I rolled my eyes at her as the drums began to build up, and made a shooing motion. “At least wait until the chaff are dead.”

She paused, probably astonished that I dared talk to her, but Rantha, Dauntless; her Intimidation attempt sailed right past me and scattered more drow, shocked that I dared even speak to her Exalted Murderqueenness. I looked so relaxed she might have been a doxy on the corner, dressed up for ten credits an hour business or something. Not that a million would buy an hour of her time...

“Intriguing,” she laughed, clearly planning on enjoying this. “You think you will make the top hundred?”

I just looked at her. “I’ve already killed two of your little brothers, and my girls one each. You think these twats are going to stop us?” I rolled my eyes. “Just honor the newbs with death at your hand, and we’ll be waltzing around soon enough.”

“Well.” She regarded me for a moment, and then ever so slowly, her eyes began to move to the remaining members of the thousand drow who had joined earlier. “Shall we compete to see who can kill them the fastest?”

A fair number of the drow swallowed upon hearing that.

“Why, that sounds marvelous!” I shook my head, and the sixty-two insignia hanging in my hair plopped to the ground in a ring around me. I stepped out of them and fixed my eyes upon the nearest plebe, who suddenly were all finding themselves being looked at by the Masters the way they had looked at the survivors. They had opted to stay, less than two hundred of them had chosen to bow out. Those who’d left were looking pretty smart at the moment.

Kill the weak first!

There was a final heartbeat, and the arena exploded in eye-blurs of violence.

Me and the girls could run faster than any of these drow, so we were on our first targets almost instantly. The Masters were picking targets and converging, and bouncing, spinning, twirling, cavorting drow were moving in every direction as blades, chains, and knives clashed in flickers of motion... except where we were fighting, of course, where they were crashing and getting forced back.

I didn’t trust any of the drow not to be sneaky, so I still had full area awareness, but that’s what multiple thoughtstreams are for.

I let someone else take care of the Necrochemysts, as I didn’t want to slow down my killing streak. I was focused on one target at a time, and I didn’t want to dance with them.

Improved Sunder meant that when I shattered their little ropes and chains and blades and whatnot, they didn’t have any weapons, and I carried right on through to carve into them. Flurry meant I could get off a combination of blows in absolute blurs of speed, so strong and fast there was no way they could avoid me even dodging as fast as they could.

As the survivors had done, the lower gladiators didn’t even spar with one another, backing off to face the masters, choosing a fight as soon as the person before them was dead, counting themselves lucky to maybe hopefully pleaseGodnotme get an injured and more tired Master as an opponent, giving them a chance, however small.

Those people made great punching bags, since I and the girls weren’t waiting for them to wait out the fights.

The one thing with a finesse style is a big reliance on multiple hits and crits. Naturally Madam Liloth was capable of mixing it up with even an experienced finesse fighter, since she surpassed them all, but they were also aware of the crit-dependency and so made that more difficult.

Also, they were all Tens with maxed out Soak and Health, and took a while to carve up the way you needed to.

When you are swinging for fifty-plus points a hit, however, that time is measured in Not Very Long At All Die Now.

My first opponent took ten seconds to get opened up vertically as she tried to jump away, her grav-mulcher didn’t work (hey, none of the drow’s grav-warpers were, boo hoo) and Chalice ripped her open.

My muscles were 6g muscles, I didn’t need no stinking grav-manipulators. I was on one of the gawking watchers with one bound, covering fifty feet and letting them know that a Spirited Charge and Death from Above combo was coming at them... and I had no problem redirecting my momentum to follow them as they tried to move out of the way.

Bang, crit on the charge! I took off the champion’s armored arm and head with one stroke, and was moving on to the next before his astonished head could finish its jettisoned tumble and hit the bloody sands in disbelief.

The watchers realized they were Liloth’s main targets too, but she was already behind me and my two badges, and now she was getting serious.

I smiled to myself and continued my massacre.

The Masters were winning, but not all of them were that fast, and certainly not as fast as me and the girls. Before the first one of them was done, I had three kills, was working on my fourth, got a fifth, sixth, seventh...

And suddenly everyone left was fighting, and there was only to wait until a fight was over, and springing on the victor as rapidly as possible.

The girls and I could only sit there, waiting and daring anyone to come, which they most certainly would. The girls had also started whole new sets of insignias, just to drive the point home that not even the best had been able to do much to them.

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There it was: a Master Warlock took down a duelist, his armor taking the final thrust as he slit the other drow’s throat, reveling in the experience.

He barely got his sword up as I jumped right over two other fights and was on him, sweeping away as he nearly lost his sword, and I stomped on the dying drow to pursue him.

He probably thought my overwhelming charge and attack would peter out and he would turn the tide and use my momentum against me. Then I hooked his sword, grabbed his dagger hand, stabbed him in the gut with his own monomolecular-edged hooked poniard and its poison a couple times, rammed Chalice’s hilt into his faceless visor hard enough to spiderweb it, leaned back to kick his sword away, and spun Chalice around to hack into his knee and cripple him. My hair flew up into his face, he couldn’t see as he tried to stumble away, and as his blade hacked harmlessly down through my black hair and behind my back, I came back up inside his reach and drove Chalice up under his jaw and into his head sweetly.

-Mmm, so this is an Eleven who doesn’t know profound swordplay. Clearly lacking in multiple areas-, I /mused, taking my insignia prize and looking around for another victim whose Soak was depleted. It made the kills a lot easier.

-Weak,- /sniffed Celestia.

-No form,- /agreed Keva.

-Thirteen different holes in his technique!- Jensa /rolled her eyes.

I leapt for a Bladewitch who was laughing in ecstasy at killing a Champion, only to look up and see me coming her way with a charming smile waaaay too fast, Chalice out and droning her doom.

I was swift and merciless, and her lack of armor certainly didn’t help her as I removed a knife and her hand, ripped her left, right, and down she went very suddenly, her insides now on the outsides.

A horn blew, and I stopped in midrun towards my next victim, another Master Bladewitch all wide-eyed and startled to see me coming... and my new array of insignias.

I didn’t look back at Liloth, but I knew she didn’t have nine of them. She hadn’t been touched, of course, and I had... but Energized Nog Armor skin didn’t give a frak how sharp the blades were, it was kinetic energy and placement or go home, bitches. They were good at cleaving through damage reduction and trying to overcome it, but I just had a lot of it, in addition to the armor skin, and what did get through was healing right back up so fast it might not even have been there in the first place.

“You are good at killing the weak, little half-blood!” laughed Liloth, seeing my performance.

“And two more Masters,” I added without batting my eye, as the hundred eyed one another, and us, and weighed their chances of making it to the top ten.

Perhaps to nobody’s surprise, half the drow saluted, knelt, and ran away, probably cursing why they couldn’t bounce artistically until they got a good deal further away from us, and only the true elites were left.

A few of the lesser gladiators had lived because some Masters were dead... more than disguised Ranthas, anyways. Forty-one sacrificial contestants remained for this celebration, including the best of the best.

The best eyed one another, and moved to take out the weak. I kept my eyes on my target, who had three wounds on her, while even my clothing had mended itself, and my hair showed my kills... pleebs on the left, post-Tens on the right.

Gladiatorial arena. Must have style, non? Performance combat is a thing... and I did have those Minstrel Levels. It was why Madame Liloth was fixated on me.

She must have had pride or something, not wanting to flee before a breshkt. My smile just grew wider and wider as she didn’t run away, and Chalice was droning to drive an icepick into her teeth.

“Half-blooded whelp!” she spat at me. “Your luck has failed you, to send you to me!”

I slowly looked her up and down, and shook my head slowly, infuriating her even more. “Pureblood, wench. Neither of my parents were of the drow.” She blinked despite herself. “As for luck, I agree, you’re going to be no fun at all. In your next life, wear some decent armor, and have a bit of style, would you?”

“Ahhhhh!” She began to rage, purple blood vessels rising on her black skin as her eyes went red. Probably some subdermal alchemical distillation getting pumped into her as the next timer came down...

She did get a lot stronger suddenly, psychic strength coursing through her, and clearly expecting me to get smashed off my feet and probably bones broken as her knives struck at me.

Yeah, well, bitch, you got finesse knives there. Just how much strength can you put into a pair of things that weigh barely a pound?

They crashed into Chalice, and I let the force flow to my feet. Oh, nice, her Might went right up to 34, a +12 bonus. Big Jotun range.

Being used finesse style with daggers. I had to laugh at her.

Basically, we were so strong we weighed the equivalent of infants to one another... but I still had a much heavier weapon, and I could still move it real fast, and when she didn’t have daggers, what then?

Freaking dire daggers and those bloody hooks. Our weapons crashed together, and then her little fractal blade shattered under the impact that was supposed to send me sprawling, I hooked down on the other one, and she was utterly shocked to find I was still stronger than her. She was so strong her whole body would move before her arm did... which is exactly what happened, and she was turned sideways as she tried to resist, and her side was open.

-Oh, my, you aren’t used to running around with a 34 Might and seeing what it does to your fighting style? Amazing. There are some major implications to your fighting style when your whole body moves before the parry does...-

The girls tittered. The drow needed more practice with the physics of the Superstrong...

My rabbit punch to her hip popped the socket out. She clawed for my face with razored nails, and I moved into it, letting her clout me on the side of my head with all that strength... and was braced and just took it as my foot drove into the sand, and my second punch shattered her jaw and nearly tore it off her face.

-Hey, you don’t have profound open hand fighting, either, do you?-

-The Sword is an extension of the hand!- /declared Celestia.

-A thousand days of hand, a hundred days of spear!- /added Jensa.

-The Sword Is A Shitty Weapon!- Keva /finished for us.

The Bladewitch tried to cut me back and bounce away, but couldn’t... I was on her, stayed on her, and simply wasn’t afraid of staying close to her and her knife. It cut in, rang on Chalice’s guard again, and then I drew three feet of orichalcum across her belly, opening it up nicely as she tried to block, and instead lost her dagger to the screaming force of the steel as she held the blade too firm with her strength and metal bit on metal. She tried to lunge with it; I was certainly in reach, but I just caught her arm, froze it in place, shook my head at her silly attempt to be a brute force fighter this late in the game, and headbutted her.

She had no DR to speak of. Strength-wise, she took it, but her face was crushed, she was blinded for a moment, and she smashed hard to the ground, rolling automatically and coming back to her feet in a graceful display of I Deliver My Neck to Your Sword.

Her head bounced away, shooting fifteen feet into the air from the force of her boosted blood pressure, and I snagged my insignia and looked for another target in dismissal before it hit the ground.