Chapter 176

The sword was a garbage weapon. Sure, it could cut through stuff, but that was the only thing it did better than the mace. When using one, Luke had to worry about things like the angle of impact or dulling the edge, plus it was so light and flimsy he was afraid it would just snap in half if he hit something too hard.

It was fine for the show, but he couldn’t imagine trying to actually fight someone strong with it. Rationally, he knew it was the fact that rank 1 [Sword Mastery] couldn’t hold a candle to rank 5 [Mace Mastery], but he just couldn’t get on board with trying to hold a sword properly. It seemed like a lot of needless complications to the fine art of beating monsters to death with a heavy piece of metal.

He made a conscious effort to remind himself that this wasn’t a real battle, that he’d just be fighting one of those monitor lizards. The real difficulty was in making the fight look close, and the sword was honestly irrelevant to that. He could crush its skull with a single punch quicker than it could hope to react.

At the moment, he was sitting in a waiting room just behind the west-side portcullis leading into the arena. A different enforcer was standing next to the doorway, this one level 37. Luke had given him a once over and was confident that even without a weapon, he could win if it came to a fight. He suspected the enforcer was also confident in his own abilities, but he suffered from the same flaw almost everyone had. Too much AP had gone into things that had nothing to do with fighting.

Luke wasn’t immune to that problem himself, not when he considered some of his more ill-informed purchases like [First Aid] or [Stealth], but with over 1000 AP worth of skills and only 100 or so having been spent on non-combat skills, he was heavily specialized. Probably the only person he’d ever met, at least since Luke had gained access to [Analyze], who was as tightly focused on combat as him was Adrevald Lath. And that man had been a monster, literally at the end.

The door opened and a petite, short woman of about five feet stepped through. Her hair had been done in some sort of elaborate braid and piled on top of her head, so thick that Luke thought it would affect his balance to have that much weight there. If that was the case for the woman, she was well-used to it and moved without any hesitation.

“Luke?” she asked, not quite stumbling over the unfamiliar name. When he nodded, she added, “I’m Suisung. I’ll be your coordinator for tonight’s fights.”

“How many are we doing?” Luke asked.

“Just two for now. The boss had three sunspot monitors brought in to fight, one juvenile and two adults. The adults are for the second round.”

Luke realized he actually didn’t know if the one he’d played with earlier was full-grown. It wouldn’t make a huge difference, but maybe if they got significantly bigger, he could add weaving through their legs and attacking their underbellies into the routine.

“How big are the adults?” Luke asked.

“About this tall,” Suisung said, holding her hand up just over her waist. “Twice as long with the tail.”

There went that idea. That was fine, it just meant the one he’d already seen was mostly grown. He’d just stick to the moves he’d already worked out. They’d left his armor and mace back at the inn with the idea that Luke could put on a decent performance if he used only the loaner sword.

“Since this is your first appearance, we’re not expecting much in the way of crowds. Most people don’t want to pay to see a fight against something this weak,” Suisung told him. She paused, and then said, “You… Ah, you’re sure you can handle this?”

Luke had to laugh. Gotayi hadn’t even told the other employees about the scam, by the looks of it. Maybe he was paranoid they’d get in on the betting and take too much money out of the arena’s coffers. The whole scam would fall apart if too many people found out about it, after all, and there had to be some canny gamblers watching for specific people to place bets.

“I think I’ll be alright. Word of advice, put a little money on my victory.”

“We’re not allowed to bet on the fights,” Suisung said immediately.

“Like that ever stopped anyone,” Luke said. “You do what you want, but the pit manager wouldn’t be setting this whole thing up if he thought I was going to die in the first fight.”

“Yes, well… I have a few things to go over with you before the fight starts in half an hour.”

“What kind of things?” Luke asked. He couldn’t imagine what other details needed to be stated.

“All sorts of stuff,” she began enthusiastically. “There’s your contractual obligations for fight length, an in the event of your death disclaimer, fines that might affect your pay in the event that the corpse of the monster is too damaged to be harvested for resources-”

“I thought Zea took care of that already.”

“Is that your partner? She did most of the contract paperwork, but there’s still a few things left to go over with you.”

Luke groaned and leaned back to look up at the stone ceiling. “This was not part of the plan,” he said.

* * *

The fight, when he finally got to it, went about as well as could be expected. Someone positioned on top of the wall on the north side of the arena did a running commentary to keep the crowd stirred up that included some rather harsh critiques of Luke’s form and reaction time. He mostly just tuned them out and focused on making it look realistic while he played with the juvenile monitor lizard. It was a bit smaller than the one he’d practiced on, but he made it work.

The sword sucked, no doubt about that. He deliberately let the lizard knock it out of his hands as it rushed at him while he scrambled to get clear. Honestly, the whole act was easier without [Sword Mastery]whining in his head about proper grip and lining up the edge of the weapon. Luke didn’t remember the skill being so annoying back when he’d first gotten it, but he’d admittedly only used a sword for a day or so before discarding his sword for his first mace.

After he lured the lizard off to one side of the arena and made a sprint around it to recover his ‘dropped’ sword, Luke let it push him to the ground and, just before its jaws could descend on his face, rammed the sword into its open mouth and up into its brain. There was a small mental ding to confirm the death while he kicked the body off of him.

[You have slain Sunspot Monitor (lvl 6). 36 XP awarded.]

“Unbelievable!” the commentator shouted. “I thought for sure our newest challenger was done after a single match, but the son of a bitch pulled it off!”

There was some scattered applause, but everyone knew exactly how weak the giant lizards were. That was why this had just been a warm up show before the main events. In an hour or two, he’d be back out there fighting two full-grown lizards at the same time.

The whole scheme had better net them a nice chunk of gold, because the XP benefits were practically non-existent.

* * *

The crowd was a bit bigger when Luke fought two of the monitors at once, and then the next night they put him up against a level 20 bloodbite flea, which it turned out fleas were absolutely fucking hideous when blown up to the size of a fat raccoon. They also had to hang up a net of metal chains just to keep the thing inside the arena.

That fight became mostly a game of dodging around as it leaped in the air and tried to fall on him. The only real challenge was how fast it moved, deceptively so for something that only had 40 agility, but Luke attributed that to a skill it had called [Spring Legs]. If he’d had his mace, he would have swatted it across the arena to splatter against the wall, something he was sure the crowd would have loved. Well, the ones who weren’t sitting by that wall would have loved it, at least.

He ended up leaning into [Unarmed Martialist] to punt it across the arena instead, then finishing it off with his borrowed sword once it broke one of its legs. That earned a much healthier set of cheers and even some foot pounding on the ground while the commentator yelled out, “No way this guy is level 1! But what is his real level? How many more fights can he win before he bites off more than he can chew? And how much money are the lucky betters going to win on that fight?”

* * *

Fleurian paused and felt the vibrations coming through the stone. He was in his most compact traveling form, that of a single, long serpentine tendril that wormed its way through the earth and stone. Unlike his smaller children, he was far too massive to ever manipulate a crawler. The simple act of inserting even one of his limbs into the stupid demons would shred it from the inside.

He’d been crawling under this bastion of mortality for days, trying to locate his prey. But there were just so many targets, and they all looked so similar. It was impossible to narrow it down, and he’d worried that if he just burst up in a random place, he’d get a satiating meal and nothing else. That would come later, after he found the one he sought, but for now, the hunt continued.

Until he felt the vibrations, at least. That was… unusual, if for no other reason than they were much deeper underground than the surface-dwellers usually went, and in reasonably high volume. There were a lot of prey all gathered together in one place.

Fleurian changed direction. Even if his chosen prey wasn’t there, he could use a good snack anyway. If the meal was kind enough to package itself up in a small underground box, he wasn’t going to refuse to eat. It was such a small, enclosed off area anyway that he could strike and begone, hopefully with a few hundred humans to consume.

Then the vibrations died down. Fleurian continued his swim anyway and circled underneath where he’d felt them, but they were gone. There was barely any prey left above him now, certainly not enough to satiate him. Perhaps they’d be back. If so, Fleurian would reach them much, much faster now that he’d created a path to their underground snack box.

Somewhat disappointed, he wriggled away.

* * *

“How’re we doing?” Luke asked Zea.

“Good, good. We’re up forty gold from our share of the bets.”

“Really? Damn, way more than I expected.”

“Just don’t ask how much Gotiya has made. You might have played it up a little too good in those first few fights. The odds are still against you, but they’re rising and people are starting to bet on you to win.”

“Well, that’s what I’m here for,” Luke told her.

“Hmm. Yeah. Why do I get the feeling this guy’s going to try to screw us on the big jackpot at the end though?”

“Because you’re paranoid,” Luke told her. “But usually right. What do you want to do about it?”

“Nothing yet,” Zea said. “But keep an eye on how much security he has tomorrow. If he starts bringing in a bunch of extra people, like way more than the crowds would dictate, that’s probably a good indicator he’s going to try to cheat us.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Luke said. “How many more fights in the contract?”

“Three, all in a row tomorrow.”

“One more day and we’re out of here then.”

Perfect. What could go wrong in just a single day?