Eduardo looked at Sam with a snarl.

“What in the name of God was that? Why didn't you warn us?”

Sam laughed.

“I just wanted to see what it looked like. Also, now that you both have the fast travel thing, you should leave this space before someone gets the wrong idea with your bodies.”

Eduardo chuckled at this.

“Sam, I don’t know if you noticed this, but we aren’t exactly spring chickens.”

Sam let out a stifled laugh as he heard this.

“Jesus, Eduardo, your mind is really in the gutter. I thought that you worked at the Vatican?”

The other man grinned,

“Well, we have a saying there. The two most desperate types of men are teenage boys and priests. There's a grain of truth in that statement I think.”

Sam shook his head. “You’re incorrigible.”

As he said this, the two men vanished, and Sam followed them. It turned out that all he had to do to exit before his time was up was to just think about the desire to do so. He popped out into his bed and groaned as he unintentionally tweaked his abdominal muscles. That cut was so deep that it went all the way through. If not for his heightened attributes, he would have died in that arena.

Sam flopped back and closed his eyes. He was tired and it was as good a time as any to rest. Perhaps he would even have another vision. He did not, only the normal sort of inane dreams about random stuff that somehow felt completely normal when you were in it. In one of them he was a dog chasing a house sized cat with two heads, and in another he was reading a magazine with a picture of Eduardo posing on it like a bodybuilder. The standard dream fare. He really doubted that there was something profound about seeing Eduardo with his shirt off, but perhaps there was. In any case, he did not remember it after he woke up.

It seemed that his high Wisdom stat allowed him a greater degree of lucidity within his dreams, because he was fully aware for some of the time. When Sam woke up, he was refreshed, and a large portion of his wound had already healed, between his stats and the liquid drip that he was connected to. Sam let out a deep breath and stretched out, glad that he was healing so quickly.

It was a day until Sam was well enough to leave the hospital, which would have been an incredible turnover back on the pre System Earth, but now it was commonplace. For an injury that had pierced his entire body to be healed in a matter of days was something that he still could not quite believe. In any case, he was healed.

Sam made his way out of the room and gave the comatose figure of Andrew Munro one last glance. The man stared off into the distance, his eyes vacant. Whatever had happened to him during the fight had been something that would not be healed for a long time. Sam shuddered as he remembered the strange things that had happened as he had fought the other man. That had not been a normal battle, and his opponent had not been using conventional skills. Sam would get to the bottom of it eventually, but for now he had a tournament to win.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

He made his way back to his room and opened the door, before taking off his clothes and jumping into the hot tub. That cleared the last few bits of fatigue that clouded his mind and Sam let out a deep breath. Someone cleared their throat next to him and he jumped in surprise. Turning around slowly, he saw the figure of Lao looking at him with a smile on his face.

“Why are you here?” Sam asked, a bit disturbed by the close proximity to naked, wrinkled flesh. The other man chuckled and took his time answering.

“I don’t have a hot tub in my room, remember? I need something to heal some of my aches and pains from old age and the constant bowls of rice. I think that I told you about that.”

Sam reached back in his memory and remembered that the man had in fact told him about that. He sighed and leaned back in the tub. It didn't matter anyway. It wasn't like there was anything visible under the foam. He waited there for a few minutes until he had been refreshed and then left the tub, looking behind him to make sure that the older man wasn't looking. All he saw was the back of his head. Nodding in satisfaction, Sam got his clothes on and left the room, taking his time in walking to the arena. It was in the middle of a fight by the time that he arrived and he sat down.

It was one of the final fights of the tournament in fact, and he leaned forwards. This one he did not want to miss. The Overlord himself faced off against Rodney Kane, and the two men were having at it. It was quite clear that there was a gulf in power however, and the strange metallic suit that Rodney used was battered and scarred by the attacks of the other man.

The Overlord was dwarfed by the gigantic mecha, but he was still overpowering it with raw strength and speed. His fists were coated with the light of mana and his Dao and each punch created a crater on the surface of the other man’s armor. It was clearly going to end soon, and the winner was certain, but it was still taking the Overlord some time and effort to defeat the other man. He was taking some hits in return from the greatsword that the armor wielded, and Sam could make out a few small cuts on his body. Still, he was mostly unharmed and he was ahead of the other man. Sam wished that he had arrived earlier so that he could see how the Overlord fought, but he had gotten here too late for that. Instead, he would have to be content with the scraps of the fight.

With a roar, the Overlord slammed his fists into the side of the armor, splitting it down the middle. An explosion of blood came out from underneath the armor, and it started to crumble away. Rodney Kane stumbled out and the Overlord launched a punch at him. The attack was simple, but filled with power and the concept of the man’s Dao, which Sam would now see with his new Dao connection, was some form of the idea of Supremacy or something else to do with being more powerful than another person. He could also see that the idea was powerful, but that it was a fragile idea. It was a good thing to know for their fight that was sure to come.

The fist came in and the other man actually dodged it, but the wind from its passing ruffled his head. It looked harmless, but then he stumbled, coughing up blood. It was as if the fist had an aura of power around it that damaged anything that it went through. That was a powerful ability, and yet another thing that Sam would have to watch out for. The manner in which the man was simply dismantling his opponent was intimidating to say the least, and Sam had to focus to nor be distracted by the theater that was going on in front of him. Rather than watch the battle, he watched what was going on behind the battle, the actions that the men took in order to be able to fight each other. This was the battle behind the battle, the true series of motions that would spell the end of the battle. He did not know exactly what this was that he was watching, but it was somehow related to his Wisdom and the interplay of his mental stats. It was allowing him to predict the movement of the two men, based on how they fought with each other. Slowly but surely, he was creating a mental map of their styles and ability to fight.

He took a look at the leaderboards, to see what would happen when Rodney lost. There were still a few of the losers' bracket matches to be fought, so if the man lost now then he would be up again later to fight Sam.

There were even fewer people left in the arena now, and they had started to cluster into the center. Without the presence of their leader, the opposing faction was looking a bit perturbed by how they were faring.