Chapter 88 – First Duel

He had woken up early in expectation of the coming official fight, and Throm spotted him. Now he sat in the meeting room, listening to his mentor expound on the finer points of sensing precognition rituals even as he multitasked and manipulated the lightning spell on his lap. Technically, the table hid his efforts from direct line-of-sight observation, but his instructor, of course, knew what he was doing. However, he was pretending not to notice. While learning the ritual was important, the centipede was wise enough to recognise that Tom advancing himself was also a priority; or, maybe, Throm thought the exercise was the only way Tom could keep himself awake.

Critically, he examined the magic lines he had just created, and compared them to the pictures of the wire frame images he could see on the piece of paper lying on the table. It was a page from the lightning domain pack pinched from an isolation room. Corrine had used her internal spatial storage to bring it through to him, and, since he had access to it in the real world, he could use it here, unlike everyone else who only saw gibberish on the paper. She hadn’t been sure it would work, but, luckily, it did.

Tom’s eyes narrowed as they flicked from his spell form to the wire frames. How had his version ended up with an entire extra foundational line? It made no sense. Then there was the question of how the fourth-dimensional component warped the three spatial vectors. The spell was proving far harder to master than he had expected it to be.   

It was almost as much of a mystery as the lecture he was listening to. It was possible he may have tuned out for a critical piece of current topic, because what he was hearing no longer made any sense.

“Great. There’s no harm in interrupting, because he’s not paying attention.” Amkhael’s voice from the right behind him made Tom jump. He hadn’t heard the rock enter, and had thought they were alone.

“Be kinder with your words, Amkhael - the child is doing well,” Throm chastised gently. “This subject matter is hardly the most enthralling one, and, if multitasking it keeps him awake, I’m all for that.”

“I still need him. There’s only an hour to the first fight, and he needs to do the last step of the induction.”

“The child has done enough duels.”

“It’s tradition, and the other two haven’t.”

Throm did his equivalent of nodding, which was the mouth making a funny shape. “I guess this is as good as a spot as any to stop. Tom, before our next session, I want you to create a new disk and incorporate the lessons you’ve learned.”

He gulped at the order. It was easier said than done. The workmanship and success of his current version had been driven by fate.

“You don’t need to use special resources.” Throm said mildly. “I’m not blind to your racial trait, and I prefer for you not to use it.”

“What racial trait?” Amkhael asked suspiciously. “Is this the one that lets humans overperform their prowess?”

Tom ignored him. In the pecking order, Amkhael was low, which was why he had been drafted to induct them. “That might mean it ends up unusable.” He told Throm.

“Until they’re tier-two, none are usable. To my mind, it’s best not to use consumables in testing. For now, you should be investing them into more important things.”

He nodded, and then followed Amkhael leaving the meeting room.

But he had to admit that Throm’s observation worried him. Corrine hadn’t told anyone about that human trait, and nor, as far as she was aware, had any of her predecessors. But he guessed someone as old and wise as Throm was more than capable of unravelling the secret through observation. He shook his head to clear it. Whether he knew or not, that did not matter - these were all DEUS’s children; they were on the same side, and, even if they wanted to betray him, they lived so far away that humans were safe. Besides, of course, there was a GEAS supported by the GODs protecting them.

Whatever the other DEUS representatives guessed, learned, or were told, it would have no impact on humanity.

In short order, he was in the common area, and it was the most crowded he had ever seen it. There must have been almost eighty people gathered.

“Do we have to be here at the exact time for every fight?” Tom asked curiously.

“No, you don’t,” Baptiste told him, his vines twirling together as he played with some purple light that, from his public information file, had to be arcane energy. After all, magic-wise, the pot plant only possessed nature and arcane energy, and that artificial light was not one of nature. “Time distortions magics are in place to make sure everything works.”

“But being here is better.” Corrine informed him. “If we’re all here, it’s safer if something goes wrong.”

“Can I have your attention, please?” Amkhael shouted suddenly. “We have three new inductees.” He then proceeded to introduce them similarly to how the presenter had done so. “As per tradition, they will duel amongst themselves, then challenge the volunteers until they reach ten victories or two losses.”

A prompt came through, and, a moment later, Tom found himself facing Baptiste in a volcanic-themed area. It was sweltering-hot, there was scorched stone under his feet; only twenty metres away, a thin stream of lava flowed down the side of their contained arena. As far as battlegrounds went, this one was greatly in his favour, not that it mattered without fate being in play. He knew he was a dead man. While Baptiste’s plant magic had been neutered by the environment, he had many other skills that Tom did not have. That included a magic shield that would be a hard counter to his lightning and deadly melee abilities, which, with his attribute advantage, meant Tom would get trounced if he got too near. Finally, there was an arcane based shrink collar that would encircle a limb or neck and then squeeze until it split the body part in two. If that couldn’t kill him, the eventual close-in fighting would.

The countdown ended.

Time immediately slowed down for Tom. It was a two- and a-bit distortion, just like he expected it to be. The fight was coming to him, and he had to move. Stillness meant death. This wasn’t the kind of setting that would allow him to plan, so he charged forward.

Something settled on his neck.

Abruptly, he was out of the arena, looking down. The collar tightened, and Tom looked away before his avatar fell into two pieces.

Shortly thereafter, he was back in the common area.

“Sorry,” Baptiste said immediately. “I was trained to go for the kill as fast as possible.”

“Yes, it’s the only way.” he agreed. The result had been as expected, but it was still a disappointment. He had been secretly hoping he would be able to make himself competitive somehow.

A moment later, Baptiste and Gruh Mul disappeared to fight.

All the audience was linked to the spectacle and Tom found himself looking down on the fight as though he was in an arena’s stands.

They started the usual distance apart on what looked like the floor of a rainforest, through there were no tree trunks visible - only the shade of a canopy that must have been a kilometre above them. Instead, there was a scattering of vegetation, ferns and fungus, but nothing robust enough to restrict the contestant’s movements. The moment the countdown hit, zero Gruh Mul threw himself into battle. His magic nullified the collar that tried to form on his neck. Plants swarmed from everywhere to try and limit his mobility. They were mostly preexisting ones, but some, he noticed, were newly grown. They burst up from the ground or whipped across from outside to tangle up the big person’s feet, but then were torn apart under the power of each step. The fight descended into a furious melee, the two combatants moving so fast they were a blur of movement to his senses.

Fifteen seconds after it started, Gruh Mul leapt backwards and roared at the sky in triumph. Baptiste had been torn apart and entirely separated from his roots.

The two of them reappeared a moment later, completely healed.

“That was terribly done,” Amkhael snapped while staring up at Gruh Mul. “What have I said about closing?”

“Not to do it,” the big person answered sulkily.

“Not to, unless your ranged options fail!” Amkhael corrected. “Or if the opponent’s ranged offence is too strong for your defences. Did either of those occur?”

“No, they didn’t.”

“Do better.” Amkhael ordered.

A prompt appeared, and Tom accepted the duel. He was in a wooden area with lots of trees larger than he was. This, unlike the previous environment, was crowded with significant obstacles. It was a biome that suited him against the bigger opponent. The only issue was that it was clear between him and his enemy, and the nearest tree was over five metres away. But, if he could duck out and get behind the cover, then he had a chance.

The countdown finished, he went to charge, but, in a very familiar way, he found himself observing the arena from above. Below him, his body fell into multiple pieces.

“Very good,” Amkhael praised Gruh Mul immediately upon them reappearing in the common area. “If you had closed with Tom, you might have lost. Attacking from afar guaranteed his loss.”

“Never; he is too slow, and I can easily beat him in a straight fight.”

“Maybe,” Amkhael said. “But he has tricks if you get too close to him and it would have been embarrassing to have lost in such a fashion.”

“I wouldn’t have lost.”

“It would only take a single mistake for you to do so. One tap of his spear.”

“By the time he achieved that, I would’ve carved him in two.”

“Which is something he might survive, and then you’ll be stunned while he kills you.

Before Gruh Mul could respond, he vanished once more, and a new duel started between him and a type of slime. Gruh Mul was enveloped and defeated. Unsurprisingly, neither of the other two reached the ten victories’ conditions. Excluding the easy kill of Tom, Baptiste managed only one further win before dying again, and Gruh Mul only got three others in before he, too, was taken out. For fresh inductees, it was a great outcome, even with Tom’s complete failure factored into the numbers.

Corrine, Baptiste, and him chatted - then, before he knew it, he was drawn into a festive atmosphere as they counted down until the first official duel.

The prompt for the official duel appeared, and Tom accepted instantly.

Just like he had been told, rather than going straight to the arena he found himself in the holding room. There were three doors for him to leave through, with each having both words and pictures to signify the GOD’s shield arrangement they were to grant.

He knew which one he was taking, but, just in case, he pulled out his disk. He spent ten fate to prime the heavens, and then flipped it. The wood spun awkwardly through the air; it smacked against the ground, bounced, rolled, and came to a clattering stop in the corner of the room.

Tom went over to look down at it and saw the zero facing up. There was no need to continue any further. The probabilities had spoken. To go shieldless, he required a minimum of seven ones in a row. A single zero, like what had just happened, meant that he was going with the full shield.

With a sigh, he walked through the most elaborate door. Then he accepted three prompts confirming he understood that he was accepting a full GOD’s shield for the fight, and his rewards would be reduced accordingly.

With the formalities done, a prompt appeared.

You are fighting a representative of SUPREME. It has one recorded incapacitation and zero kills.

Tom nodded as he read the details. He was dead. If whoever this was had gotten an incapacitation awarded through their own efforts, then he was massively outclassed. But there was no avoiding it, so he kept walking, and the portal flared and placed him in a new location.

It was desert-themed, and he was standing mid-way down a sand dune. They were going to be fighting across the slope. Going left would take him down the dune, while the right could give him the height advantage – if the adversary did nothing, which was unlikely. As always, there was an outer edge. In this case it was a dome that encased around a football field worth of volume that started near the base of the dune and stretched most of the distance to the top. There was little other information to be gathered, as his opponent was hidden by the system magic and had been replaced by a patch of light to signify where they were standing.

Tom watched the countdown, preparing to act the moment it triggered.

It displayed zero, and he sprinted to the right to seize the high ground. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted his opponent. It was a squat, ugly thing with soft short fur that highlighted its many legs and compressed body structure. It was crab-like, even with its mammalian aspects.

There was a boom behind him, and he felt stinging pain from fast moving sand followed by a heavy blast of air that almost made him lose his balance. That explosion had definitely originated from where he had been standing a moment earlier.

Time slowed dramatically as the enemy focused on him.

It was only a three times dilation, so relatively speaking, this opponent was weak - at least, physically so. But, as it relied on ranged attacks, it was unlikely Tom could win this.

How fast would it be able to recast? He thought, and then realised that it didn’t really matter. The most likely answer was faster than he would like. He zig-zagged back. Still angling toward the crab thing, but now running down instead of up. An explosion nipped his heals. It unbalanced him and forced him to do a forward roll. For a moment, he lost control of his descent, and sand sprayed everywhere in front of him. In seconds, he had slid downwards over eight metres. 

He rose to his feet, and now because of how far he had slid he was looking up at his enemy.

It hadn’t moved, and…

Tom was suddenly back in the common area, along with everyone else. At least two people were missing and there were multiple injuries. Throm had lost over a dozen arms, but Tom’s eyes fell upon one of the aquatic people in his own pool. The person, a battle seal with sharp armoured blades covering its flippers, was alive, but looked like it had been cut into pieces. There was a parallelogram with a trident through it carved across its forehead.

He stepped forward to try to heal it, but Corrine’s arms wrapped around him and stopped him in his tracks. “You can’t help. You can’t heal others. It’s a restriction.”

“But it’s dying.” Tom protested. It was true - everyone present could see that the wounds, which had been stabilised when it had first appeared, were starting to deteriorate and open up due to its slight movements.

Corrine’s arm tightened around him. “Watch and absorb. That’s what a partial God’s shield does when the opponent succeeds in murdering you.”

One of the bigger gashes was definitely coming apart, and Tom could imagine a third of its body literally peeling away and falling. That was going to happen immediately if it moved too much, but even it stayed still, such an outcome might only be a minute away. While he wouldn’t die from injuries like this, Tom understood, it was the wounds he couldn’t see that were the problem.

“Help. Help.” The bird that had been closest to the injured person had been squawking the entire time, and, finally, there was a reaction.

Abruptly, the ground itself changed as the stone transitioned into water and another aquatic person - this one shaped more like a sea horse than a seal - swam over. She held a vial filled with a glowing liquid that she brought close to the injured battle seal. There was a flash of light, and, as though that was a permission, she poured the vial onto the largest wound. Most of the liquid went straight into the body, entering via the massive opening in its chest.

The wounds healed visibly, and, in moments, the wide-open gashes had been reduced to barely visible scars.

“That was a recovery potion,” Corrine told him. “The light was an emergency healing transaction. The elixir costs ten coins if you buy it directly from the shop, but in this kind of desperate situation the system takes its pound of flesh. That just then cost the seal nineteen coins. Eight of them being taken by the system, and a single coin profit for the person who brought it over. It’s a waste, but it’s better than someone dying, and the fact the emergency transaction went through means that the injured person would have died otherwise.” She sighed and then looked at him. “I take it you lost?”

Tom nodded.

“Yeah, me too. I tripped at the wrong time, or else I might have had it.”

“Yeah, me too.” Tom agreed.

She glanced up in surprise.

“I meant the trip part. There was no way I was ever going to win.”

She laughed, and then pointed at one of the terminals.

Remember to fill in everything you learned.

He did so. He found the person to attach the record too. Then he added his estimate of their speed and a description of the explosive attack they had used, and that it had been chained three times in a row. The entries from everyone else were far more comprehensive. It had an annoying magic-assisted leap ability that let it escape to the other side of the battlefield whenever anyone got too close. It seemed to be unlimited in terms of the number of times this could be used. That evasion ability was coupled with impressive magical defences, and it could sustain its attacks for minutes. The explosions seemed to be both its go-to and least efficient form of magic, but it had a lot of force variance attacks that seemed to be able to wear down most people. He doubted his own observations would ever help anyone get a win, but they were worth putting in, just in case.

Another two days passed as he ramped up his practice without any tangible advances, and, after a brutal hour of theory, he returned to his body.

The usual rush of memories assaulted him, but this time they caught his attention fully. It was like he was experiencing the memories fresh.

The word ‘Trials’ was scribbled in large bold letters on the blackboard.

Dimitri was standing up the front and addressing them. He explained the eight types of trials quickly and efficiently. They were Coliseum, Battle, Boosting, Challenge, Affinity, Special, Quest and Bottomless.

The different categories were not new knowledge to him, as the tutorial books covered it. Colosseum and Battle was a fight for random rewards. Boosting was used to enhance the levels of a single skill or spell that you already possessed. The Challenge ones enabled you improve an area of expertise. In his first life in Existentia,  he had greatly boosted his earth magic due to outstanding success in a Challenge trial. While Challenge trials could help anyone improve a chosen aspect of their build, the value of an Affinity trial was dependent on its nature. Like the crystal he had consumed, it was capable of boosting an affinity by a significant amount. It was on par with the divine fruit, but just for a single affinity as opposed to all of them. No one would turn down the option to use such a trial, if it was for one of their primary affinities. Tom understood their value, and, if he heard of a precognition trial fifty years’ journey away from him, he would make the trip without hesitation, no matter the danger levels - that was how valuable they were. A two-point increase in his precognition was going to catapult him to be on a trajectory to be a realm wide powerhouse. If it was on top of the fruit, that impact would be even higher, but it was all theoretical, as there were no rumours about anything like that existing.

The final three categories were: Bottomless, which was what Throm used to get his power, and Quest trials, which created an elaborate world for people to solve before receiving rewards tailored to them, while Special covered everything else. 

“As I was saying,” Dimitri continued. “The frequency of trials is based on that order. Within our town’s influence, there are twenty Colosseum trials, with only one being against sapients, eleven Battle ones, four Boosting, and one Challenge. We don’t have any Bottomless or Quest ones in all of the human territory. That scarcity does not just apply to us. For example, there are no known Bottomless trials in any of the nearby countries. That doesn’t apply to just the nation clusters - that’s any country we’ve had contact with or their neighbours. As for Quest, they aren’t quite so rare, and there are a few in the closest nation cluster. Special trials are different. We have two in our small town.”

There was a murmur of conversation at that.

“The first is the one you enter weekly. It’s designed as a training benefit for us, and is linked to the competition. The second is one of the darkhole trials.” Dimitri paused, looking sad. “These, as far as we can determine follow all species, and plague their top four population centres. They are deadly and most civilisations use them to execute criminals, because they extract a blood price on every sapient species. While they can be challenged at any time, if insufficient people do so over the four Existentia years it remains dormant, then it activates.” The big man stopped for a moment to take a drink of water.

“Do they come alive?”

Dimitri only shrugged in response to the question from his audience of little people. “I don’t know the details. But I do know that darkhole trials terrify me. When they activate, they wander. They leave their secured location and find people who are bored, or down on their luck, or depressed or have a weakness. They find that type of person and then offer them something they desire to trick them into entering the trial. But don’t listen to it!” Dimitri yelled. “It’ll promise you what you want to hear, but do not heed its lying honeyed words. The thing’s a trap, it’s evil, and it’ll lie to get your attention. Thankfully, it doesn’t target children, but when you’re older, remember this, and if it wanders near you, ignore it. It’s enough of a menace that we’re thinking of stopping it from waking.”

“How would you keep it asleep?” the same talkative boy questioned innocently.

Dimitri hesitated. For a moment, he appeared to be lost for words. He scratched his ear ruefully:

“Let’s just say that’s an adult thing and not talk about it.”