image [https://i.imgur.com/WEerCY6.jpeg]

East Arena

On the middle of the eastern side of the Board lies the East Arena. One of the Four Arenas, the East specializes in duels.

Will chose to skip over Sarlisa and Bob. He could actually use an Aspect on Power Attack, and possibly on Offensive Aura, assuming he was going to use it, but he also had three unused aspect shards sitting in his inventory.

Two of those were supposed to go into Defender, whenever Will actually got around to merging it, but he still wasn’t sure when that would be.

Instead, Will moved the full distance rolled, and found himself in the waiting room of the East Arena.

Getting to the arena was another reason to skip the enchanter and alchemist. The arena shop stocked skill and aspect shards, as well as consumables and equipment. And Will hoped that there might be some shards that Fili didn’t have.

Miss Drill wasn’t in the waiting room with him, and attempting to summon her failed. Will didn’t understand the rules behind where minions were and weren’t going to accompany him. His old pickled Wild Sage, before it was destroyed, was missing whenever he entered a merchant Space, and was also absent the one time he’d been in an arena while it was still around.

Miss Drill, on the other hand, was with him in both Kevin’s Smithy and the Emporium. But apparently the arena was a no-go zone for the summoned monkey.

Not that he had much time to ponder the issue. Lilac, the orcish event manager for the East Arena Bronze Tier, showed up just a couple of minutes after he appeared in the room.

“Will the Wombat! Welcome back to the East Arena! And with such excellent timing, too!”

Hey, Lilac. How are things?

“Not bad at all. The bronze tier this season is looking really good. Speaking of, it’s been a while since I’ve seen you here. I was afraid you’d let your dislike of PvP keep you away, but I’ve heard that you’ve put in an appearance at the West.”

Yeah, well. I don’t really get to decide when I drop here, you know. It’s kind of random.

“Ah, yes. You’re from one of those weird worlds, aren’t you?”

You could definitely call it that.

“Oh, well. You’re here now, and I have the perfect opponent for you!”

Can’t wait. Lead the way, please.

The orc gestured for Will to follow here, and started to lead him down the now familiar passage leading to the entrance to the arena floor.

Hey, Lilac, can you tell me something?

“Depends. What do you want to know?”

How come I can’t summon my Mana Beast here?

“It’s because you’re in the duelling arena. Pure one versus one fights here, with no adds or summons. It’s better for both the contestants and the spectators to put a blanket ban on that sort of skill than it is to disqualify fights when someone inevitably starts to lose and decides to break the rule.”

Huh. I guess that makes sense. Does that mean I’ll be able to use her in the other arenas?

“South and West, definitely. North bans summons too.”

Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to do much in the North Arena. I’m not precisely built for athletics here.

“There are skills that can help you get around that, but I’m not the one to argue with you about not doing the Gauntlet. I’ve never really liked it, personally. I much prefer direct contests. And speaking of direct contests, here’s your entrance.”

Thanks, Lilac.

“Thank me by giving us a good fight!” The orcish manager grinned at him, and went off to wherever it was she was overseeing the fights from.

Will was waiting in front of the purple entrance this time. Not that it really mattered to him. Will still didn’t share Lilac’s enthusiasm for “direct contests”. He was in the arena because his dice roll led him there, and because he wanted another look at the prize list.

If there really are rare skill shards on the list, I might have to become a regular here. I think I’ve more or less exhausted what Fili has to offer. Other than using them for XP, I guess.

“Ladies and gentlemen! Welcome, once again, to the East Arena! We are ready to continue today’s bronze tier fights, and this time we have two returning fighters! Both have won fights before, so this fight promises to be thrilling!” Lilac’s voice was full of enthusiasm. Will had no idea how she could be excited over what really amounted to amateur hour. Then again, Will had no idea why one would be so excited over a PvP duel to begin with. “On the purple entrance, please applaud a winner in both our East Arena and our sister arena in the West! Will the Wombat!”

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Surprisingly, there actually was some applause when Will went out into the sands. More than there had been on his previous duel, at least.

“And on the green entrance, give a warm welcome to another winner in the East, and one that has shown his might in the South, too! Benjamin ‘Spike’ Howard!”

A porcupine walked out from the entrance opposite Will. He was wearing a leather skullcap, and his quills were tipped in a variety of different colors.

Spike? Will wondered. A bit on the nose, isn’t it?

“As if ‘Will the Wombat’ is any better?” The porcupine snapped back.

Sorry, man. Didn’t mean to offend you.

“Well, I mean to offend you!” Benjamin tensed, and a large quill shot out from him and hit Will’s shoulder. The quill actually managed to pierce through Will’s armor and into the shoulder.

Ouch. Isn’t the whole ‘porcupines shooting quills’ thing a myth?

“Real enough to turn you into a pincushion, pocket pig!” Benjamin tensed again, and another quill shot out. This time, however, Will was ready for it and managed to dodge. The quill hit the arena sand and started to sizzle.

Looks like it definitely mythed me! But Will wasn’t going to just stand there and trade verbal barbs for physical. The porcupine was too far away for the stronger variants of Will’s Mage skill, but he was definitely within range of Bolt.

Twin Thundershade Bolts launched themselves from Will and slammed into Spike. Just before the bolts hit, however, the air surrounding the porcupine distorted, and the bolts seemed to slow down almost to a crawl. They still hit their target, but it was obvious to Will that most of the force had been stripped from the skill.

“Aren’t you supposed to be some sort of melee mook?”

Among other things.

“What kind of bullshit is this?”

The same kind as a porcupine shooting acid quills?

Rather than respond, Benjamin curled into a ball and immediately started rolling in Will’s direction.

Fast enough that Will didn’t even have time to get out of the way before the spiky bowling ball smashed into him. It didn’t have the penetrating power of the launched quill from earlier, but it hit with enough force that it didn’t really matter.

The problem with fighting a ball of quills, Will was discovering, was that you didn’t really have anywhere safe to hit. His claws could deal with armor fairly easily, by that point. But before those claws could even get close to Benjamin’s actual body, Will’s paw would be completely shish kebabbed.

Which left Will with just his Mage skill to rely on.

Fortunately, Mage was a really versatile skill.

Benjamin had some way to defend himself from Bolts. It was possible that Will could overload whatever skill it was. It was also possible that a different variant could break through the skill.

Especially with the porcupine now being within melee range.

Thundershade Burst blasted out from Will, knocking the ball of quills away and giving Will some breathing room. Whatever it was that blocked Will’s Bolts, it wasn’t any help against the less directed use of the skill.

Banjamin tried to roll over Will again, but caught a Cone shaped blast of Thundershade before he could pick up any momentum.

Will kept the Cone up and running, burning through his mana fairly quickly, but at the same time burning through Benjamin’s health.

After a few seconds, the porcupine managed to roll out of the Cone’s area, and quickly continued until he was out of its range.

“How many of these bullshit skills do you have?”

What are you talking about? I’ve only used one skill since this fight began, man.

“That’s a load of crap! Those were at least three skills that you were using!” Benjamin started to shake, and his quills started shuddering. “Go to hell, wombrat!”

Every one of Benjamin’s quills shot out at once, all of them converging on Will’s location. There was no way for Will to dodge the attack. Instead, the wombat called on the defensive side of his Mage skill, and covered himself in a black shield.

The attack ate up every last point of mana Will had. Including what little scraps of mana got absorbed by the effects of the Darkness part of his aspect.

And it wasn’t even close to enough. Will felt over a dozen quills pierce through his Shield, his armor and his skin.

Some of them burned with fire. Those were the easiest to ignore, since Will’s Lava aspect blunted some of their extra damage.

Some of them were tipped with ice, the cold burning just as painfully as the fire did.

Some were charged with lightning, delivering a shocking sting even if they didn’t penetrate the armor.

And some were tipped with acid, offering a third distinct type of burning sensation.

And yet, what quills managed to hit Will weren’t enough to take him out of the fight.

He was down to a single digit worth of health points, but he was still up.

And Benjamin was standing there without his quills.

Will didn’t waste any time laughing at the naked porcupine. He could see the quills starting to grow back, and while it would take them time to reach their full length and harden again, Will was not in a condition to take another attack like that.

But for a little while longer, Will could switch to physical attacks against the now defenseless Benjamin.

Charge caught the porcupine by surprise, and he didn’t even try to dodge. Nose horn was followed by claws, and before his quills could grow enough to protect him, Benjamin vanished from under Will.

“And the winner is Will the Wombat! What a wonderful fight!” Lilac’s voice cut through Will’s frenzy, and the wombat dropped down on his wom-butt, breathing hard enough to be confused for a miniature locomotive.

Healers charged into the arena floor, and it took a mere minute before Will was back to full health, and heading back into the purple entrance.

Victory!

You’ve won your second arena fight!

Win three more fights to be promoted to the East Arena Silver Tier!

Keep fighting to increase your tier and win more rewards!

Rewards:

50 XP

1 Wombat skullcap

20 Bronze Arena Tokens

Twenty tokens this time? Not a bad haul, but the West Arena still offers better rewards in that department. No upgrade to my arena boost shard, but I guess that will only happen when I reach silver? Assuming I get here enough times to even have that chance… OK, let’s see what I can find in the shop here.

A quick glance at the shop screen turned up that it did, in fact, have skill shards from the Healer, Wizard, and Beacon sets.

The only problem was that they were twice as expensive as the commoner shards, costing a hundred bronze tokens each.

Damn. I’m going to need at least one more arena win before I can get any of these. And I can’t even see what they do until I have enough tokens.

Unable to buy what he wanted until he had enough tokens, and unwilling to spend the tokens on anything else, Will moved on.

…Only to sit down on the stone floor and grumble.

Randomness my well padded wom-butt!