. “It is good to know that someone knows their place around here.” He glared at Dave. “I can forgive much if it be the will of the gods.”

  Dave bowed to the man, stretching his paper-thin patience further.

  “I apologise if I caused offence, my good baron,” said Dave. “I hail from Ahitereiria where Dominion’s hand rises and falls upon all folk as He sees fit within the whims of Fortune, for it is a different land with different needs. I am still learning the ways of this land.”

  Dave felt the baron’s aura expand onto his aura camouflage but was quickly shooed back by similar aura motions by de la Vega and di Moretti.

  “Sounds like a place of madness,” harrumphed the baron. “But, I will leave that to Him.”

  “Thank you, Baron de Saint-Pierre, and please let me say,” Dave extended his hand and used his rudimentary aura control to show his authentic feelings on the matter, “It’s pretty awful when you know you’re right but everyone in the room refuses to listen.”

  The baron looked down his nose at Dave, but shook his hand.

  “Well, today we all know that sensation,” said de la Vega with a playful smile. “Please, Jacques, you are blocking the doorway! Let Rupe and Harry in. Without them we would have the choice between the worst arena seats or our rented rooms in the city!”

  The baron started but quickly stepped to bow Rupe and Harry into the room apologetically, nodded at Dave and allowed Johan to lead him to the bar.

  What the fuck, Rupe? Dave wrote on a piece of paper. Rupe and Harry paused and sent their most apologetic, sheepish looks. They clearly hadn’t thought it’d go like that. Dave rolled his eyes and gestured with his head at the chairs in front of the viewing glass which he followed them to. Easy going people like Harry and Rupe often had trouble getting into the mind of someone with a superiority complex.

  Baron Claude Franchet hadn’t felt this kind of excitement since his adventuring days. The gathered nobles were going over a list of Johan’s most probable abilities, as given by their various secret-finders. Their faces were taut with concentration as they poured over and over his abilities and only found more strengths. So far, their collective conclusion had been the one everyone had seen within the first five minutes of knowing his abilities; don’t go near him.

  “Alright, I think I have a plan for young Baudouin,” said Adriana Villaverde, elvish peerage from the mountains in Iberia who occasionally coached students in the spear. “I think if he ignores the sword and gets in hard and fast and really gets behind that shield, he’ll be able to out-damage the peasant.”

  “And, what if the peasant fights back?” asked Matteo Grimaldi, another would-be strategist from Città Eterna, the major city in the boot of the empire. The man was involved in wine import/exports and followed the iron/bronze duelling scene in his home region.

  “Well, yes of course, but hear my reasons, won’t you?” said Villaverde. “Now, we know he gains those stacks if he dodges, if an attack misses him, if he eats those sweets or touches one of those flowers. Now, he can’t do any of those things while Baudouin is holding him down and raking him with those claws. Being in that close can also stop him from using that shield which makes him harder to damage, no?”

  “Well, yes but again, what if he fights back?” asked Grimaldi. “With his strength ability? Or with his shield-charge? Or uses that net which we just found out interacts with his strength ability for its power?”

  “Do you have a better idea?” said Villaverde aggressively.

  “No, but -”

  “Well, be quiet then!”

  “- yours is still trash.”

  They glared at each other. Claude clamped down on the urge to chuckle at their childishness and stepped in to keep the peace. Earlier he’d allowed dissent to heighten emotions with the plan to direct those feelings into reckless betting but it hadn’t worked. Instead, a few of the particularly submissive, pious members had started talking sense so he’d had to ask them to leave. He’d rudely suggested the idea that they should seek out comfort in the understaffed viewing room that the Schmidt boy was no doubt occupying.

  Thinking about that reminded him that a couple of Isabelle Duval’s thugs had snuck onto the viewing room floor and tried to rough up the room while Schmidt was out. Luckily, they hadn’t the courage to break the door down and had been found in the hallway by Schmidt who’d thoroughly embarrassed them with a spanking. He’d gotten lucky. He couldn’t condemn that kind of thing, it’d go against the story he was trying to sell, but he also didn’t want such attempts to be successful, because then he might lose his bets.

  “Lord Grimaldi, Countess Villaverde,” said Claude in a conciliatory tone. “While we can all agree that the boy’s weakness is at range,” he gestured at the list of abilities of both fighters. “We know for a fact that Baudouin, the fight that matters for now, doesn’t have any ranged power himself. So why don’t you put your heads together and see what you can think of to use in Baudouin’s abilities to close that distance?”

  Claude smiled to himself. They’d spend the next half an hour coming up with ability combinations that Baudouin would have already perfected himself just for situations just like this. But, let them feel useful. It would only increase their confidence.

  “Baudouin’s not going to be able to do it,” muttered Reyer in his ear.

  Claude walked over to the viewing glass and gazed down into the area with his hands behind his back.

  “I know Reyer,” said Claude softly, using his aura to ensure the words didn’t carry. “But in his defeat, he’ll provide valuable insights for your daughter to beat him.”

  “You think it’ll come to that?” said Reyer.

  Claude had personally brought in the subtle magic that’d rigged the groups so that Reyer and Schmidt could only meet in the finals.

  “I do, old boy, I do,” said Claude with a slyness that he enjoyed all the more because he knew his rival would read it wrongly. “With every moment that boy spends on the sands, the more we notice weaknesses in his technique. Have you noticed he drops his sword tip momentarily when he disengages?”

  Claude had only noticed it because he was a silver ranker. Perhaps a bronze ranker with an eye for sword technique could also see it but the moment was too brief for an iron ranker. Thankfully, Reyer had never trained in melee and just nodded along.

  “And remember, Reyer,” said Claude, withholding no satisfaction from his aura. “That betting pot the boy has going. It’s winner takes all.”

  Reyer just grinned greedily and left to join the strategic discussion.

  Having the three extra nobles in the room turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Despite the rough start, with the first three in, one of them being a bronze ranker, they’d gotten messages to fellow aristocrats in the same position and soon, there was another ten in the room. All had agreed to the conditions of no aura nudging against the fight team and Baron de Saint-Pierre, who believed in taking charge of any situation, took it upon himself to use his bronze rank to enforce this. Despite being quite terrible at following the rule himself, he seemed to be of the mind that if he wasn’t allowed to force his soul onto the lower ranks, nobody was.

  Fortunately, those occurrences of attempted aura dominance seemed to be a force of habit from the collected aristocrats rather than actual malice. Dave hated it. He was hating this society, this world he’d found himself in, where shaking someone by the soul was considered a perfectly mundane way of asserting one’s authority over anybody else in the vicinity.

  Rupe was holding court at the gathering, chatting to everyone and keeping the conversation flowing between the matches speculating about what could have been if a fighter had done this or that or worn different armour. He was a talented armchair general, Dave thought.

  Between matches, sometimes during if the matchup wasn’t interesting, the collected nobles would laugh and have at Johan with practice weapons, laughing the whole time at how he did this or that movement perfectly, or with a twist they admired. The three bronze rankers in the room, led by Baron de Saint-Pierre managed to land the occasional hit on Johan but mostly, Johan’s practice sword would land first, instantly becoming pliable and floppy, as the comic safety magic of those practice weapons worked.

  In short, Dave had nothing to do, so he studied. Dimensional Magic: Bridges Across Reality by Sorin Zephyros was the least self-fellating book on the subject that bothered with iron rank teleportation and he’d been trying to reconcile what the book was trying to get across with his observations from the silver rank portal Brisset made. He was reading about destination targeting when a shadow fell across Tome and cleared its throat.

  Dave looked up from his book and found himself face-to-face with a young elf who stood there with a relaxed, upright posture that he somehow affected to look almost lazy. Despite his slender frame and below-average height for an elf, he looked lithe and graceful enough to spring to the ceiling and his eyes danced with the same kind of mischievous sparkle to them as Marqués Hernando de la Vega. Perhaps more so. A smooth, disarming smile played on his lips as he projected a roguish coolness with half-shut eyes that suggested a certain calm self-satisfaction. If he was still in his home reality, Dave would have compared the elf to Jeff Goldblum or Antonio Banderas. Everything about him spoke of effortless, almost feline elegance, from the way he moved to the way he talked.

  “Hello, you are… Booker, are you not?” He brushed a charming smile over Dave.

  “And, to whom am I speaking?” asked Dave, rising from his seat and extending his hand in greeting.

  “Lord Diego Noguera,” said the elf, bowing with a flourish and taking the proffered hand. “But please, call me Diego! I want us to be friends.”

  “And, you can call me Dave. Now, What are the strings attached to this friendship?”

  Diego threw back his head and laughed, twirling into the seat next to Dave.

  “I see you’ve met the peerage! Ha!” said Diego. “I think you have the right attitude. No! Our friendship will come from a professional arrangement. You see, Friar Hugh suggested that you are trying to become something of a detective, no?”

  “I am,” said Dave guardedly.

  “Excellent!” announced the vibrant man. “I believe that one of my family’s suppliers in the city is stealing from us. The good friar said this would be a speciality of yours?”

  A yellow exclamation mark appeared over the dandy’s head and Dave glanced over the quest.

  Dave accepted the quest.

  “Tell me about this supplier,” said Dave, his voice all business and gesturing for Tome to come, flapping clumsily into his hands.

  “Luciana Delgado,” said Diego, enthusiastically going along with Dave’s mode switching. “She purchases magical items for my family and we sell them on the world adventurer market.”

  Dave looked up the name. In the course of her legal work on behalf of the Remore estate Brisset had been finding opportunities to get Dave access to private files. Among them were city taxation records. He looked up Luciana Delgado and saw a steady stream of taxes paid to the city over the course of the years. He did a graph and plotted it through time and it had a slight upwards trend.

  “May I have access to your family’s records?” Dave asked.

  “You may have access to all the invoices of Luciana Delgado,” replied Diago with a smirk. “For now.”

  Dave used Stop And Think repeatedly under Diago’s energetic gaze while browsing through Delgado’s invoice history and graphed each of Delgado’s purchased items by time of purchase against purchase price and market price. This was something Dave was uniquely suited to do with unique items, as magic items often were priced in a broad sense that wasn’t entirely accurate but Epistemology could query local value on the day of purchase.

  “Yeah, it’s not looking good,” said Dave, showing Diego a graph a few real-time seconds later that he’d drawn on some summoned paper he’d flicked into his hand. “There’s a consistent trend of Delgado invoicing you for an average of about seven percent more than the local selling price. Now, sure magic items are subjective and all but after twenty items, a consistent trend like that is telling. Wait, hang on,” said Dave peering critically at Tome and flicking back and forth between the invoices it was pretending to be. “Is she that dumb?”

  Diego was staring at Dave like a hungry man stares at a scrumptious dinner. Dave, somehow, failed to notice.

  “She fucking is,” said Dave, grinning. He flipped through the pages quickly, pulling out numbers into another graph that he drew on yet another conjured piece of paper. “Look, she did it with the bulk alchemical ingredients too. Because they’re all the same item, the cost doesn’t vary, there’s no haggling, errors are reduced. Anyway, see?” Dave pointed at the graph. “You can pinpoint an almost exact date she started. See? When the market started rising as we came out of summer she let her own prices rise just a little bit more and kept them up. She’s stealing from you by overcharging her invoices and pocketing the difference.”

  Dave looked up to see the grey question mark over Diego’s head had turned yellow. He mentally pushed his aura against Diego’s lightly to turn the quest in and watched the coin counter go up in his HUD.

  “That is amazing,” said Diego, with obvious relish. “I don’t want you to look at any more files for now. Oh? What is it?”

  Diego was looking at Dave looking at the exclamation mark over Diego’s head.

  “I can tell you have something else you’d like done,” said Dave.

  “Oh? You can tell? Stupendous!” said Diego, laughing with his usual exuberance. “Yes, I would like you to find the sellers with me she was buying from and look through their invoices. Were they aware of the overcharging? It is an interesting question.”

  Dave ran it over in his head and nodded as he accepted the quest.

  “Yeah, but tell me where you’re staying so I can visit you a day or two after I escape this evening,” said Dave.

  “Escape? From - Oh, yes. Of course,” said Diego, catching on. “Perhaps you could use some allies? No?”

  “I wouldn’t say no,” said Dave.

  “Hey, everybody!” announced Diego to the room with sudden happiness. He waved the graphs that Dave had given him. “Dave here is a detective! He can solve local financial crimes! My purchaser was ripping me off and Dave found them out in about five minutes! Come, come!” Diego gestured to his peers whose attention went from bored to piqued. “He said that to expand his clientele, he is available for free today only.”

  The faces of the dozen or so nobles in the room went from piqued to serious. Far from the kind of people to look gift heidels in the mouth - they were, in fact, the kind of person who’d take any heidel and sell it to the knackers if it gave them any trouble - they rounded on Dave and he saw yellow exclamation marks appear above their heads. Diego smiled wickedly.

  “How about I set myself up in the corner there next to the viewing glass and I’ll have my familiar bring you over to me between matches, one-by-one where we can throw up a privacy screen and have an innocent chat?” suggested Dave.

  There was a general murmur of agreement behind Diego who was grinning like a maniac.

  “Well, there’ll be plenty of time in the day so, nobody worry! Everyone will get a turn so… you first? Good time for you?” Dave pointed at Countess Marina Valencia, an Iberian noble who was also in Healer’s clergy as a travelling collector of rare knowledge.

  “It is, yes,” said Valencia. She turned to excuse herself from her company. “Let us continue later, Lord Hampshire.”

  Dave spent the rest of the day cycling between clerical matters with the nobles and watching Johan fight his murder’s row of opponents.

  Right after lunch he fought Baudouin Fosse. Fosse had beaten his previous opponent by opening with three abilities he always used; Transform, Razor Claws and Iron Skin, which gave his characteristic form. The transformation into the form of a lion imitated a strength ability which, like Johan, increased the damage of his special attacks and increased his agility.

  Comfortably in Lion form, he just charged his opponent, knocking them down with Pounce, lay on top and just mauled them to victory. Dave noted that the iron lion used a high burst DPS combo, Pounce, Savage Bite, Rending Claws, Kinetic Claw, Lion’s Roar - a loud, stunning effect ability - and Claw Barrage. He was pretty much out of mana by the end of it but Dave appreciated the effect. After the combo his opponent was very much depleted of health and still lying on their back underneath a couple of hundred kilograms of aggressive, armour-wearing lion. Fosse finished them off quickly enough after that.

  Against Johan, Fosse had intelligently selected a more paced strategy. He’d clearly intended to fight in iron lion form, do a lot of damage and then disengage for a while to recharge his mana pool by channelling an ability called Mana Magnet which gave mana regeneration commensurate with the amount of iron in the area. As it turns out, Fosse could summon a wall of iron so there was quite a lot of iron in the area. Unfortunately for Fosse, Johan felt no need to stop hitting him. His every attempt to disengage was met by Johan reengaging with Hold Your Heidels!, Ram’s Charge or sometimes with Shield Ally using a blood bubbler crab. With Johan whittling him down, he eventually transformed back into iron lion form and attacked Johan in a blaze of glory, rendering himself unconscious when his mana ran out.

  A couple of detective sessions later, Johan was facing Clovis Garcon, who’d won his previous bouts in the same fashion; he’d confuse, distract and misdirect his opponent with charms and illusions while stabbing them to death. His style had a kind of deliberate randomness to it. For instance, just when Dave thought Garcon was using his magical shielding abilities only to cover lapses in his defence, he’d use it to deliberately tank a special ability and literally jump — Mountain Leap was the ability — into a reckless attack. He’d summon spectral animals by also-summoned moonlight to seemingly retreat to heal but actually be using the display to disguise a cast of Wild Growth behind his opponent, trapping them between a horde of spectral allies and a temporary but dense wild hedge. And, he did it all with a mad, beguiling smile.

  Johan weathered a lot of damage before his strategy against Garcon became obvious to everyone who wasn’t already privy to it; once he had five stacks of Kingfisher’s Riposte as well as the Healing Honey buff from his ring and he activated Boss Music. Boss Music was a sound-based effect which competed with Garcon’s flute essence abilities. The effects of the flute abilities included an attack speed debuff, at will auditory illusions, a shield and a melody-based constant heal-over-time.

  With that dispel and a lot of the pressure taken off him, Johan just let his buffs accumulate; five stacks of wind blossom, kingfisher’s riposte and mage swatter all made him formidable beyond his rank. According to the magic his abilities worked by, attacking illusions counted as attacks and he was doing so much damage on each swing that Farmer Reaps The Fields ensured that there was no safety within melee distance of him. After his setup was complete, the second half of the match was just Johan being a human blender of destruction to anything near him. It ended with him at half health still holding onto all his stacks of buffs, unwilling to attempt a smite in case he lost them to an illusion. Once the force fields melted away from both combatants and Johan’s sword was removed from his belly, Chevalier Clovis Garcon’s shoulders slumped for a moment in defeat for a moment before his mad grin returned. He proceeded to salute Johan properly with his rapier and strut straight-backed off the arena sands while Johan acknowledged the crowd.

  Although clapping along, there were some mutters in the viewing room.

  “Can’t say he isn’t consistent.”

  “He just… hits them. Over and over.”

  “It’s spiffing!”

  “Oh, come on, that’s not fair. Sometimes he hides behind his shield.”

  “Where’s the flair? The art?”

  “You don’t have to watch.”

  “No, I’m watching but you have to admit it’s…”

  “Well, yes, it lacks the usual pazazz. He’s actually being highly technical.”

  The debate continued until Johan returned because Harry rudely brought up the topic. To Johan’s delight. Johan gladly explained every detail of high fights, drawing everyone in with his aura of friendliness to ask questions. Apparently, having the opportunity to ask for personal insights from champion-material like Johan was rare and he entertained the room between fights by explaining things to look out for. He gave the example of a moment in the last duel where Clovis gestured with his weapon when casting a spell that gave Johan an opening to begin the strong attack he’d done that’d sent Clovis retreating. Dave listened in with one ear while going over old, conflicting family records detailing where a shipment of ranked metal goods had sunk thirteen years ago.

  The semifinals were soon on and Johan faced Georgette Brodeur, who had, so far, displayed a strategy that Dave could only describe as nasty. In a good way. She was what people called an affliction specialist, which meant their abilities were focused around DoTs and debuffs. That ability set that wasn’t normally good at duels because while all the DoTs and debuffs were ramping up, the opponent would normally just go all out and bring the affliction specialist down which would technically make them the winner even if the lingering DoTs would have killed the other fighter a minute later.

  Brodeur had a couple of things going for her which made this difficult for her previous two opponents. Firstly, she was an amazing defensive swordswoman. Advancing on her if your name wasn’t Johan Schmit was basically asking to be cut by her sabre. Secondly, it seemed like all of her equipment was movement enhancing which paired well with two of her sand essence abilities; Quicksand Step was a wide area spell that made the ground shift into quicksand but only for her enemies and Sandtrap Strike was a low cooldown special attack that imparted an affliction that slowed and slowly rooted the struck person in place.

  So, basically, if her opponent didn’t finish the fight quickly, she’d eventually just immobilise them and fill them up with DoTs until they collapsed. She was calm, methodical and smart in her victories. Johan dealt with this by throwing his shield at her feet to trip her and running in, bellowing a battle cry. Much more aggressively than usual.

  The pre-match ritual had fired him up. It was all the usual until Brodeur had walked in accompanied by several high ranking nobles, including Everard Reyer, who preened in their finery while Brodeur introduced them and accepted Johan’s challenge in the harshest of terms, condemning his education, his heritage and in particular accusing his parents of raising him badly. They really did go too far and although everyone knew it was just for show and to get an emotional reaction out of Johan, the crowd muttered uncomfortably. The nobles then smugly doubled the amount of riches in the all-or-nothing pot, boldly stating that Johan could also have their coats and shoes if he won the match and then they left. Dave smirked, clicking around at the items they’d put in. In the riches, awakening stones of harmony, a myriad, liberty, adventure, and purity awakening stones. Every stone on Hugh’s list.

  And, so that’s how the match started with Johan sprinting towards Brodeur, timing his exit of his starting circle with the bell, hurling his shield like a frisbee and shouting, “For Master Greenwood, my dad and my mum!”

  Only Dave, who had one eye on the combat log in his HUD, noticed that Johan had just used Threads Of Fate, the reveal in this tournament of the day-long cooldown ability that turned the probability of a single event perfectly in the user’s favour.

  Johan’s shield dipped in flight, skipped across the arena sands, dismissed by Brodeur as no threat… until it lodged perfectly between her feet on her first step backwards. She even spun as she fell and went down, face first into the sand.

  In those precious moments Johan did the jump-clap-spin move he’d been working on all week, summoned a new shield to hand and used Ram’s Charge over the last bit of distance. Brodeur had been regaining her feet and managed to put an affliction on him, Inevitable End, but Johan was already there, tackling with his weight, armour, metaweight and all, onto her, dropping her to the ground. She got the point of her sabre caught on the mail of Johan’s inner elbow which managed to prick his skin before he achieved full mount on the prone woman and twisted her sabre out of her grasp. Dave winced at how unfair affliction specialists were as her plethora of afflictions attempted to load up on Johan from just that one, little prick; Foreboding Strike, Portentous Blade, Desert’s Grasp, Gritstorm, Sandtrap Strike, Necrotic Touch, Bleeding Edge, Dreadful Edge and Doomblade Strike. Johan’s attacks were lessened even though he resisted a couple of the afflictions. Dave was pretty sure she must have an item that made her afflictions difficult to resist or else most of those afflictions would have been resisted by Tough As Old Boots, but even though most got through, it wasn’t enough to save Brodeur. Dave felt a surge of pride as Johan kept his weight off his opponent and pinched her between his knees. He’d drummed that to Johan last week; you stay on top by ensuring that the person on bottom never has control of your weight.

  Brodeur wasn’t completely inexperienced at wrestling but Johan was by far the bigger and stronger and she could do nothing to stop him. She wriggled a bit and pushed at him for a moment to no avail while Johan half-sworded his weapon in both hands and shoved it into her face.

  She ended up using an item to escape with her face mutilated, covered in blood. She hadn’t teleported, she’d become intangible and rushed several metres into the direction she’d been facing off to the side. Without skipping a beat, Johan simply used Hold Your Heidels! and took three running steps and hacked at her with an overhand swing that was just a distraction for an ankle pick.

  He scooped Brodeur up by the ankle, held her upside down and, ignoring the afflictions she cast, demanded a surrender. One more affliction spell later and he deftly got the point of his sword between her armour at the hip then shoved his sword down into her torso before the silver rank forcefields and healing magic swamped the arena.

  “WINNER, JOHAN SCHMIDT!”

  The area burbled with shock and surprise before building up into an aggressive cheer for Johan’s brutal victory.

  “Well, I do say,” said Rupe into the silence of the viewing room. “The Brodeur’s said some unseemly things about his parentage that don’t bear repeating, what-do-you-say?”

  The room came alive with outraged chatter all clamouring to agree that yes, the Brodeur’s did have that beatdown coming. Dave didn’t bring up his quibble that perhaps Georgette herself had been caught up in the schemes of her elders and didn’t deserve to be the brunt of such a public humiliation. But, he told himself, apples tend not to fall far from their trees. She probably was perfectly comfortable with the plan until it stopped working. He’d judge if he ever got to know the woman.

  Johan’s return to the viewing room was heralded with some awkwardness that his presence soon washed away. Somehow, he engaged all the fight enthusiasts in the room about the importance of grappling and limb control when duelling. Especially when you had a strength ability. It was something Dave had brought up with Johan a few times in training and he’d taken it in. It just made sense. If you had a strength ability and were next-level stronger than your opponent, just grab their wrist. Or, even their weapon. What’s your opponent going to do? Break the grip of the person who can casually bicep curl their entire body?

  Dave left him to it and got back to crime solving. Time passed this way until Johan had the semifinals with Seigneur Abelard Perrot. Johan entered with his usual bold challenge looking the very picture of knightliness. Perrot’s entrance was subdued. He entered by himself, with no escort and, again, merely stated his name, his trainers and that he hoped to win favour in Warrior’s sight to win the prize. Johan bowed deeply to him in reply.

  “Oh, this is spiffing!” chortled Rupe, staring at the fighters as the hourglass ran. “I wonder what boring strategy Johan is going to win with this time, eh? What do you think, Harry?”

  “Probably pick him up and throw him out of the arena,” said Harry, getting some laughs from the room.

  As it turned out, Johan’s boring strategy was to be an almost preternaturally good swordsman until Perrot was saved by the force fields. Still, Johan lost three quarters of his health getting there.

  Although ‘boring’ in the sense of flashy moves, poses and banter, nobody took their eyes off the six minute and thirteen second slugfest between Johan and Perrot. Although Perrot didn’t have a strength ability, Dave’s HUD informed him quite early in the fight that he had an ability called Meta-Weight Slingshot. It basically allowed him to store whatever meta-weight was leveraged against him and output it right back which he did pretty much the whole fight because, hilariously, Johan was still so new to his abilities that he hadn’t figured out how to not be strong all the time yet. So, Johan would crash and bash into Perrot who’d absorb it and body-check Johan right back from behind his shield. Every time they smashed into each other, the crowd roared with delight.

  The fight wasn’t just entertaining the half-drunk patrons who wanted to see blood either. There was a level to the fight that those who cared to see it enjoyed. Perrot had a lightning-infused strike that came with a stun effect and a slashing attack that left a line of fire on the ground. He was very deliberately using neither of them to avoid inflicting a condition on Johan that’d activate his rings. Also, Perrot had two abilities that would strike all enemies in range, Infinite Blades and Weapon Storm, from his vast and arsenal essences respectively, which he intelligently alternated between to constantly reset the number of blood bubbler crabs to zero.

  Johan had smites and his stacking buffs, Perrot had special attacks that ignored armour, or were powerful enough to be dangerous through armour, as well as having better stats by just being further through iron rank but, in the end, Johan won by just plain being better at sword fighting. That was it.

  The force fields stopped the match with Johan’s sword deep in the enchanted glass dome that was Perrot’s helm — Dave figured he must have an ability from his vast essence that let him see in every direction — but Perrot himself only a moment away from a serious go at thrusting his sword through Johan’s lightly armoured armpit and into his chest. It was a great match with a great finish and Dave clapped along with everyone else. After the healing, they both formally saluted each other and Perrot even took off his helm and held out his hand for a handshake, which Johan, of course, took, taking off his own helm so they could exchange words.

  Johan had another speech about how much he appreciated the crowd for cheering them both on and how much he respected Perrot for putting honour first as a true member of the nobility and just how much they both loved the gods. Dave was already lining up his next client. It was getting late in the day and there were still three more nobles who wanted a session with him although he’d gained a bit of time because Diego Noguera had left the room at some time. He didn’t recall exactly when. He’d only noticed it at all because he’d written everyone down on his schedule. For a flamboyant man dressed in artistically clashing silks, Diego Noguera sure was stealthy.

  As usual, Dave waited for the hubbub around Johan to die down a little before congratulating him and giving him some encouraging words for the future.

  “Alright, Dave? Don’t you worry about me one jot!” said Johan in reply. “Master Greenwood has been training me for this all my life and I feel just swell! Now, I think she’d have a thing or two to say about my footwork a couple of times in that last match,” he grinned sheepishly at Dave, shaking his head, “but I don’t think I’ve let her down. Don’t you think?”

  “I know she’d approve, mate,” said Dave, holding back from covering his face with his hands at how ridiculous an idea it was that anybody would find anything about Johan’s performance less than adequate. “In fact, how about after this tournament we make a point of flying up there in that boat of mine and drop off some recording crystal copies for her? You can go over them together.”

  “Cor, really, Dave?” said Johan with absolute sincerity. “Would you really do that?”

  “I’ll try to fit it into the schedule,” said Dave with a confident nod and a pat up on Johan’s shoulder. “It’s the finals after everyone has their little self-important speeches so get over there with Harry and de Saint-Pierre and start warming up, thinking about your game plan and all of that, hey?”

  “Cor, right you are, Dave!” said Johan, with a boyish smile. “Thanks for everything… Mate!”

  Dave didn’t wince. It was a well meant attempt.