"What are you doing here, kid? We’ve been over this already."
Grey didn’t waste any words, dumping everything on his back to the ground, including his long sword. The only thing that was left in his hand was Fitz’s Nexis Suit.
"This will work. Right?"
The gnome seemed about to answer, but then its lips were tightly sealed.
"What?" Grey frowned. Just now it looked like the gnome’s lips had been pressed together by a pair of fingers, but there was obviously no one here.
Unless there was some invisible bastard skulking around?
Grey looked around, but he didn’t feel or spot anything.
"Stop looking. There’s no one here," the gnome said. "Whatever you need to figure out is going to have to be done yourself."
Another pillar of light came from the distance, and Grey knew that a new set of people had arrived. He had to hurry up before the other foot fell.
"Okay, okay." Grey focused himself. He dropped Fitz’s Nexis Suit and picked up May’s, pulling it over his forearm, squeezing it on. He decided that there was no time to waste on Fitz’s.
Logically, there should still be several hours more before everyone had arrived and there would be a chance to make an announcement about him, but he wasn’t taking any chances. Who knew what these bastards might try to do?
Whoever arrived first would be amongst the most powerful people of the zone, considering how fast they cleared the Tutorial Zone. If they were the ones who came after him, his odds of survival were slim.
’Where is that feeling? It’s not coming? Focus, Grey!’
He took a deep breath and then took a step back. His adrenaline was still running high, and he hadn’t even caught his breath from sprinting all the way here. Now he was trying to do something that presumably required focus and contact, but his mind was scattered and his skin was flooded with his own sweat and the blood that was running down his chest from an arrow he had conveniently forgotten had only just skewered him.
For a long while, Grey just stood there, letting the anxiety of it all sink into his bones.
He closed his eyes and focused on his breath.
This wasn’t the first time Grey had been forced to deal with his nerves. Ironically enough, the problem wasn’t nervousness. He just got so amped up sometimes he wanted to just run through walls.
But he had learned early on that his instinct and what was right were two different things.
In MMA, the chess match was just as important as the grit and determination. If he went in guns blazing all the time, his opponents would just pick him apart if the skill level was even remotely comparable.
So, before every match, he had to stand outside the cage just like this, letting everything flush away.
He hadn’t gotten a chance to do this since the very first loop, but ironically enough, that was the loop he had made it the furthest in. Since then, the weight of death, the constant unfairness of it all, and one challenge after another had begun leading him by the nose instead of the other way around.
Controlled madness. That was what he needed right now. It was also that controlled madness that gave him a 0.900 win rate in amateur MMA bouts.
In fact, before Earth was sent here for intergalactic entertainment, he had been on an eight-match winning streak.
That was all this was. Just a new match.
A longer one, with more moves, and less time to rest. But a match nonetheless.
Grey’s eyes snapped open and a red glow flashed for a moment that made the gnome’s finger twitch. But once again, it was restricted by something invisible.
This time, though, Grey was too focused to notice it. He exhaled one more breath, pulling on his memories until he recalled what had happened the last time he felt a response from May’s Nexis Suit.
He shifted it incrementally, turning the seams and tugging on the fabric.
Slowly, a subtle feeling he hadn’t been aware of before became stronger and stronger.
’I’ve felt it before. After the arrow pierced through that guy I pummeled’s suit, the feeling disappeared. But it’s a feeling that’s always been there. It’s just so subtle that it’s easy to miss.’
Grey finally understood. When the arrow broke through Ray’s suit, it had broken the mesh that was meant to communicate with one’s neuronal network.
Somehow, Grey had felt the difference immediately, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on what had changed.
Now, he focused on that subtle feeling until it grew to the point he felt like something had snapped into place.
’There it is!’
Grey looked up to the gnome. "Hurry up, let me give it a shot!"
He didn’t dare to move his arm more than a few inches a second. He had to keep the fabric exactly like this.
But even without the final results, he knew he had succeeded.
**
Caldrin watched this sequence of events from his perch. Honestly, there wasn’t anything else interesting to watch right now. He found himself coming back to Grey continuously.
His tentacles flashed about, but he had started and stopped writing up an envelope to send to Gard several times already. But he didn’t even know what to write.
Grey would really be the perfect heel. His personality was just right. He was a madman, and the audience would love to hate him. Grey would also certainly gain his own fanatic fanbase of madmen and women with a propensity to fall in love with serial killers.
But Caldrin was still hesitant.
The value Grey was showing right now was too good to allow him to flame out too easily. If they put too much pressure on him, he’d die early on, and then what would they do?
But then Caldrin’s eyes landed on Joaquin. He was certainly an anomaly, and he had triggered a very Rare Instance himself. If not for Grey, he would have certainly finished first.
Caldrin’s silky wet skin began to rapidly change color as an idea came to mind.
He grinned, his eyes landing on the girl crying her eyes out in Joaquin’s arms.