I clutched my staff tighter, holding it upright by my side, but didn’t move. I stared at him, as he stared at me. I didn’t need to rush things. I took slow easy breaths, trying my best to calm my run away nerves. The crowd grew silent as we waited, and near a minute passed with no action. At least from me. He took steps left and right, holding his shield closer and his sword upright. When I realized I wasn’t calming down at all, I decided to move.
I swung my staff up forcibly, directing a [Wind Gust] from the ground-touching end as it lifted up and forward, carrying dust towards Riuki. I brought my left hand to the staff as it reached its apex, pulling it back as the top half swung forward again with another [Wind Gust]. And I closed in on him.
He raised his small shield and braced for the [Wind Gust]s. By the time the second one hit, I was already half way to him. It forced him to take a step back, while I went for a low swing of the exposed legs. He recovered fast, lifting the leg in reach up, and bringing his sword in a downswing for the staff. I pulled back, swinging the other end forward. He responded quickly, and I only met the flat of the blade instead of the back of the hand I had being aiming for.
I pushed the attack, swinging left and up, back and down. Always pulling back to avoid hitting the shield or the blade slicing through my staff. Most of the hits were aimed at the exposed head or his sword hand. After close to a minute of engagement, I released a [Fire Ball] and pulled back for a breather.
As I had expected, the shield offered protection against magic based attacks and also had mitigation properties for the physical parts of it. Most of the fire had gone around him, leaving him winded, but unhurt. He looked at me then, smiled, and advanced.
He was fast, putting me on the back-foot almost immediately. Avoiding all his attacks was working against me. And the magic Skills at my disposal didn’t have the power necessary to force him back for long. I was already beginning to sweat, and I had yet to land a single hit that could do anything to his HP.
I avoided a backswing, thrusting my staff forward to the maximum distance I could manage, before pulling back. He managed to pull back, but not before I connected. Only a tap though. He tried bringing back his sword but I slapped it away with the staff. Followed by a forward swing that finally connected with his jaw before the shield knocked my staff back. I pushed forward, going for a leg swing before hurling a [Fire Ball] at him. This time, I put in a little more whoff into it. It hit right in the torso, knocking him back a few steps. But nothing more. And I still pushed my attack.
And so it went. Me pushing him back, him taking the offensive, landing a cut here and there, mostly to my arms though. Me landing blows to the head and knees, and if I got lucky, the sword hand. As the fight progressed, it became clear he was losing speed faster than I was. But my HP was taking a beating. Sometimes I would hear the spectators shouting, other times it was silent. Just the exchange of blows and cuts. My grey outfit had turned bloody all over. And as fast as I was, I was having trouble keeping the staff up to speed. It felt heavier than normal. Maybe those cuts had been deeper than I had thought.
My MP and SP were both below half, and my HP was teetering close to the 400 mark. I pushed for an attack, it was going to be my last one for the fight, either I won or lost. So, I went in hot. Two consecutive [Fire Ball]s to his shield arm, it had been the reason I wasn’t landing as many hits as I had wanted. I followed that up with my most powerful attack, the [Hurtling Projectile]. It took a lot out of me to dislodge the piece of earth from the ground to his shield arm. But when I heard the more than a groan from him, I was satisfied. Sadly, it wasn’t enough to take him out.
I moved in with my staff, swinging as fast as my arms would let me. I was finally landing more hits than before, proving that I had finally disabled his left arm. Maybe I should have done that to begin with. A left swing for the head he avoided, an understrike he was unbalanced to stop knocked the sword out of his hand. I was happy with my achievements, but not happy with the body that collided with me then.
We landed on the ground, him on me. And my staff pinned between us, rendered completely useless. I tried punching at his sides, aiming for where I thought it would hurt. Was that supposed to be the kidneys or the ribs? But his armor was there. There was no armor to protect me, and his right punches felt like sledge hammers. It wasn’t long before I was out.
…
When I came to, I was lying on a rough hard surface. Had they not even bothered to remove me from the pit? Was my first thought. Then I remembered that the pit had soft dirt and not the hard thing I felt on my back. I opened my eyes slowly, remembering what had happened the last time I had been eager to open them.
Luckily, the room was lowly lit, with most of the light sources away from the ceiling. The room appeared to be an earthen encampment, made up of smooth earth walls and ceiling. Was it beneath the pit? That would be dangerous. For both its occupants and those on the pit itself.
“You are up,” a voice to my left said. It sounded like the statement needed a few more words to be complete.
I turned my head slowly to my side, bringing my competitor to view. He was sitting on a raised earthen bed, facing me. And already out of his armor, and shirt. He had well defined muscles, a clear sign of the dedication he had put into his training. I still had fat on me. Not much though, but my muscles were less defined.
“How long was I out?” I asked, slowly getting up into a seated position. I was sore all over, but I didn’t feel any pain. I slowly swung my legs over the edge and sat facing him.
“Around ten minutes. I think,” he said.
It felt like I had been out for a few hours at least. I inspected myself, checking all the places I remembered getting hit. Either by the sword or the shield. Everything seemed to be in order. I had been scared of the sword at the start of the fight, thinking that a single hit from it would dismember me. I was still scared. But I now knew I could dodge and redirect it in such a way that the hits weren’t crippling.
“If you had gone for the head instead of the torso, the fight would have been yours.”
“What?” His statement had caught me off guard. I couldn’t remember what the topic of discussion had been.
“When I tackled you,” he clarified. “Your torso hits were powerful. If you had gone for my head instead, you would have been able to knock me out.”
“Oh.” That surprised me. He was actually offering fighting advice. Well, there was nothing I could say in return. “My arms felt like dead weights. I didn’t think they could do anything else.”
“Mine felt so too. And yet, I managed to knock you out,” he said as he lay back down on the earthen bed. I looked at mine and decided I was fine with sitting. Couldn’t they have found something less hard for us to lie on.
“You are not used to not hitting something,” he said. “That’s the first thing I noticed. When the fight started, it wasn’t noticeable. But after a few exchanges, your pull backs became slower, more dragged. You trained with a dummy all the time.”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“Yeah.” There was nothing else to say. The fact that he had seen and figured out all that during our fight was just scary. I couldn’t remember anything I had noticed during the fight. Nothing at all.
“You should spar without a dummy or an opponent on occasion. It will help you with pulling back when you don’t land your hits.”
Okay, that was just too much. “Are you sure you should be telling me all this?”
“Why not? I would hope for someone to tell me what I was doing wrong. We are here to get better, at least I am. And the better my opponents get, the better I get.”
“Well, I won’t be of any help in that area. Being a beginner and all,” it was sad, but the truth.
“Yeah, I noticed.”
“Was it that obvious?” I asked. “Aside from the fumbling at the beginning.”
He was silent for a while, before he answered, “I’m not sure. I think the fumbling made me look harder.”
“How high do people get here?” I asked. At Level 28, he was very close to 30. My goal.
“When I joined three months ago, there was a woman at Level 29. But she left soon after, not sure why.”
“What about you? At what Level do you plan to leave?”
“I’m planning to leave when The Grand Competition begins.”
“You will be participating?” I asked surprised. And a little scared. I hadn’t heard of anyone else with the intention to join in the town yet.
But he laughed at my question. For a while too. But when he looked at me, he quickly composed himself.
“Oh, you’re serious. No, no. I’m way too low leveled for that. I was thinking I could try my luck in the next one.”
“That’s too bad. I’m participating in this one.”
He made to laugh again before he noticed I was serious. “You can’t be serious. Those are monsters you will be fighting. They will kill you. And that’s if you make it past the Baronies.”
I didn’t bother commenting on that. We settled into a companionable silence as we waited. For what? I didn’t know. I knew that as long as I was within the fighting pits, someone would find me for the next fight. And I would get my regeneration potions then too.
“Since you are in the spirit of helping, do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Sure,” came his reply.
“The earthen projectile. What if I had used it earlier?” It had been bugging me with a lot of what ifs. I needed to know how likely it was that it could have worked. Maybe the fight could have ended sooner than it had.
“You would have been done for,” he said.
“Why?” That hadn’t been the response I was expecting.
“Any earlier and I would have had the presence of mind and energy to dodge it. For you, it would have still cost you. And that would have given me an edge.”
My ass was starting to feel uncomfortable, and I decided to just lay down on the hard surface. To give it a break. I used that time to think about the fight, going through as much as I could remember. Trying my best to notice things that could have helped me win it.
By the end of the day, I had only lost the first bout. And leveled up to Level 26. Using the potions wasn’t as revolting as I had expected. Quite nice actually. I could get addicted if I weren’t careful. But by the fifth bout, the potions couldn’t get the [Status] to their full values. Barely even three-quarters. In terms of finances, I had lost a considerable amount in joining the fighting pits. Despite my wins, I didn’t make back the signup fee of a whole gold. It took more than a single day of fights to do that.
…
I nearly missed the registrars. That would have been bad. Like bad, bad. I had been about to head out for another training session when Boni brought to my attention that the registrars were in town. And that they would be leaving before the day broke. I quickly made a U-turn and high-tailed it to the Council Office.
“The Grand Competition Registrars?” I asked the receptionist as I came to a stop in front of their desk.
They really needed a security measure in place to prevent someone from doing what I just did. The receptionist pointed me to a group of people to my left. I quickly walked towards them. At first, I had thought that they were just other people interested in joining The Grand Competition. There were three of them, all male. Two of them had the lightest skin I had seen to date. The third had the tan skin I was used to seeing in the town. They all had short black hair and were on the heavy side of the weight scale. And not the good kind. They all wore the same clothes, uniform perhaps, consisting of black boots, black trousers, white shirt and a navy blue cape. There was something sewn into the cape and the right side of their chest, but it was hard make out what it looked like. But I assumed to either stand for The Grand Competition or their office.
When I got close, they stopped their chatter and stared at me. For long seconds, nothing came out. I really tried, I promise. But I was useless. Until one of them asked,
“What do you want?”
“The Grand Competition,” I squeaked. I gathered up all the courage I could muster and added, “To join.”
There. Now, was that so hard?
But they looked at each other and back at me. That seemed to have sobered up the mood alright.
“Are you sure?” another asked, the tan one.
I nodded in response. I wasn’t sure if I talked I would be able to form coherent words.
The tan one continued, “Your Citizen Card.”
I quickly retrieved it from my pouch and placed it on his outstretched hand. He held it for a few seconds before handing it back to me. I carefully took it and waited.
“The Grand Competition begins in two weeks. Be sure to have presented it to the Council Office in the Sjuma City for your Baronies by then,” the last one said.
And with that, they got back to their chatter.
It was done. I was finally registered as a participant in The Grand Competition.
[+][+][+]
‘[Identify]’
[Species: Human]
[Name: Hartie]
[Sex: Male]
[Level: 26]
Status:
[HP: 2102/3166]
[MP: 3157/3748]
[SP: 2890/5476]
Attributes:
[Agility: 32]
[Constitution: 26]
[Endurance: 33]
[Intelligence: 25]
[Strength: 19]
[Vitality: 22]
[Wisdom: 28]
General Skills [3/3]:
[Identify: 1]
[Language Proficiency: 3]
[Mana Manipulation: 5]
Skills:
[Acrobatics: 2]
[Archery: 3]
[Bludgeons: 3]
[Carpentry: 3]
[Daggers: 5]
[Enhance Plant Growth: 3]
[Fire Ball: 8]
[Fire Bolt: 7]
[Herbalism: 3]
[Hurtling Projectile: 9]
[Spears: 1]
[Stealth: 2]
[Staff Making: 4]
[Staffs: 10]
[Unarmed Combat: 5]
[Water Ball: 5]
[Water Punch: 8]
[Weeding: 8]
[Whirlpool: 4]
[Wind Gust: 8]