Chapter 85: The Chieftain

Tyr: FYI We are now transitioning to 5 chapters a week. Aka Mon - Wed - Fri - Sat - Sun.

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I should have seen it, really. How long had Sean been away from his normal life? A month? And the whole month, people had been trying to kill him. He had been knocked unconscious multiple times. He had been buried alive, shot, stabbed, cut with mind-energy, and chased by utterly silent monsters through midnight forests.

And now someone he knew had died, his memories had been messed with, and he was waiting for the other shoe to drop on after standing up to the biggest bullies on the block. The stress was building up. But even knowing that, I didn’t really get it.

The idea that the world was ending wasn’t new to anybody but him. We had all grown up knowing that the Earth was on a timer. He hadn’t. For him, that was a new thought, one that he never had time to come to terms with, calm down about, or, hell, even really think through.

You take a guy like that and set him loose in a sandpit full of assholes, he becomes a problem for everyone. The enemies. Himself. The audience. Everybody.

The Big Book of Brett, Page 66

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Before Sean even read the rest of the notification, he dumped the stat points he had picked up from the proving ground, splitting them between his SAV and MAG. With his new ring, the stat buff from his improved armor, and the stats, he was sitting pretty.

Sean Lawrence
Level 38 Human (Prisoner of Time)
EXP: 2,780,600/12,160,000

STR: 20 (34)
DEX: 53 (70)
VIT: 25 (42)
SAV: 65 (79)
MAG: 100 (114)

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Abilities: Shankmaster LV9 (LV13, pending absorption), Adhesives Mastery LV5, Stitch Up LV8, Hard Time LV3, Cellblock Brewmaster LV6

Achievements: E-Raticator, Uncommon De-nominator, Three Spectral Bears, Make-shift Ranger, Forest Dragon-kin, Mini-boss Massacre, High-Proof, Late-Start Long-Shot, Junkyard David, Front-yard Defender, Chaotic Alloy, Tell Me More, A Fighter’s Heart

And, even more, he now understood magic. Sort of. Something about pushing his magic stat over 100 gave him a dim feeling somewhere in the back of his head that something had clicked into place, magically. That he had finally got a foot in the door of the whole magical power thing, pried something more permanently open that he had only had slightly cracked before.

Of course, I won’t know what any of that shit means until I try it out. Still, major threshold crossed on my arcane journey. Not the least cool thing that’s ever happened to me.

Pulling the retrofitted Jellyfish Shield and the Mystereamer out and arming himself against contingencies, he turned to the rest of the notification.

Daily Challenge: The Gladiator Arena One

You of all people, Sean, would have expected this. At some point, you probably wondered if it was just a standard part of the package, if there was an arena just sitting outside that you could visit. There wasn’t. The Apocalypse System held it back.

Now it’s here. The rules are pretty simple. Enemies come in waves, each one harder than the last. Between any wave and the next, you can rest, heal, or even quit if you want to. But the further you get, the better the rewards are.

This is obviously a test of your combat prowess, but it’s also a test of your judgement. The further you go, the more stuff you get, unless you die. Don’t get greedy.

Note that the progression of difficulty is roughly linear but that doesn’t mean it won’t jump wildly between some waves. And, just so you don’t say I didn’t warn you, the first three waves are mandatory.

So draw your sword, gladiator, or whatever thing you made that vaguely resembles one. Hundreds of simulated Romans have gathered to see your triumph or to watch you bleed out. Don’t worry. They aren’t partial to either.

And just like that, the Romans were there, little figures up in the stands. Their cheering roared down on him as he paced, getting a feel for the sand and feeling the fake warmth of the imitation Mediterranean sun on his face.

“Good people!” A voice boomed out, echoing off the sides of the Colosseum and completely masking the direction it originated from. “Are you prepared for battle?”

The audience went insane, screaming as one to indicate that, yes, they very much were ready for battle and would like it to begin as soon as possible.

“Are you ready for blood?”

Once again, the audience indicated they were ready. Eager, even.

“Today we welcome a new competitor, a new potential champion. His name is Sean, but I believe I will call him… SHAWN!”

Sean could hear the dumb spelling of his name. He didn’t know how he could hear it but he knew. He could sense the dumb, unnecessary H, the pretentious W. He now hated the announcer. The audience cheered and he could tell they liked the change somehow. They loved him more. He hated them. He hated them with the roaring heat of a thousand suns.

“So prepare yourselves! Prepare yourselves for violence! The fighting starts…. Now!”

Somewhere, Sean heard big, rusty cranks start turning as heavy ropes began to drag up an even heavier iron gate at the far side of the circle of the arena wall. As the gate reached its highest point, it clanged into position, just before a puff of vapor bellowed out of the dark passage behind it.

Nice touch, that. Perfect, really. Almost. Now all that it needs is the mob. Come on. You have to know I’ve been waiting for it.

And then they came. Out of the tunnel swarmed fifteen little figures, some with bows, some with short knives but all clad in rags. They had green skin, long ears, sharp teeth, and screeched as they skittered across the sand towards him.

Once upon a time, they would have been unthinkably fast. Sean would have been like the world’s worst shark, getting hunted by a school of fish and not being able to differentiate which one was stabbing him where. Now, they were slow. He could see every footstep, understand every gap in their almost non-existent formation. Even the arrows flying towards him might as well have been standing still for all the chance they stood of hitting him.

He stabbed the goblin unlucky enough to be faster than the others through the top of the skull, light glinted out from behind its eyes as a fire-elemental proc cooked its brain. The next, he punted so hard it nearly flew into the audience. In the meantime, he swiped a half-dozen arrows out of the air with his shield, not bothering to slow his pace enough to dodge.

It wasn’t a fight so much as it was a round-up. After the first six or so fell to his dagger, the rest got wise and started trying to evade him rather than keep up the offensive. It barely made a dent in his progress. The biggest difference was that he had to switch to chucking things, first his darts and then the various sharp implements the goblins had dropped on the field.

That’s the goblins. Which means next is… kobolds? Ogres?

It ended up being trolls. Good, old-fashioned trolls. The arena setting was probably an in for a penny, in for a pound sort of thing. Once it established that the premise wasn’t about fighting against other competitors, it only had so many directions to go. Locking into the fantasy world meant tropes Sean had been absorbing his whole life.

And if he knew one thing, it was that trolls meant toughness and regeneration. The two big, mossy, leather-skinned monsters that lumbered out had to be tough, just based on how they looked. Had to be hard to pierce. Had to have cells that took on damage and went to work fixing it at lightning speed. There was no other way it could be.

But just so happened he had weapons that ignored armor and one chaotic elemental damage weapon that was only limited by how often he could stab his targets.

For a tank, these guys would have been bad news. They’d have trouble outpacing the trolls’ regeneration. For a conventional warrior, they’d be tough as well, since the big wooden clubs they were carrying looked more than capable of matching all but the strongest shows of force.

For Sean, who had built his whole strategy on being slippery-fast in unpredictable, high-skill ways, they had about as much chance of hitting him as a semi-truck had of taking down a fighter jet.

He ducked one club, jumped over the other, and then went to town on the backs of their knees, doing his best impression of a sewing machine as he spammed jabs with the Spectral Sticker and Mystereamer dozens of times between every dodge.

By the time the second enemy hit the sand, both trolls were literally smoking from the chaotic mix of elemental energy he had pumped them up with. He stayed as far away from the vapor as he could until the system cleared the corpses, then took a knee as he waited for the third contestant.

If he knew his arena battles, and he thought he did, the next fight would be a good bit harder. Since the system was forcing three battles and the first two were such jokes, the third not being hard would be like the system admitting this whole challenge was essentially a risk-free give-away.

Sure enough, the third competitor was a different kind of thing altogether.

“My friends!” The voice rang out. “You’ve seen the preliminaries! You’ve had a taste of what this competitor can do! What do you think? Let me hear it. How do you like SHAWN?”

The stands had been loud the whole time but now they exploded with cheers so loud they vibrated the sand under Sean’s, now Shawn’s, feet. Deep in his spirit, without even knowing it, he swore revenge on each and every one of the bad-name-loving villains in response.

“Are you ready for a real test? Are you ready for him to face… the chieftain?”

If the screams for Shawn were loud, the response the chieftain got made them look like quiet bedtime whispers. The audience went insane at the mere mention of his name.

“I hear you! I hear you, and I answer. Release the chieftain! My friends, prepare yourselves for blood!”

This time there was no melodramatic smoke. There was just the sound of iron dragging across stone and pounding footsteps as the monster approached. What came out of the tunnel was an orc. And not the goblin-esque, chubby kind with warts that was funny because it was so ugly.

Nope. This is the jacked kind of orc. The one you get if it’s a playable character race choice.

The orc was indeed swole. And he’d have to be buff to use those weapons. His 12-pack wasn’t just for show. They flexed and puffed so their owner could to make good use of the two massive chains shackled to his arms. Each of the chains was barbed with nails and other jagged pieces of metal, entirely lethal looking in a stupid fantasy way that reeked of the system’s meddling.

Any hope he had left of an easy fight evaporated when the first chain whipped out, missing him by a mile but cracking in the air like it was made of the lightest leather. Then, it spun around on its own momentum for another strike. This thing had a 20 foot lethal range extending centered on its own arms and appeared to know how to use them.