WIEDERGEBURT Act VI: Chapter 21

It didn’t take a genius to figure out what happened. I could already imagine how Tora stepped in to save the woman when those men got rowdy with her, though I did have to wonder why they were all being allowed to gang up on a single woman like that.

Merging with the earth, I reappeared right next to Tora, who looked startled at my sudden appearance. The woman behind us was also gaping.

“You’re fucking late,” Tora muttered.

“I don’t think we ever specified a time,” I said with a sigh. “I think I already know what’s going on, but why don’t you tell me what happened?”

“If you already know, then there’s no fucking point. Besides, we don’t have the time.”

She wasn’t wrong. The six men who had been surrounding us were already edging closer. Their leader was a man who looked big and brawny, even when compared to the other men around him. His short cropped orange hair made his head look like a sun. He wore armor and had a sword grasped firmly in his left hand.

“Who in the nine realms are you?” he asked.

“I don’t think who I am really matters,” I said, my voice containing an icy chill. “I think the more important issue is what you were trying to do to this woman here.”

“Ha! What I do to my belongings is for me to decide!” the man said with a bark of laughter.

“She isn’t yours!” Tora snapped. “Just because you fucking beat her in combat doesn’t mean she belongs to you!”

“To the victor goes the spoils.” The man licked his lips as he looked at the woman behind us. “And I want my spoils.” His eyes shifted back to Tora, and then he grinned. “Of course, I won’t mind if you also give yourself to me. How about it? Wanna be my woman?”

“I’d rather suck a Sekbeists dick than go anywhere near your uncleaned cock,” Tora spat.

That was quite the insult. I’d been impressed by this woman’s foul mouth, and now I found myself impressed by what sort of vitriol she could spit at people. Never in my life had I met such a confrontational woman.

“You… you dare to insult me like that?!” The man roared. “Do you not know who I am?! I am Grimnir!”

“I don’t fucking know who you are, or why I should care,” Tora said, not batting an eyelash at his name.

“Grimnir is… he’s the best warrior in the first level of the arena,” the woman behind us said. “Many people say he could go up to the second level if he wanted to, but he sticks around here because it lets him fight people weaker than himself.”

The arena was composed of ten levels. To be allowed to fight in the level above, fighters were required to win a certain number of matches consecutively. If you lost a match, your winning streak went back to zero, and you had to start over again. It sounded to me like Grimnir would defeat people until he reached the cusp needed to advance, and then lost on purpose to remain on the first floor.

“That’s fucking despicable,” Tora said. “Shit stains like you should get the fuck out of this academy. Hero Hall doesn’t need cowardly bastards tainting its halls.”

Grimnir gnashed his teeth together as his face turned red. “That does it. I don’t care if you are Tyr’s daughter! You are fucking dead, you hear me?! I’m going to skull fuck your corpse!”

Tora just laughed. “So your a coward and a sick bastard! Go ahead and try! I’d like to see if you can really back up that bravado.”

I didn’t want this situation getting out of hand, so I stepped forward before anyone could do anything too rash.

“I don’t think this arena will allow an unauthorized fight like this, so why don’t we do this by the book.” I pointed at Grimnir. “I challenge you. If you defeat me, I’ll back off and won’t bother you about this anymore. If I win, I don’t want to see your face in the arena ever again.”

“Hey! You’re stealing my fight!” Tora exclaimed.

I ignored her. I was looking at Grimnir, who furrowed his brow like he wasn’t sure of what to do.

“I know of you,” he said at last. “Eryk Vanir. You beat Skude in a competition a few days ago and Brynjar in a duel. I have no quarrel with you.”

“I see. In other words, you’re a coward,” I said with a knowing smile.

It had been a long time since I’d provoked anyone. The last time I’d had to do so was after the Drage Family took over Nevaria. It wasn’t something I enjoyed doing, but I knew there were times when provocation was necessary to manipulate people into doing what I wanted them to.

I felt like I understood Kari a little better.

Several people laughed at my words. They pointed at Grimnir and whispered to their friends. As I expected, the man’s face turned an ugly shade of boiling red. He looked ten seconds away from strangling me.

“Fine,” he ground out. “I’ll show you what I can do. You’re going to regret picking a fight with me. I’ll have you calling me daddy by the end of this battle.”

It didn’t take much time to prepare a fight. The official who monitored the first floor of the arena came up and made us hand over our badges, taking one hundred credits from the two of us. Whoever won would get the two hundred credits.

“I can’t believe you stepped in like that,” Tora muttered with a sigh. “I wanted to be the one who put this sack of fucking Sekbeist dung in his place.”

“My bad,” I shrugged.

“You had better give me a good show,” Tora said.

“I’ll do my best to put on an entertaining performance.”

Tora went over to the woman, helped her stand, and walked off the stage. The other men who had been surrounding us also removed themselves. It seemed the official would not allow one-on-one battles to be interrupt, which made me wonder why he allowed this situation to escalate so far. But I was digressing. There was a battle to be fought.

“Are both fighters ready?” asked the official.

“Ready to crush this bastard’s skull,” Grminir said with a snarl.

“I’m ready,” I said.

“Then you may begin… now!”

The man leapt off the stage so he wouldn’t be struck by the stray attack. I didn’t hesitate to launch a wind blade at my opponent, eyes firmly locked on the attack as it sailed toward Grimnir--only for it to disappear inside of a black gap that suddenly appeared. That was… a dimensional rift. So Grimnir understood the Concept of Dimension.

“So it’s true,” Grimnir said. “I heard you used the seven elements, but I still didn’t expect it. Everyone knows the seven elements are pathetic compared to high level concepts.”

“You say that, but I’ve beaten several of you with these pathetic elements,” I said. “Come back and say that again after you beat me… if you can.”

“With pleasure!”

The man roared as he swung his sword in a two-handed grip, unleashing a powerful dimensional blade from it. Everything around the blade distorted as it severed the space between it and me.

I didn’t bother blocking. Merging into the ground, I reappeared underneath the man, who wasn’t expecting me. He hadn’t even noticed me yet. That was the problem with these Guddomelig. Not only did they lack a good deal of practical experience, but they had no understanding of the seven elements. It was easy to surprise them this way.

Not wasting time, I grabbed the man’s legs and pulled him into the ground. He screamed in shock as I buried him in the arena floor up to his head. Then I emerged from the ground and punted him in the face. A loud crunching noise echoed around the arena as my attack shattered his nose. I didn’t stop with just one hit. After rattling his brain, I slammed a sideways kick into his temple, knocking the man out cold.

The entire battle had only taken a few seconds.

After making sure Grimnir was out cold, I looked at the official, who was standing just outside of the arena floor, gaping. He probably didn’t expect the match to end so quickly. I almost sighed. It was something I had noticed, but while the people of this realm were indeed very powerful, they lacked experience. Even people trained in combat had no real concept of true combat. It was like kids swinging toy swords at each other.

“Are you going to call the match?” I asked.

“Er… winner of this match is Eryk Vanir,” the official said, his voice echoing loudly in the silent arena.

***

After I was declared the victor, the official gave my badge back to me, and I saw the number on the badge had increased from one thousand to one thousand two hundred.

The official asked me to dig Grimnir out of the earth, so I did. I even gave him a pleasant wake up with some electrical interference. The man had jolted upright from the shock, hair standing on end, eyes wide.

“Wha… what…?” Grimnir asked, disoriented.

I knelt down so we were face to face. He looked at me with wide eyes. My expression was cold.

“If I ever see you causing trouble in the arena again, I won’t let you off with a light warning,” I said.

Grimnir couldn’t do anything, not even speak. His face was pale as if he was staring at his impending death. And to think I didn’t even need to use killing intent.

I stood up and walked over to Tora, who was grinning broadly beside the woman she’d helped. The other woman flushed scarlet as she stared at me.

“Was that entertaining enough for you?” I asked.

“Fuck yeah, it was. Holy shit. You beat that mother fucker so fast it made his head spin,” Tora cheered, then settled down. “I do kinda wish it had lasted longer, but, eh, what can you do?”

“Are you all right, miss?” I asked, turning to the woman who even now was hiding her breasts with her hands. I sighed, then summoned a cloak and handed it to her. The woman seemed startled at first. Then she gratefully accepted it and quickly put it on to cover her body.

“I’m fine,” she said. “Thank you for helping me.”

“You’re welcome.” I nodded once, then turned back to Tora. “I’m thinking of climbing the ranks in this arena. Do you know how many fights I need to win order to move up to the next floor?”

“You need to win one hundred fights.” Tora placed her hands on her hips. “You can fight in either team matches or single matches. Once you’ve attained one hundred victories, you have no choice but to move on to floor two.” Tora glanced at where Grimnir’s followers were helping the shell-shocked man up. “That asshat would always fight until he attained 99 victories, and then lose on purpose.”

So it was as I thought. I had assumed this was the case. It was nice to hear my assumptions were true.

“And what are the benefits of moving up a floor?” I asked.

“There are a lot of benefits.” The one who answered was not Tora. It was the woman. “Each floor offers more credits per victory. You get one hundred credits on floor one, two hundred on floor two, three hundred on floor three, and so on. Aside from credits, you also earn a prize for moving up each floor. I think the prize for moving up to floor two is a bag of ten Conceptualization PIlls.”

Hearing that made me wonder why Grimnir wanted to stay around at floor one, but I assumed the reason was because of his cowardly nature. He wanted to reap as many benefits as possible with as little danger to himself. He was unwilling to go after big rewards because the bigger the reward was, the more danger he placed himself in.

Since I wanted to reach floor two to reap more benefits, I went back to the official and told him I would like to accept challengers. Anyone who wanted to fight was free to step up.

No one did at first. My swift victory was still fresh in their minds, but not everyone here was so cowardly they wouldn’t try their luck, and I eventually received a challenger. I couldn’t remember his name. I beat him in a few seconds flat, though I went much easier on him than I did Grimnir.

After my second victory, more people became willing to try their luck, and I defeated every single one of them within a few minutes. None of them were very good. They had power, certainly, but they lacked the know how when it came to using it. Directionless. I guessed it was because this was the first floor. Everyone here was a newbie or someone who lacked the capacity to advance.

I hoped the second floor would prove to be more of a challenge.

According to the rules, I was only allowed to accept ten fights a day, so after my ten victories, I spent the rest of my time in the arena watching Tora dominate the battlefield. She was a lot more fierce than me. Her style of combat was brutal and overwhelming, like a storm sweeping over a small village, destroying everything in its wake. She also won her ten rounds a day fairly quickly.

We left together.

“That was a fucking blast.” Tora stretched her arms above her head as she and I sat in the banquet hall for lunch. “Though I think I’ll get bored if I keep fighting weaklings. I want to head up to the second floor quickly.”

“I do as well,” I said with a nod. “There are a lot more benefits to be had by reaching the higher floors.”

We were having sandwiches for lunch. Two slices of bread had been lathered in a sauce called mayonnaise. Some meat, cheese, and vegetables had been stuffed between them. This was a meal I had eaten plenty of back on Miðgarðr. That said, the meat they were using in this realm was different from the beef, chicken, and even fish of my old realm.

Tora perked up. “That reminds me of something I heard about the higher levels.”

“Which is?” I asked.

“That woman--her names Annah--said that the higher levels have less people in them. Floor one has the most because most people because it’s where the weakest combatants gather. There are something like ten thousand people on floor one. Floor two has about eight thousand. Floor three has even less.”

That made sense to me. There were generally more weak people than strong people, which was the reason powerful Spiritualists were venerated in Miðgarðr. If attaining strength were easy, there’d be no point to it.

“Are you going to join me in climbing up to the higher floors?” I asked curiously. I believed I already knew the answer, but asking never heard.

“You bet your saggy scrotum I am,” Tora said with a grin. “You’re way too interesting for me to just let you go off on your own. I’m gonna stick to you like fucking glue.”

I had no problem with this woman hanging around. Her father might be someone I needed to keep an eye on, but I had a feeling Tora was trustworthy, though this may have been guilt talking. I still remembered Sigrid. She had loved me, but I kept her at arm's length, which resulted in me killing her. Even now, I wondered what would have happened if I’d done things differently. Perhaps me placing my trust in Tora was my way of atoning for not doing the same for Sigrid.

There was only one thing I had to say about her decision.

“My scrotum is not saggy…”

***

The days passed by, and I had picked up a new routine. Every morning after breakfast, Tora and I would travel to the arena and fight. We could only fight ten matches. It didn’t matter if they were team matches or individual matches. No matter type of match I decided on, ten was the maximum, and so Tora and I would do five individual matches and five team matches.

It only took ten days to reach the required amount of consecutive victories. Just like the woman we had saved said, Tora and I received a reward: One bag of ten Conceptualization Pills. The pills we received were based on the concept we understood. Tora received Creation Conceptualization Pills. I asked for Life Conceptualization Pills.

I stored the pills away in my storage ring. I didn’t intend on using them until I could secure a meditation chamber. My plan was to earn enough credits that I could use a meditation chamber for half a month, or 32 days, which I believed was enough time to help gain a far clearer understanding of the Concept of Life. I also planned on attaining enough Life Conceptualization Pills to consume one each day. That meant I needed twelve more.

After the matches, I would attend Instructor Tanik’s beginner alchemy lessons. It cost one hundred credits to attend his classes. Since I earned one thousand credits a day, spending one hundred each day for a single lesson was pocket change.

Instructor Tanik was a surprisingly robust man with a head full of brilliant pink hair tied into a ponytail behind his head. His powerful pectorals practically popped from his robes, his arms were the size of my head, and his legs looked like they belonged on a giant. Despite how big he was, he was probably the best alchemist I had ever seen. I was very impressed with his first class, where he taught us about the different ingredients found in Gudeverdenen, how they interacted with each other, and what sort of effects we could expect from mixing them.

I was actually attending one of his classes right now.

“If you crush the armor of a carbuncle and mix it with the liquid spirit crystals, you’ll get a powerful liquid that can heal wounds when drunk. Of course, this is only the first step of the refining process. The healing liquid, which we called Elixir, is very potent and can be a deadly toxin if consumed in large quantities. To dull the effects and avoid making people addicted, we have to dilute the drink with several other ingredients.”

There were only ten students attending Instructor Tanik’s lesson, and all of us were gathered toward the front of the classroom, watching as the man refined his alchemy. He spoke as he worked. His fingers were quite nimble despite being so large and thick. I was decently tall at 182 centimeters, but this man towered over me, and I think his hands were about two times bigger than my own.

My biggest surprise about these lessons was not the lessons themselves, but the fact that my quiet roommate, Hendral, was also attending them.

“Now then, I have shown you all what to do. Go back to your stations and refine an Elixir Pill. If you can’t refine one to my satisfaction, you can consider today a failure. Refine one that I approve of, and you may earn back all the credit this class cost you and then some,” Instructor Tanik said.

Everyone went back to their stations, which were set up on one side of the classroom. They were basic alchemy stations. The rectangle tables were about one meter long and half a meter wide, with an advanced alchemy set sitting on it, the ingredients resting off to the side.

Hendral was right next to me, though I didn’t say anything even though I wanted to ask. Instead I got to work.

The Elixir Pill only required fifty ingredients to make. That didn’t seem like a lot, but to make up for that, all of the ingredients were extremely volatile. Not only did you have to watch the temperature of the fires while refining them, but you had to make constant minute adjustments to the flames heat. Furthermore, you had to use your own Spiritual Power to help further refine these ingredients, which were far more powerful than anything found on Miðgarðr.

Because of how much work was required to refine this pill, I could only focus on the refining process. I wrapped the ingredients in a layer of Spiritual Power, used my own affinity to ignite the flames that calcined, roasted, smoked, and liquidized the various ingredients, and worked extra hard to keep the ingredients from exploding in my face. That had already happened to one unfortunate victim who had already been sent out.

The reason I was learning alchemy was actually for Fay’s sake. I was not huge on alchemy myself, and I had only learned in the past because it was an avenue of acquiring strength. Now I was learning so I could teach Fay everything I had learned. She would be thrilled, the two of us could work together on refining new pills, and I would probably get some thank you sex out of it.

I missed sex.

It had been too long since I’d had it.

“Excellent work, Eryk!” Instructor Tanik said as I finished the refining process. In my hand was a small pill that looked like a crystal instead of a ball filled with medicine. “The quality of this pill is incredible. Do you have experience with alchemy?”

“I do,” I admitted. “I was a rather talented alchemist back in Miðgarðr. However, the alchemy here in Gudeverdenen is a lot more challenging. I’m afraid my skills might not be up to snuff here.”

“Hmm… that might be true. This is only a low-tier alchemy pill here on Gudeverdenen, but I can see you have great potential. Work out and I’m sure you can become an incredible Alchemist Master someday,” Instructor Tanik praised me.

I noticed everyone else was looking at me in either awe, shock, or jealousy. Even Hendral was staring at my pill and looking at his own, comparing the two. Mine was a little smoother. It was clear he didn’t quite have the control to refine a perfect pill, but he had done a lot better than the majority of students taking this lesson.

After Instructor Tanik wandered off to help the other students still struggling, I turned to Hendral.

“I am surprised to see you here,” I said. “Figured you were more the type to fight in the arena.”

Hendral was a big, well-muscled man and seemed like a competent warrior. He didn’t strike me as the alchemist type.

“My parents own an alchemy store,” he explained. It was one of the only times I’d heard him speak. “I am expected to help out around the store.”

“So you are doing this for your parents?” I asked.

He nodded. “Our store does not do well. We have fallen on hard times because my parents are not very good at alchemy. I entered the Hall of Heroes because I heard their alchemy classes were some of the best.”

My respect for this man had just moved up. I understood the desire to help out family, though my family consisted primarily of my wives, son, and in-laws… and Fray too, I guessed. In either event, I could respect wanting to help your family.

“In that case, maybe we can help each other out,” I said, holding out my hand. “Let’s work hard together and improve our alchemy.”

Hendral didn’t do anything at first, neither speaking or taking my hand. I thought it was because he was just quiet at first, but now I suspected it was because he wasn’t very social. He always kept to himself whenever I saw him in our room. I’d often arrive at our dorm to find him meditating on his bed.

“Yes, let’s,” Hendral finally said after several seconds of silence. He reached out and clasped my hand in his.