“The brown note is a myth,” said the announcer. I glared up at the ceiling.

“Now you respond?”

I finally noticed how quiet the arena had become. I looked around at all the holographic audience members, and they were flabbergasted. Then I jerked my hands back and stumbled a step, then two away from Craig.

“Fuuuuuuuu–” I fell to my knees screaming through my clenched teeth. I had held onto Craig’s nearly molten body for far too long. The burns were horrific. My hands looked like bacon, all crispy and charred, while the blisters joined together, growing as I watched them. Fluid gushed from my ruined skin, sloshing around in the mega-blisters on each arm. The pain was so great I wanted to retch. I cradled my arms to my chest and tried to catch a breath. The pain in my arms and chest, my whole front, really, was absolutely incredible.

“Uh, hey,” Craig said as he stood. He did something and I heard the rocks crunch in his arm. He winced and looked at me. “You okay over there?”

“Now this is unusual,” boomed the announcer. “It seems the combatants are pausing to talk to each other. We rarely see this.”

“You know,” I grunted through grit teeth. “You’re hot enough to boil water?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s my day job. I fight to put money away for my kids.”

I looked up at him, all pain forgotten for a moment. “You have kids?”

“Yeah, just little rubble piles at the moment, but Craig Junior shifted yesterday. Made me so proud. He’ll have his first land slide any day now.”

I shook my head, though I tried to isolate the movement from my neck on down. “I don’t get it.”

Craig pointed up to the side, and a projection started, showing an aerial view of a town at the foot of a moderately sized hill.

“That’s Craig Junior, there. He’s only a few decades old. Very advanced.”

I blinked at the picture, then looked back at Craig. “Only a few decades old? How old are you?”

“That’s kind of rude,” he said. “Most people know better than to ask a lady her age.”

My brain crashed to a halt. “You’re a woman?”

He laughed. “Not as you would understand it. My species doesn’t have binary genders.”

I shrugged, then winced as it pulled on my blisters. “You might be surprised. A lot of people of my species don’t define themselves as one gender, or even, sometimes, a gender at all. It’s all a bit beyond me, I just figure I’ll treat them as people and call them whatever they want. Doesn’t cost me anything to be respectful of people’s self-identity.”

Craig put a rocky finger to his lips and nodded. “That’s… surprisingly forward. Some species just don’t understand. Then again, a lot of species out there have only one or two genders, and some have hundreds or even thousands. Actually, my kind, the Strata, have seventeen-thousand genders.”

I nodded along. My hands were already healing, I could feel an intense itching as my skin grew a new layer, even as the fluid in the dead skin was reabsorbed. “That’s a lot, how do you keep it straight?”

“Oh, we don’t care. Nearly every gender can mate with another, with very few exceptions. That’s how most Strata children are born, with a mating of two genders, which also defines what gender they end up becoming.”

The image shifted, and I watched as the side of the hill shifted, then slid down onto the town. There was no sound, but it was clear the slide was of considerable size. Craig jumped up and down.

“Oh! Craig Junior just slid! Her first slide!”

“What about the town?”

Craig looked back at me. “The town? What about it? They knew for the last thirty years Craig Junior was there. In fact, having sentient life nearby helps accelerate the process. Why do you think he’s already had his first slide after only forty years?”

“So, let me get this straight,” I said, working to hide my receding blisters. “Your kind give birth to mountains, which kill sentient people to grow, then somehow end up like you?”

“Oh, yes. As we age, we become more compact. Some become more dense, some end up taller, it all depends on your gender. But eventually, almost all of my kind take on a humanoid shape and go out into the cosmos to find a mate and settle somewhere nice and flat.”

“You aren’t looking very settled,” I said.

He shook his head. “Not yet. Land is very expensive on that planet. I took a job here with the System for a handful of decades to earn enough for a few thousand acres. I want a dozen more kids.”

I shifted my weight, and Craig quirked a rocky eyebrow. “All healed already? Your kind are quite resilient.”

Busted, I shrugged with my arms wide open. “Maybe not all of my kind, but I seem to be doing okay.” He nodded, and just as his eyes closed, I launched. Burns or not, I had to take the guy down. I couldn’t have his kind destroying cities on my planet. I caught him around the midsection and slammed him to the ground with my shoulder. The rock burned, but it wasn’t as fierce as before.

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

“That’s more like it,” said the announcer. “Back to the action. Though, we should thank contestant Craig for the enlightening lecture about the Strata.”

Just like that, the crowd was cheering again. Craig, for his part, was incredibly fast. He grabbed the back of my shirt and yanked me up and over his head, tossing me into the cage wall. I crabbed the chain link as I impacted, then pulled my feet up and braced. He looked at me, and I sprang out, using the fence for extra oomph. The whole maneuver took less than a second. My fist connected with the side of his stony head, and I felt my hand break. More satisfying, however, was the chunk that sheared from his skull. It took a portion of his face and crumbled to dust as it hit the mat.

I rolled and sprang to my feet, shaking my hand. “Yikes. You’re even more hard-headed than my cousin.”

Craig spun his legs and used the momentum in a flashy kip-up. “Is he a Strata too?”

“No, he’s from Florida. He heard about monks who would hit stones and wood to make their arms harder, so he started headbutting concrete. A few dozen concussions later, he’s dumb as a brick but holy fuck. I saw him headbutt an ox one time, and the ox was knocked out.”

The projector overhead changed to a video of my cousin doing just that, and the crowd ooh-d and ahh-d over the short clip.

Craig nodded. “That is impressive.” He lunged forward, clearly trying to headbutt me like the video. I slipped his attack and kicked the side of his knee. It broke with a sharp crack, sounding like a bullet skipping off stone. His center of balance shifted and he tumbled to the ground.

“Look, we’ve had a good discussion here,” I said. I raised a foot and struck down on back of the same knee. Craig howled with anger and pain. I kicked again, and this time, the leg separated as the knee completely gave in. Craig curled up, gripping at his severed leg. Magma oozed from the center of his thigh. The amputated limb rapidly crumbled to dust.

“My leg!”

“But I think it’s time to wrap this up,” I said as if there hadn’t been an interruption. I lashed out with another kick, this time catching the side of his partial face. The rest of his face broke off, landing nearby. I saw the eye blink, before that, too, crumbled away. He immediately started flailing, trying to catch me with a solid swing. Even if I was tougher than before the system, I figured having a hundred pounds of rock slam into the side of my leg was a bad idea. I jumped clear of his wild attacks. He tried to stand, then fell over again.

“What will he do? It looks like our champion is in trouble!”

I should have figured it wouldn’t be that easy. Any time I tried to close the distance, Craig started flopping around, trying to smack me. Then, when he got enough space, he did something I did not anticipate ever seeing. He raised his hand high, and brought it down on his good leg just above the knee. Even though he could no longer scream, since he didn’t have a mouth, I felt the tremors through the mat. He raised his hand again, and this time, he sliced through his leg. Before it could crumble away, he stood on the stumps of his legs and held the severed limb like a club.

“What? Why is everything so freaking weird now?” I shook my head, then started analyzing. It was clear what was normally a fatal wound for most humanoids was instead an inconvenience. Painful, sure, but not debilitating. Then he surprised me again. He gripped the end of the leg-club and crushed part of it in his fist, put the resulting dust to his face… and started to scream.

“AHHH! Gods, I haven’t been injured like that in years!”

I blinked, and just like that, he had a face again.

“Did you just cut your own leg off to repair your face?”

He smiled, mouth looking like a jagged mountain range in winter.

“I did. Pretty cool, huh?”

“And what about your legs?”

He shook his head. “They’ll regrow in a few years. Nothing to worry about.”

I sighed. “I was hoping this would be easier.”

Craig nodded. “So do they all. I’ve been champion for ten years now. How do you think I stuck around, despite not being the strongest?”

I ran in again, using my size and speed to counter his new reach with his leg-come-club. He swung, harder and faster than I expected. I jumped, but it was too slow, too late. I almost cleared his attack, but he pulled it up a hair, and my foot was clipped. I was sent spinning, crashing to the mat a moment later. My head rang from the impact. Even handicapped, he was putting up a hell of a fight.

“Damn, now I wish I could use my abilities.”

“Ha, you and me both,” Craig replied. He readied his club, looking me in the eyes. We both understood. This was it.

I took the initiative, since he was movement impaired. I sprinted in, juking left, then right, and finally jumping at him. He swung, trying to catch my feet again, but I cleared his head, slammed to a stop, then released a vicious scything kick that took his head from his shoulders. I worried, for a moment, that it wouldn’t be enough. That his kind could function without a head, using a distributed neural network or something. But, after a long, breathless moment, his torso caved in. Just like that, his body stopped holding its shape and slumped into a pile of gravel. The gravel continued to break down, going to pebbles, then sand, and finally being blown from the arena as a fine dust.

“Ladies, Gentlemen, and all fine beings with the honor of witnessing this historic match, I give you your winner… Alabaster Blackwood, of Blackwood Company!”

The crowd erupted in cheers, some even standing and throwing holographic roses into the ring. A trap door opened in the floor, and up rose… Craig.

“Bloody hell, I thought I had you.”

I fell into a fighting stance again, fists curled despite the pain. My hand was still broken, I had blisters everywhere from fighting him, and I was pretty sure a good portion of my face and hair had sloughed off. But I was ready, if I had to be.

“Oop- no,” he said as he held his hands out in front of him. “The fight’s over. You won.”

I stood up, though I still had my fists ready to block or attack.

“You really did,” he insisted. He extended a hand to shake. I hesitantly reached out, and was once again surprised. His hand was cool, like touching a wall in a cave.

“How?”

“Oh, that’s easy. I’m contracted to be here. Like I said before,” he said.

I smacked my face in realization and frustration. “Duh. You’re like the soldiers in the game.”

Craig shook his head. “I don’t know what that means.”

I shook my head in return. “Don’t worry about it. I get it now. You lose, but you come right back because magic and whatnot.”

“Uh, yeah. Anyway, congrats.”

Quest Completed!

You defeated the boss on floor 100!

Rewards: 100xp, 100 recognition, new title: Delver (100)

New title awarded: Centurion.

The announcer appeared in the arena, looming over the both of us.

“What a bout! Excellent fight, if a little… wordy for my tastes. But a promise is a promise. What level are you?”

I looked up at the holographic face and smiled, feeling the adrenaline crash set in.

“Level nine. One-hundred-thirty-one out of one-forty-five.”

The announcer’s face fell. “Oh.”

I shrugged. “Well, what now?”