Leonidas entered the tunnel to the Arena proper with a welcome sense of calm familiarity. He felt refreshed after his shower, and even with the talk he’d had with Ceruviel and Tarnys on his mind, there was a sense of purpose to what he was doing which soothed any remnant trepidation. What he’d always wanted, more than anything else, was a goal and a purpose to push toward. In the Duchess’ offer, he’d found just that.
Fight, win, advance, live.
The remnant concern over his use of his [Cataclysm Core] remained in his mind, and Leonidas didn’t by any means lack for caution when it came to the volatile—and clearly mentally overriding power of the Cataclysm Mana, but he knew he had to learn to control it, temper it, and harness it for his purposes—not run from it, and cripple his cultivation in the process.
His Mana Sage Title was proof enough of the energy’s efficacy.
image [https://i.imgur.com/RsGktd7.png]
Congratulations, you have unlocked a new [Title]!
MANA SAGE
[Rarity]: Epic
[Description]: You have managed to advance your Mana Channels in an unprecedented manner, through the use of hitherto unseen Cultivation methods on Terra. As a reward, you have been granted the title of Mana Sage, and been recognized for your bold innovation.
[Effect 1]: +25% Mana Pool
[Effect 2]: +25% Mana Regeneration
At the end of the tunnel he spotted both Tarnys and Ceruviel waiting for him, but didn’t hurry. He continued at a measured gait, and worked on achieving his Battle Meditation again through his taught and remembered breathing techniques. Ceruviel had warned him that ferocity would be his ally, as much as focus and a level head—and if he wanted to use the former, he would absolutely need to have the latter.
He had an idea for how to achieve a symbiotic harmony between both, but it would require a different kind of limit testing—and in a more lethal environment than he might have preferred, though that brought with it unique benefits all on its own: such as the instinctive understanding that there was no reprieve in the event of failure.
Either he succeeded, or he died horribly in the Arena.
It made things simple in an oddly calming way.
When Leonidas came to a halt beside the pair of elves, and bowed to Ceruviel in a perfunctory manner, the armored Dusk-Lord snorted at him.
“Save your manners for if, or when, you’re victorious,” the purple-eyed warrior, eyes aglow in the tunnel’s dim lighting, said to him with perhaps a modicum more warmth than when they’d last spoken. “Your opponents have been the death of many aspiring Gladiators, and will be the death of you, too, if you let them.”
“Them?” Leonidas asked with a raised eyebrow. “I thought I was going to be fighting an individual.”
“You were,” the Duchess said with a slight grimace, “but things changed. I will explain it to you, but only when you return to your chambers in victory.”
“Should I wear my helmet this time?” he asked with a glance at Tarnys.
“Get used to not wearing one,” Ceruviel answered when Tarnys didn’t. “Psionic abilities can often be dampened by your mental state, and if you subconsciously envision your mind as entrapped—such as within the confines of a helmet—while wielding them, it can cause the abilities to lose potency.”
Leonidas stared at the Dusk-Lord for a moment, and then frowned.
“That… sort of makes sense, I think. Though, part of me wonders if you aren’t hazing me for your own amusement.”
“You are welcome to ignore my advice,” Ceruviel said flatly, “though it would be to your detriment.”
Behind her, Tarnys subtly but deliberately shook his head.
Leonidas took the hint.
“My apologies, Dusk-Lord,” Leonidas said with a bow of the head. “You’ll have to forgive my suspicion. I’m simply—”
“Oh shut up,” Ceruviel cut him off sharply. “It is far worse when you simper. If you are going to doubt me, Achilles, then doubt me. Be your namesake’s heir in truth. For all that I smelled war on you like a cologne, when we first met, you’ve been acting like a moody adolescent rather than the soldier your stance and manner implies you to be.”
The Duchess turned to the gates, narrowed her faintly luminescent eyes, and then turned back to him. “I do not know what manner of war tempered you, Achilles, but it did not do a full job. You still bear the resemblance to the child you were before it began, from what I have seen, and from what my vastly stronger powers over Psi tell me.”
Magitech lighting lit up the gate, and the Dusk-Lord stepped closer and lifted her armored hand to grip his chin, and pulled him down to look her in the eyes. “The only time I saw some hint of the true Archon within you was when you lost control, my would-be Apprentice. If that is the only circumstance wherein you can demonstrate that level of liberating savagery, and control your instinctive ferocity; you will die quickly and be forgotten in this merciless world. Stop hiding behind the boy you were, and running from whatever memories haunted you in the place before this one.”
Leonidas’ eyes widened at her words. She couldn’t know about Elatra, and yet…
“Be the man you are. Use your gifts—all of your gifts—to their true potential.” Ceruviel said heedless of his thoughts. “Or you are going to die here, Achilles. That much I can promise you.”
With that, the woman released him, and turned to stride away down the tunnel without so much as a ‘good luck’. Leonidas watched her go with a mixture of trepidation, doubt, confusion, and even some measure of awe—and then Tarnys got his attention by wrapping his knuckles on the black metal of his [Archon’s Psiblade].
“Whatever your thoughts on the Dusk-Lord’s methods,” Tarnys said when Leonidas turned back to him in surprise, “and confronting manner of speech, she is correct. You are hiding from something, or the memory of someone, and it is crippling you.”
“I came into the tunnel ready to do as she said, Tarnys.” Leonidas replied with a frustration he felt to his core. “Every time I speak to her, in the three interactions we’ve had, she throws me another head-spinning curveball. I’ve seen war, but I’m less than useless. I have to be focused, but also be ferocious. She tells me to embrace savagery, but to also be controlled. It’s like conceptual whiplash.”
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“The problem, Leonidas, is that you think they are contradictions.” Tarnys said with a sigh, and then glanced at the gate when it began to grind upward slowly. “We have no time, so listen carefully. Controlling your ferocity does not mean discarding your savagery, it means wielding it like your hand wields a sword. Ultimately, Leonidas, all she’s telling you to do is to stop doubting yourself, and just be. You think too much about too many things. Exist in the moment you inhabit, Leonidas. Foresight can come later.”
With that Tarnys nodded to him, turned, and hurried away before Leonidas could respond.
“Control my ferocity, and wield my savagery?” Leonidas asked the air. “God help me, they sound like motivational speakers that get paid too much money.”
Still, something in what he’d been told seemed right in a way. He was running, though perhaps not from what Ceruviel or Tarnys thought. He wasn’t running from his own strength, he was trying to not repeat the mistakes that strength had caused: overconfidence, overestimation, and the loss of understanding about how truly fragile lives could actually be.
Miranda’s death had been the first casualty of his arrogance, but it hadn’t been the last, and that did haunt him. It haunted him every day. He’d worked so hard to escape that gnawing guilt, at one point, that he’d veered too much to the extreme—like a child having a moodswing, he’d become violence manifest during the following year of the war. By time Caricus, of all people, had managed to rein him in; the result had been the failed but expansive coup that had nearly destroyed his Grand Army.
Leonidas had corrected his behavior after that, and other than the final assault against Azrageth, had never let that rage come to the fore again.
At least, not until earlier, when his [Cataclysm Core] had eroded his self-control.
The portcullis finally hit its zenith while he ruminated, and Leonidas strode out into the light of the arena.
When he did, he did a double take, and his train of thought screeched off the rails. The Arena had changed completely. Where before it had been expansive white stone in every direction, now he stood upon a deep sea of sand, with rising and falling dunes dotting the middle third of the arena, and the white-brown grains trailing off toward the entrances into flat and thinner surface area.
“What the hell?” he asked out loud, only for the Arena Master’s voice to answer him.
“{WELL WELL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! IT APPEARS THAT THE DUSK-LORD’S CHAMPION WASN’T INFORMED OF THE NEW ENVIRONMENT AFTER ALL! AS YOU CAN SEE, HER BENEVOLENCE—TOWARD OUR LOVELY CITIZENS—KNOWS NO END! SHE EVEN FAILED TO WARN HER OWN SPONSORED GLADIATOR, SO THAT WE CAN BE BETTER ENTERTAINED!}”
A roar kicked up from the crowd, and Leonidas realized with a start that there had to be double the amount of people in attendance as compared to his previous match. At least six thousand filled the stands, with more arriving every minute.
“{NOW, SHALL WE GET ON WITH THE GOOD PART? LET’S SEE HOW ACHILLES HANDLES… THE HIVE TYRANT!}”
A wave of ‘Oohs’ came from the crowd, and Leonidas heard something immense rumble in the distance, near the middle of the arena. Some sort of gate or accessway, perhaps, had been opened—and a moment later, screams and cajoling jeers came from the crowd. He had no idea what they were commenting on, but a moment later, a thunderous SCREE shook the air like it were being emitted by the world’s most pissed off and jacked Cicada.
A feeling of dread filled his gut, and Leonidas cursed under his breath. Of course it was some sort of monster. Of course it was called a fucking Hive Tyrant, and of course the arena had changed very likely specifically to favor the monster. He must have pissed off the Arena Master more than he’d thought by ignoring the rules in his last match.
“{AND NOW, WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, LET THE MATCH COMMENCE!}”
A crackle of lightning descended from the shield above, and the unknown monster let loose a blood curdling scream when it impacted. A moment later, Leonidas heard something massive thump against the Arena floor, and the crowd cheered in response.
“Oh fuck me,” he said under his breath in realization, “they just used the equivalent of a god damn cattle prod.”
The sand under Leonidas’ feet shuddered, and he glanced behind him.
There was no part of the Arena that was bereft of the sand, and it almost appeared to be rising passively, as if filling in the gaps near the portcullis entrances—the one he’d come through, in fact, was already halfway buried, and sinking fast.
Talking to himself, as always, helped him focus—and he worked to regain the Battle Meditation he’d lost between Ceruviel’s speech and Tarnys’ piggybacked admonishment. The excitement and adrenaline of a fight, even one that seemed intentionally weighted heavily against him, always seemed to help him find his knife’s edge meditative balance—and this situation was no different.
While his meditation slowly settled into place, he also realized that he was going to need to keep moving to avoid being ambushed easily, and be very careful with his resources until he had a better idea of what in the hells he was dealing with.
That highlighted a critical oversight which Leonidas immediately corrected.
He’d been tracking the loss of his resources in a kind of passive fugue, and understanding what he was losing without visualizing it, the way he had on Elatra.
“System,” Leonidas said far more calmly than his racing heart should have allowed, and with his eyes sweeping the sand while he carefully made his way forward along it. “I want to configure my HUD as per my Intent.”
There was no confirmation window, nor elaborate System message to accompany the request while he swept his eyes across the surrounding sand carefully.
Instead, his Intent was translated to reality, and Leonidas suddenly had what he wanted: a compass in the right corner of his vision, a quartered circle at the central bottom base of his vision for his each of his resources, and a display of his [World Map] at the bottom left of his eyeline. He enabled a currency tracker above his map as well, which showed his 300 remaining Aetherium, and nothing else—for the moment.
Finally, he brought an ‘EXP’ bar into existence at the top of his HUD, showing ‘250 / 4,000’ and a segmented set of rectangles.
A quick flick of intent disabled the HUD and re-enabled it, followed by the disabling and enabling of individual elements; and he nodded in satisfaction.
Being a gamer in a world taken over by a living logic engine had some benefits.
He certainly didn’t want to walk around normally with his vision occluded by so many elements, but the ability to enable and disable them with a flick of his intent was incredibly useful. The advantages of a System-based world were myriad, in some ways, and not taking advantage of the ability to quantify his active state seemed, well, incredibly short-sighted.
With that thought in mind, he knew he needed one more stipulation.
First, he enabled all of his HUD elements with a thought, and then he spoke.
“Automatically disable all HUD elements except resources during combat.”
Leonidas felt the ripple of acceptance from the System, and his HUD once more was reduced solely to the four-way circle, with a quarter colored for each HUD element and their values displayed in ‘System’-font text.
First, it worked a treat and let him easily track his resources in a tangible way.
Secondly, it confirmed that he was already in combat, and that meant—
Instinct, experience, and a feeling he couldn’t explain combined together to convince Leonidas to throw himself to the side with every iota of his enhanced Strength, and he rolled along the sand at the same time as his enemy abruptly made its less-than-subtle entrance.
A desert-brown carapaced monster he could only describe as the nightmare combination of a Rhino Beetle, a Scorpion, and a Mantis emerged from the sand in a spray of granules and screeched its rage to the sky. Its stinging tail slammed down where he’d been standing seconds earlier, and the creature smashed two immense, razor-sharp scything pincers into the sand at the same time.
A set of six malicious black eyes stared down at where Leonidas had been, and the creature screeched again in outrage.
Then it turned, and spotted him a moment later.
Leonidas lifted his [Archon’s Psiblade] with narrowed eyes.
In response, the super-arachnid’s beetle-like carapace fluttered in rage.
“Come on, you ugly son of a bitch!” he roared while stoking the furnace of his [Cataclysm Core].
The Hive Tyrant charged with a trumpeting screech.