As the rest of the fights wore on, Xander thought over his own battle. He found the ease with which Treyanna had been able to disarm him disconcerting. It didn’t quite feel fair that she could just make his weapons slip out from his hands. But then again, as he thought about it a little more, it’s not exactly like his own skills were fair when it came to an all-out fight. He could touch a man and then make them explode. Granted, [Reactivity] had a two-hour cooldown, but he doubted that it would make the person he was about to explode feel it was any fairer. The same could be said for his body, which was able to take much more of a beating than he had any right to be able to. He supposed that it was better to say that the status systems allowed people to be extremely proficient at certain things, rather than that it was ‘unfair.’ Those proficiencies and abilities could be overcome in any number of ways, and that was why mercenaries so rarely worked alone. A team could shore up the defense that one member might be lacking with the skills of another, and so on.
The last fights of the second round wore on as Xander thought about the skills system as a whole and how much of an impact it made on people. It certainly seemed to skew towards specialization, for one. He was, he felt, a bit of an oddity in that his classes allowed him such flexibility, the combination of [Combat Artificer] and [Runelord] allowing him to engage in ranged and melee fighting as well as create minions of a sort, on top of his ability to tailor-make his own equipment for whatever situation might be at hand. Most people, if they were in a fight where their class did not thrive, could do little about it, having to rely on their teammates to either pick up the slack or change the battlefield in such a way that they could make more of an impact. Frazay needed people like Graffus to shield her from enemies who wanted to get too close, and Graffus needed people like Frazay to deal with the enemies that they couldn’t get to.
He was startled from his thoughts by someone walking out onto the field and waving to the crowd. No other fighter had joined them, so he was unsure as to what they were doing in the arena. Their purpose, however, became quite clear as soon as they spoke.
In a voice that was augmented either by some artifice or by a skill, the man’s voice rang out over the field to the crowded stands, roaring “Ladies and gentlemen, Humans, Dwarves, Elves, and esteemed visitors from across the seas, you’ve seen the first two rounds, and we’ve shaken the chaff from the wheat! The next few rounds, as the number of competitors are halved over and over, will see the cream of the crop rise to the top! Today and tomorrow, you’ll see the highest speed, highest intensity skill user battles you’ve ever seen!” The crowd cheered at the man’s boasts for the tournament, and he paused, waiting for the roar to die down. He continued, “Up next, we have our first two fighters of the third round! One is a combatant you all know well, a competitor who has performed well each year! The King of Ice! Shiver and shake in your boots for Urtel ‘the Ice King’ Crond!”
Urtel Crond, the ‘Ice King’ the announcer spoke of, stood from his place in the stands, raising his arms high as he entered the arena to the cheers of the crowd. A chant of “Ice King! Ice King!” accompanied by stomping feet was had around the arena.
“And up against the Ice King, we have a fresh face! Someone who’s never competed in our humble tournament before, but by the gods, that hasn’t stopped them from winning! Let’s hear some noise for the mysterious, black plated warrior, Xander Jones!” The man raised his arms high, spinning to face every side of the arena, as people cheered once again, though there were no chants to be had for Xander. He wasn’t established enough to have earned one, he supposed. Fuck, they put me up against the ice guy… Xander thought to himself as he rose from his own seat and made the journey to the center of the field. Guess these runes weren’t for nothing after all. Meeting Urtel at the center, the two of them traded a quick nod to each other before separating from each other.
As Xander and Urtel split from the center of the field, the announcer moved over to the gong where he spoke once more. “Alright folks, let’s get this match started! Three, two, one, fight!” On ‘fight,’ he struck the gong.
Urtel went for a match ending blow immediately. As he had in the previous match that Xander had watched, he clapped his hands together and activated the skill that had earned him his nickname. As the clap rang out, Xander, through his temperature sensing runes, felt the temperature instantly drop as ice began to rapidly form around his body. Before he could even begin to move, a thick layer was encasing him, growing thicker by the moment and obscuring his vision with a pale blue haze.
Muffled by the ice, he could hear the announcer cry, “Ohh! Looks like Urtel has gone for his signature move and entombed his foe in ice! Unless our black plated friend has something up his sleeve, this might be it!”
Fortunately, Xander did indeed have something up his proverbial sleeve. He pulled his cloak into his inventory to prevent it from being destroyed, and then activated the flame runes engraved all over his armor. He could feel the heat immediately, and the wetness as melted ice waterlogged his armor.
“What’s this? It looks like Xander does have something up his sleeve! He appears to be… glowing? No! He’s on fire! And he’s melting his way through Urtel’s ice block! Looks like we’re in for a fight after all!”
The crowd was cheering and roaring as the flame wreathed figure of Xander finally melted enough space in the ice to begin breaking out of it, sending shards of melting ice flying. Free of the ice, Xander ceased feeding the runes mana, and the flames winked out of existence. In the short time they’d been on, he had begun to feel the silicone begin to melt from the heat, and he expected that it would catch fire, costing him his sense of touch if he kept it up any longer. He’d likely need to fix the outer layer of fake skin and hair on his body tonight after the tournament. A bolt of ice of ice cast from Urtel that shattered against his breastplate returned his mind to the fight.
Xander swiftly moved to close the distance between him and Urtel, who had been backing up as Xander melted through the ice that he’d been encased in. Swinging his chain, he cast it forward, aiming at Urtel. The Ice King replied by raising up a wall of ice that stopped the head of the weapon dead in its tracks. Xander reeled the weapon back in and began to spin it again, building up momentum as he navigated around the wall of ice. As soon as he came around the wall, he was met with two ice bolts, one aimed at his head, which obscured his vision for a moment as it shattered against his helm’s faceplate. The other destroyed itself on his shoulder, rocking him slightly to one side. The distraction, for that was what it was, served itself well, and Xander slipped to the ground, having lost all traction. Looking around, he saw that Urtel had created a slick field of ice around himself behind the wall and was expanding it with his abilities. Xander struggled to regain his feet as the man pummeled him with ice shards. They didn’t do any real damage, the impact almost completely absorbed by his armor, but they kept him from returning to his feet, knocking him around and skidding him across the ice. Annoyingly, Urtel had no issues moving across the ice, befitting an ice mage.
“Uh oh, looks like Urtel has gotten the drop on Xander and created a field of ice! He’s not letting our newcomer get his feet under him, and at this rate, the whole field will be covered in ice soon!”
If he couldn’t move on top of the ice, he’d just have to break it. Activating his weight enhancing runes, he poured mana into them until the weight of his body caused him to shatter the ice under him. Finally able to stop being pushed around on the ice, he managed to get his feet under himself. Taking a slow step forward, the barrage of icy projectiles no longer able to rock him, he slammed his foot down, shattering another portion of ice and bringing his armored boot down onto the soil beneath, leaving a deep footprint. Slowly, Xander began to pick up speed, running at Urtel, who was still frantically pelting him with ice bolts. Crashing through the ice beneath him, Xander finally reached a full sprint, closing distance again with Urtel. Activating [Sprint], he increased his speed even more, startling Urtel with his rapid pace. The man attempted to skate away from him, gliding over the ice, but his, admittedly graceful looking, movement over the ice was no match for the speed of Xander’s frenetic, destructive rush. In little time at all, Xander was close enough to attempt to strike him with his chained weapon.
Urtel countered once again with his wall of ice, but this time, instead of going around it, Xander decided to try and surprise him by going through it. As Xander burst through the wall of ice, empowered by his runic body and the sheer momentum his artificially increased weight coupled with [Sprint] had gathered, he also crashed into Urtel. Evidently, the man had been hiding directly behind the wall, hoping to ambush Xander as he made his way around. The force of Xander’s body hitting him threw him nearly ten feet, and Xander mentally flinched as he heard the sound of multiple bones breaking with a disturbingly loud series of crunches. Urtel hit the ice field he’d created and slid another twenty feet before stopping, where he lay, unmoving. Several healers ran out, recognizing the severity of Urtel’s wounds, but were stymied by the ice the mage had conjured over the ground. They slipped, fell, and skidded along as they tried to make their way over to the injured figure that they needed to heal, and Xander was appalled to hear the crowd laughing as if they were watching a group of rodeo clowns.
He tromped his way over to Urtel, leaving a trail of crushed ice in his wake, where he then began to crush another trail of ice toward the healers, who were finally able to make their way to the man and begin healing him.
“Well folks,” The announcer hollered, “That seems like the end of this match! The Ice King was put down hard, and Xander can claim attempted regicide for this fight!”
Xander felt the pun was in poor taste, as he very well might have come close to actually killing his opponent by accident, but the announcer elicited a smattering of laughter at joke. He finished creating a trail that the healers could use to remove Urtel from the arena and continue their healing, and made his way to the stands again, ceasing his stream of mana into his weightiness runes as he left the ice.
He found it hard to pay attention to the rest of the matches, instead focusing on the area of the healers, who were currently crowded around Urtel. Xander felt incredibly guilty for how badly he’d injured the man, especially as it had been on accident. He’d been barreling forward full force to get through that ice wall, and hadn’t expected Urtel to be taking shelter behind it. Instead, he’d thought that the man would have continued to try and make space between himself and Xander. He kept replaying the moment of impact in his head, his [Engraved in Memory] skill making it far too easy to review over and over in excruciating detail. Reviewing the scene in his mind, he felt certain that he’d at the very least broken Urtel’s arm, shoulder, and some of his ribs, as well as concussing him, if not fracturing his skull as the man’s head had snapped to the side and then impacted Xander’s armor. It was like watching a car crash in slow motion, only he was the car. He hoped the man would be alright, and was relieved to see him finally stand up, though he was clearly still in pain and seemed unable to properly walk. Surely, with enough time spent with the healers, he’d be back on his feet. He was startled to realize that he’d been focusing so much on Urtel that the rest of the matches had finished, and that the last one for the day was going on.
In fact, even this match was almost over, and one of the combatants, the lone elf who had enrolled in the tournament, had disarmed their opponent and was currently battering them down past their shield. With a few expertly placed stabs, the elf’s opponent was unable to move their arms any longer, forcing them to surrender.
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“And Illanno wins another match! But hah, that’s no surprise, eh?” The announcer crowed, and the crowd laughed with him. Clearly, the elf had participated in the tournament before, and was expected to do well. “And that does it for today! Tomorrow, we have our last two rounds, and it’s looking to be a toss up! Will Illanno take the win this year? Will it be our mysterious newcomer? Or will it be one of our other contenders? Find out tomorrow when we narrow our twelve contenders left down to one champion!”
Once again, the slow process of emptying the stadium began. This time, Xander opted to leave as soon as the event was over. He’d end up in a crowd no matter what, so he might as well get back to the inn a little earlier. He made his way out of the arena and navigated around the various gaggles of people surrounding various stalls set up outside the stands and joined the crowd that was sluggishly moving towards the city proper.
Xander sighed mentally. He should have flown to the inn, but he hadn’t considered it, and now he was too boxed in with the crowd to be able to spread his wings without hitting someone. Slowly, the pace of the people in front of him sped up as the crowd lessened, until he was free to walk at his own pace once again. Ducking into one of the larger alleyways, he took advantage of the lack of people to leap into the air and make his way over the building tops. He noticed the occasional person pointing at him and smiled inwardly. He really needed to get back into flying more often. It was relaxing, and far more convenient for traveling.
Touching down in front of the inn, startling a few people who had been walking down the street nearby, he folded his wings back against his armor. Stepping inside, he was greeted by the lively atmosphere of a bar after a sporting event. People were lined up across the bar, drinking, eating, and discussing the matches that had gone on today at the arena. He moved to claim a table that was still empty, as he’d beaten his team to the inn by flying there, and noticed that at least a few people had recognized him.
He heard the occasional snippet of conversation as he passed people as people said things along the lines of, “Isn’t he part of the tournament?” and “That’s the one that fought Jarnel!”
Finally making it through the packed seats to the table he’d been angling towards, he sat down to wait for his team. The bartender by this point knew not to bother with trying to serve him, and so he was left alone with his thoughts as he waited. It was odd, sitting in a room full of people who seemed to recognize him, but didn’t know him. People kept stealing glances at him when they thought he wasn’t looking. If this was the amount of ‘fame’ that one got for doing well in a local competition, he was glad he wasn’t actually famous. Just this was making him a little uncomfortable.
Fifteen awkward minutes later, Atrax, Frazay, and Graffus entered the inn, followed closely by Gabrelle and Freyja. They all, including the big cat, made their way over to table Xander had chosen, once they’d spotted him, and took seats around him, with the exception of Freyja, who instead sat on her haunches between Gabrelle and Xander.
Atrax was the first to speak, saying, “Damn, Xander, you hit that guy like a cart hitting a small child that ran into the street! Remind me not to get in your way next time you need to get somewhere.”
Sheepishly, Xander nodded. “Yeah… it was an accident; I didn’t think he’d try hiding right behind the wall.” He turned to Gabrelle, asking “Is he going to be okay? I saw that you all were able to get him awake, but he seemed… rough still.”
“Oh yes, you really did a number on him, Xander. That level of blunt force trauma can be a nightmare to heal,” she continued, and Xander wilted under her commentary. Noticing his shift in demeanor, Gabrelle added, “but, he will be fine. It’ll just take a few more sessions of healing, is all. And those will be covered under the fees he paid in the first place to join the tournament.”
Xander felt some of his guilt ease as he was told that his former opponent would end up just fine. “Uh, well, if you see him for healing… let him know I’m sorry, alright? It was not my intention to do that much damage to him.”
“I’ll make sure to,” Gabrelle said.
“Now let’s celebrate that win!” Frazay interrupted, gesturing towards to barman to come by.
Drinks were had, though once again, no one went overboard like that first night he’d arrived, and the team took turns ribbing Xander good naturedly about ‘accidentally’ defeating his opponent. As the evening drew on, they separated to their own rooms, Freyja was stabled again, and Xander was free to make his way to his room with Gabrelle. Taking off his helmet once he was back in the room – he was glad none of his teammates had asked him why he was keeping it on – he created another small piece of steel to use as a mirror. The last one had disintegrated since he’d last used it. His arming jacket had suffered as well, the exterior of it completely singed. Still, it had held up better than he would have expected.
“Xander! What’s wrong with your hair? And your face!” Gabrelle asked, sounding horrified.
Looking into the mirror, he saw what had Gabrelle so disturbed. His ‘hair’ was a single large matt of melted nylon, and his face was lumpy with misshapen silicone, some of which had charred black. He expected that the rest of his body looked much the same.
“Ugh, it was those fire runes. They burned pretty hot, and it did not play nice with my body. Give me a few minutes while I fix this.” He pulled his armor into his inventory, leaving him in his gambeson and looked over his exposed hands and feet, which were similarly lumpy and charred. Using a combination of the mirror, [Improved Manipulation] and [Schematic], he fixed his face first, and then his hands and feet, mending the gashes his arm blades had cut in his fake skin as well as the lumps and burns. “Uh, Gabrelle, do you mind stepping out for a minute?”
“Um, sure, but why?”
“I need to get naked so I can see if I need to fix any burns on the rest of my body.”
“Oh! Right, of course,” she said, sounding a little embarrassed. “I’ll step right out, just let me know when I can come back in?”
“Sure, it won’t be long.” Xander said.
As Gabrelle exited the room and shut the door, he pulled gambeson into his inventory as well. “No peeking,” he muttered to the two golems that were still stationed at the head of the bed, mostly as a joke to himself. Despite his hopes, they had not seemed to gain any form of sentience despite the repeated applications of [Golemancer] that he’d continued to apply to Atlas, Lynx, and Juniper. He inspected the rest of his body for damage, finding that, while the arming jacket had protected most of him from being charred, the intense heat had still caused the silicone to deform in places. It was easy to reshape back into the form that [Schematic] indicated that it should be, however. Once he was done, he manifested a set of clothes from his inventory – a tan T–shirt, boxers, and one of the pairs black pants he’d bought. “Alright,” he called to the door, “you can come back in. I’m decent.”
Gabrelle opened the door back up and stepped inside, looking Xander up and down. “Much better,” she commented. “You don’t look like you just wandered out of crypt anymore.”
“Thanks. What should we do until it’s time for bed?”
Gabrelle shrugged noncommittally. “I dunno. I’d planned to settle in and read a little before turning in. Is there something you’d like to do?”
“Not really, I’m just a little bored.”
“Is there anything you need or want to do for the matches tomorrow?”
“Mmm, I do have one idea, but it’s a quick one. Mind if I read over your shoulder once I’m done?”
“If you happen to find the various uses of frogsleaf and how it can be used to accelerate the healing of a set bone, then be my guest.”
“What, no steamy romance novel?”
Gabrelle flushed a little. “Nooo… well, not this time, anyway.”
Xander laughed. “I knew it! Awh, don’t be too embarrassed, I’m just teasing. It’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Well, nothing to be too embarrassed about anyways. But, ah, I will probably hold off on reading about herbology.”
Xander’s idea was a simple one. If he wasn’t going to be able to hit an agile opponent with a jar, then why not make the jar explode so that he’d only need to get the jar close to his opponent? He created a series of small, coin-sized disks and carved an explosion rune on each of them, along with an array that would allow him to remotely power them. The single rune wouldn’t be enough to do much damage, but it would surely break open the jar and throw the glue in all directions. Carefully, he dropped a single explosive disk into each of the jars that he’d previously filled.
With nothing else to do, or at least, that he felt like doing, Xander slid into bed next to Gabrelle, who was still reading, and using a small pencil to make occasional notes in the margins of the book.
“Done already?” She asked.
“Yep, it was a pretty small idea.”
“Mm, well, I’m just about at a good stopping point, so how about we try and get some sleep for tomorrow? Well, me that is. You just… do whatever it is you do when I’m asleep. Wait, you don’t stare at me while I’m sleeping do you?”
“No, I mostly just stare at the ceiling as I try to zone out.”
“Oh. Good, I guess. It would be weird if you stared at me the entire time.”
“Yeah.”
Xander decided to return to some older ideas he’d had that night, now that he had the time and more experience with rune work. Namely, the idea he’d had for a cloak that could adapt to its environment, creating a kind of adaptive camouflage. He already knew that he could arrange runes to sense temperature or touch, so surely he could have them sense color. But how would he translate the color that the runes sensed into being displayed on the cloak? Colors were just different wavelengths of light… perhaps some kind of modulated light rune could display the color? But then it would glow in the dark, even if he powered the light runes as little as possible. Maybe an inverse light rune could be used instead. Rather than putting out light, it could absorb more or less light, leaving what was reflected naturally by the cloth and picked up by the eye as another color. He’d have to start with a base color that what a combination of all the colors of light – a bright white. Then, he could cover it with intelligence runes that would detect nearby colors and an array that would interpret these sensed colors into how much light the inverse light runes would absorb. That should work.
An array to detect color, in three parts for the primary colors of light. Each part would detect how much red, green, or blue were in the color. Then, more intelligence runes to translate those numbers into how much to power the inverse light rune. If the color was white, maxing out each array for red, green, and blue, then the inverse light rune would be unpowered, leaving the cloak white for that portion of the array. If it was black, the rune would be fully powered, leaving the cloak a deep black. Anything in between would vary the power of the runes and hopefully produce another color. He’d have to test it out and work out the exact levels of power that would achieve the proper colors, but in theory it should work.
All the thinking of runes that could detect color, ways to display other colors, and runically sensing what was nearby brought him to another idea: thermal vision. He already knew he could sense temperature with runes. And he’d had the idea of using light runes to display color. He could use a similar idea to the sections of runes he’d use on the cloak, and instead use runes that would detect heat and light runes to display colors that corresponded to different levels of heat. Slap that onto a pair of goggles and he had heat vision. Inspired, he carefully slid out of the bed and made his way over to the desk in the room. He created a set of metal ‘goggles’ that would fit over the eye slits of his helm, with an elastic band that would keep them in place. On the outside of the opaque metal ‘lenses’ he engraved a multitude of runes to detect heat, similar to how the runes on his body worked. These, however, were linked to multiple amplification runes, magnifying their sensitivity. They were linked to light runes on the other side of the lens, layered as tightly as his new [Miniaturization] skill would allow. An intelligence rune would modulate each light rune according to the corresponding temperature sensing rune on the other side of the lens. White for freezing cold things, scaling up to a blue for cooler temperatures and transitioning to red for warmer colors, and a blazing orange for fiery hot. These light runes would act as individual pixels and hopefully allow him to see heat signatures even in pitch darkness.
He spent the next few hours painstakingly carving the runes on the lenses of his goggles as tightly and neatly as possible, powering it with gathering arrays on the sides of the goggles where they flared out to block any incoming light from disrupting the light runes. When he was finished, and the runes were fully powered, he could already see the faint light shining on the inside of the lenses, shades of blue indicating the background of the room. He held them over his eyes and looked left and right. He could see the form of the desk and the shape of the room, and the red spot that was Gabrelle’s form underneath the covers. He looked at his own hands, seeing the warm red tones that his heat runes put out. The two golems were much harder to see. They were essentially the same temperature as the wall, causing them to blend in. He could just barely see them outlined, likely because their smooth surface was a little bit colder than the wooden walls, but he had to look closely to do so. This highlighted the downside to thermal vision. Against anything that was the same temperature as their environment, like constructs, undead, or potentially even reptiles due their cold-blooded nature, they would perform poorly and leave him at a disadvantage. Still, it was a useful tool, allowing him to navigate in the dark without giving away his position by having to use a light.
Satisfied, he stashed the goggles in his inventory, and made his way back to bed. He felt much more relaxed after the mental challenge of creating something new and was much more content to lay back on the mattress and wait for the morning to come.