It was quite a diverse mix of names, ranging from mythical beasts to philosophers, but it was mostly recognizable to Sam. Sam looked around the room, trying to match faces to names, and he was able to do so quite easily in fact.

Solitaire was the masked figure leaning against a wall, with card hands inlaid onto their clothing. Drake was the large man with scales, Sam had no idea where those came from, Thomas Aquinas was the man sitting deep in thought, wearing what looked like a halloween costume of Issac Newton, and Starchild was the woman wearing a blindingly bright sequined outfit made to look like twinkling stars. Of the last two people, Harry King and Marina Talbot, both wore masks, and neither of them were wearing anything especially identifying. Sam would just have to wait to see who they were.

Eduardo was handling himself admirably against Anonymous, and had succeeded in getting the first hit of the battle in. However, a fight between two high Dexterity fighters was more of a game of skill than brute force, and it was quite hard for either to land a telling attack. As of now, both of them were sticking to their basic attacks, not wanting to reveal anything too special to each other. Anonymous already knew about Eduardo’s finishing move, Ave Maria, but he could have created a new skill in the time since his battle with Rodney Kane. For now, they were probing each other and testing the waters.

The stakes for this match were extremely high, as it would determine who would be the master, and who would be the servant in the new world order after this. There were only three faction spots for the entire world, and the hierarchy within them would be determined by personal strength or usefulness to the faction. It was basically assured that the Overlord and Sam would get a faction, but the most important thing was to place first. The bonuses from that would allow the faction leader to overcome stronger opponents, which would in turn increase the power of the faction immeasurably. After the end of the tournament, this would become a game of politics and threats, rather than one of force. There would still be battles and fighting of course, but not immediately.

Sam turned his attention back to the match and saw that Eduardo had managed to disarm Anonymous. The girl had created a pseudo knife of wind in her hand, which she was using to fight. It seemed weaker than her normal one however, and it was starting to come apart as she parried and blocked with it. Eventually, as the knife came apart fully, she was forced to reveal her final attack.

With a high pitched cry, she raised her hands and then ripped into her arm with a jagged blade of wind. Throwing the blood up into the air, she cut through it with her blades, creating a red tinged blade of wind that moved far faster than any she had created before. It sucked the blood out of her arm at a furious rate, and she was quickly going pale. The blade grew larger and larger as it crossed the divide between the two fighters, Eduardo having retreated upon seeing her prepare the skill. That may have turned out to be a mistake for him, as the blade was growing more powerful the longer that it traveled. However, it stopped growing about ten feet from Eduardo, Anonymous having run out of blood to fuel it with.

She clutched her arm and sank to the ground, drained of energy. Eduardo pursed his lips and stared down the rapidly approaching attack. It was far more powerful than anything that Anonymous had leveled at him before, and he knew that if it hit him, it would severely injure him.

Eduardo sighed and spoke something softly, too softly to be heard. He raised his rapier up to the heavens, and a bolt of jagged lightning lanced down and struck the tip. The blade started to glow with a searing white light, and Eduardo drew his right leg back, getting into a stance. With a simple downwards slash, he parted the blood blade, creating a solid wall of white that rushed across the arena. It slammed into Anonymous, and picked her up, smashing her into the wall. She was instantly teleported away, her injuries too severe to continue.

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Eduardo bowed to the audience and then collapsed to the floor. He had not taken a single hit during the fight, but his final attack had overtaxed his body. He was lifted out of the arena by a small hard light projection and plopped down in the chair next to Sam. There was a short intermission, and Eduardo woke up at some time within it.

“Huh? Did I win?” He asked, sounding confused. Sam nodded and Eduardo let out a sigh of relief.

“Good.”

Sam smiled and waited for the next fight to start. This could very well be his one, with Rodney Kane. Instead, something unexpected happened. The form of Andew Munro walked out of the back of the room and took a seat on the other side. Sam said form, because it was clear that this was not the same man who he had seen before. He walked with a jerky cadence, and his eyes rolled back and forth as he moved. If Sam didn't know better, he would have said that the man was possessed.

In fact, he was possessed, by the AI that had been implanted into him. It was very careful not to arouse any suspicion, as the System Overseer was very close to it. By masking all of its functions and blending it with that of its host, the AI was able to hide from the all seeing eye of the System. That was helped of course by the fact that it was greatly distracted by being on billions of planets at once, supervising tournaments, but it was still more than powerful enough to erase the AI from existence.

Sam saw Rodney Kane give his friend a look as he sat down, and then whispered something to him. The answer was apparently not satisfactory, as the man edged away from Munro. With that, the System announced the end of the interlude.

“With a quarter of the fights for this sector finished, the next ones will bring us to the one half mark. Coming from the losers’ bracket, we have our next fighters, Harry King, and Marina Talbot!”

Sam was now able to more easily see who was what as they got out of their seats, as they walked quite differently. One was quite clearly male, and the other female. He crossed his legs and watched the beginning of the fight. Both fighters were close quarter, Strength oriented fighters, like himself. Marina wielded a large hammer, and her opponent clutched a greatax in one hand, with a buckler in the other. It was a very strange combination, but one that seemed to work for him. Sam noticed that they seemed to have pulled the weapons out of thin air, and he turned to Eduardo.

“Hey, did you see that too?”

“What?”

“They both summoned those weapons out of nowhere.”

Eduardo chuckled.

“Oh, that. Some vendor in an alien run city tried to flog one of those things off to me. They both have storage devices. The alien tried to tell me that it was a premium one, but I analyzed it and saw that it was some hack job. It took a constant injection of 99 percent of your mana pool to use. However, that might not be a problem for these two. They don’t look like they’re using much mana.”

Sam and Eduardo watched as the two fighters circled each other, wary of a possible attack. Marina attacked first, and she performed a strange technique with her hammer, where she slammed it into the ground, propelling her body through the air. As she flew, she raised her hammer high above her head and started to imbue it with some sort of elemental energy. It was not one that Sam had seen before, and it had an aura of dark blue power around it. As it moved, it kept altering its trajectory, making sure that its path was unerring.

“Huh, that’s a pretty rare element,” Lao said, talking for the first time. Sam looked over at him.

“What is it? I didn’t recognize it.”

“It's the element of Order. She’s using it as some sort of aiming technique.”

Sam laughed.

“Hah, if only I had that when I was playing those first person shooters. I would have been a god at them.”

The reference went over the heads of the other two men and Sam sighed.

“Nobody? Ok, never mind.” Sam then realized something. “Hey, how did you know that? Where did you find out about the elements?”

“I bought it. It was only a few thousand credits. Information vendors on the Interweb seem to be a lot cheaper than ones in the real world.”

Sam gave him a pensive look.

“Alright, I’ll buy one of those then. It might not be for a while, but I will definitely look into it.” With that, their conversation was over.