Continent: Blue River Continent
Aethelgard Megacity
Below Floors District.
Location: Combat Pit IV.
The journey from the marble arches of the Academy to the industrial rot of the Lower City took less than an hour. It felt like traveling to a different dimension.
This was the Below Floors, a sprawling subterranean combat network carved into the ancient sewer systems.
David Silver adjusted the hood of his tattered grey cloak. He looked like just another desperate soul looking to sell his life for a handful of copper. That was exactly the point!
"System," David whispered, his breath hitching as he stepped past a group of scarred mercenaries. "Initialize Void-Shimmer. If anyone sees my face, I am dead before I can even cast a spark."
[Void-Shimmer Activated.]
[Mana Output: 1 point per hour sustained.]
[Visual status: Your face is now a blurred smudge of shadow. You look like a very depressed ghost.]
"Thanks for the fashion critique," David muttered. He pushed through a set of heavy iron doors.
The noise hit him like a physical blow! A circular arena, sixty feet wide and sunken into the stone floor, was surrounded by hundreds of screaming spectators. They were betting and fighting in equal measure. In the center of the pit, a Tier 2 Fire Mage was currently being beaten into a pulp by a man who looked like he was made of spare parts.
David navigated the crowd toward a raised platform draped in crimson silk. Sitting there with a long silver pipe in her hand was a woman who radiated more danger than a bag of vipers. This was Madame Joyce, the queen of the pits.
Even if one were to ignore the danger she radiated, every man in the crowd was paying attention to her for two simple reasons, Boobs!
They were not just the ordinary ones, they were the heavy ones. Even she could not carry them all by herself and had to rest them on the railing of the platform she was sitting behind to relieve herself. Joyce wasn’t pretty and her beauty could be rated 4/10, but the racks she was carrying instantly elevated her from an ordinary 4 to a 20!
"You’re new," Joyce said without looking at him. Her eyes remained fixed on the carnage below. "And you’re hiding. We don’t get many shimmers in the Tier 1 bracket. Usually, the kids who come down here are too proud of their noble chins to cover them up."
"I am not here for fame," David said, deepening his voice to a gravelly rasp. "I am here for the prize money. I need to fight."
Joyce finally turned her head. Her eyes were a piercing, unnatural violet. She inhaled a cloud of sweet smoke and blew it directly into David’s blurred face. "You have no presence. No aura. You smell like a library and stale bread. My crowd wants meat, little ghost. They want to see bone break. What do you call yourself?"
"The Wraith," David replied.
Joyce let out a sharp, jagged laugh. "Creative! Fine, Wraith. You want a purse? You fight Grog. If you survive three minutes, I will pay you. If you win, I will give you a seat at the main table. But fair warning: Grog has not eaten anything but gravel and spite all day."
She gestured toward the pit. The previous fight had ended and the Fire Mage was being dragged out by his ankles.
[Ding! Quest Detected: Survival of the Shadiest.]
[Objective: Defeat Grog the Mangler.]
[Reward: 500 Gold Sovereigns and 100 Proficiency Points.]
David descended the stone steps into the arena. The sand beneath his boots was cold and damp. From the opposite tunnel, a massive shadow emerged. Grog the Mangler was nearly seven feet of corded muscle and scarred flesh. He was a Tier 3 Earth Warrior and his skin was already shimmering with a dull, stony grey tint. This was the signature Stone-Skin technique of his class!
"Fresh meat!" Grog roared, slamming his massive fists together. The impact sounded like two boulders colliding. "I am going to peel you out of that cloak like an orange, little ghost!"
The crowd roared! The betting odds for The Wraith were currently sitting at a pathetic 50 to 1. David saw a group of merchants laughing as they dumped bags of coin onto Grog’s side of the ledger.
"System," David thought, his palms sweating inside his sleeves. "I am a Tier 1 Novice. He is a Tier 3 Earth Warrior. His defense is higher than my base attack power. If I hit him, I will probably just break my hand."
[Observation: User is correct. Standard physical attacks will result in ’Self-Harm’.]
[Suggestion: Use the Academy’s movement art: ’Breeze Step’.]
"Breeze Step? That is the most basic dodge. It is designed for fleeing, not fighting!"
[Trust the Multiplier, David. Or don’t, and let the giant man turn you into a rug. Your choice.]
Grog did not wait for a bell. He charged and the ground shook with every footfall. He swung a haymaker that moved with the speed of a falling tree. David instinctively activated the skill.
"Breeze Step!"
Inside his mind, the mechanical gears of the Aeon Catalyst ground into motion!
[Passive Multiplier Activated: 100,000x!]
[Skill Evolution: Breeze Step ➔ Flash-Step: Chronos-Drift]
To the crowd, David Silver simply vanished!
To David, the world turned into a thick slow-motion nightmare. Grog’s fist was moving toward his head, but it was crawling. David could see the individual grains of dirt caught in the man’s knuckles. He could see the sweat flying off Grog’s brow.
David did not just move, he felt the air molecules around his body vibrate at a frequency that defied physics. He stepped to the left, but the multiplier forced his muscles to react with such impossible speed that he did not just dodge. He effectively moved through the gaps in time.
"What the?" Grog grunted, his fist hitting nothing but air. The momentum carried the giant forward and his eyes widening in confusion.
David was now standing directly behind him. He had not even broken a sweat!
[Proficiency: Breeze Step ➔ 100.00% (MAX)]
[Skill ’Flash-Step’ has reached Divine Mastery!]
David stared at his feet. "I... I just moved ten feet in a microsecond. System, did I just teleport?"
Grog spun around, his face turning a dark, bruised purple. "Magic tricks! You are a coward! Stand still and fight like a man!"
Grog slammed his palms into the ground. "Earth Spike!"
Jagged pillars of rock erupted from the sand, chasing David across the pit. In any other situation, David would have been skewered. But with the 100,000x multiplier fueling his Flash-Step, the spikes looked like they were growing in slow motion.
David began to run. He moved between the rising stone pillars with a grace that was unnerving to watch. To the spectators, he was a grey blur, a flickering image that appeared in four different places at once.
"He is too fast!" someone screamed from the stands. "He is not even Tier 1! No one moves like that without a Rank 4 Wind Core!"
Madame Joyce leaned forward, her silver pipe forgotten. Her violet eyes were fixed on David. She watched with intense curiosity as her massive chest jiggled in the process. "That is not wind magic," she whispered to herself. "That is pure, raw proficiency. He is not using mana to move, he is just... moving."
Grog was hyperventilating and his Earth Armor was starting to crack from the strain of his own missed attacks. He let out a primal scream and threw a desperate, wide-reaching tackle.
David did not dodge this time. He stopped. He waited until Grog was inches away and his massive arms were reaching out to crush David’s ribs.
"Flick of the wrist," David reminded himself, recalling the outline of his own destiny.
David did not use a spell. He did not use a weapon. He simply raised his right hand and gave Grog a sharp, precise flick on the forehead. It looked like a joke. It looked like a child teasing a bully.
But the system did not care about aesthetics!
[Passive Multiplier Activated: 100,000x!]
[Physical Impact Multiplied...]
The sound was like a cannon firing point-blank! The flick contained the kinetic energy of a speeding freight train. Grog’s head snapped back with such violence that his feet actually left the ground. His Tier 3 Earth Armor shattered into a thousand dusty shards and the magical protection vaporized by the force of the impact!
Grog flew backward across the arena, skipped once off the sand like a stone on a pond, and slammed into the stone wall of the pit. The wall cracked! Grog slumped to the ground, unconscious before he even hit the floor, a perfect red welt the size of a coin glowing on his forehead.
The silence that followed was absolute!
The hundreds of spectators sat frozen. The Wraith stood in the center of the pit, his grey cloak settling slowly around his ankles. He looked completely bored.
"Is... is he dead?" a voice asked from the back.
[Scan: Grog the Mangler is alive. He has a severe concussion and will likely have a fear of fingers for the next decade, but he will survive.]
"He is fine," David said, his raspy voice echoing in the quiet arena. He looked up at Madame Joyce. "Do I get paid now?"
Joyce stared at him for a long, agonizing minute. Then, a slow smile spread across her face. She stood up and began to clap. Slowly and Deliberately.
Following her lead, the crowd erupted. It was not just cheering, it was a riot. People were screaming and throwing hats as they frantically tried to cancel their bets.
David walked out of the pit as Joyce beckoned him toward her private chambers. He felt a strange mix of exhilaration and dread. He had won. He had money. But he had also just shown a room full of criminals that a Tier 1 ghost could one-shot a Tier 3 Earth Warrior with a finger-flick.
"I really need to learn how to hold back," David thought, his heart finally slowing down. "At this rate, I am going to accidentally punch a hole through the planet before I even graduate."
As he followed Joyce into the shadows, the system chimed one last time.
[Quest Complete!]
[Reward: 500 Gold Sovereigns received.]
[Proficiency Gained: Observation Skill has been unlocked.]
[Warning: Madame Joyce is currently calculating how much your organs are worth on the black market. Relatable humor: At least you are valuable!]
"Great," David muttered. "Just what I needed. A fan club."