Polly cheerfully wanted to cook for their group that night to celebrate the death of her teacher. It was a bit odd to have her tell stories of how her teacher had taught her and how much he had sucked in between happy humming because he was now dead and buried.
Speaking of death, Jake issued his challenge to the Necromancer two days after he had beaten the Archmage… and once more was told the guy wanted an entire month of preparations… so yeah, another thirty days for Jake to prepare tools to increase his chances to win. Of course, he also needed to gather a lot more information on this guy compared to his two prior opponents, as he didn’t have anyone related to him to spill the beans.
Even before the Archmage fight, he had already gathered a lot, and with another waiting period, there was no reason not to get more. Jake also began to feel like one of the reasons Show Matches weren’t a thing in the Champion rank was to remove the potential plot hole of none of the Champions ever doing Show Matches. Sure, it would make sense if some of them weren’t, but wouldn’t someone like the Lightning Monarch have welcomed the training?
Anyway… the Necromancer was pretty much a warrior with some poison and death magic. There was also a bit of dark magic in there, but he usually won through prolonged battles where he wore down his opponent, and from Jake’s research, he did admit the guy could be a problem.
He usually played defensive the entire time while creating a field of miasma all around him. This miasma would slowly spread and begin to inhabit the entire arena, putting anyone who fought him on a timer. Jake did question how the hell the guy had mana to pull off something like that, but he assumed it was just more equipment-powered bullshit.
So, the best strategy would be to take him down fast. That is where him pretty much just being a warrior became an issue. He wore heavy armor, wielded a warhammer, and had several spells to defend himself and buy time for the poison to spread. Shit, he even often won without having to spread his field of death just with his normal spells and a good smack with his hammer.
In preparation for this fight, Jake prepared another powerful quasi-Protean Arrow and worked on covering his body in a small layer of stable arcane energy to keep the miasma out. He also went to the shop to see if he could buy anything to help with breathing it in, but the best he could get there was a bandana or something to cover his mouth. Gas masks were sadly not on offer.
To counter it, Jake began working on a better method of eliminating this miasma before it had a chance to reach his lungs. Ultimately, he settled on just circulating destructive arcane energy through his body to try and eliminate the miasma, covered his mouth with some torn-off cloth, and hoped he could win before it got too bad. Jake was confident in his offensive prowess, after all.
Moreover, the Necromancer was many things, but fast was not one of them. Jake should have a good window where there was no miasma around him, and he could bombard his foe with arrows. Besides that, he spent the month working on more general stuff and even had a few spars with Owen, who was still quite a bit away from Champion material, but he was fine for a sparring partner.
Soon enough, another month had passed, and without further ado or delays, Jake found himself back in the small opening area of the arena, facing a tall man across from him.”Welcome to yet another Champion’s Match in the Colosseum of Mortals! Today, the Doombringer will attempt to continue his march on the Gauntlet of the Grand Champion and take home his third win! The Lightning Monarch and Archmage have already fallen to him… but will the Necromancer meet the same fate? Or shall he be the Deathbringer to the Doombringer? Well, I guess we should find out! Lower the gates!”
Jake watched the gates lower, but he didn’t walk too much forward in order to still keep a good distance. He observed his opponent from afar, and he had to admit… the guy looked pretty damn strong.
His heavy armor was ivory white with black patterns all across it, with bone adornments here and there. On his head, he wore a helmet with antlers on it, both of which gave off eerie auras of death. The hammer he wielded was entirely black and had a long handle and a medium-sized head, where one side was blunt, and the other had a sharp pick. By the way he wielded it, Jake also didn’t doubt the Risen before him was strong enough to swing that bastard around fast.
His opponent walked into the arena with heavy and steady steps, a slightly dark footprint left wherever he walked. Jake felt and studied his aura closely, and the conclusion was clear:
This man was the strongest being he had faced in the Colosseum yet. Jake was excited to face him as he stayed at a good distance, yet still walked a bit closer to meet his foe and have the customary first-meeting talk. The Necromancer was the first to speak as a deep voice, slightly distorted by his helmet, sounded out.
”I apologize for the wait before I could accept your challenge. I have been absent from the arena for too long, and I had to refamiliarize myself with the place before I felt ready to face you with the respect and honor any who dare attempt the Gauntlet deserves,” the Necromancer said, his words having an odd sense of calmness to them. He sounded old. Like, really old.
”No worries,” Jake answered. ”I cannot criticize anyone for using their allotted preparation time when it is perfectly in line with the rules. Especially if you were not active in the arena.”
”Your understanding is admirable,” the old Necromancer nodded.
”I am curious about something, though. What is a Risen doing here? You are the only Risen I have seen in the entire Colosseum, even counting the audience,” Jake asked. The Necromancer had not made any moves or begun to release his miasma yet, and Jake saw no reason not to try and probe out a bit of information. Who knows, maybe he would even say something useful?
”Oh?” the Risen said, surprise clear in his voice. ”I had not expected someone to recognize my kind around here, much less when I keep myself covered. But if you are curious, then I did not end up here by choice. I was exploring an ancient ruin in my homeland, and in ways I do not recognize, I ended up in these lands. Alas, all I could do from there was make the best out of my situation, and as a Death Knight of my home, I welcomed the familiarity of the Colosseum. It is a glorious place, filled with battle and death.”
A Death Knight, eh? Jake mentally noted. That was pretty much the only semi-actionable piece of information he gave out. The rest was just a throw-away explanation by a lazy writer to justify why a Risen was in the Colosseum as the only one.
Anyway… Death Knights were pretty much the paladins of the undead race, and Jake did know a bit about them. Ultimately, his biggest question after learning he was a Death Knight wasn’t anything related to his abilities, though.
”If you are a Death Knight… why is your title in the Arena of Mortals Necromancer?” Jake asked very pointedly.
”That is… due to my own hubris. In the early parts of the Colosseum, I found this place far too easy, so I never bothered to battle myself but only raised weak bone constructs and unleashed basic magic to win my fights, and before I knew it, everyone called me the Necromancer. By the time I showed my true prowess, the name was already stuck in the consciousness of all,” the Necromancer, who should really be called the Death Knight, answered.
Jake felt immense sympathy as he nodded in understanding. He knew the pain…
”Now, while exchanging words with you has been a delight, we are not here to speak, are we?” the Necromancer said after a few moments of silence, wanting to get the action started.
Jake nodded as he pulled out his bow. ”True, true. Let’s have a good one.”
”May the best combatant win,” the Necromancer said with a nod as his aura grew in power.
Without any hesitation, Jake made his move. He nocked an arrow and loosed it immediately as the Necromancer slowly began to leak out black smoke from between the seams in his armor. Jake had shot hit him in the chest before he had a chance to block, the arrow exploding on impact and making the Necromancer slide backward on the sand for over a meter.
Jake cursed internally as he saw it had only left a small mark and a few cracks in the metal. He had wanted to test the durability of the thing, and it exceeded his expectations. His only real choice was to hit the weak spots of the armor, such as the seams, or where the explosion would still do a lot of damage.
The problem was the Necromancer also knew he had to do that. Jake’s second arrow was aimed at the Necromancer’s head, but he was quick and blocked it with his hammer as he began running forward with heavy steps.
Outpacing him was easy, but the problem was that Jake couldn’t just shoot arrows haphazardly. He had jam-packed his quiver, getting thirty-eight arrows in there, and while that seemed like a lot, Jake knew they could quickly vanish if he shot them without thinking.
With every footstep, the Necromancer left a trail of miasma in his wake, and it showed no signs of dissipating. In fact, it seemed to multiply by itself, infecting the very air itself. Jake, inspecting the armor of the Necromancer more closely, soon became certain it was the cause of this miasma. At least he used it as a catalyst to both power and release it.
Legendary… if not higher, Jake concluded. What’s more, the small crack he had made in the armor with his first arrow had already been mended by the miasma. Seeing this, Jake slowly began to formulate a plan as the Necromancer attacked. His planned strategy was simple but incredibly effective.
Wielding his hammer with both hands, he smashed it into the ground, but Jake had already jumped away before a bone spike shot up from the ground where he had just been standing. Jake took the opportunity to counterattack as he shot an arrow aimed at the knee-joint of the armor.
It struck true and penetrated straight through. Jake purposefully did not detonate this one as, with an arrow in the knee, the Necromancer would not only have his dreams of being an adventurer squashed but have his movement speed slowed.
At least that was the plan, but the Necromancer stomped down, breaking the arrow, and kept walking like nothing had happened, leaving a fragment of stable arcane energy embedded within his flesh. Jake felt the energy of the Necromancer slowly attack it, but his arcane energy was not that easily gotten rid of, and he was in no rush to detonate it quite yet.
Having confirmed that his arrows could penetrate the armor in some places, Jake began to carefully attack as the miasma also continued to spread. He shot arrow after arrow, and while eight out of fifteen hits were blocked or missed, he soon had seven arrows sticking out of the shoulders, elbow, and knees of the Necromancer.
Jake had to admit that seeing the tall Risen continue to walk unbothered despite his injuries was very intimidating, but he also knew his attacks were working. The Necromancer’s speed had gotten slower, and while the miasma seemed to be spreading even faster as the Risen got injured, Jake still had plenty of space to make use of as he purposefully sought out the areas where the miasma didn’t have time to spread to yet.
With his opponent slowed down enough, Jake initiated the final part of his plan to take down the huge Risen. He began to shoot a barrage of arrows in rapid succession, all of them seemingly doing nothing as they exploded upon impact with the armor covering his opponent’s chest, forcing the Necromancer backward a few steps with each impact. Even if this seemingly did nothing, as with the first arrow, all of them left small cracks. Cracks that would take time to be repaired by the miasma… time Jake didn’t plan on giving the Necromancer.
Releasing a final arrow toward the head of the Necromancer, he managed to make the man’s head reel back as one of the horns was blown off. Seeing his chance, Jake unleashed his finishing attack.
Taking out a massive arrow from his ring, Jake quickly jumped back as far as he could without entering the miasma that now covered the entire perimeter of the arena. The second he landed, he rapidly began charging a quasi-Arcane Powershot. His opponent was clearly aware of this move, but right as he wanted to move away, Jake detonated the arrows stuck in his body. The ones embedded in his knees made the Necromancer groan and fall to his knees, giving Jake the time he needed to land the killing blow.
Jake’s special arrow this time around was what Jake would call a bunker buster. He knew the Necromancer was tanky as hell, so he wanted an arrow that could penetrate a tank. Which is exactly what he made. The arrowhead was filled with destructive energy that exploded directionally forward, with a sharp bullet-like stable tip right behind it. Based on his tests, this arrow should more than do the job.
The Necromancer didn’t even make any moves to defend as he saw Jake charge his shot. Clearly, he was aware he wouldn’t be able to, so he counterattacked as he roared and dropped his hammer hard, sending a large bone spike flying toward Jake right before he shot the arrow.
Having the choice of either abandoning his attack or taking the bone spike, Jake chose the latter. As he released the arrow and used a quick Fear Gaze to make sure it would hit where he wanted it to, Jake swayed to the side at the very last moment, taking the bone spike to the shoulder. The impact lifted him off his feet and threw him backward as he spun in the air, yet despite the pain, his true focus was on the arrow he had just shot.
On the other end of Jake’s arrow, the Necromancer did not fare well either. As expected, he was forced to take it head-on as the arrow smashed into his chest. Metal and bone were sent flying as the chest of the Necromancer exploded, and he was shot backward over a dozen meters before he impacted the wall of the arena, resulting in an explosion of arcane energy.
The entire wall also cracked, as the arrow had not only managed to pierce the armor but had gone all the way through to hit the wall behind the Necromancer, with the final explosion destroying almost every vital organ that even a Risen still relied on.
Jake, having been thrown into the midst of the miasma, coughed as he saw the defeated Necromancer through his sphere. He was embedded in the wall, with blood everywhere. He had been a good opponent, but Jake’s offensive prowess was just too-
”Undying.”
A ghostly voice echoed throughout the arena as an eerie presence descended upon it.
Jake could only stare as the Risen tore himself from the wall, and his feet landed on the sand once more. With steady steps, he began walking forward with a huge gaping hole in his chest, every single internal organ, including his heart and lungs, destroyed. At the same time, he felt the change in the Necromancer’s presence… and it reminded him of a certain old swordsman when he went all-out.
As Jake was still trying to comprehend what the hell was happening, he coughed again. This time, blood came out as he felt his lungs burn from the miasma, but far worse than that was the bone spike in his shoulder. A hefty dose of toxins seeped from the bone even now, and even after Jake pulled it out and quickly got out of the miasma, the situation still wasn’t looking good as his arcane energy was hard at work, trying to eliminate the toxins that had invaded his body.
Nevertheless, Jake still had his bow and a few arrows to fight with. Even if he ran out of arrows, he had his katars, and with the Necromancer already looking half-dead, he shouldn’t last much longer despite the skill he had just used, right? Jake simply refused to surrender before the seemingly immortal monster walking with steady steps toward him.