My own breathing was starting to come heavy and ragged, and I knew I had to press my advantage and finish this quickly. Tossing aside the broken spear haft, I bull-rushed him clumsily to the ground. His face was a gory mess. He tried reaching for a sword that was no longer there before blindly swinging at me, punching at me with his plated gauntlets. His blows scarcely registered across my trunk as we were simply too close, and he was barely able to cause a single point of damage despite his superior Strength.
Nevertheless, his blows still caused me pain, which kept my blood hot and angry. Grappling him with my right, I raised my half-spear in my left like a knife over the remains of his face and used another Power Strike. The spearhead hammered down, punching through teeth and bone in an explosion of crimson.
Suddenly my opponent was still, his blood staining the pearl sands like vermilion ink on fresh snow. A great hush fell across the arena. I recovered my half-spear from Jongshoi’s mangled face. It came out with a sickening sound, the spearhead covered in blood and pink viscera. Just as I did so, a long list of notifications flashed across my mind—my reward for committing hot murder.
As soon as the countdown began, I assigned all of my points into Constitution. Unarmored as I was, I needed to be able to take a hit, and an increased Constitution also granted me greater Stamina, which allowed me to train my other physical attributes. As for my skill points, I needed to focus on the spell that seemed to be my main advantage: Heal. Some people prefer to play their character as a jack-of-all-trades—and the temptation was certainly there—but with pain and potential death as my constant companions, my focus was on survival. I quickly checked the changes to my character sheet, confirming them with an exhausted nod.
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Through all of this an explosion of hushed silence filled the arena, as if a profane and blasphemous word had been uttered in a sacred temple. Then I heard the wailing of a woman somewhere up in the stands, her grief smashing the fragile silence with its anguish.
So piercing was her lament that my eyes were drawn to her, a slender form with gold circlets woven throughout her hair, a counterpoint to the strands’ raven darkness. Even at this distance, I could tell her features were wracked with overwhelming sorrow.
The official who presided over the event was still, like a statue frozen in bronze, his face through his plumed open helm a picture of shock. I surveyed the crowd and found in my questing gaze a group of robed women rattling bone effigies about them like mantles. There amongst them stood Navigator Olai, who stared at me with her sharp gaze, a cold black ocean of daggers.
The men came for me then, sure in their stride, my fate now written in the characters that spelled slave. Bare muscular chests glistened bronze in the afternoon light as they held long man-catcher poles and cruel barbed nets. I offered no resistance, as I had already played my part. As it was in my old world, the powerless were, even in victory, never truly winners.
They led me away. But before I was swallowed up, I noticed that one of Bogurchu’s men, the pockmarked man who had tried to lay hands on me, was staring at me with hate-filled eyes.
