The spear itself had a good heft. Enough that with his Athletics, Ludere was able to use it as he'd practiced so many times as a child. It wasn't the best thing ever, but it did stand up. It was clearly not Legion-quality. For whatever the Legion said they did, the lowest bidder would always win the contract.

  The lowest bidder, or whatever senator had the means to deliver the goods, and was in good with the current Emperatus.

  None of this helped him. Demons were just as deadly and fast. They only had one advantage so far.

  Their sole advantage for humans in this situation was that there's only one exit and one entrance to the Medica. The humans had formed a shield wall there. He couldn't even bring himself to go save Erebus, because to do that, he would have to pass through all the demons that were trying to invade.

  At least now he was able to step in, stab one, and then replace Gia. Ludere wished that he had a sword or something. Spears were great for reach, but terrible in close quarters. Jay had a shortsword and some small amount of skill, but it was neither of those that were keeping them from dying to another demon. It was just their structure.

  The demons didn't just rush past the small hallway leading to the Medica. One would try to walk through the small doorway, and they would stop it. He put up one of the cots and tried to use it as a shield, even though the thin canvas was not holding. Sure, it was good enough to hold up people and help him not drop them, but it did not stand up well to claws. This was why they were on their third or fourth cot, taking them apart piece by piece.

  Ludere stabbed a demon in the chest, finally stopping it from moving, then one of the other two would step in. His Athletics skill was working overtime. If only he had a Spear skill, he might have been unmatched.

  Then the other two of them would change positions as either Gia or Jay moved to reinforce their makeshift wall. Neither one of them asked him to switch to being support. There was something going on between them that he hadn't immediately understood. But now that he saw them working together, Ludere was pretty sure that Gia knew Jay intimately.

  They had to buy a lot of food down in the medica. Of course she could make Lucre off of them.

  She was playing both sides and coming out on top. That's what she had to be doing.

  "Hold the line!" Gia shouted, as she tried to make a club out of one of the legs of the cots.

  "Fuck!" Ludere said. One of the demons scraped his forearm. Where they contacted his skin, it stung, and where it stung, he bled.

  "Heal!" Jay yelled, touching his arm.

  It still hurt. But it didn't sting.

  "Thanks, but maybe try something offensive?"

  "Sorry, all I have is a mild analgesic."

  "You have the weirdest skills."

  Ludere stabbed at another demon. The red carapace across its chest looked like armor. The two he had killed so far were purple, and it had taken everything he had to take them down. He was running on empty. Fighting was like running all day and night. He thought he could do that now, but it wasn't like it had been.

  If he could kill three demons, he could survive. If he could survive, he could…

  A hulking demon arrived in the hallway, its size taking up the large room. Ludere barely had a moment to think about it before it flung back the demon he was attacking. The arms of the new demon alone were the size of his torso. Unfortunately for him, it looked like he was on the hook for the demons' kill quota.

  The demon slammed him into the ground faster than he could blink.

  Ludere gasped.

  He was back in the same room. Back next to Erebus. His head was not smashed in. The same Prefereti was looking at him as if he had two heads, because of course he did. It hadn't been the claws this time, but he'd been killed by a demon.

  He'd never had the same dream twice. Or rather, if he had such a vivid vision, it had to be something else. Something was happening.

  "Do you have the odds?"

  The man with the mop of hair was insistent and in his face. Ludere tried to remember the man's bet. "The one with the loincloth is even odds."

  "Fifteen Dinarii, then."

  Ludere made a mental note. This was the third time that this man had placed the same bet on the same man in his vision. If this was real?

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  People were still preparing to fight and the man with the net was looking very confident in his choices.

  Ludere checked his skills.

  He was shocked to find that his athletics had gone up. If this was an extended dream, well, he had never heard of a dream that involved someone learning and gaining skill levels. It wasn't to say that such a thing was impossible. It clearly was possible.

  Additionally, his Unarmed Combat reached level six, and he was sure that it had been him trying to defend against the hulking Brute.

  Ludere drew up a chit for the man and took his lucre. This was his third time performing the familiar action for the man. He took a moment to take him in. The messy brown hair the man had cultivated looked like he was trying more than anything else to hold onto some fad of the youth. It wasn't that Senators or Prefereti were more prone to bald heads or short-cropped hair. It was just that they had a look, and this man in particular was not trying to adhere to it. So either he was eccentric, or…

  He grabbed the spear he had taken before from underneath the counter.

  "Erebus, you're not going to believe me, but I just had a vision."

  By now he was very quick about explaining what had happened. Erebus, to his credit, listened.

  "If you've had a vision, who wins that next bout?" Erebus peered into the arena. It was a well-known fact to all of the bookies that they couldn't place bets. They weren't supposed to, either. Additionally, they weren't supposed to have any of their family members spend on games. They knew the odds because they took the Scan skill when it was offered to them. But beyond that, they weren't really supposed to give up proprietary details about it. In general, the two of them came to the same conclusion far more often than not.

  The other twenty percent were the ones that the Prefereti made their money on. These matches where they were unevenly matched in a way that couldn't easily be accounted for.

  Erebus crossed his arms. "So you saw a vision and you think you're inside of one. Is that what you think is going on?"

  "Erebus, I was killed by demons twice. I gained skill levels. Something is going on."

  "If that's true, then shouldn't you be finding someone with the Spear skill and swapping with them?"

  Erebus had a point.

  "Well who do we know that got offered a Spear skill and took it?"

  Gia took that moment to arrive. Ludere had to remind himself that she hadn't just died next to him. It was a vision. It had to be.

  "Gia, who do you know that has that spear skill? Because we're looking to see if we can learn it."

  She just scrunched up her face as if he'd just asked her to marry him, and he was also a mentor. He wasn't, as she could clearly see, but perhaps was feeling too familiar because she'd been by his side several times. Whatever had happened in the vision hadn't actually happened. They work together but she…

  "Gia, I'm sorry, you look hungry. Or, wait, no, you're out of food?"

  "What are you both doing, taking bets on who has what skill? I feel like the owners are going to have a problem with that. You need a high Scan in order to figure out someone's skill, right?"

  As far as what the scans skill told him, he needed to have better skill at detection, unless a person had a scan skill of their own, and then they could block an equivalent-level scan. And it wasn't like he spent a lot of time scanning things. It's just that it was so useful.

  Scanning people gave him enough information to base a decision off of if he could kind of get a gauge, and how many skill levels they had in their max skill, if not others.

  And the only thing he had to do would be to find somebody with a Spear skill and convince him to swap with him, and then do some training with the spear. Because in this way Athletics had made things easier. Perhaps Ludere could advance early with this and be able to fight his way out. That is, if he wasn't just having a vision repeatedly.

  "If you just want someone with the skill, I think that some of the guards have it. Most of them. You're going to have to ask them, though, because they also tend to take the Scan skill, and I know you have that one, Lu. So it's to your benefit to go ask them personally. In fact, there's certainly a couple that are just hanging out. You can go ask them."

  Ludere gave her his best impression of a canid pup, complete with the eyes he had perfected on his mother.

  "Ugh, fine, if you want an introduction, I'll give you one. You both are sandal scum. Leave the little hut you live out your lives in for once."

  Ludere almost wanted to point out that he had recently died twice, but based on his previous conversations with her, that would take up all of the time he had.

  "I'll go with you—can you give me a quick introduction on my break?" Ludere got up, holding onto the spear that had not saved his life twice.

  "Do you think you're going to impress him with your ineptitude at spear handling?"

  Ludere had never been so self-conscious in his short life as that moment. He adjusted his grip until she put hands on him. "Fix this. You're grabbing the shaft up too high with both hands, and you need a more even stance. Do not embarrass me."

  It took the entire walk to the closest guards that she knew well to get his face not fully red. He could still feel it, but at least he held his spear like a warrior. That unfortunately counted for nothing.

  The two men were just slabs of meat inside of itty bitty tunics. Both had the blue stripes across their faces, indicative of a house guard. Gia walked right up to them.

  "Hello, Jett; hello, Theo. I've brought someone interested in Spear skills."

  Theo, the larger and more tall-looking of the two men, looked like he raised and slaughtered yaks regularly, while his partner looked like Yak breeding stock, due to all of his hair.

  "So you want to join the Legion? Make a real Yak—er, man out of yourself?" Theo said.

  If there was one thing, the most he could say about his grip is that it was immaculate. Apparently there were points of performance to holding a spear that he had never really understood until Gia explained them. And the main reason that she did that was because she didn't want to be embarrassed when she met these two tall beefcakes of men.

  "Yes, well, something like that. Do you have a moment or two to go over the skill itself?"