The first blow hits her like a freight train.

Four days. Four whole days after the “opening” fight. That’s how long it took for her to get put back into the ring.

There’s been talk, and plenty has been happening. The loser’s brackets had their two days in the sun, the upper tier brackets opening for the next two, and then alternating back, apparently. All very well planned, all leaving people enticed and offering breaks for the fighters in their different lanes.

Raika hasn’t really been paying attention. Half of her focus has been on trying to think of how to make things up to Maen, the other half has been on the conversation she had with Rei Ji a day prior. Plenty of the fights were distinct, some she even earmarked to maybe learn more about later, but for the most part, she hasn’t cared.

And then, almost like a gift from the heavens, Kaena poked her and told her that the third fight of the second bracket was hers. A gift, Kaena had said, with a wink.

So much to do. So little time.

But the allure was just too much.

The second hit cracks through a layer of exoskeleton and nearly breaks apart the composite scales beneath, leaving a bloody hole in her shoulder and sending her back a good few feet.

There’ve been two types of fights in the early days of the tournaments; the protracted battles and the wipeouts. Those with simplistic or matching cultivation, who’ve managed to find perfect counters, or who have near equal levels of stamina tend to be the former, taking well over an hour in some cases of back and forth. Most are holding back their best for later fights, but without those higher techniques many of the battles fell into wars of attrition or dramatic slugfests, both still plenty entertaining. On the other hand, there’ve been those who have wiped out their opponents in mere moments. A cultivator with a number of tamed insectoid beasts unnerving and crushing an opponent with wind techniques, a practitioner of the Vile Song cultivation technique forcing the arena’s shields to mute their sound as their opponent vomited and bled, that sort of thing.

This one, for now, is shaping up to be like the latter type.

By the third hit, there’s a sense of disconnect in her limbs, her body failing to send proper warning signals of failing function. Her senses are sharp enough she can still feel the cracks forming and work to repair them, but it’s concerning how quickly the damage is built up.

She lattices bone structure into a connected pillar, from shoulder to foot, and grabs the next strike. The ground behind her shatters in the impact, transferred through the bones, and in the next instant her fist crashes through her opponent and shatters the rock behind them.

Slowly, sardonically, applause drifts in from a few stones away.

An eye forms on her neck, letting her look towards it without taking her eyes off her opponent. It causes the beginnings of a splitting headache, but in the thick of combat, dosed with adrenaline, she can handle it. Sitting a good hundred feet away, casual as can be, a man in bright red and dark grey robes claps, sitting picturesque against a background of waterfalls and basalt columns of the arena’s latest form.

“Truly, you are a magnificent specimen!” he laughs, waving a hand at her. “I’m impressed with whoever made you! It's not often you Imperial fleshcrafters do something right!”

Her opponent strikes her a fourth time, a new limb forming and slamming from its chest down into her knee and fracturing it. She hisses, already healing but not fast enough, and pulls her hand back to rip through her enemies’ flesh once more.

The construct writhes, twirling away from her like a kaleidoscopic vision of meat. There’s about a hundred different shifts and alterations and it’s moved away from next hit, and the one behind it, reabsorbing the new limb and rotating 180 degrees to almost crack her jaw off.

It’s infuriating.

It’s also kind of fun.

Another wave of Qi flows out from the red-robed cultivator (Shao- something, Shao Han? Shao Fan? She can’t remember). It has a delicacy to it, like a scent just barely holding together against the wind, smelling of blood and fibrous string and dull, spasming meat. It touches her opponent, and once again it transforms, throwing itself at her.

The construct is a layered thing, shaped only vaguely like a human. Four arms, three legs, a sort of half-centaur equipped with armor plates of bone and eyes along every joint and seam. It squelches as it moves, tendon and ligament-wires stringing its pieces along, and its meat is made up of more than a few different shades altogether. Rather than a cohesive whole or a real organism, the construct seems more like a weaponized puppet, its pieces modular and slipping in and out of combinations as Qi is pumped into it.

She’s partway into her transformation herself. It’s a bit annoying; she thought she’d gotten it down better, that she could do something more refined than her humanoid juggernaut form, but in the time it takes her to shift the flesh-mongrel is there, hitting all the right points to disrupt things as they form, to force breakages as things shift.

“All that hubbub in the first round!” says the cultivator in red. “Honestly, I wasn't impressed. I mean, your whole system is a mess, far too human, far too aesthetical. Either someone made you and kept too many people-pieces or you’re just a mess. Either way, it’s embarrassing! Proper, professional fleshmolding isn’t anything like the clown show you’re putting on. It would bring shame to the Blood and Bone Bodies path if we were compared to you. See what proper, traditional technique can achieve when used by even one such as I?”

She shifts a foot taller, extends her reach, tendons lengthening- and the construct reacts to a fresh burst of Qi from its handler, grabbing her arms and pulling right as they extend, tearing the fresh flesh apart. She sharpens her claws, kicks and rips at it, ripping away a bit of armor and some gobbets, but it’s not enough, and in the end she loosens the joints and skin and lets it tear both arms right off.

“I treasure this opportunity to showcase just how much better a true craft is than your own paltry showing!”

Hmm.

She keeps her teeth hidden for now. Keeps the flame at bay, too. Either one might end this too fast, and there's more to be gained here than just beating the bastard's head in. She can make more flesh, and the pain isn’t all that bad. Every time she shifts, though, the bastard notices and sends his construct right at it. There’s noises from the crowd out beyond, her senses a bit muted by the arena’s magics and further focused on her immediate surroundings, but it’s annoying.

The construct looks like shit! It shouldn’t be hard to beat!

She snarls, her real voice making the notes of it tremble strangely, and the construct sways for a moment. The cultivator (Shan Cao? Shan Jao? It’s something-Ao) notices, frowning slightly, and a quick Qi signal has it stable again, but not before she's seen.

Fuck. Another thing she can’t use, then. And another note against the "traditional" method, if a little bit of projected Qi and sound is enough to disrupt its signals.

It’s professional fucking pride, here! She’s had to build herself back from scratch! Two Truths in the mix! And this meat puppet can fight back directly, on a flesh-to-flesh basis, while sporting this many weaknesses?

It’s infuriating. And quickly getting annoying.

She steps forward, growling, the sound of it resonating as sharpened blades of bone grow from severed arms and-

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

“You really should step back a bit.”

She flinches, and feels some of her vertebrae strain as it forces her to take a solid crack in her cheekbone.

“Not trying to distract, just saying, you really should take a step back. I can help.”

She snarls louder, and Zhoulong steps back, hands up, feigning innocence.

“No need for all that. Barely even a bother, me. You do as you please. Just saying that if you need advice on flesh constructs…”

He looks sickly. Weak. He barely fills out his robes, looking skinny and starved. But he smiles just the same.

Both blades snicker-snack out to slice into the flesh of the construct, which barely seems to take damage, and she uses the moment it rearranges the cuts away to launch herself backwards up onto a higher pillar.

The handler laughs, starts saying something, but she isn’t paying attention at this point.

She turns, off to one side, and snarls at Zhoulong, already there in the corner of her eye.

“I don’t need your help, and you can shut your fucking trap.”

He shrugs. “Of course. I’m just saying, you don’t avoid the pit by falling into the well. Say what you will about my motivations, but you die, I go right after. I’ve got a vested interest in your well being. And frankly, this fucker’s an amateur. Looks like he stitched together half a dozen lesser constructs and is just keeping the meat alive through Qi usage. It’s embarrassing, especially for someone so old fashioned! He should know better! And we can do better, you can do better. I can only offer suggestions that might help!”

“Hey!” roars the cultivator, sending out a pulse of Qi as he does. “How dare you disrespect this duel! I am-”

“Come on, you’re really going to let this pompous idiot look better than you?” Zhoulong interrupts, speaking over the ranting opponent down below. “ You’ve got just a couple little inconsistencies is all. Academic stuff, little oversights. I can help,”

She ignores both of them, focusing instead. Thinning out the bone blades, using them as foundation to grow the arms back, then shifting her weight inside herself. Rather than planning vast, sweeping changes, she focuses on her ideal, the form she’s trying to perfect for now.

“Are you even listening to me?” roars the cultivator.

“No.” she opens her eyes faster this time, ready to block the incoming blow.

It’s still not perfect, not quite her as she feels it should be, but for now the dysmorphia falls back before the transformation.

A second set of limbs, putting her equal to the abomination, sprout forward from her ribcage and shoulder muscles, all four arms now armed and armored properly, glowing with heat-haze of rapid transformation. She steps forward, pressing her weight against the morphic meat-thing, and her steps crack the stone, sharpened claws and back-talon anchoring her in place. Over the rest of her, even as she repairs her reactive scales, she layers a full exoskeletal set of chitin.

Then layers a second set over top of it.

In an instant, she is armored like an Imperial guard, their exo-suits and armor replicated in more brutal and sharpened a fashion out of bone and keratin. Her faceplate locks in, a second set of eyes growing slightly to the sides to widen her vision, the bone mirroring her jaws and integrating them easily, and just as the meat puppet that this fucking guy compared her to goes to strike, her tail stabs in from over her shoulder.

She’s not 100% confident in it. It’s a mess of muscle and bone, barely optimized, but it centers her balance and has a sharp fucking club at the end, and it’s enough for now.

Shao - something shuts up at long last, focusing and redirecting his Qi in a more complex burst, but she just laughs.

“Ok. Not bad. But see, if we just tweaked this here-”

She ignores him, picking up the thousand-pound amalgamation of tendon and muscle and slamming it back down into the stone, breaking the ground beneath them and sending them both down onto lower pillar of the basalt all around them.

Shao-something’s Qi finally hits, even more delicate and complex this time, smelling like the tendon-threads within it are woven somehow, and the meat-thing reshapes itself. It shoves her off, and despite the quality of her flesh and its Qi saturation a difference of more than twice her weight again matters when they’re both enhanced.

She morphs again, increasing muscle fibers, trying to keep her joints spring-locked and-

“You’re doing this really inefficiently.”

Before she’s even realized, she swings her tail again, knocking through the stone where Zhoulong’s voice said he’d be standing. She snarls, vocal cords half-altered by the application of the altered jaw and the increased need for oxygen, but it’s enough that the creature hits her again, once twice, its mass reformatting under the commands of its owner. Soon it’s gained another half-foot in height and absorbed two limbs into its central mass, using its masters strings to move itself rather than proper fucking structure, and-

“You don’t even have any modifications to your cells, do you? Ten Hells but you’ve been going about this ass-backwards. Those Truths really carry the weight, eh?”

She roars, and for a moment the arena stills. She’s not entirely sure why, but her Qi saturation means that her true voice has weight, now, and the delicacy of the Qi in the air all the fuck around her shudders for a heartbeat.

“Listen. One modification. Just one. Undo it right after if you like, and I’ll shut up until you explicitly ask me to come back. How’s that? Easy trade.”

She turns to him. Away from her opponent, much to the confusion of the crowd and said enemy. She can hear him muttering, moving his hands and uttering some sort of mantra, feel and hear and sense the intricacies of puppeteered meat moving behind her-

Instinct says no. Says to move. Says to rush forward, screaming, listening to the blood and the pain and the anger. She’s made it through worse, she can waste some time here, and-

Another part of her speaks. Whispers.

The mask speaks, human lips and human words emerging from within a jaw two handspans wide..

“Fine. Then you leave.”

He smiles, exactly the same as every other time that smile has crawled on his face.

“Wouldn’t have it any other way. You need to prioritize oxygenation and your blood. You use it to waddle around your Qi, sure, but it’s the most crucial element, it carries and supplies everything. Picture your blood. Break it down into pieces, so small you can’t even see them, like sand made to look like water by distance.”

The meat-thing hits her again, but she’s not listening. Her instinct is screaming, writhing, in panic and anger and confusion, hardening her plates, anchoring her posture and stance, locking her to the earth and weathering the blows. The… not the mask, maybe? The rest of her, outside the instinct, piggybacking on the mask and focusing, meditating, thinking. The point of this was to practice and learn, no? To use it as a bonus opportunity as she searches for her target and the information they could have?

A third voice whimpers, riding the adrenaline, warning that this is a bad idea, that something here is deeply wrong-

But it’s fine. She can survive this. All of her. She’s been through worse.

The meat thing keeps hitting her and she heals some of the damage, lets herself weather the rest, ignores the questions from the crowd and the reactions from her opponent.

“Good. Now picture these grains of sand. Picture them drinking in your Qi. There should be enough it’s possible, even without the organs digesting it first. Picture the concept of movement, of depth, of strength. Picture them expanding, just a touch. Their shell growing tougher. Picture that Qi drinking into them, changing them to suit what you need.”

A blow makes it fully through her armor, impacting deep and bloodily into her gut. The pain is there, but like always it doesn’t mean anything important.

“Good. You won’t be able to do them all at once, but the refinement should be shifted a bit. And don't forget to have fun, dearie!”

She opens her eyes, and Zhoulong is gone, honoring his fucking word for once.

Her heart beats. It has not stopped beating, but it does so again, and it feels… different.

She breathes in, a mix of shock and joy. It’s a rush. It’s a joy.

She said it herself, she just didn’t think it through. The greater the foundation, the higher the tower. Blood and bone and organs, all important, but she didn’t know to look deeper, to think in even smaller increments.

It’s not much, but she can feel her fatigue lessen, her muscles new and old refueled.

She moves an arm, and it feels… right. More accurate.

United again, all of her turns to the puppet.

Two of her arms shoot out, sharp-edged and piston-fueled, and tear two of its limbs from its body.

Her gut closes, her armor regrows, and she steps forward, her tail swishing behind her and keeping her movement steady as the damaged meat-thing flails.

Her left arms shoot out, both moving far more comfortably, not synchronized but more responsive, and tear another third of it apart.

She turns to look at Shao… Shao Kan. That was the name. Probably.

“Sorry,” she says. “Got distracted. This has been helpful, but I think we’re done here.”

His face goes scarlet, eyes wide, nostrils flared in outrage. She feels the meat-thing respond, its body multiplying, blood gushing from it in a flood and turning to sharpened spikes and-

She looks at the meat thing, its core body torn and shredded in her hands, sharp and divine, and smiles, terrifying with a jaw like a monster. She relaxes her vocal cords, lets her real voice sit as she hums.

“Die,” she says, and pulls it apart.

Like wet cloth, like old wood, like fresh bread, it tears into pieces, and the blood and flesh flowing from it fall limp.

She turns to face Shao (probably) Kan.

“Not to be arrogant, but… you should be a bit more humble. This thing couldn’t fight ten cultivators. I beat the shit out of a good eighty like, two days ago.”

“Oh, fuck you.”

She moves, and his Qi circulates to strengthen his body, to help him run or fight back but she’s already there, in his face, and she opens a maw of black and steel teeth and bites out a chunk of his shoulder.

He screams, and she lets him, and bows to the crowd.

As she turns her attention outside the arena for the first time, as the arena’s shields flicker to let in healers, as she experiences a shivering ecstasy of the taste of puppetry and flesh and meat as it should taste- she sees her.

She smells it an instant later. Sharp scalpel-edges, purified in candle-heat, atop soft-scented sheets.

Raika sees Li Shu, staring down at her from the stands.