Boro raised his shield, not trying to dodge the hammer. It bounced off the metal, the gong sound echoing. He crossed the distanced quickly, almost hopping across it. Each step sent him a couple of feet. He’d land and then hop again. It actually looked pretty graceful as he did it.

  I was impressed.

  I didn’t look long as I was already moving. Boro’s eyes were on me and they widened a bit as I charged right at him. He was bigger than I was. Taller, thinner but I had no doubt he was stronger. He had a shield, which with his size advantage made him a kind of battering ram. I shouldn’t have wanted to play a game of chicken with him.

  And I wasn’t. I was putting on a show.

  We got closer and I pushed some energy into my legs, pushing off from the hard ground. I soared over him, just high enough that we wouldn’t hit. If he’d been a better fighter, Boro could have reacted in time and swung his sword up, but I already knew he wasn’t that good a fighter. The mysterious employer wouldn’t have risked someone truly talented on a test match. Boro was expendable.

  He’d still gotten to Level 106, which was impressive, but he wasn’t anything special

  As I soared over him, I swung with the hammer. It slowed my flight, made me a little wobbly, but that was okay. I scored a nice and solid hit on his shoulder, sending Boro stumbling. I rolled in the air, landing on my feet and running across the arena toward Boro’s end. Reaching the wall, I hung my hammer from my belt, the other one on the floor somewhere behind us.

  I stopped a couple feet from the array of weapons, studying them. Decent quality stuff but nothing special. I couldn’t tell if any were Arcanum-infused, but doubted it. And if they were, that was just a bonus for me.

  I grabbed the spear.

  “Hey,” the other Anura said. “You can’t do that.”

  “Who says?”

  The Anura didn’t answer.

  “There’s nothing in the rules that says I can’t use his weapons,” I said, facing her and smiling. I was pretty sure the Anura was a her. She took a step toward me. “It does say in the rules that you can’t do anything or else he gets to play too,” I said, pointing down the arena at Sunie who had stood up from the wall, staff in hand.

  He waved. The Anura took a step back, glancing up at the viewing window. These guys weren’t good at this.

  “Bye,” I said to her, turning to face Boro.

  He had been running back to me, when I’d been facing away from him, but had now come to a stop midway across the Arena. He glared at me, pointing his sword.

  “That is mine,” he said.

  I held up the spear, twirling it in my hands, around my back, being pretty flashy with it. I didn’t use spears, but I had trained with staves. Not my weapon of choice, which is why I had chosen it for this fight.

  “Sorry,” I said, stopping the show. “I figured you brought all this stuff in for us to share.”

  I could hear some laughter coming from the stands. Boro heard it too, glaring up at the spectators. This was not going how he’d planned. Probably was going how his employers had planned. I set the butt end of the spear in the ground, leaning on it.

  “Can we speed this up? I have a lot to do.”

  Making that odd croaking growling sound, Boro’s sword lit up. A weird green energy crackled around the blade. It wasn’t Arcanum-infusion, but some Ability of Boros. Because Adventurers use their own Arcanum, there’s no way to sense when an Ability is Activated but over time you can learn the body language signs. Boro seemed to grow another inch or two, the long muscles in his arms and legs thickened and tightened.

  Body enhancement.

  He charged again, not as fast. I shifted my feet, holding the spear across my body. Boro came up short, arms spread wide, mouth open. A long tongue shot out, energy dancing along its length. I shifted and raised the spear, intercepting the tongue. The tongue wrapped around the wood, pulling against it. I let the weapon go.

  It flew back but fell to the ground as the tongue unwrapped, retreating back into Boro’s mouth. He launched the tongue at me again. I let it come close and then sapped it of any momentum. The tongue slowed, starting to sag. I’d raised my hammer, knocking it against the tongue, hoping it looked like the weapon had slowed it and not anything I’d done with an Ability. The last thing I wanted to show in this duel was my kinetic manipulation.

  I couldn’t hide it forever, but longer than the first week would be great.

  The tongue hit the ground and I stomped on it. Boro’s eyes widened as he tried to pull the tongue back, but I was sapping all energy from it. With my foot on the tongue, it just looked like I was stronger than the Arcanum-Infused Boro. He tried to pull back, walking backwards, eyes bulging, tongue straining.

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  I kind of wished I had a blade handy, but instead I slammed the hook of the hammer into the tongue. Boro’s eyes widened in pain as the tip pierced the flesh. I yanked the hook to the side, ripping a large chunk out of it. Then I stepped off and the tongue flew backwards, trailing blood. Boro stumbled backwards, off balance.

  Before he could recover, I was on him, crossing the distance quickly. The hammer slammed into his side, followed up by a punch, a strong uppercut, snapping his head backwards. I jammed the hammerhead into his gut, staggering him back again. I kept up the barrage, hammer and fist. I might have augmented the punches a bit. I’d already shown I had strength, so the extra impact from the punches fit the image I was painting.

  Strength and speed. A deadly combination.

  My Abilities did make me strong and fast, so it wasn’t like I was making things up. It was just making it look like I did things one way and not another. There was no way to really hide my fighting style, or that I liked to punch things, so I leaned into that. Let them think I was a true brawler and not a fancy brawler.

  Yes, there was a difference.

  I reached out with my leg, looping it around Boro’s long one. Pulling back, feeling some resistance but using my Ability to get rid of the friction between his feet and the ground, I yanked him off his feet. I had to put a lot more Arcanum into the effort. Looked like he had sticky feet. I wasn’t sure if that was a racial Ability or one of his Essence.

  If we’d been on a different surface, I didn’t think it would have work. But loose sand doesn’t give much to stick to.

  He fell, landing hard. I jumped up, landing on his stomach with both feet, and maybe some added force. He let out a huge breath as ribs snapped and cracked. The hammer slammed into the side of his head, smashing against an eye. It exploded.

  Not what I had wanted, but he’d moved his head at the last second. I hoped he knew healers that could fix that. I pulled the hammer back, shaking it to get the eye juice and flesh off.

  I stepped back, looking down at the one-eyed Anura. He crouched up, one hand covering the ruined eye.

  “Sorry about that,” I said, and meant it.

  “I will kill you,” he croaked, standing up.

  “Dude,” I started, holding up the hammer, backing up a step. “You’ve lost. Just surrender and get that healed.”

  “Kill….,” Boro said, taking a couple steps forward.

  I sighed. This was not going to end well.

  ***

  I dropped Boro’s mace on the ground, looking down at the bloody mess that was the Anura. Had to give it to him, he had no give. He hadn’t surrendered.

  Boro hadn’t hit me once. This hadn’t been a duel, it’d been a slaughter. For someone Level 106, Boro was really bad. Tracy or Nathan could have handled him and they weren’t even Level 100 yet. Boro was sad. He had to have been power leveled or carried to get to 106. Or maybe just had rich backers that fed him Essences.

  It was a waste of money.

  “I told you to surrender,” I muttered, glancing back at his second.

  Her eyes were wide in fear. The arsenal of weapons that Boro had so carefully set up were either laying on the ground or discarded somewhere in the arena. I’d let him try to use some of them, and I’d used some, but none of it had mattered.

  I looked up at the blacked out viewing books, focusing on the one I thought held Boro’s backers. Part of me wanted to throw the hammer at the window or just give them the finger and let out the good ol’ ‘are you not entertained’, but decided not to.

  They’d wanted a show and they’d gotten one.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Boro. “But I did give you a chance to surrender. Whoever put you up to this owes you big,” I said, making sure I was loud enough so everyone in the crowd could hear. “This didn’t need to happen.”

  I walked back toward my end of the Arena, giving the viewing box one last glare. I didn’t bother to listen to what the announcer was saying. Sunie opened the door, looking back at Boro. The other Anura had rushed over, working to get the unconscious Boro up and out of the Arena.

  “That was something,” Sunie said, following me into the locker room.

  “Yeah,” I muttered, walking over to a bench and sitting down. “That sucked,” I said, leaning back against the wall.

  “It was… something,” Sunie said, standing and leaning against the wall. “Did you really apologize to him?”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t really his fault he was expendable and used to test me.”

  “He should have surrendered.”

  “Yeah, I asked him to,” I said, shaking my head. “But he just wouldn’t stay down.” I sighed. “Was it too much?”

  “No,” Sunie replied, walking over and sitting next to me. “It sends the right message. The duel showed that you are stronger than your Level and the…,” he paused, and shrugged, knowing i wouldn’t like the word. “The brutality was enough to tell his employer to leave you alone. And you did not give anything away.”

  “Still sucks.”

  “Yes, being a pawn always does,” Sunie said.

  “Think he can get the eye healed?”

  “And hand, ribs, legs and tongue,” Sunie asked. “Did you really have to rip the tongue apart?”