I stare at the unmoving [Soldier] with a raised eyebrow.

“Wait, is this a trick?” I look at the massive handle of the Vanedeni sword—the weapon is currently resting on top of my shoulder. But it bears no evidence that it could suddenly become able to shock my enemies to death or something.

Soon, though, after not seeing the mean [Soldier] rise up, doubt takes over the collective attention of the arena.

Is he actually dead? My strike was strong, but it wasn’t nearly enough to kill the man. Not even close. At best, I could have broken his arm or dislocated his shoulder. But killed him?

I turn to the referee and see no particular reaction on his face. I shift the weight of the sword and let it fall on the ground tip-first, planting it in the soft terrain of the arena.

I start walking toward Appius, wondering what’s happened to him.

I could snap his neck with my bare hands. Is he really that scheming to fake it?

I am ready to crush the man at a moment’s notice, still wary that this could indeed be an interesting ploy of his.

But when I get to his body, I move his shield away and find a ghastly spectacle in front of me: Appius’s face is streaked with black, bulging veins, enlarged as they go down his neck and, most likely, the rest of his body. His expression is one of terror: his eyes are wide open, and his mouth hangs loose.

“I think he’s dead,” I tell the referee, who’s now walking toward us after I crouched down and personally touched his neck.

He has no pulse, I confirm with empty eyes.

The referee gets to the body of the [Soldier] who challenged me and put me through one of the most hellish training regimes one could ever experience.

The referee takes Appius’s wrist and looks at me with a nod.

“He’s dead.”

The words are amplified by some spell and vibrate through the bleachers, making most of the crowd’s whispers turn to silent astonishment.

“So… is that poison?” I point at his face.

The referee looks troubled but says nothing and instead eyes the many exits from the arena. From the corner of my eye, I see a few people starting to move there. Two of them, I recognize.

“Lucillus! Antoninus!” I exclaim, still mostly focused on the body on the ground.

“Joey, let’s go before the [Soldiers] realize something is wrong,” Lucillus speaks curtly.

I don’t even argue. I just look at the body on the ground one last time. More than confused about what just went down, I am completely empty. I cannot process the feeling of emptiness that this situation is having washed over me.

…

“What’s happening?” I ask Lucillus as soon as we walk through one of the corridors of the arena. The people on the bleachers are now starting to boo and shout at the referee—they probably think I cheated.

“[Captain] Drusillus has already confirmed that Appius has been poisoned by a high-level individual before the duel. He said to get you out of the barracks before the [Soldiers] could stir up any trouble with you, Joey,” Lucillus explains.

“Hey, Joey, where have you been?” Antoninus asks. “You ran away that day, and we haven’t seen you since.”

Oh, shit, I realize I have never even mentioned that Antoninus’s mother was sick, very sick.

“I’ve been training and—“

“Both of you, shut your mouths,” another [Guard] says from the side. “This could cause unprecedented civil unrest if they think the Human poisoned that fucking idiot. Shut your rotten mouths until after we are out of here.”

And shutting up, we do. But still, what the hell just happened?

Who the hell poisoned Appius? And how? It’s not like he was sick before. Was it some slow-acting poison that flared up all at once? Maybe it’s because of my hit? But again, who would do this? Are they trying to do me a favor or frame me?

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We are escorted out of the barracks before any civilians or [Soldiers] can be sure of what just went down. I guess that most of them must be thinking that I just one-shotted the idiot. Given the wild stories they might be telling about Humans, that’s, perhaps, what’s keeping most of the peace—folklore.

Well, now I can go back to my normal life… maybe.

…

“Joey!” Flaminia gives me a big hug and squeezes me tightly. “You have so much to tell us! And I have so much to tell you! You won’t believe what I got from cooking those steaks! I’ve already told Clodia! You’ll lose your mind!”

“Hey, Flam,” I say with a hint of shyness in my voice. In my heart, I’m still in front of Appius, still ready to use my sword to cleave him in two. But in reality, I’m back at Happy Bakery. That’s where Lucillus and Antoninus escorted me together with the other [Guards].

“You stupid Human,” Clodia comes in next and gives me a big hug, almost pleasantly crushing all the bones in my body.

“Yo, boss,” I say, forcing a smile.

“You killed him!” Raissa smiles. “How did you do it?!”

“Joey, you were fantastic,” Tiberius says with pride.

“You cracked that rotten bastard like an egg,” Quintus agrees from the side.

“I—I am not sure what happened,” I reply. “I didn’t think that swing would be enough to kill him.”

“Your sword was massive!” Flaminia exclaims, immediately going on a tangent.

Everyone looks at me expectantly, clearly waiting for a joke or something.

“Oh, yeah, er, huge… yes. Like… Well, whatever. It’s a heavy sword. It’s in my bag of holding now.”

“These damn Humans and their big swords,” Clodia sighs happily. “I had some food prepared and shipped here in case you won. Are you ready to celebrate? Now that this is over, we can start working towards getting things back on track."

"Yes, back on track,” I reply, still feeling the thrum of the sword smacking against Appius’s shield. “Absolutely. Let’s have a drink, maybe?”

…

“So, how did you do it?” Flaminia asks. “How did you swing a sword that big? Was that your strategy? Is it an enchantment?”

“It’s… not,” I clear my throat. “It’s the real deal.”

I look at my team at Happy Bakery. To me, it doesn’t feel like I was away for two weeks; it feels like a lifetime.

Training with Magister Mulligan was much more intense than anything I had gone through since I arrived in this place. It’s more like going on a goddamn LSD trip that lasts two weeks and finally having to go back to your 9-5 job. It’s… weird. And it also feels like something is missing, like I’ve missed something myself.

“Third, marring the viscera of the Earth and taking the burden of ambition will be the blood of your foe...”

The words of Magister Mulligan echo in my mind as Tiberius is re-telling me about some experiments they ran on the Mimosa cake. But I’m not just not listening to the man. I’m not there at all. My mind is still in the arena, still waiting to make sense of Appius’s death.

Why is no one coming to tell me what just happened?

What is going on?

…

You decided to, as your people would put it, duck the party?

“I felt like I was about to get a bout of psychosis,” I tell Magister Mulligan. “It feels like a dream. Appius is dead, but… was that really supposed to be the point? Just him being dead and out of the way?”

Young Luciani, you have grown in ways that you still do not comprehend. A great opportunity was missed. Now, it will take time for you to re-adjust and rebalance your soul.

I might have called the old man corny in any other context, but his words hit close to home this time. It does feel like I have a hole in my soul at the moment – as if something was gnawing at me from the inside, trying to come out and straighten up this nausea that is mounting inside.

I walk through the wall’s Northern exit and wave at the [Guard], that gives me a long side glance as, amidst the dark, I make my way beyond the wall.

Why am I going out? After all the work I put in to stay, I’m not thinking about leaving Amorium or anything crazy like that. I’m just going for a walk to clear my head. If I go to sleep now, I might go crazy before I actually manage to sleep. Also, I don’t have a bed anymore. It collapsed at the end—it couldn’t take the Enchantment anymore. I’m not even sure how it was possible that it lasted this long; I’m sure Magister Mulligan was up to some of his typical shenanigans.

Anyway, the walk, yes.

The last time I was about to go outside of the wall, I found out that Antoninus’s mother had cancer. Since I wanted to test out [Lightbolt] back then, I thought this would be the right occasion to try it out. At the very least, I would be finishing one of the two things that recently got interrupted. It feels very apt.

I walk away from the walls and closer to some sparse trees that populate the Northern side of Amorium. As I’m walking, a cluster of clouds passes in front of the moon, turning everything dark.

I can’t see shit, I swear internally, immediately whipping out a [Light].

But as soon as I do, the earth opens below my feet. For a moment, I’m free-falling, but in the next, an invisible force yanks me up and levitates me to the edge of the now wide-open hole.

“What the fuck—“

A Dungeon, Magister Mulligan says in my mind, it reacted to your spell… fascinating. My senses cannot extend into it, Joey Luciani. This is… remarkable.

I look at the deep hole and click my tongue.

“It looks interesting.”

The old me would have already run away from this – obviously the start of some weird quest; it’s clear as the day that this is some main character drudgery. But I’m not that person anymore—or at the very least, I feel something pulling me into the dark depths of the hole.

“Yo, let’s explore it? I mean, you are a very powerful [Archmage] and can still launch spells and shit, right? What do you say I jump in there, and if it’s too dangerous, you blast me out of there?”

You almost speak like a Vanedeni, Joey Luciani, minus the fear and the need to be bailed out. Go. Follow your instincts.

Without needing to be told twice, I jump into the all-enveloping darkness.