Having forgotten the method of transport, Seth found himself promptly falling onto his ass in the hot sand of the coliseum. With his ears slightly burning, he quickly got up and dusted himself off right before being sent flying into the air.

It was like a tank had run into him, causing his bones to crack, and his muscles to groan. After being sent tumbling, Seth had barely enough time to cough up some blood and sand before he noticed a large figure barreling his way again. It was a rather large sort of primate that had a frog-like, orange head and glowing, metallic knuckles.

So that’s why my chest feels like a mashed potato.

Seth summoned a high classed recovery crystal from his cache as well as Anar. As the red halo of healing formed above his head, and his flesh and bones were restored, Seth used the agony of his limbs fixing themselves to focus his mind. Unfortunately, his body was not healed quickly enough, so all he could do for the next attack was throw his body to the side. The primate finally reached him and Seth couldn’t help but be struck with a sense of impending doom as a red, glowing fist of steel descended towards him.

Fulling honing his tripled reflexes and knowledge of matadors, Seth dove to the side at the last possible moment, barely allowing himself to dodge the fist but buying him another mouth full of sand. Landing on his back, Seth used his good arm to shank the large monster right in it’s meaty thigh. After missing its mark and getting gouged, the creature let out a shrill roar before crashing into the granite wall of the coliseum. Dust showered the area and Seth was delighted to find himself back in control of his limbs. He darted to his feet and used his tempered constitution ability to put some space between him and the monster.

Now that he was finally up and ready, the creature had no chance of winning the fight. Despite its strength and empowerment abilities, Seth could tell he was faster than the beast, especially since his glaive had already seemed to cripple one of its legs. Even with this handicap, it seemed the creature was not done just yet, as Seth watched it rise from the rubble across the arena. Finally about to actually start fighting, he began his first planned experiment. A familiar clone wreathed in smoke emerged from Seth’s hand as well as an identical copy of Anar.

“Let’s go you ugly bastard.”

Both he and the illusionary clone charged at the primate from two different sides. Unsurprisingly, the monster paid no heed to the clone and instead went straight for Seth. He sighed in disappointment before reaching the oncoming behemoth. Another glowing fist came crashing toward his head, but this time, he was ready. He slid underneath the blow and followed up with a horizontal slash to the creature’s abdomen. It seemed this monster was not as easy as he thought to defeat though, as the blade coasted halfway through its muscles before a shockwave of energy pushed him backward and launched the weapon away.

Seth vision swam for a moment, but he didn’t let up though as the second his feet touched the ground, he rocketed himself right back at the monster and resummoned Anar. Although wounded, the frog eyes shined with hatred as they refocused on the fast-approaching shaper. A scarlet red wave burst forth from underneath the skin of the monster’s mighty arm and a dangerous amount of purple energy began to torrent around the appendage. Unable to stop himself now that he was in the air, Seth dismissed his useless clone and used the entirety of his Fear Itself ability to create a flurry of plain daggers that went straight for the monster’s head.

Even though the creature had ignored his illusion last time, the monster couldn’t entirely ignore this one.

Regardless of knowing they were illusions, the frog-like eyes couldn’t help but flinch at the sharp points penetrating its eyes. Seth was delighted to find his gambit work, as he used the distraction to twist his body above the giant fist and thrust Anar down into the top of the metallic limb. His strike panned out better than expected, as his grotesque weapon slid straight through the hand and embedded itself into the ground, pinning the monster in place. It didn’t come without downsides though, as the stored-up energy from the monster’s ability did not dissipate after being deflected.

The frog’s mouth opened up in what looked like a mask of panic and Seth shared the expression as the pinned arm began to spasm around. Rampant purple energy began to mix with an inky black stream as the creature’s arm reached a breaking point. Unlike his opponent, Seth was not pinned down, so after delivering a solid punch directly into the frog’s face, he used all his strength to get away from the monster.

After dashing to the farthest side of the arena, Seth watched as the energies finally lost their form and a brief moment of silence was followed by a large blast of blood and bone splinters. Seth ducked his head behind a bracer as the blast wave passed over him. A lot of sand, and a good splatter of blood hit him despite being at least a hundred meters from the blast. Finally, the dust started to settle and Seth slowly raised himself up. His mouth sat agape as his eyes found the remains of the monster.

“What. The. Fuck.”

All that was left of his opponent was a pile of mush and viscera. Before he had the chance to actually think about what happened, the countdown screen appeared just like the last match. Shit. He sprinted across the arena just in time to plunder the leftovers of the primate.

A second later, Seth glitched again and found himself in a new coliseum with a lot less blood. Although the teleporting sensation still caused him to become a little woozy, Seth was prepared this time. He quickly dismissed the notifications from completing the match and looting the monster. Although he wanted to try and figure out what exactly caused the monster to implode, he knew that doing so would hinder his ability to handle the task at hand. Not to mention, he had finally found a worthwhile path to follow for his Fear Itself ability.

--------

It wasn’t until his seventh match that Seth discovered a path for his ability outside of scaring his friends.

So far, every illusion he made with Fear Itself was basically useless in combat. Sure, it would help camouflage him in the woods, but after getting discovered, it became a liability as it required his energy to sustain. The energy consumption wasn’t anything crazy though, as Seth could keep True Sight and the majority of his illusionary mist active for quite a while if need be. This was a good thing when it came to endurance battles, but it’s not like it really helped in them. The unintelligent monsters couldn’t give a shit about his clones, which was proof enough in his first fight with the frog primate.

The fights since then have gone basically the same way, mixing between groups of high tier twos and individual tier threes. Despite the tier three monsters being much stronger than the tier twos, they still didn’t seem to be any smarter. The only time he could get a reaction from them was when he threw an obviously lethal attack illusion. For example, when he cast a storm of daggers to go for the bulbous eyes of the frog primate, it had flinched just enough for him to dodge a lethal blow.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

He also had a very good experience after trying to create a smoke cloud. During his third fight, a pack of hyena-like dogs that shot light rays had surrounded him and blinded his vision temporarily. In his desperation, Seth had imagined the feeling to be like a pitch-black smokescreen where he couldn’t even see his hands. The second after doing so, the blinding light had receded, and he was able to see what had become of the fight.

Covering his immediate ten-meter area was a thick blanket of black fog. Although impossible to penetrate with his normal vision, he could still see through it with True Sight. He could see the hyenas running around his smoke cloud, but for some reason they didn’t seem to be able to sense him. One explanation was his racial ability, Specter State, which allowed him to be erased from all senses and “lower ranked detection abilities.”

Whatever the hell that even means. So far, I haven’t seen any ranking system for abilities other than tiers, which doesn’t even really make sense.

At this point, all of his aligned abilities were up to tier two, which seemed to improve the effects of each branch ability that fell under them. The thing was, he couldn’t tell how his abilities ranked against other ones. Putting aside that whole debacle, Specter State seemed to work perfectly for animals who couldn’t detect energy, but when it came to monsters, they somehow had the ability to sense it. The same was for some humans like Ty. The concealing trick he had originally taught him was not as effective as he would’ve liked. It was useful for being polite around others, as holding in your energy was considered normal in Ethin, but when it came to anything else, it was a completely useless trick.

It was quite disappointing for Seth to learn this, as for a moment he had thought he might’ve been talented with energy manipulation when Ty showed his initial surprise.

That is why he had been so interested when the hyenas hadn’t attacked him through his illusion smoke. Then it hit him: If they could sense energy then he probably looked like a giant purple cloud right now, or whatever color it normally looked like. His ability was basically pure energy, so of course they couldn’t tell the difference between him and the ability.

But wait, how did the frog monster know which one was me? How did it tell the daggers were illusions?

He thought about it quickly while he sat in the smoke cloud, but then decided that it was probably up to either the type of energy, or amount.

I most likely just look like a jumble of energy while inside this, they probably can’t tell if I’m any different right now.

If he was right, then the new fog illusion would actually be a pretty useful trick for monsters. He used the trick a couple more times in the next rounds, finding similar results in each.

It was also a good application of Fear Itself because it didn’t require a lot of imagination to make a bog of smoke and it could exist without much concentration. It was a bit embarrassing really, the fact he had only thought of making a smokescreen now. It was like the most basic dark type spell in any RPG.

After putting the black fog into his repertoire, Seth tabled the idea of brainstorming more useful illusions and instead decided to focus on fooling the senses of the monsters. When he originally made the monster in the first match flinch, Seth had felt like he had finally found a lead toward the best use for his ability. It slightly bothered him that he couldn’t spend time working on his other abilities, but at the same time, what could he really do with the other ones anyway?

Anar was pretty straightforward: slice, stab, kill.

True Sight was something he used constantly used, but it really only had one use.

He had one other ability that could possibly be useful: Anima Thief. The only issue was that Seth couldn’t get a handle on its aspect ability, Anima Release.

He had plenty of monster animas stocked up due to the hundreds of fights he has had over the past months, except that he didn’t know how to release them on command. It had worked once when he accidentally tried to absorb an Xtrey Hound, but after that, it never activated again. Seth had spent many nights getting pissed off trying to figure the ability out. Unfortunately, it never heeded his call.

Whatever, it’s a problem I can figure out later. He concluded.

His mind went back to the task at hand as he looked at the spindly orange creature sitting a little ways away. His seventh match was against a sluglike monster with multiple random appendages. It seemed to be disabled by the heat, so Seth took advantage of the situation to experiment on the thing. It was a baseline tier three, so it had a pretty good level of durability, plus, it wasn’t totally defenseless as when he got close enough, all the appendages would attempt to skewer him. Also, it would periodically spit some sort of curse venom at him regardless of how far he was.

Seth easily dodged another projectile of venom as he began casting illusion after illusion. All kinds of weapons appeared and disappeared around the monster, taking turns to deliver a series of what would be lethal blows onto the monster. Before, Fear Itself could really only re-create objects that were stiff, without a lot of moving parts. With its tier up, Seth found it easier to imagine objects into life, and sometimes they would move naturally without Seth putting all his concentration into it.

For example, a fire would be incredibly hard to bring to life because it has all kinds of moving parts, but with the tier up, if he imagined a campfire, the fire would absently flicker like a real one. Seth attributed this to the ability reading his memories to an extent and replicating the movements like a short video rather than a picture. This was a welcome development, as it made the rest of his illusions more realistic, plus it didn’t drain his focus as much. He used this improvement to torment the slug even further.

It seemed most illusions that were targeted at the eyes of the monster were more effective than anything, as it was quite hard not to at least squint when seeing a solid object come directly for your vision. Soon enough though, the slug seemed to overcome its involuntary reflex to a degree as its attention shifted off of the illusions and back to Seth. Although unable to move, the monster still attempted to reach Seth by stretching out its various limbs. Of course, Seth was a good ways away, so they came nowhere near him.

He sidestepped another glob of spit before changing his approach. Instead of a lot of random weapons, he began to weave illusions of different kinds of energy.

It was definitely harder, but he found that if he focused on only a few at a time, he would be able to comfortably maintain the flows and movements. Sweat began to build on his brow as he waved his hands in the air like a composer. The slug’s attention was finally brought back to the illusions as a collection of water bullets began to assault the monster. It was stupid enough to react regardless of the fact that it hadn’t been hurt one time by the illusions since he started. The thing slightly squirmed around as Seth created basic wounds that looked to have resulted from the water.

He continued this pattern with illusions of earth slabs, razor leaves, lightning bolts, and a variety of other basic elemental spells from video games.

Finally, just as he was getting increasingly strained and tired, he conjured a blanket of fire that settled onto the slimy hide of the slug. To his delight, the slug began writhing vigorously and moaned in fear. Despite the fire emitting no heat to burn the monster, it had reacted greatly to the illusion.

Seth grunted in surprise as he felt the illusion slip out from his grasp and inherit a life of its own. It seemed to feed on the primal fear that was pouring from the monster, empowering the ability and allowing it to exist without Seth’s concentration. He watched in awe as the fire clung to the body of the monster no matter how it moved, and how it actually began creating small burn illusions on the creature’s skin.

With a thought, the fire disappeared, and his body filled itself back up with the crimson mist.

Now I get it!

Excitement spread throughout his body as Seth recalled the ability’s name and description. Fear Itself was not just a name, it was a hint that he had blatantly missed. The point of his aligned ability: Insanity Eternal, was to manipulate the mind of his opponent. It made obvious sense that the branch abilities’ main focus was to do exactly that. Although he didn’t have a way to find out the fears of his opponent just yet, Seth could use whatever information he did have to fuck with their heads big time.

Just imagine how well this could work on people.

He grinned evilly in his mind at the thought. People back on Earth were so afraid of death they would waste their lives never taking risks. It made sense to think that a good amount of people with a Foundation would have the same fear, right?