Jay returned the stare, he couldn’t remember the man’s name, so he pulled his stats up beside him.
Alias
Ezekiel, the Soulsnatcher
Organisation
Second Chance Coliseum (Soulbound). Flaming Tomb Alliance.
Grade
E
Rank
5
Offence
2
Defence
59
Strategy
103
Instinct
4
Vitality
7
Speed
5
Shit, maybe I shouldn’t stare back.
Jay stared back.
He stared for the next few seconds until it became clear that Ezekiel wasn’t looking away first.
Jay wondered why the strange man was staring at him. Did he remember what happened last week? Jay didn’t think he’d acted rudely or did anything to piss the man off. Jay had a reason to be annoyed, Ezekiel had greeted him with a sword to the face, Jay was just standing there.
Wondering about manners and who annoyed who got old quickly, and it was replaced by a more pressing thought in Jay’s mind.
How does he fight?
“Hey Vega. How do you watch fights on the system? I unlocked the ability, but I haven’t tried it out yet.” Jay asked, as soon as the armoured man started walking away.
“You haven’t tried yet? I thought you were into that analysing and strategizing shit?”
“I’ve been busy. So how do you do it?”
“It’s different for everyone. Nerd one or nerd two might have told you that the coliseum system is designed to create the best coliseum experience, for everyone. That means different structures for each user.”
“Yours’ll be far more similar to Akira’s than mine, since you’re from the same planet, but basically just do what makes sense to you. Pull up your rankings and freestyle from there, then add parameters based on what you want to watch. It works best if you’re specific.”
Jay nodded. Vega hadn’t given him much advice other than just do it, but if it was as she said, she couldn’t do much more anyway. Jay pulled up his stats, unchanged since his last fight other than a few tiny shifts, and worked from there.
The coliseum system must have known him well, either that or it made the first thing he attempted work. Because as Jay mentally swiped right on his stat sheet, the table flicked away and was replaced with a single search bar.
He didn’t need to use his fingers to type. Jay just thought of what he wanted to watch, and the words appeared. He remembered Vega’s comment, so he made it specific.
Ezekiel, the Soulsnatcher. Member of the Flaming Tomb Alliance. Previous five fights.
Ezekiel, the Soulsnatcher. Member of the Flaming Tomb Alliance. Previous five fights…
Even if Jay hadn’t been told that his system was tailored to him, he would’ve believed it now. His mind went back to countless afternoons, both before and during his career as a boxer, searching up fights, compilations, and breakdowns online.
Because the coliseum system looked exactly like YouTube but gold.
On a tab on the left side of the screen were the two parameters he’d chosen. Ezekiel, and his last five fights. The search bar was at the top, and the rest of the system screen was filled with a list of five fights. Each had a thumbnail with a snapshot of the fight, and next to the thumbnail was information about it. In the corner of the screen, there was even a red notification with a 2 in it, presumably the twins’ fights he’d saved all that time ago.
Jay looked at the first fight and the information tags beside it.
Ezekiel, the Soulsnatcher vs the Whirlwind. High E Grade. Swordsman vs Mage. Brief. Humanoid vs Humanoid…
The list went on, but Jay focused on the thumbnail rather than reading further. As soon as he focused his intent, the video started playing, taking up the whole screen. Jay leant back on his chair and watched the five second countdown before the fight started. He even heard the announcer inside his head.
“Who’re you watching?” Vega’s voice interrupted the fight, but it automatically paused when Jay's attention drifted away.
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“Ezekiel the Soulsnatcher. Do you know him? I met him at the Flaming Tomb last week and now he keeps staring at me from that table over there.”
“I know him. He’s a cunt.” Vega turned around to Ezekiel’s table. The swordsman blinked rapidly, face frozen for a moment, before turning and speaking to the man sat beside him. Vega span back around and sat back in her chair with a satisfied smile. “You won’t learn much from his fights. His sword is pretty much a one-hit-kill, so his fights are all unorthodox. Make sure to watch them when Akira’s around though. Ezekiel’s the only swordsman ranked higher than him at the moment. It really pisses him off.”
Jay chuckled and focused his attention back on the fight. Vega was right, Ezekiel fought with a very strange style. He threw knives at his opponent, a woman in light armour and a yellow cloak with three golden shields orbiting her, and swung his sword in long arcs with very little power behind them. The style would make sense if his sword was a one hit kill, as Vega said.
The golden shields rebuffed each swipe of the sword, but Ezekiel kept advancing, not giving his opponent a moment to breathe. The information said she was a mage, so maybe that was his strategy. Not giving her any time to “cast spells” or whatever a mage did with essence.
Whatever his plan was, it was working. Ezekiel’s blade kept inching dangerously closer to the Whirlwind’s face. Jay could see her distress, frantically backing up while her floating shields desperately tried to block every attack.
But she couldn’t keep it up forever. Eventually one hit got through. A miniscule cut on the mage’s arm.
That was all it took.
The runes lining Ezekiel’s sword lit up, showering him in a sickly green light. The same green glow crept out of the tiny scratch, crawling out from within the poor woman and lighting up her skin from underneath it.
The Whirlwind wasn’t running anymore. She was writhing on the floor in pain.
Her screams, muffled and dampened through the system, struck a chord of fear within Jay. Pure hopelessness and dread echoing through every vibration.
The colour drained from her body, her skin shrivelled up. Eventually, when the last dregs of green light had been dragged from her body, all that was left was a grey husk.
Fucking hell.
Jay’s face must have looked a bit drained too, because Vega had to stifle a laugh when she looked at it.
“You see why he’s called the Soulsnatcher? I’ve got no idea how he does it, but its brutal as fuck.”
“You can say that again.” Jay replied, dragging his eyes away from the grey corpse and closing the system screen. He didn’t feel like watching another one of Ezekiel’s fights. “That prick almost stabbed me the first time I met him. I was an inch away from being fucking desaturated!”
Jay looked over Vega’s shrugging shoulders to see Ezekiel staring back at him again. This time joined by another set of eyes. Seeing their lips move, Jay wondered what they were talking about. He had the sneaky suspicion it was him. He pulled up the new fighter’s stats, Ezekiel wasn’t with the same sinister woman as last time and Jay wanted to see her replacement.
Alias
Davad, the Infernal Harpoon
Organisation
Second Chance Coliseum (Soulbound). Flaming Tomb Alliance.
Grade
E
Rank
502
Offence
400
Defence
470
Strategy
515
Instinct
550
Vitality
599
Speed
488
Why is rank 5 talking to rank 502? Jay thought, staring over the shoulders of rank 1. And why are they looking at me?
Jay reopened the system and searched for Davad’s last five fights.
Davad fought nothing like Ezekiel. He was an archer who had never got within ten metres of his opponent in all his fights. All five of the fights ended with him firing an arrow at his opponent while backing up. Not terribly impressive, but definitely effective.
Jay wondered why nobody had been able to close the distance on Davad. He wasn’t especially fast, or creative with his retreats. None of his opponents managed to even get close, and Jay couldn’t figure out why. Before every killshot, Davad’s opponents just seemed to stand there and accept getting hit.
Watching the fights also brought another question back to the forefront of Jay's mind.
How the hell are the rankings calculated?
Jay knew they were based on the coliseum performances, but if that was the case, why did Davad have a higher vitality score than him? Jay had survived a hit from a Goldenback gorilla. He’d barely survived, but he’d still survived. A more impressive feat than anything Davad had shown in his last five fights.
Yet the archer still ranked over three hundred positions above him. Why?
A loud clapping sound and the rumble of people walking to their seats brought Jay out of his thoughts. Perhaps he could ask someone about the ranking system later, but it wasn’t particularly important right now.
Akira and Lyra both took a seat at table fourteen. One of them had an ear-to-ear grin, the other remained as calm as ever.
“We have a strategy for doing well at the auction.” Said Lyra, turning to face Jay. “Because we don’t have a whole alliance backing us up, we have to stick together. That means we pool our points together if there's an item that’s a great fit. So one of us may have to use your points, if there's something good, but it goes both ways. Get it?”
“Got it. Seems like a pretty simple strategy though, how come everyone doesn’t do it?”
“We can only do it because we’re unaffiliated. If a fighter joins an alliance, a lot of their needs are taken care of. They get given help in the way of training, as well as magic items and guidance for their fights. That leaves people like us at a disadvantage because they don’t have to spend their points on any of those things.
“Normally, you can’t transfer your contribution points to anyone else. Unless they’re a coliseum sanctioned vendor. But since the people in charge of the Moontide Auction aren’t particularly uptight, and the organisers don’t mind helping a couple of lowly E graders out, they let us pay for things together. If I’m short a few hundred CP, then one of you guys can cover the difference and it won’t matter.”
“Yet another reason why this place is the fucking best” Akira said, rubbing his hands together in excitement. “I spoke to Sirius just now. He said there's a bunch of good raw materials tonight with a few good weapons and utility items sprinkled in after. Perfect for us.”
“Why’s that perfect for us?” Jay asked.
“Because we don’t need to buy materials, but a lot of alliances do.” Explained Lyra. “Materials are a much safer purchase than already made items, because you can give them to your craftsmen and make something good. Whereas anything prebuilt is more of a risk. All the alliances will spend their points on the materials, letting the quirky, but still useful items slip through the cracks and find us.
“Of course, it doesn’t always work out that way. But that’s generally how it’s turned out every other time.”
Jay nodded, he wondered why the twins and Akira weren’t in an alliance. It seemed quite useful to join one. The Flaming Tomb Alliance was a bad introduction, but surely they couldn’t all be that bad?
A blonde woman in a sparkling silver dress took to the stage. She cleared her throat and dragged the entire crowd’s attention towards her.
“Good evening good evening good evening good evening. Ladies, gentlemen, and all in attendance, hopefully you have arrived with full hearts and even fuller pockets. Because you know what time it is.”
The booming voice was obviously the woman’s, but it came from everywhere around Jay, taking him aback for a moment. It was like the very ground he sat on amplified her voice, making it hard to hear anything other than the words she said. Akira leaned in and whispered in his ear.
“She’s using the essence of projection.”
Jay looked back to the woman on stage. The essence of projection huh. He wondered how he would go about using that essence, were he to have it. Would his punches amplify in power? Could his kicks stretch even further than his limbs allowed?
“I am very pleased to welcome you to the two hundred and forty fourth Moontide auction! Now, before we get to the fun stuff, I know some of you have been here before but I can see a few new faces. So let’s go through the rules.” Jay could have sworn the woman looked directly at him and winked, but she carried on with her introduction without pause.
He didn’t look, but Jay felt four more eyes trained on him as well.