That guy there was a Fifteen. I advanced on the Corsair with a smile as he harried his mercenary lord opponent, that experienced fellow looking fatalistic at his lack of luck on getting this fellow on the draw. Krazn Oyqifix, as my purloined memories and a quick glance at the displays above confirmed.
As it turns out, we probably weren’t going to get to the Madam, but that was fine.
The raider eventually fell to a twisting lunge up under his ribs, hanging for a second on the extended edge of the darkly glowing blade, and then crumpling. Another trip to the Vats for him!
That elegantly clad fellow turned around, and saw me approaching him. I noted he’d been marked twice, which meant his Soak was probably gone, although he wasn’t bleeding. Vampiric Weapon, probably, but it didn’t matter. Trying to suck out my life energy was going to be an exercise in frustration for any Weapon.
“You are very confident to be facing me,” he said, sword snapping around on guard, his dirk in hand to parry. “Will you not equip your shield?” he offered mockingly, supremely confident of himself.
“If you can force me to do so, I will be impressed,” I replied, and then our blades were meeting.
I was watching his every move, as this was an extremely rare opportunity to fight someone with a higher Melee Attack Bonus than I had, all from Class Levels.
My Melee Level was still Ten, because I’d sucked up so much Karma into my Racial Levels. I had full BAB for both ranged and melee combat from my Rantha Levels, making me a hideously gifted instinctive fighter. Weapon Mastery from being a Melee and tons of profound stuff had tempered all of that, of course, but I was still enjoying looking at a Fifteen strut his stuff.
That being said, he didn’t have an advantage on me, and he swiftly realized it.
He was boosted all the way to the nines, maxed out with everything racial he could, Dex near to mine if not equal... but he was still much, much weaker, even after the muscle-weaving and sinew-strengthening bioboosts. I had a fighting style he literally had never seen before, with Seven Dragons swordplay on full display with all its intricacies and ways of overcoming a foe, and it was clearly throwing him on how I was using a sword so effectively.
His force-enhanced mesh armor was barely there as far as I was concerned, even if it was +V, and his Charisma-enhanced swashbuckling style meant nothing to Way of the Wind. Way of Fire was chasing him down, Way of Shadow was matching every feint, Way of Sun every riposte, and my Way of Moon defense was punishing his off-hand tremendously.
He couldn’t match my speed or my footwork, and given how he was prancing around, I could see how badly that alarmed him. I definitely hadn’t seen anyone but the Madam so light on their feet, but it wasn’t doing him any good as I slid around him, back and forth, barely moving my feet, always messing with angles and forcing him to adjust to my attacks, turning his attacks into more openings.
I landed my first hit within ten seconds, just a flicker through the cloth on his arm, but it drew blood. His darkly-glowing Saber was skirling with Chalice, who was taking it with a sniff, easily forcing it off, while elaborate and precise parries tried to shift her here and there and weren’t working anything like they should.
If he tried a hard parry, he was going to lose his weapons and likely his hands, and he realized that the first time our blades met. That meant he was instantly on the defensive, and trying madly to keep my sword away as he retreated across the sands. I saw the flash of his eyes when he couldn’t grav-bounce. I saw that Belt he was wearing, and just grinned as I pursued, forcing him to use every technique he could think of to stay alive from Chalice’s black and gold length.
All the girls had thoughtstreams watching this fight, commenting and analyzing, thirsting for the sight of that level of BAB, and the attack speed that came with it.
His face hardened as he realized that I was using him as a practice dummy. I left myself open once, he took it for a stab at my side that barely went in a half-inch... and in the opening Chalice reached out and touched his kidney via his belly button, or nearest facsimile thereof. The cold power of banefire shot through him, and he hissed as I twisted and he barely curled away from it.
I felt the negative energy pawing at me, but it couldn’t steal my life. Nulls don’t like that, thank you, and his face suddenly got a wee bit more fatalistic about what was coming.
Looked like he didn’t know what shadowfire could do to him, either.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
And there it was, a half-inch opening in his style, thrown off by his lack of grav-jumping and the wound in his side and on his arm. Chalice flicked in, light as a foil in my hands, slid over his parry, and went right into his left eye a full six inches as my feet slid forward without my legs moving a whit.
Gotta love that Waveskating Step.
His blades were still attempting to parry it away as he gawked at me with his other eye, trying to bounce back, and I just moved faster, pushing it in, and shoved the point out the back of his pale violet-haired head. His feet danced, and kicked, as shadowfire and banefire did interesting things to his brain and mind and soul, and maybe he realized what was going to happen to him, maybe not.
He was over a thousand years old, and now he was dead, and he wasn’t coming back at all.
Them not knowing profound martial arts really hurt them. Pity them.
---
And then there were ten.
I glanced at the girls flipping blood off their blades, and the drow masters had expressions suddenly lacking in the absolute confidence and arrogance of being the superior breed and us being trash and all that.
Just like that, we flourished our blades, conceded, and walked away.
They blinked in shock, especially Madame Liloth, who was looking forwards to a good series of fights. If her eyes flashed at me having nine insignias in my hair, and she only had five, that, in the end, only meant I could deal out the damage, not avoid it.
She still didn’t have a mark on her, while I had indeed been hit, but since it didn’t matter, I had healed it all back... with the help of a couple horrific poisons triggering Poison Healing, to boot. I was basically at full.
Which, when you have a 50 Con and Soul/Psi-Reinforced Body, is nigh unto 400 Soak and 350 Health.
Yes, I was a monster, and I didn’t care if she was an Eighteen with +V crap up the kazoo and zippy-yay Stats.
“You cannot walk away from our duel!” she stated icily, stepping forwards.
“They haven’t earned the right to watch us fight,” I waved over my back. “We’ll do lunch with fractal edges soon. Secure your position!”
We had the right to withdraw. The other five drow were all Twelves through Sixteens, the last being a Warlock who was probably the only viable threat to Liloth.
Did they want to take another run to the Vats? Everyone knew who was going to end up on top. The rest was just where they were in the top ten.
Well, why not? What was a little death, to people like them?
------
We were walking down the ramp that had been walked down by hundreds of survivors just a short time ago... probably more than had come back down it in total for the last millennium. Things came out of this room, they didn’t come back down into it.
Some of them were still in there. Many of them had settled up on their prizes from the highly amused drow, who knew that their victories would only bring more hapless fools in to enthusiastically offer themselves up for death.
-How’d the bets go?- Celestia /asked for all of the girls.
-We have made an obscene amount of money in multiple currencies,- I /replied, and let them peek at the account balances. Imperial credits was one of them, and they giggled behind impassive faces as we came down into the room.
The survivors were silent as they saw us come in. A few of them even staggered to their feet in respect, while others labored to live, clearly on their last legs, running off alchemical side-effects, or simply wounds, poison, or the like that wouldn’t go away.
I pointed, and Grim flipped out of my hair into my hand. The girls repeated the gesture with their own psi-crystals, and we split up.
If it was quiet before, you could have heard a pin drop once we started healing them. They watched gory wounds flash over us, off of them, and get healed away as we took the injuries silently. We’d gotten a lot better at this, and could take poisons, which were just like healing salves to us.
We said nothing as we took the injuries to flesh, couldn’t do it for cybernetics, and healed it all away. Those who might have died here rose to their feet in our wake, surviving despite everything, awed and greedy and relieved and having very complicated expressions as they looked after us.
But when we left the room, nobody was left behind. Urgob, reptoid, whatever that spider-faced freak thing was (a Hepazuga, jeez, Mom!), human, hobgoblin... they all walked out of that room of death, far more subdued than they had been when they walked down into it.
-----
The station to claim our rewards wasn’t that far, although they had neverever had so much business from non-drow in one day. Still, that didn’t make the mechanics of it any different. Some of the more astute who had bet on themselves to live were also going to pick up gambling winnings and multiply their earnings. After all, if they died, why did they care if they lost the money?
I didn’t inquire too deeply into some of the things they were asking for in their winnings, as drow biotech and cybergrafting was all on the table as services that could be purchased. They should be above board on granting the rewards, in order to lure in more fools, er, contestants, but you never knew.
I just took the money, parceled it out to the girls, and then, to the amazement of a whole lot of people who wanted to keep tabs on us, we vanished into the crowd entirely, and were gone.
----------
The guards and psi-weavers guarding the area weren’t exactly accommodating of our need to use a certain Portal, but that was wonderful, we were experts at improvisation.
In turns out when you coup de grace a recalcitrant Portal-opening psychic drow with Mindfeaster up on your Sword, and nail him to the power input crystals of the Portal when you do it, you can transfer the stolen PP, which the Portal did indeed recognize as permitted, to the device, and power it right up! Use Psychic Device Ranks for the win... it was one of Chalice’s two major skills, the other being Use Magic Device, two Skills no Null could possibly use, naturally.
Gotta have ways around those weak points, doncha know. Wouldn’t that surprise people, learning my Sword could activate all their little toys where I couldn’t...
The Portal shimmered to life, and we all stepped right on through.