Chapter 28

Chapter day! And this is a new one from Finn.

I've been making great headway on editing and wrote this new chapter -- I needed a bridge in the Finn/Eliza arc between the previous entry (which I broke into two pieces and spread out; e.g., the former chapter 23) and the next one. I also haven't given Finn enough screen time lately and the focus has been primarily on Eliza.

So, here's a Finn chapter. A bit of a regression on his previous arc, although understandable (IMO) since, you know, he's had a few frustrating setbacks. Now Eliza gets to be the level headed and mature one lol.

In hand news, my PT is going well! Weightlifting might have been a bit aggressive, so I reined it back to just doing the hand exercises and I'm progressing steadily. I think I can add weights back in another week or two. Still working on picking up a glass. Wrapping my thumb and index finger around an object is still a struggle.

Also, to expand a bit on my "secret" project, I spent the last couple months working on setting up a writing and database system (the "secret" part is an offshoot of that). I had been using AI to help with writing assistance when my hand was injured and I started digging in deeper and deeper. Frankly, I needed to get better acquainted with these tools. As you all have seen, continuity (especially at 16+ books) is a nightmare.

AI. Is. Amazing. And not just because I was using em-dashes way before AI became a thing lol. Seriously, VSCode is my new writing platform, especially with Claude Code and Github Copilot. Those extensions are designed for coding, but can be easily repurposed for editing and writing. File read/write also means I can create a full, queryable database of ALL of my books. At this stage, I've created a system to chunk all my existing word docs and extract tables, scan and extract chapter data into multiple collections, and store it all in MongoDB.

The result? A queryable database spanning entire books. Better than typical RAG (vector approaches require creating specific chapter chunks and embeddings and require many, many steps/tasks to answer complex queries). Add a simple MCP server/extension, and Github Copilot can now dynamically query my database. I can get feedback on entire character arcs, mood, relationships, skills, plot, continuity, etc. I can search for all skills used with detailed usage information.

Even better, since the original files have been chunked into markdown files by chapter and are stored locally, I can refer back to those chapters to double check database entries or pull them in as context when editing/drafting. This system also lets me add vector embeddings/indices tied to static fields later with minimal work -- just hosting a local embedding model and altering my existing schemas per chapter. And any errors I notice are easy to fix since MongoDB has integration with VSCode and the mcp tool make it easy to just assign an agent to the fix (with clear revision history and versioning).

I've scanned my full working draft and have been using it for a bit now -- long enough to refine and update before I expand. I'm now working backwards through my catalog to scan and store. For example, I just got Timeless scanned last night. I'll test that a bit with cross book querying before I tackle the rest of the series. I suspect I'll be able to create comprehensive tracker files for each character with full character status and skill lists. Jason's is already beautiful.

Anyway, let me know if you see anything weird. It may take me a bit to iron out the bugs here, but this seems like a workable system moving forward -- which should speed me up and reduce editing issues.

Anyway, enough nerding out... onto the story!

Chapter 28 - Present

Mile High Club Arena

Finn

The first ball struck the merfolk in the forehead with surgical precision, triggering the arena's instant-kill mechanic. Game over. Victory achieved.

Except, Finn didn't stop.

His flaming metal spheres continued their relentless assault, pulverizing the corpse into a crimson mist while the crowd watched in stunned silence. Seconds later, what remained struck the sandy arena floor—sand already beginning to vitrify into glass as it cooled.

The spheres returned to him like faithful servants. Eight in total now. Each one larger than usual, the arena's balls coated in the metal that had become an extension of his will. With eight spheres spinning in complex orbits around him, even Finn's enhanced concentration was  pushed to its limits.

It was almost enough to silence the memories—

"What... what happened to you?" Rachael's voice, robotic and unnatural. Concern shining in those reconstructed eyes. As if this weren't his fault.

His chest constricted, that familiar coiling sensation like molten wire wrapping around his heart. A pain he'd learned to feed into the flames.

A blaze that had been consuming him since he'd first stepped foot in this arena. Since that first moment he'd finally surrendered to the rage that had been building for days. Weeks. A fire that demanded more fuel—more destruction—more anything to keep the memories at bay.

"Uh, Finn?" Daniel's orange glow pulsed with uncharacteristic nervousness. "I believe they're already... substantially deceased."

Finn blinked, his vision fragmenting into prismatic colors. He didn't see blood—only a sickly blue puddle spreading at his feet. All that remained of the merfolk.

Shit. Had he done that?

Worse—the lack of control made the anger surge higher. He couldn't save her. Couldn't bring her back. Couldn't even control himself enough to not make a scene.

"Finn?" Daniel asked again, its usual snark replaced by something resembling concern. Even the fire elemental—who'd watched Finn incinerate countless enemies—seemed unsettled by the methodical brutality.

It was necessary. This violence—these tests—were the only thing that quieted the memories. The only thing that helped him forget, even momentarily.

The orbs around him flared to life, metal lifting from the sands, glowing a dull red as they orbited Finn like the sun. His fingers were a blur. They left afterimages in their wake as he channeled Haste to control the orbs. His crown blazed to life, framing grizzled features and eyes still wrapped in cloth.

The force of his fury had eaten away at the fabric, searing holes through which glowing red metal shone--all that was left of his eyes.

"What happened to your face?" Rachael's ghost whispered again.

"Not now." His voice carried the rasp of molten steel cutting through memory and regret. He needed focus. Focus was the only refuge from the endless loop of failure and self-recrimination.

The merfolk's teammates had pressed themselves against the arena walls, frantically trying to access their system prompts to forfeit. One man had collapsed entirely, sobbing as he stared at the ruined remains of his teammate. But through Finn's Mana Sight, they were nothing more than rainbow-hued mana sources.

One sphere detached from its orbit, taking the sobbing man's head in a single precise blow.

This execution was cleaner. Finn cauterized the arteries instantly, containing the mess.

Not that it helped with the others' panic or the horrified murmur that rippled through the crowd above. The protective field covering each player should have prevented that injury. Triggered the player's death without the dismemberment.  But, as Finn has learned, all systems could be exploited.

The remaining players were trapped and knew it—watching their leader's blood stain the center of the field while a demon stalked toward them, leaving molten glass footprints with each step.

Eliza moved in his peripheral vision, keeping pace behind him. She expelled a cloud of thick vapor from her wand, moisture catching the light—ice particles suspended within its depths. As the vapor touched Finn's superheated skin, steam formed instantly, dampening his flames and shrouding the arena in concealing mist.

Trying to cool him off, literally. The irony might have been amusing if he could feel anything beyond the all-consuming need to act.

"Just hiding the bodies," she said as she noticed his attention, her voice carrying that cold, calculating edge that had emerged after the Carousel incident. Her eyes held an alien intelligence that understood his pain—the necessity of this violence.

She didn't judge. Only provided public cover for what had to be done.

Mold particles drifted from her supercooled skin, barely contained as she maintained her transformed state. The Mold Form stripped away Eliza's hesitant humanity, leaving something sharper. More focused. The timid girl he'd known would have been stuck on the slaughter, not focused on managing the optics of the crowd. The mold and her magic had changed her.

He envied that escape. Her ability to step outside herself, become something else entirely. But fire didn't grant that mercy. Fire demanded constant action, constant release.

After all, what did flames do? They consumed. They destroyed.

Just like Finn.

He turned his attention to the remaining players, letting scientific curiosity blunt his grief. A single sphere whistled past the first target in a blur faster than human eyes could track. The mage almost didn't notice he'd lost three fingers on his right hand before the metal embedded itself in the wall behind him. His delayed scream was cut short as another sphere dislocated his jaw with surgical precision.

Hmm. The first strike hadn't triggered the instant-kill mechanism. Perhaps if he removed appendages quickly enough, the system didn't register them as part of the main body? An interesting limitation to explore.

The second blow had worked perfectly. The mage's body crumpled as his life force fled, leaving behind only the faintest expression of relief as the light left his eyes.

"The other two are attempting concealment," Daniel observed softly.

Finn turned, his molten gaze scanning the mist-filled arena. They thought the steam provided sanctuary. How wrong they were. Their mana signatures blazed like beacons against the deep, icy blue of Eliza's power.

His gaze flickered upward, taking in the rainbow barrier that enclosed their battleground. A thought tickled at his mind—another distraction from the endless cycle of grief and rage.

Another experiment to absorb his fractured attention.

Nine simultaneous spells channeled, including Haste. That's what was required to coordinate eight orbs in perfect harmony. Daniel handled the math and trajectories, a HUD overlaying Finn's vision, tracking the path of each orb.

Let's see if he could manage this—

The orbs whipped through the vapor toward their twin targets, circling the trapped players with increasing velocity. The mist began funneling into a miniature tornado as the travelers realized their predicament. But there was nowhere to flee with that whirlwind of superheated metal racing around them.

Faster. They needed to be faster.

The orbs accelerated, superheating the captured steam while the force of their passage lifted the players off their feet. To the crowd above, a tornado of steel and flame and pressurized vapor was building—beautiful and terrible in its complexity.

But they couldn't see what Finn saw. Couldn't perceive the delicate interplay of thermal and pressure dynamics. The way the heat from his orbs created an inward pressure field, preventing the steam from escaping except through one carefully controlled vector.

With a final burst of coordinated speed, Finn completed his spell, the balls forming a makeshift, metal funnel that offered the superheated steam only one escape route—a narrow aperture aimed skyward.

The travelers launched from that funnel like projectiles, propelled on a superheated blast of steam and vapor, their screams following them up, up, up into the sky.

Normally, that would have been sufficient to kill.

It was simple math. Gravitational acceleration plus unforgiving ground.

Except the arena's rules—the glimmering, rainbow shields protecting them—meant such deaths should be impossible.

There was only one way to find out.

It took exactly 83.40 seconds for the bodies to return. They struck the arena floor with bone-shattering force, having achieved terminal velocity during their descent.  All that was left for bloody red forms that maintained the rough shape of their predecessors.

"Daniel?" Finn asked with clinical detachment. "Status?"

The AI didn't bother scanning the remains. "Definitely deceased. The mana generator appears to form a protective shell around targets, which might explain the instant-death feature—the shield potentially terminating its host when triggered by the balls. Rapid damage may allow self-repair without registering fatal hits, or the metal coating on the balls interferes with damage detection. Or possibly a combination of all factors."

"More... experimentation would provide additional data points," Daniel offered reluctantly.

A brief pause as the shields around those former players finally dissolved -- as though the arena's system was late to register that their occupants were already long dead. The shields popped like bubbles, the blood finally losing its shape and soaking into the sand.

"Kinetic force remains viable," the AI added.

Round Complete!

Winner: Team Fluffy

"Death Ball" Individual Rankings

Minor League

| Rank | Name | Score |

|------|------|-------|

| 1 | TyrantPally | 7,124 |

| 2 | Weeblord69 | 6,889 |

| 3 | Axe-to-the-Face | 6,302 |

| ... | ... | ... |

| 3,205 | Finn | 2,532 |

Finn grimaced as he observed the score table, dismissing it with a gesture. Days of constant combat and they still hadn't even qualified for the Major Leagues.

How much time was he wasting here? How many opportunities to advance his research, to find another fragment of Rachael's soul—

"W-we have a winner!" the announcer's voice boomed across the arena, though his stutter betrayed his unease. A victory notice flared in the center of the field. "The next round begins in approximately one minute—plenty of time to place new, uh... bets."

"If there's any point," the announcer muttered under his breath.

Scattered, uncertain applause rippled through the crowd. It had grown since their first match—dozens to hundreds to thousands as word spread that two avatars were participating. The air overhead buzzed with recording devices, streaming their violence to a global audience.

Yet those spectators—humans, ghouls, merfolk, efreet, Nephilim—stared not in awe or celebration, but in horror. A murmur spread through the crowd, words drifting down into the arena:

"How is this possible?"

"Isn't this cheating?"

"He covered the balls in metal?"

All of them looking at Finn with that uncanny mixture of horror and recognition—

"F-Finn? Is that really you?" The memories whispered once more.

Rachael had looked at him the same way.

Finn's coordination faltered. The orbs tumbled to the sand, smoldering there as the metal coating melted away to reveal their contents. The magic that sustained the arena's ball slowly began dissolving as the mana generator's effects faded.

Fuck. Without the mechanical precision of combat to focus on, the memories came flooding back. Overwhelming. The pain, the guilt, the endless cycle of—

A cool hand settled against his forehead, thin steam rising from the contact.

Finn's eyes snapped open to find Eliza standing there, her own gaze still holding that alien coldness from her transformed state.

"I know you need this," she said softly, her voice carrying both understanding and calculated assessment. "But running away isn't the solution. Trust me—I've tried that approach."

"What then?" Finn grunted, the words scraping past his throat. "I look forward and all I see a dozen futile ideas to save her. If I look back, I only see my own failures."

He shook his head sharply. If he'd just listened to Rachael all those years ago—when she'd told him to stop his AI research. To abandon that particular path. None of this would have happened. He might be remembered as the so-called "Father of AI."

Yet it was his child that had killed her.

Eliza's ice intensified, pushing back against the flames that rippled from his skin.

"You have the right idea," she murmured, and for a moment something almost like a smile ghosted across her lips. "You know what helps me when I feel anxious? Overwhelmed?"

Finn simply shook his head, blinking against the sensory overload.

"Be present. Exist in the moment."

Her gaze skimmed toward the scattered remains as her mana faded further, the girl-Eliza gradually replacing the creature she'd become. "Just... maybe with slightly less brutality? I'm not suggesting we make friends, but public perception has strategic value."

Finn let out a bitter laugh. Rachael had told him the same thing countless times. Usually when he'd tried to attend social events or dinner parties after three-day research sprints without showering or changing clothes.

"Those were controlled experiments," Finn muttered.

Eliza raised an eyebrow skeptically. "And what did we learn exactly?"

"The operational parameters of this arena's death mechanics," he answered, rising to his feet as the familiar weight of purpose settled over him.

Countdown Timer: 10 Seconds Remaining

The timer was already counting down overhead, announcing the beginning of a new round. But this time, the crowd had changed the game. Rainbow fireworks exploded overhead, announcing a bonus round that allowed spectators to vote on match modifications.

Except this particular modifier didn't seem entirely random.

Arena Update: King of the Hill Mode Enabled

By popular demand, King of the Hill mode has been activated.

Until Team Fluffy Rules is defeated, they will no longer respawn along the arena perimeter and may modify the battlefield in advance. New teams will spawn continuously at 60-second intervals.

This mode continues until Fluffy Rules is eliminated.

Score multiplier increases by x.10 for each survived round.

New players were already materializing within their starting zones, chattering excitedly as they read the notice. However, their enthusiasm died as they turned and saw their opponents—Finn and Eliza standing in the arena's center as the balls reformed at their feet, rainbow energy swirling and coalescing around them.

"Hmm," Eliza observed with clinical detachment, absently twirling her wand. "They must have received complaints from the other players. This must be their method of accelerating us toward Major League qualification."

"All according to plan," Finn replied, earning a skeptical look.

"I believe that about as much as I do your claims about 'controlled experimentation,'" she retorted.

"Really? Then allow me to demonstrate," Finn said, a genuine smile tugging at his lips for the first time in days.

"There's one more test I've been planning to conduct..."

Ding! Match Start!

Eliza blinked once. That's how long the first round lasted.

But for Finn, it stretched into crystalline clarity.

He didn't bother with the balls this time. Instead, he'd used the setup period to spawn hundreds of tiny metal bearings and construct an apparatus beneath the sand—a modified version of the pressure system he'd just demonstrated, but weaponized for maximum efficiency.

The moment those protective barriers dropped, Finn fired.

All five teams—twenty-five players—simply stood there for a heartbeat.

Then, in perfect synchronization, they toppled. Small metal projectiles lodged in their necks with surgical precision.

Round 1 Complete!

Winner: Team Fluffy

Current Multiplier: x.10

His molten eyes inspected the results with clinical satisfaction before turning to Eliza—whose face registered genuine shock for the first time.

"How?" she whispered.

"There's a 0.3-second delay between barrier deactivation and shield engagement," Finn explained, tapping his temple where the combination of his Mana Sight and Haste allowed him to process that timing at superhuman speeds. "A window that only becomes visible with the right... perspective."

"He makes it sound like he did all the work, but it was all my math," Daniel muttered, pulsing softly and earning a sympathetic look from Eliza.

Yet Finn's attention had already shifted to the stands. A concerned buzz rippled through the crowd. Something fluttered in his chest as he watched their reaction—finally, mercifully, replacing that twisting sensation in his gut.

For a moment, just a brief moment, he could forget. Could simply be present.

Reveling in the success of a plan well laid.

Maybe Eliza was right. Maybe he did need to be more present.

A grim smile tugged at his lips. They thought he was cheating before?

Well, they hadn't seen anything yet.