CHAPTER 81 ARMED CONFLICT

We all lined up in a single-file line as usual and left the cellblock. And as usual, as I passed by Lurks she pulled me to the side and had a pair of soldiers escort me a different way. This time I felt much better about myself being led this way than I had the previous times. Although this was still only my third fight, it felt like I’d had many more than that.

I went ahead and let one of my [Parallel Minds] begin building up some armor for me. It didn’t take much effort for me to build it up. I was noticing that anything regarding wood got enhanced by my [Wood Manipulation]. I kinda wished there was a description for general skills, simply because they didn’t always make complete sense. Like [Fruit Production], [Vegetable Production], and [Plant Production] all being completely different skills rather than falling under one-umbrella.

Well, it was something I could worry about later. For now I had a fight to focus on. I wanted to try and start forming some flowers to start getting an idea of what I could see around me and start controlling my area of observation. But the soldiers generally seemed to be able to tell when someone was channeling mana into a skill or something.

Not that it was a particularly hard thing to do, they just reacted harshly from what I could see. I guess I couldn’t entirely blame them, since we were prisoners and their job was to guard us. Hard to sense the difference between an attack skill versus a support one until after they had been cast.

I ended up in the same room I had the last two times and made my way over to the same corner and summoned up an elaborate chair to sit in. This time I was feeling a lot more confident, it helped having established my position after a couple of fights. I was a strong fighter, despite being a tier below everyone else. Although, how many had actually spent the effort identifying me was unknown, so how many people actually knew that I didn’t know. I was sure it was pretty much everyone though.

I was planning on keeping my levels hidden going forward, even if they knew I was a tier below them they would have to guess the level from here on out. They’d always be wondering if I was already in the third tier or not now. Especially when they fought me.

Actually, now that I thought about it, none of the people I had fought were from this room at all. So it might just turn out that none of the people I’d be fighting knew what my actual level would be or even tier. So they might approach the fights with more caution than other people did.

I wasn’t entirely sure what I wanted. If someone fought aggressively but cautiously knowing I was comparable speed, maybe not strength or other stuff, then I’d be in a rough position. That showed itself with Adam.

In fact, the only real reason I could even beat him in a fight was simply because my sword was once again, absurdly powerful. Combined that with a skill that guaranteed critical hits, it basically just exploded his rock armor off of him. Although that had been expensive mana wise.

I needed more and more mana all the time it felt like. I wondered how spell-blade skills compared to purely physical speed fighters. Since they would probably focus more on things like strength and endurance rather than intelligence and wisdom. It would be interesting to see and compare the differences.

I summoned up an apple for me to munch on while I waited. I ate it carefully this time, not eager to spawn another episode like I had last time.

‘Ping’ [Fruit Production] Has leveled 8 > 9

It was getting pretty close to dipping into the first tier. It would slow down a bit there and once it got into tier two. I’d have to summon an absurd amount of fruits and vegetables to get the same kind of level gains I had been up to this point. Already I was having to bring in a whole bunch. This wasn’t a terribly cost effective skill I was noticing. Although going forward I knew I could use [Rest] with one of my minds while I was working so that should help a lot.

Hours passed as I idly sat there waiting, people kept getting pulled out to go to their fights. The numbers in the room dwindled from the initial thirty down to about ten of us. I was also starting to get a little impatient. I hadn’t had to wait this long before, normally I’d been pulled out pretty quickly it had felt like. Maybe I hadn’t been. I hadn’t been in the best state of mind both times it had happened.

Whatever, I doubted it would be much longer before I had to go out. I managed to keep my outward appearance calm, I was intentionally going for the calm, collected look. Appearances did matter for things like this. If I projected confidence that would suit me better in the long run, especially if I could back it up with wins. Of course if I lost it wouldn’t matter. Mainly because I’d be dead, but ya know.

And that did get my heart pumping a bit. One screw-up here and I was dead. If that wasn’t a sobering thought…

A soldier came in glancing between everyone, his eyes settling on me, “Elf, you’re up. Let’s go.”

I nodded and stood up, dismissing the chair to dissipate. His eyes narrowed slightly as he watched the chair disappear before turning around and marching back out the door.

I followed closely behind him as he led us both down the hallway towards where the cage was. Once again we came in as a fight was going on, and it looked like it was pretty close to finishing. One looked like a mage primarily, the other was a melee fighter. Dual-daggers, it seemed like. And it looked like a completely unfair matchup, the mage was just struggling to do anything as the rogue darted around them, toying with them apparently.

I was never fond of the idea of messing with your opponents in fights. I figured if you could win, you should just do so. No point or reason to drag something out, especially in fights to the death. But bloodsports I guess ran by different rules. While it could be interesting to see fights end in a single, powerful blow. It was more entertaining to see closer fights that kept you on the edge of your seats.

Given my enjoyment of sports back on Earth, I could understand where they were coming from. I also just had no intention of playing into their desires. If you derive enjoyment from watching people kill each other in reality, you are a sick, twisted person. In fiction that’s one thing. I enjoyed reading about main characters that would absolutely decimate their opponents in a righteous fury. It was cathartic. Or when it happened in anime, I mean. Everyone likes to see a good fight. But when you remove the fictional aspect of that and try to place it in reality it has a completely different connotation.

One I don’t necessarily care for either.

The rogue decided he’d had enough and dealt his killing blow, a flurry of precise cuts and slices that ended with a dagger through the heart and another through the throat. He then twisted both blades before yanking them out and executed a flourish, dispelling all the blood from his blades onto the ground.

How quaint.

He walked towards my side of the cage again as the last guy had and came close enough that I was able to [Identify] him.

[Level 443]

A pretty decent level. Something I had noticed is that there wasn’t anyone in the fourth tier that was a slave. Not that I was really complaining.

The announcer got up to do announcer things and I just tuned him out. I was getting a little annoyed with this whole spectacle. One of my minds instantly noticed an approaching presence, I turned slowly to look at Lurks as she approached.

She had made it obvious she was coming by running a tendril over my mind to indicate her presence. And it caused me to completely lock up. I shivered slightly as she got closer. She kept her presence in my mind noticeable as she ran through my most recent memories, feeling each and every one of them causing me to shake uncontrollably as she also reached out a hand and ran it through my hair intimately.

She smiled, “Looks like you’re finding some friends for yourself and fitting in nicely. That’s good,” She whispered to me.

I didn’t like that she was bringing this up to me at all.

She just laughed, “I’m not planning on doing anything to them. I’m not interested in them, I’m more interested in you. Besides I don’t need to actually hurt them to make you believe that I’ve hurt them. I can make you believe whatever I want just by tweaking your mind a little. But I won’t. Not yet, it’s not time to try and fully break you yet. I want you to get closer to people, I want you to really feel those bonds break when I ruin you.”

She smiled lovingly, it was a terrifying smile with how tender it looked and how it clashed with her words. She knew the effect it was having on me as well.

She handed my sword to me, she had to make me wrap my fingers around it to hold it because otherwise I wouldn’t have grabbed it.

“You be good now,” She whispered into my ear before turning and walking away.

I felt her slimy thought tendrils slide over my mind like fingers tracing over my skin before they left. I had no doubt she was still in my mind, but she just wasn’t making it obvious she was there.

I felt like puking.

I slowly stepped up into the cage and the soldiers closed the gate behind me and locked it as per usual.

I looked forward and waited for my opponent. I wanted to go ahead and start placing lilies in the corner but I wasn’t sure how they’d feel about me prepping the arena, even if they didn’t know what it was for.

Soon enough my opponent arrived. A woman this time.

She only wore leather armor and held a single sword in her right hand. She was about average height you would expect for a woman, around 5’6”. Maybe a little taller. She had short black hair that looked like it was well taken care of.

She was relatively attractive, and she walked with an easy confidence that seemed infectious. She was catcalled all the way up into the cage, she just ignored everything her eyes focused only on me.

I nodded my head ever so slightly in her direction. If she saw me do it she didn’t return it.

Not that it really mattered to me.

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[Level 323]

Not a bad level, still early tier three, maybe just only recently got her third class into the third tier or close to it.

I wasn’t planning on underestimating her though. I wasn’t sure what type of fighter she was. Hell, she could even be a spellblade like myself. Although if she was I figured she would have some sort of noticeable defensive skills running like I did.

I took up a defensive stance as I waited. I pushed all of my minds into overdrive actions planned out for the second the fight started. It would happen any second now.

“FIGHT!” The announcer belted out.

I reacted instantly, my minds completing their pre-ordained tasks. What I wasn’t prepared for was for my opponent to disappear in a burst of speed, reappearing right in front of my face, her blade already in mid-swing.

I collapsed backwards in surprise with a slightly startled yelp, the mind handling my barriers instantly sprang up between me and her as she fluidly transitioned from her swing into a downwards stab. She made it through the first two without any trouble, but her blade was stopped on the third.

I tried to kick out her feet from under her, but she just calmly hopped backwards.

I took the moment to roll backwards and flip myself onto my feet. Making sure to keep an eye on her through my skills. [Mana Sense] didn’t turn anything back on her gear being special like Adam’s had been. [Electric Sense] gave me nothing either.

I didn’t turn those off though and instead passed them off to one of my other minds allowing them to keep an eye on her flows to see if I could discern anything from it.

Lilies sprouted up around the cage in various places giving me a much wider field of view to see things with. Her eyes flicked to the flowers and she quickly flicked her blade in the direction of the flowers in the center of the arena and they were torn apart by… something. I could see the mana flow, it looked like an invisible blade. I wasn’t entirely sure what it was though.

It could’ve been wind, but that didn’t feel right to me for some reason. Maybe there was a wind aspect to it, but my gut was telling me there was something more to the situation.

I regrew the flowers almost instantly, she didn’t try to destroy them again, instead directing her efforts to throw several invisible blades in my direction. I danced out of the way of the blades and slowly approached her. I raised my off-hand and fired a couple of [Paralyzing Blasts] her way.

I fired a third one just for good measure and then jumped through it with [Ride the Lightning].

I also got a nice dose of what happened when someone attacked one of my skills while I was riding one of them. [Paralyzing Blast] was one of my slowest skills, so there was ample time for her to intercept each attack with her own. As her invisible blade cut through the ball I was riding I was painfully shunted out of it. It had clipped a bit to the left side and sheared right through my wooden arm removing it from my body.

I definitely did not want to get hit head on by those blades.

I fired another couple of [Paralyzing Blast] shots at her, one angled slightly to the left and another to the right and then immediately followed up with a [Chain Lightning] directly at her. I rode this one again, this skill covering the distance much faster and overtaking the other two attacks. She didn’t have time to try and cut this one out of the air.

Instead she dodged to the left to avoid the [Chain Lightning]. I popped out right next to her, blade swinging for her neck in a decapitating strike. She raised her blade to block and I activated [Second Strike] as my blade connected with hers another strike came to intersect my blade with hers pushing her momentum off slightly.

The [Paralyzing Blast] reached us at that moment. I covered myself with a few barriers to cover from the explosion. My opponent just disappeared and reappeared at the other end of the arena. My mind watching her mana flow popped with excitement. It had seen a thread of mana and managed to start deducing from there.

I smirked as my minds came to a conclusion.

She was using some void or space magic. The invisible blades were way too stable to be air, and she was teleporting. That’s what the skill was, it had initially looked like she was disappearing with speed, but there was no gust of wind to accompany her displacing the air of the room.

Looks like it was also time-gated. Couldn’t spam it relentlessly.

I launched myself at her, and she frowned, throwing several more blades my way. I wasn’t able to tell if they were void or space, and it didn’t really matter to me. I just needed to keep an eye on the mana she was using.

I easily danced through the blades and approached her, letting loose a flurry of blows that she deftly blocked before teleporting again. I could see where she was going though before she moved.

I fired a [Chain Lightning] at her location shortly before she left and rode it over to her appearing at the same time she did. The blast hit her dead on rewarding me with a shriek of pain.

I struck out at her again and again, but she was prepared for me. She also hadn’t seemed as injured as I thought she would be from taking a spell from me head on.

Some strange passive at work. She was glowing a random assortment of hues of mana that showed me that she did indeed have some defensive and support mana-based skills active.

I growled, striking at her with renewed ferocity, trying my best to keep on the pressure. She wasn’t teleporting anymore, so I wasn’t getting any easy strikes against her. She was also as fast as I was, if not faster. Which wasn’t good.

Our blades constantly swung at each other in a frenzy dance as we moved across the arena, slowly moving faster and faster as she picked up the speed. I had been setting the pace up until this point, but now she was slowly starting to control the flow of the battle.

My eyes widened as a blade suddenly appeared behind me. I moved to jump and allowed [Dodge] to activate, giving me an extra burst of speed. I jumped upwards, spawned a barrier and jumped off that and cleared the majority of the arena landing lightly on the other side from her.

We both stopped and stared at each other. My minds rushed, trying to come up with a plan of action. I’d only noticed a few of her skills so far. What was she still hiding that she could do? What made this also a lot harder was that she was faster than me.

She had made that clear in the last engagement, once she realized she had better technique than me, she hadn’t run away so quickly and instead gauged where we sat on speed. We were about even on strength. Which meant she was a bit out of my league. Not that this was surprising information.

She slowly started stalking around the outside of the arena, a smirk on her face. So far she hadn’t said anything. Although I hadn’t either, most opponents liked to gloat though. I had to say that I liked that she wasn’t talkative. Obnoxious opponents were…obnoxious.

A firm stare settled on my face as I stalked around mirroring her actions. I ran mind over my skills quickly, trying to determine what I could do to increase my chances of winning. I wasn’t entirely sure.

I’d have to get creative here. She could summon her blades in thin air. I needed that same level of versatility to fight her. But all my skills that I could use down here originated from my body.

One of my minds perked up at that line of thought. What counted as my body? I was able to cast spells through my prosthetic arm since it was a part of me. Despite it being manipulated mainly with magic and intuition. Could I do the same with other things connected to me?

I slammed a foot down and a tendril of wood blasted up from her feet and tried to grapple her. I saw her try to teleport before it happened and immediately fired [Chain Lightning] at the destination, only for her not to teleport and instead lunge forward towards me.

I swore as I hurriedly tried to get my blade up in time to block. She let out a torrent of blows that I could scarcely keep up with me. My proficiency was being tested here.

I honed in several minds on purely focusing on this sword fight, and that was enough to barely keep up with her. She feinted multiple times in a fraction of a second, I fell for each one but still managed to move fast enough to barely deflect her killing blow with an angled barrier.

She didn’t stop though, summoning several blades behind me causing me to dodge awkwardly by bending over to the side. I put my dexterity to use and flipped, landing lightly on my feet a little bit to the side and blocked her blade coming for my waist and then returned with several tendrils of wood trying to either pierce her back or grab her arms and legs.

She didn’t even look behind her as she summoned a torrent of blades to cut down my attempts, instead she kept purely focused on pressuring me with the intense sword fight she was going through.

She continued to bounce and twirl, her blows raining down fiercely on my defenses. Once again I lamented my weak sword technique. It had been a problem against Adam and it was a problem now. I was only keeping up because I had extra minds to process the information I saw.

Her blows started raining down more and more quickly. And they started slipping through my defenses. They also cut through my armor like it wasn’t even there. I noticed each time she got close to connecting a blow mana exploded down her sword, coating it as it struck before disappearing again.

I was losing.

Slowly but surely, she dealt a little bit more damage. I could barely even get my healing off with one of my minds. I was so overwhelmed by her tenacity and skill. Each blow shaving off a significant chunk of health that I had spent a decent amount of mana healing.

Except I wasn’t keeping up, in this fight of attrition I was slowly losing. Eventually I’d run out of mana, sooner rather than later. Each blow also hurt. It hurt being cut apart by blades, and she was taking chunks off. No dismemberment, but her cuts were deep and bloody.

Blows kept coming again and again and again. I swung desperately trying to block or counterattack, but nothing was working. She expertly dodged each attack or parried them with expertise.

I flipped around, constantly casting [Chain Lightning] and jumping through it to reposition for better opportunities. But she was slowly getting used to the timing and getting better at predicting where I would land. I was constantly parrying blows whenever I landed. Our blades kicked up dust whenever we connected.

I had a slight advantage whenever [Dodge] activated, but that only lasted a second and had only been good enough to get me a single strike on her when she hadn’t been prepared for it. Every other time, she was just out of reach whenever it activated. Some sort of danger sense? I had no idea, the skill wasn’t mana based.

Maybe it was just expert intuition? Whatever it was, she was ready. Her blade flew at me with relentless precision. Anytime I parried a blow and went in for an attack against her I was fended off with a blade shooting out of the air in the path of my attacks. I couldn’t even position her body in the line of fire since she could just summon them wherever she wanted to, so they always came from the best possible position.

My mind whirled searching for an opportunity to turn this back around. I wasn’t seeing a good way to do it. I would just have to try.

I pulled away all my minds that were focusing on observation or helping with my reactions against her attacks. I stepped into her next swing coming from my left, and stuck my arm out knocking back her sword arm.

A tendril sprouted underneath her foot causing her to take a single step back to not get grabbed. Already her blade was coming from the other side, only to immediately slam into 15 barriers blocking my entire right side.

A [Paralyzing Blast] erupted out of the tendril right beneath us as she connected with the barriers. The timing was too perfect to dodge. I was already swinging my blade at her neck before the blast even finished exploding.

Her eyes widened in panic as she saw my blade come closer, her body tensed as she moved to block it.

Her body sparked and refused her movements.

She didn’t even have time to fully panic as I cleaved through her neck.

I collapsed to the ground panting and breathing deeply.

My health and mana both were sitting dangerously low. Not even Adam had gotten me this close to death. I struggled to push myself to my feet, as I did my awareness spread to the arena as they cheered loudly.

I guess they liked the show.

Instead of feeling pride from winning, I just felt sick.

I hated it here.