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Charitybelle reserved the arena on our first anniversary in The Book of Dungeons. When the date came, the interface showed the status of the last-person-standing competition—56 active contestants and eight knockouts. With only eight players out, I guessed that Crimson had done their homework picking players—or they had overestimated our willingness to kill one another.

Since Charitybelle and I became regular fixtures in the training yards, the other cadets heard about the match and gathered for the event. Seeing faculty members occupying the arena’s seats surprised me. I figured it would be the six of us picking fights in order to crown one of us the top dog.

That faculty also invited a guest lecturer from Fort Tilbury, a gate sergeant who’d seen battles with the orc empire on the eastern half of the continent. I’d even attended her lecture on siege machinery.

She taught us that siege warfare, aside from the orcs, became a lost art. Humans dabbled with war machines developed hundreds of years ago, but river tolls had smothered commerce so much that no one could afford to muster and equip an army or wage a campaign. The lecturer called it Arlington’s peace tax.

Aside from our little competition becoming entertainment for the visiting dignitary, the audience size made me nervous. Everything in my childhood taught me to avoid attention, and I dreaded public speaking. I choked in front of crowds and never played sports.

Fabulosa became the group’s best fighter, and she cared about it so much that I didn’t want to take her status away. It’s not like she lorded it over us. She’d distinguished herself over the year with hard work and dedication while I’d weaseled up my skills by exploiting the system. Her identity involved fighting, and mine, academia. No one liked the person who could do everything, but I was a gamer among gamers—pulling punches felt contrary to our nature. If people wanted to see my skills, I would oblige them. Besides, after all the ribbing I’d taken for being low-level, winning might earn me a little credibility.

Fabulosa agreed to let RIP fight me first. It became a toss-up between RIP and ArtGirl, the second-best at combat. Comparing them wasn’t fair because he served as a tank, and she provided burst damage with two blades. RIP appeared eager to test my mettle and agreed to be the undercard.

ArtGirl wouldn’t play second-fiddle to RIP, so she bowed out of the contest. Their competitiveness always amazed me. The event’s vibe wasn’t the cordial let’s-amuse-one-another-with-our-skills affair. Instead, they built it up into a trash-talking grudge match. Everyone wanted bragging rights. Somehow, I’d become the rope in the tug-of-war between them.

We agreed to use the standard format of wound-kill rules with practice weapons. In wound-kill bouts, an impartial official determines if a strike injured or incapacitated an opponent. We agreed not to use damage spells, which weren’t effective in melee. When word got out that we planned to spar, the instructor named Baldrick volunteered to officiate. His dark magic proficiency suited him to cast illusory wounds whose pain made engagements realistic. It safely mimicked real-world combat. Everyone thought it appropriate since we tested free-form fighting styles, not tournament rules.

Cheering welcomed me into the fighting pit. I helped many audience members practice their forms and stances, which they reciprocated with encouragement.

RIP made thumbs-down gestures to the cadets supporting me. He smiled but looked self-conscious and uncomfortable playing the bad guy. When the crowd died down, he teased me. “Hey man, this isn’t like football. There’s no home-field advantage or anything.”

Without control over the crowd, I shrugged my shoulders.

Charitybelle stood up and addressed the spectators. She knew the cadets and instructors in the audience since we trained together, but her initiative impressed me. As the audience applauded, she waved back.

“To celebrate our first year in Belden, we are putting on a contest. Who will be the victor—skills or levels? Can a cadet beat a battle-tested warrior? Apache, level 4, will face RIP and Fabulosa—who are 10 and 11. This is a no-magic wound-kill bout. The first to two wounds or one kill wins. Good luck, boys!”

Charitybelle’s public speaking impressed me. She would be a hard act to follow, so I hoped no one expected me to say anything. I just wanted this to be over. The contest itself never made sense to me. Levels gave advantages like more health, mana, and power points. Higher willpower improved spell resistance. None of this mattered in mock battles.

RIP and I faced each other while one of my instructors shouted the academy’s mantra over the noise. “High-level warriors take longer to kill.” The phrase encouraged untested cadets to be careful and rely on practiced attacks. It certainly applied to the situation.

RIP and I exchanged fist bumps before squaring off. We each held a weighted wooden short sword and shield, waiting for Professor Baldrick’s order to engage.

RIP hefted his wooden blade. “I wish they had a katana boffer.”

“What’s a boffer?”

“That’s what these are—wooden practice swords. When I put away my shield, I want to wield a katana, man. You know they’re the best swords out there, right?”

I shrugged, avoiding the conversation.

Before RIP delved into the virtues of katanas, Baldrick started the bout. “And begin!”

RIP’s opening attack came so quickly that I narrowly dodged his attack two seconds into the match. I hoped to size him up and read his footwork before engaging, but the suddenness of his Charge foiled my plan.

ArtGirl, Charitybelle, and PinkFox chanted from the stands. “Defense!” Clap-clap-clap. “Defense!” Chap-clap-clap. I’d never had girls cheer for me, but the thrill it gave me made me appreciate why guys tried out for high school sports.

RIP left himself wide open to a counterattack after I blocked his wooden blade, but his action caught me off guard. My opponent nodded in appreciation. “You’re pretty good, man. You’re quick. I usually hit with a Charge.”

I thanked him with a nod, still recovering my position.

RIP executed the same maneuver, and I tagged him on the shoulder when he missed.

Professor Baldrick cast an illusionary sensation to accompany the hit with a flick of his fingers.

“Ow! That hurt!”

“Wound one goes to Apache!” Baldrick raised a flattened palm in my direction, and the crowd cheered. If I could manage another wound, victory would be mine.

“That hurts too much! This isn’t like field combat at all!”

Fabulosa’s voice carried over the audience. “Don’t be such a baby. Now, get back to entertaining us.”

Peels of laughter rippled through the onlookers.

RIP groaned, dropped his shield, and called up to the stands. “Hey Pinky, where’s my heal?!” He sobered up and became more cautious, giving me more time to evaluate his forms.

RIP typically played the tank role against monsters, but he wasn’t easy to read without a shield. He shifted between defensive and offensive stances, giving him improvised strike options. His subtle footwork and natural grace made predicting intentions difficult.

One more wound would win the bout. By cycling through practiced moves, I performed a triple-feint attack that should end with the opponent’s exposed arm. I tried it twice, but RIP kept withdrawing after my second feint. Either he wasn’t taking the bait or didn’t see the phony vulnerability it offered.

After trying the sequence a third time, he shot forward with a thrust into my stomach, scoring a wound, then ducked my counterstrike.

Baldrick cried. “Wound one to RIP!”

The even score meant the next wound determined the winner.

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Fabulosa’s voice carried above the din. “Come on, Patchy! Whoop his butt!” The women joined the rest of the arena in cheering for me, although the crowd’s energy likely fed RIP’s determination more than mine. With everyone cheering for me, I didn’t feel like the underdog.

Part of this flowed from RIP’s ignorance to forms. He didn’t seem to know more than two. I felt awkward knowing that my combat skills, across the board, were higher than his. His freestyle moves weren’t easy to read, but they didn’t seem to lead into anything.

Giving up on my deceptive sequence, I tried to confuse him by shifting through stances. As he advanced, I cycled from a defensive form to an aggressive form called serpente. Before finishing my strike, a crackling sound split the air, and a solid thud smacked my chest.

RIP’s sword tip delivered a kill shot using a power I didn’t recognize.

Baldrick enunciated. “Kill shot. The bout goes to RIP.”

“Cooldowns!” Fabulosa and ArtGirl flew to their feet, shouting in protest. “Boo! Boo! Cooldowns!”

I stood, stunned. RIP hadn’t just wounded me—he delivered a kill-shot.

RIP defended his winning strike with wide-open arms to the hecklers. “Wait, a second! We’re allowed to use abilities.”

“Oh, what a ripoff! You’re a cheater, RIP!” ArtGirl waved her thumbs downward in the air. “No fair. No fair.”

I could see PinkFox getting into the spirit, but the smile on her face betrayed her faked outrage. “RIP is a weedy player!” She clapped and covered her mouth, unable to contain her giggles.

Charitybelle held her stomach and laughed.

Fabulosa’s full-throated shouts carried more gusto. “That was so weedy!”

The rest of the crowd murmured about what had happened. It didn’t sound like anyone else understood what combat maneuver RIP had used.

RIP offered a conciliatory fist, to which I responded with a bump.

After Fabulosa and ArtGirl settled down, RIP nodded in respect. “You’re pretty good, man! I had no idea what you were doing half the time, so I ended it before things got out of my control. You’re pretty dangerous.”

“What was that move you killed me with?”

“It’s a tier 1 piercing ability called Thrust. It delivers a Bleed. It increases your chance to hit, too. It’s the sword version of Discharge except without electricity. Since Bleeds aren’t a thing in sparing, I just used it to land a point.”

I didn’t follow his specifics, but I nodded.

“It’s a keen little move, right? I don’t get to use it very much because my opponents usually have jaws and claws.” He laughed at himself. “But seriously, man, your D is smoking, but you gotta attack more. You’re not going to have time to cycle through all those feints. And you also might want to flow a bit more—otherwise, your stances are recognizable.”

RIP didn’t have poor form or sloppy stances. He disguised his footwork naturally. I hadn’t even known that was possible, but it made sense. And RIP recognized my moves all along, proving himself a much better fighter than I’d realized.

“I know. I tried positioning myself into a sure thing, but it wasn’t happening.”

RIP grinned and complimented me on my footwork. “Oh, man. We gotta get into the field. I mean, I know you don’t want to join us—but that’s cool.”

Before I could explain for the hundredth time that I wanted to join after maxing out my skills, Fabulosa interjected by stabbing a finger into RIP’s muscled chest.

“Bro, that was weedy as all git-out.”

“Look, if he’s going to fight higher-level opponents, he’s gotta know his cooldowns.” RIP extended his hand toward the arena. “None of these guys have power points. How will he learn what actual combat is like if we don’t use cooldown powers?”

“I ain’t talking about him. I’m talking about you, blowing your cooldowns to win. It’s a sorry state of affairs when a warrior twice his opponent’s level can’t win fair and square.”

RIP snorted and shook his head, hoping his disgust spoke for itself. “Oh, please. Please!”

Fabulosa’s hands fell defiantly on her hips. She cocked an eyebrow—an attractive and disarming expression. “Are you ready for someone who doesn’t need to use canned moves?”

When she emphasized the last words, RIP turned away. “Aw, whatever, man. You guys can’t make up rules afterward.” He reluctantly sat in the stands, but I could still hear him complaining to the audience. “The whole point is to simulate real-world fighting!”

Fabulosa blew him a kiss.

RIP waved away her teasing, shaking his head.

I tried to change the subject by thanking him again for the match. RIP wasn’t taking anything personally, but he ought to know that I appreciated the pointers. Learning meant more to me than victory. Being the group’s alpha held little interest to me.

“I’ll show y’all some real-world fighting.” Fabulosa made a pouty face to poor RIP. “I love you, honey-bun!”

He flapped his hand at her. “Yeah, yeah, whatever.”

Fabulosa turned back to me as we backed away from each other. “You good to go?”

“Ready when you are.” I took an extra few steps back to prevent premature rushes.

Baldrick motioned for us to begin.

Fabulosa raised her shoulders after seeing how far away I’d backed. “Whatchu doing back there? This is melee, right?”

Her taunts shook none of my focus. After taking the lesson from RIP to heart, I opened it with my most practiced feint attack, a tried and true signature that no one in the academy consistently countered. It wasn’t fancy, but it mimicked a different maneuver, and few could tell the two apart.

Incredibly, Fabulosa blocked it.

I chased it with a little trick I developed on my own, one that presented opponents with the problem of shielding against a quick jab from the front or a side-swipe to the shoulder—giving me a nearly 50 percent chance of scoring a hit. Fabulosa’s block to my opening attack rendered her vulnerable to the side strike.

I guided my blade toward her with practiced muscle memory, but she tumbled onto the ground before I could complete the stroke. Using gravity to avoid the swing, she rolled across the soft sawdust of the arena floor. No cadet had tried this in class.

The audience emitted gasps and soft cries at the near misses, but I couldn’t tell which contestant awed them.

After Fabulosa dropped, I quickly moved after her. She released her shield to spin on the ground fast enough to escape unscathed. Her extended sword deterred me from my follow-up attack as she regained her footing.

For the second time today, I’d unshielded an opponent. Sawdust clung to Fabulosa’s hair, and I relished the minor accomplishment. Regardless of the outcome, I’d won some points with the group on that move.

Undismayed, Fabulosa lowered her blade at a strange angle I’d never seen before. As my eyes followed the blade’s slow upward motion, something flashed from her other hand—which I thought to be empty. A cloud of sawdust blinded me.

My wooden blade swung to block her sword. Even with closed eyes, I guessed it would come from a downward arc—it connected. But my blind swordsman career became short-lived. Her follow-up blow landed across my neck.

Baldrick crowed to the crowd. “Kill shot!”

I felt another stab against my side, beneath my arm.

“That’s number two!” Fabulosa shouted over the crowd.

Baldrick unnecessarily echoed her sentiment. “Um, another kill shot?”

A hard kick to my backside followed, and I pitched forward onto the floor. If I weren’t already blind, I would have been so from face-planting in the sawdust.

“Oh, dear.” Somewhere nearby, Baldrick editorialized, moving from play-to-play announcing to color commentary. I could hear the disapproval in his voice, but like the gasps, I couldn’t tell if Fabulosa or I dismayed him.

“And that’s three. Welcome to the real world, cadet!” Fabulosa lowered her voice as I picked the sawdust out of my eyes. “You okay, partner?”

Aside from temporary blindness, I nodded in her direction.

The audience murmured in confusion, and I could hear RIP’s howls of disapproval. “What?! What cheating is this!? You can’t throw dirt in someone’s eyes. That’s cheating! Awww, man. Weed! Weed!”

ArtGirl gasped. “Fab, that was so mean! I can’t believe you did that!”

Shouts from the cadets agreed. “Rip off!” “Boo!” “Cheater!”

As I brushed sawdust from my eyelashes, Fabulosa continued. “Another lesson—Always use your environment. It’s your third arm in combat.”

“Yeah. I, um, I see that now.”

As I blinked away the remaining particles, the crowd formed around us to witness the aftermath. The faculty conferred with Baldrick and officially agreed Fabulosa had won the match, eliciting mutters of protests from RIP. While he argued, the girls ganged up on Fabulosa.

Fabulosa projected her voice so the cadets could hear. “This is what fighting is like! You’re never on level terrain.” She kicked the sawdust for emphasis. “Which means you’re angling for high ground or defending yourself against someone with the high ground. Have y’all practiced that?”

Habitually, cadets became attentive when someone instructed them, so the crowd noise died.

Fabulosa continued her dissertation. “And bushes. Have all y’all learned how to use low bushes to your advantage? Do you use trees to shield your weak side?”

The faculty watched the audience in silence. Their wan smiles showed tacit affirmation of Fabulosa’s lesson.

RIP had stopped arguing, but he crossed his arms, shaking his head with annoyance.

Fabulosa finished her message with a gesture to me. “Patchy is good. He knows his stances, but he hasn’t learned how to fight. When it’s your first time in battle, this little lesson might-could save your hide.”

The assembly looked to me for a response. I didn’t know what to say, so I shrugged, smiled, and offered a ceremonial fist bump. Fabulosa accepted it because these guys loved trading fist bumps before and after combat. The onlookers ended the exhibition with an applause.

RIP looked exasperated but clapped along.

ArtGirl whispered to me. “Don’t worry about RIP—he’s getting make-up sex tonight. Fab winds him up like this all the time. It’s kinda their thing.” ArtGirl shook her head at the thought. “And isn’t it sad that I know their routine?”

RIP renewed his outrage after the spectators left and returned to their scheduled classes. “I can’t believe you called me weedy for using cooldowns. I taught him something, too.”

ArtGirl patted him on the back in consolation. “We knew you were, sweetie. But it’s fun to push your buttons.”

“Aw, man. That’s so lame. We ought to spar, you and me!” He beckoned to ArtGirl.

ArtGirl cocked her head. “You think you can take me on?”

“Well, yeah. Same rules. I mean, with a short sword and board.”

ArtGirl flicked his shield. “Oh, no! I use two swords, wall-boy.”

“But that’s not the rule. One sword, one shield!” RIP spoke to everyone around him, hoping to draw supporters to his side. He found no takers.

“You want to test real-world combat? When am I ever going to be without two blades?” ArtGirl waved her hands for emphasis.

“Aw, forget it. You guys want to change the rules, so I can’t win. What a bunch of weeds.”

While Charitybelle and PinkFox watched, the trio argued back and forth, suggesting rules and concessions to which the others disagreed.

Negotiations broke down, to my relief, as I didn’t want to spar again. My friends had given me much to consider and had bruised my ego enough for one day. Facing ArtGirl’s dual blades held little appeal.

PinkFox avoided getting sucked into the contest because she specialized in scouting, ranged attacks, and healing—and Charitybelle didn’t want to fight anyone, regardless of the conditions.

Like many of our gatherings, our anniversary exhibition ended in unresolved bickering.