The moment the robotic words ended, the gate finally began to open. Outside, silence reigned with the specific quality of a place that hadn't yet decided what to be — not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of anticipation. The only thing gaining space was the light, filling the dark gaps and giving me a more complete panorama of what lay beyond.
"Why is it empty?"
The arena opening before me would make the Colosseum look like a toy — and it was completely deserted. No spectators, no noise, nothing that communicated interest in what was about to happen. The stands were enormous structures that the absence of people made more imposing, not less — as though the space had been built for a scale that hadn't arrived yet.
"Honestly, the stronger ones are probably at the main event." — Morgana said, with the tone of someone who had been in enough places to recognize when a place was operating below the capacity it had been designed for. — "Most likely we'll go unnoticed until round six or seven, which is when the fights normally converge and we'll encounter the fighters from the main event."
Welcome news. With nobody watching or analyzing my powers, I could hold my cards longer — the sooner someone identified what I really had, the sooner they would start making decisions based on that. And the organizers, as far as Morgana knew, didn't have direct control over the Colosseum, but could certainly add influences that made the arena harder for those who seemed more promising. It was exactly the kind of attention I didn't want to attract.
As we exited, the gate closed again trapping us in the arena with the dry sound of heavy wood meeting heavy wood.
"Wait — there are other fighters."
While I observed the empty stands, I noticed that just like me, other races had emerged from the gates — each gate revealing something different, like boxes containing distinct worlds that had been opened simultaneously without concern for the coherence of the whole. Most I didn't recognize — very likely ranked as low as humans, seeking glory for exactly the same reason I was there, with the specific mixture of ambition and desperation that made the arena attractive for those who had no other ways to advance.
But among them were some familiar ones.
"Even the Orghaal are interested in this event."
The Orghaal were extremely strong and tall humanoids, whose most significant characteristic was their additional arms — the more pairs of arms, the more "pure" according to their own culture, which treated the quantity of limbs as a mark of nobility and genetic purity. It was the kind of culture that had chosen an arbitrary criterion and built an entire hierarchy around it, which said something about the race and something even more interesting about how races construct identity. I counted four arms on that specific one, which indicated low rank — weak compared to their race, but still a race that rarely fell outside the top twenty of the general rankings.
"They're a warrior race." — Morgana said, with the knowledge of someone who had accumulated information not through study, but through presence. — "They participate in this type of event more often than you might imagine. I wouldn't be surprised if there were others at the main event."
Before I could respond, another concern arrived.
"Wait — are we going to fight in the same arena as them?"
The proximity of something I knew to be significantly stronger than me, even in a lesser version of its own race, was a variable I hadn't calculated when I had analyzed the arena from the outside. Inside, the geometry changed.
"Don't be nervous, Lord. The fights happen simultaneously, but there is containment so there's no interference between competitors."
Morgana had been in the arena before — and there were things the Codex didn't explain about the possibilities the Colosseum offered in terms of missions, even the most common ones. There were things that could only be learned by being there, with the body present and the eyes open to what the text hadn't been able to communicate.
"Will we fight together?"
"Yes and no. There's some kind of access restriction between competitors — we'll be trapped in an invisible dome where only our enemies will have access. Actually I believe it's a way of running all the fights at the same time — each pair or group in its own bubble, each bubble containing only what belongs to that fight."
"That's a relief."
My concern upon noticing other competitors entering through the gates was that — beyond the creatures — I would still have to monitor the other races around me. Not because I believed they would be specifically interested in me — Griffins were rare, but the prize for the final fighters was of another category. Eliminating competitors was a way of facilitating advancement, yes, with the Infernals' logic that rarely would anyone be capable of reaching the end. The most likely scenario was to survive and wait for the competitors to die before things got too difficult.
"Can other humans participate, or is there a race restriction?"
"Anyone can. Although I've rarely seen humans participating in this type of event." — she paused. — "Until today."
Before I could learn more about the arena, a strange music of complex notes began to play — not loud enough to hurt, but loud enough to ensure everyone in the arena heard it. It was the kind of music that hadn't been composed to be pleasant but to be heard, that fulfilled a function of presence before fulfilling any aesthetic function. Then, a beat that sounded like a microphone — the familiar sound and at the same time completely out of place.
"Ladies, gentlemen and things — welcome to the 423rd glory fighting event. In this cycle, we once again summon all races of the Oasis to demonstrate their superiority. A CHEER FOR US—"
What followed wasn't sound.
It was pressure. It was frequency. It was something that had been produced by a vocal structure that hadn't been created to communicate, but to destroy — and which had merely calibrated the intensity to sufficient rather than maximum, with the specific restraint of something that holds back not because it can't do more but because it decides not to. My ears bled before I finished processing that they were bleeding — the sequence inverted, the damage arriving before the warning. Morgana's magic followed — fast, precise, with the urgency of someone who had seen this happen before and had learned that the response window was narrow enough not to allow hesitation.
When the ringing diminished enough for me to hear again, Morgana was already explaining with the efficiency of someone who needed me to understand quickly.
"They always do this. The Infernals enjoy participating — and the Oasis doesn't prohibit this kind of interference."
It was the organizers' logic applied to the environment — they could be part of the spectacle while producing it, and the Oasis had decided that wasn't cheating but character of the event. The Infernals had, among countless advantages, a hypersonic vocal cord capable of stunning enemies with what would be, for them, a normal conversational tone. For a human without protection, it was a sentence before the confrontation even began.
"Thank you." — I said, with whatever calm was available after having ears that had bled. — "I ask that you keep your magic active on me while I fight."
It wasn't paranoia. It was calculation — if they could do it once, they could do it again, and I needed functional ears primarily to locate creatures I hadn't yet seen. Losing a sense in the arena wasn't an inconvenience, it was a disadvantage that cascaded into everything else.
While I was still processing, the doors around the arena we had entered began to open again — with the deliberation of someone who knew that what was on the other side would need a second to be absorbed before it was too late to absorb anything.
✦
The three suns were directly overhead. I could tell from the colors — aside from the orange that matched the earth there was a white and an intense red, each contributing differently to the total luminosity, the combination creating a brightness that didn't come from one direction but from all at once.
Forty degrees, perhaps more — the kind of heat that doesn't just warm but presses, that makes the air heavier than it should be and makes every movement cost slightly more than it would under normal conditions. Not incapacitating. Just costly, and in the accumulation of a long fight costly became relevant.
The creature I was supposed to face hadn't appeared yet.
I knew the reason — Shadow Rats didn't arrive, they emerged. There was a difference between the two things: arriving was movement toward a point, emerging was the elimination of the space between two points without the intermediate process.
"Our first enemy is the Shadow Rat. Stay as close to me as possible."
From the corner of my eye I could see other pairs spread across the arena — creatures so distinct from each other they seemed to have come from different universes, each with the specific body language of something that had been built for one environment and had arrived in another. The movements of a race that lived in high gravity were different from those of one that lived in a dense atmosphere, which were different from those of one that had evolved in an underground environment. I ignored them. My objective was clear and had a name.
"Lord. I sense the presence of five enemies."
Five. I had expected between three and six based on what I knew about the species — the group had landed in the middle of the expected range, which was neutral information. The problem wasn't the number. It was where they were.
"Yes. I noticed."
The creatures' bloodlust arrived before they did — hunger and rage intertwined into something that was almost palpable, the kind of presence that hunting animals communicate before attacking, except these weren't hunting animals in the sense I knew. They were prey that had learned to hunt, that had reversed the original position and had become more efficient in the process.
"They're coming."
The first emerged from the ground without warning — not from under the sand, but as though the ground had decided there was something more interesting than being ground and had released what was inside. It leaped directly toward my neck with the speed of something that had practiced that specific movement many times, that had calibrated the angle and force until the movement no longer needed thought.
It had the appearance of a large rat but with larger and sharper claws and teeth — still with the physical resistance of a common rat, which meant that when the sword cut it in half, there was no surprise or extraordinary resistance. A level E creature had a resistance ceiling that the bronze sword reached without effort.
The problem was the other four.
Two leaped simultaneously at both flanks with the coordination of something that had practiced the group attack — not as conscious strategy, but as instinct shaped by generations of cooperative hunting. I put the shield up to stop one while the sword cut the second — but the Shadow Rat had a flexibility I had underestimated on paper. The one the shield had blocked simply scaled the surface as though the metal were terrain, climbed up my arm with claws finding purchase in every irregularity, and advanced toward my neck with the agility of something that had learned that obstacles were merely route changes.
An arrow passed through its head no more than five centimeters from my face.
"Get down."
Morgana didn't wait for an explanation — she had identified the angle before I asked and had acted before I processed the request. I threw the sword which passed over where her head was, the metal cutting the air with the specific sound of a heavy object in fast motion, passing through the fourth one coming up behind Morgana while she was still occupied protecting me. The impact killed it even without the blade hitting the right angle — there was something satisfying in discovering that physics resolved what technique didn't need to.
But I was without the sword, with one enemy still alive.
I dropped the shield.
The last one leaped on my back with the timing of something that had been waiting for the opening — it had been monitoring the combat, had calculated when I would be vulnerable, had acted at the moment I had created by discarding the shield. I grabbed it before the teeth reached my neck — feeling the claws pass through my palms with the specific pain of a wound that wasn't serious but communicated that it was happening, that demanded attention I couldn't give right now. I held. The teeth tried to reach anything they could reach — ear, neck, shoulder — with the persistence of something that had discovered that persistence overcame strength in most confrontations. I held tighter.
I needed two seconds.
The arrow passed through the creature's face centimeters from mine — with the precision that only exists when you've practiced enough for the hand to do the calculation without needing the head.
[ Ding. Ding. Unknown Quadrant — Arena 7523 was the last to win, no casualties. ]
I looked around.
Most of the other pairs had already finished. The vast majority much earlier than me — some by a margin that made the difference hard to ignore as irrelevant data.
"Are we really that weak?"
The question came out before I decided to ask it — the kind that exists before being formulated, that is more sensation than thought.
I knew I could have summoned Zaetar. I had chosen not to — I wanted to challenge myself, wanted to know what I could do without the shortcut, wanted the fight to be information about where I was without my offensive abilities. But seeing the scale of difference between what I had done and what the other races had done was data that needed to be processed, not ignored.
"Don't worry, Lord." — Morgana said, with the precision of someone who had identified the real question behind the question asked. — "Most races have intrinsic powers or very unusual physiques. And you didn't use any of your powers."
She was right. That was the relevant data — I had won with sword, shield and arrows, without summoning, without healing, without blood magic. The other races had used what they were. I had chosen to use only what I had trained.
And even not being anywhere near the first to finish, there were still some who would never have that luxury. At least two domes to my right, two bodies lay fallen while being torn apart — the rats preferred the soft parts of their enemies, focusing on eyes, tongues and ears before eating their enemies from the inside through holes in their stomachs. Reading and seeing were completely different things. One thing was to die — another was to be violated that way, the body being consumed while there was still enough consciousness to register what was happening.
Before the next fight began, the dome started catching fire — the flames appearing from within, without a visible source, with the speed of fire that had been prepared and not accidental. The screams of the rats filled the environment while others around watched the scene with the varied expressions of races that had different relationships with death and with the form it took. After a few seconds the noise ceased, and when the fire ended there was nothing left — no blood, no body, no clothing, no life. Everything destroyed, everything removed, the space returned to its previous state as though nothing had happened there.
"The Infernals love fire in a way I don't know how to understand."
I slapped myself in the face — the dry sound attracting glances from those nearest before they returned to what interested them.
"Focus."
I was losing myself in what was happening around me — in the spectacle the Infernals had designed for me to lose myself in, for my attention to go to the other domes and not to what was inside mine. I needed to seriously face the fact that death was one enemy away, and losing focus on what happened to my body after dying didn't matter. In the end I would be dead, and dead didn't need to worry about what came after.
The creature's voice filled the environment again.
[ Level 1 complete. Prepare for the next level. ]
✦
I picked up the shield and sword. I moved close to Morgana, positioning myself beside her own shadow — deliberately, without explaining why. It was the kind of positioning that could appear accidental or could appear deliberate, and I preferred it to appear accidental to anyone watching.
"Can you sense the enemy?"
"Nothing. I believe they haven't—"
Before she finished, I drove the sword into the right flank of her own shadow.
Morgana didn't move. Didn't flinch. Stayed absolutely still with the specific confidence of something that had processed the action and arrived at the conclusion that if I had done it, there was a reason — and that questioning would come after, not during. It was the trust built not with words but with track record, with the months of decisions that had cost something but had reached a result, with the memory that he had always been right when it seemed he wasn't.
A scream came from inside the shadow — brief, cut off in the middle like a sound that had begun and found the end before finishing. Then nothing.
[ Ding. Ding. Unknown Quadrant — Arena 7523 was the first to win, no casualties. ]
Morgana looked at the ground. Then at me — with the expression of someone who had been used as involuntary bait and was processing both facts simultaneously.
"How?"
"The sun is directly overhead." — I said, with the calm of someone who had reached the conclusion before entering the dome and had merely waited for confirmation. — "And yet you had a shadow."
She was silent for a second — the specific second of someone verifying whether the logic they just received is the logic that was missing, and finding that yes.
"Shaggy Shadow."
Exactly. The scroll had placed the Shaggy Shadow before the Walking Fungus — inverting the expected order, placing the most psychologically disturbing before the most physically dangerous, specifically to confuse those who had calculated the sequence based on logical level escalation. It was the kind of detail that killed those who depended on a fixed plan, who had arrived at the arena with the sequence memorized and had assumed the sequence would be respected.
"Cunning sons of bitches."
The event was theirs — they could structure it however they saw fit, and they understood that surprise was part of the spectacle. I didn't care about the intent. The result had worked in my favor because I had arrived without assuming order.
Knowing the opponents in advance was already the greatest advantage they could give me, regardless of the order they appeared in.
Being the first to win, I was able to observe the other competitors with the calm of someone who had finished and had time before the next began. It was free information — each fight completed by others was data about how they operated, where they had gaps, what they prioritized when under pressure.
Most seemed within expectations — clear characteristics, readable powers, predictable behaviors in ways that made each combat a direct expression of what the race had been built to do. But what caught my attention most was the Orghaal. Even being the strongest of those present in raw terms — the musculature of the four arms working in coordination that no biped could replicate, the bone structure communicating resistance I had calculated as impressive even in the low rank version — it had come out of the battle with the Shaggy Shadow wounded and depending on its hero not to die.
Being stupid killed more than being weak in the Oasis — and even being a colossus of strength and resilience, intelligence was the main reason that race could never maintain its position at the higher levels long enough for the position to be considered permanent. Thinking purely in terms of strength, I believed the Orghaal were stronger than the Birmans. But strength without direction was waste — the same amount of energy, applied without strategy, produced less result than half applied with it.
Its luck lay in the hero. Despite being only a gate, it had managed to summon a Mossara — a creature resembling a fairy of a few centimeters in height, considered a rare and strong summoning despite its size due to the kind of strength that didn't depend on physical scale. Most of the race used life magic, not death magic, which complicated direct combat — not from lack of power, but from incompatibility of application. But among them some stood out for high intellect, and this one seemed to be one of them — there was something in the way it observed the environment, in the speed with which it had responded to the Shaggy Shadow's attack, that communicated above-average processing. It was probably the real reason that Orghaal had agreed to enter the arena. It had calculated that the Mossara would compensate for its deficiency. In that at least, it had been intelligent enough to compensate for the lack of intelligence in another area.
My attention returned to the gate again — because my next enemy had appeared, this time without using artifice, without the sudden emergence the Shadow Rats had preferred. The Walking Fungus appeared slowly, with the slowness of something that hadn't been built for hurry and hadn't learned to pretend it needed hurry. It moved with the certainty of something that had discovered that speed was a less important variable than the venom it carried — and had stopped worrying about arriving fast because reaching wasn't what killed.
I didn't approach. I left it to Morgana — who killed it after two arrows, one in each eye, with the precision of someone who had calculated the angle before shooting and had executed without the margin of adjustment that hurry would create. It was a creature difficult to defeat without a precise archer — something Morgana could provide without issue, transforming what should have been a challenge into a marksmanship exercise.
[ Ding. Ding. Unknown Quadrant — Arena 7523 was the first to win, no casualties. Prepare for the last battle of the day. ]
I observed the surroundings while waiting — with the attention of someone who knew that observing was using the time correctly.
The Walking Fungus had caused havoc. Races I had calculated to be stronger than me in direct combat had succumbed to the fungus, and the reason was simple: a single direct attack was enough for the spores to immobilize the enemy. The creature's feeding resembled that of spiders — with enemies immobilized, it sucked the blood while the body visibly shriveled. It was sinister in a way that reading didn't fully communicate — it was still possible to see the scream of victims who couldn't open their mouths, screaming inward, trapped in their own bodies while being devoured alive. The body present but the capacity for action removed, the horror being the distance between the two.
"What a tragic way to die."
As I had imagined, the Fungus would be challenging for anyone who couldn't fight at distance and who wasn't capable of killing the creature quickly — the woody body but extremely hard resisted cutting and impact the same way wood resisted: not breaking, but absorbing. Having Morgana hitting the eyes and neutralizing before the spores could reach had ended the fight before the risk became real. The Mossara had saved its Lord in a similar way — using a light arrow magic whose origin I didn't know, but which with a single shot had been enough to neutralize the enemy. Two different methods arriving at the same result by the same path: eliminate before being eliminated.
Now only one enemy remained, unfortunately also the most difficult.