Carmen forcefully pressed Jake against the wall and pushed her own body onto his with all her weight. Jake responded by elbowing her in the shoulder only because she dodged getting hit in the head, the movement allowing him some leeway before she could headbutt him in the face as he struggled to get free. His blow managed to gain him some space as he quickly jumped away and stabilized, trying to regain momentum.
She pounced on him instantly, Jake escaping her grappling hands that tried to restrain him. He dodged her blows one after another as they swapped who was pushing the other one back constantly, the soft sand beneath them making it difficult to move fast but also allowing them to really get some proper force behind their attacks.
Dodging another swift blow, Jake quickly landed a low kick, making Carmen stumble. However, rather than fall backward, she dove straight into Jake’s incoming fist, taking it on the forehead as Jake’s knuckle and fingers hurt from the impact. He tried to retract his hand, but she managed to grab his wrist, and in a move Jake felt was out of a movie, she lifted her entire body off the ground and twisted, making Jake fall down alongside her, held in an armbar.
Pain shot through Jake’s body as his eyes opened wide because rather than use the move to pressure Jake into giving up, she straight up broke his arm. Probably a good choice as Jake had already determined himself to give it up as he used his legs to get leverage, and despite bending his now broken arm in a painful fashion, he tried to get on top of Carmen.
Sadly for him, she managed to roll away and quickly stand, Jake doing the same as he was forced to. Carmen looked at Jake as he stood there with his arm looking like just a useless slab of flesh. Smiling, she asked triumphantly:
“Wanna keep going?”
“I can still stand,” Jake said with a smile, refusing to surrender just yet while he still had the ability to fight ba-
Five minutes later, he had a broken leg and was pretty some at least one internal organ had entirely given up, and standing wasn’t really an option anymore. Carmen stood over him with her arms crossed and a big grin as Jake sighed painfully. “Alright, alright… let’s get out of here.”
The Colosseum around them faded away as the two of them had their consciousness transported back to their real bodies still within Jake’s lodge. They had both been sitting on the floor with legs crossed and opened their eyes at the same time as the emblem Jake held in his hand stopped glowing and powered down.
“That thing is really good stuff… a lot better than the one I got,” Carmen commented, not trying to hide her envy.“Yeah, I probably should have been using it more before,” Jake nodded as he looked at the item he’d been rewarded for his performance during the Colosseum of Mortals Challenge Dungeon.
[Emblem of the Grand Champion (Mythical)] – An emblem infused with the powers and concepts of the Colosseum of Mortals, given only to those deemed worthy. This Emblem can create a replica of the Colosseum of Mortals arena within a virtual space for individuals to duel one another. Allows the user to choose two targets who must consent to take part in a duel within the virtual space. Those entering will leave their true bodies defenseless during the duel period. All levels and stats of those entering will be normalized. Most skills and abilities will also be restricted. Dying within the virtual space will have no negative consequences. As the owner, you can always observe the inside of the Emblem of the Grand Champion. Cooldown period: 1 hour.
Requirements: Soulbound
As he said, Jake hadn’t really been using the thing, and in truth, he’d only been reminded of it because Carmen brought it up. She’d also gotten her own emblem, but it was a lot worse than Jake’s in several ways. First of all it had a cooldown of a full day, which was kind of annoying, but the biggest thing was that Jake had way more options for customization within the Colosseum itself and the rules and restrictions the two people would be fighting under.
He’d been able to make it so that they both had the exact same stats for their many duels. He could also limit equipment and weapons effortlessly, making it a great sparring ground. At least for spars without skills, as most things wouldn’t be replicated as the item description said. To many, this could be seen as a negative, but in truth, it was a massive bonus.
It allowed one to train skills without as much system assistance. It was weird, but the system clearly still recognized you had the skill even when in the Colosseum made by the Emblem, yet the assistance was significantly reduced. This meant one could do a lot of new experimenting, and it allowed one to get more familiar with one’s skills than during regular practice while offering a new perspective and way to train. Especially if one had to pull off skills with far smaller resource pools and lower stats.
Jake and Carmen had just gone for a few rounds of sparring with close-to-mortal stats, very much akin to how the Colosseum of Mortals had been in Nevermore, but a little more restricted than even that. The two of them had fought with weapons twice, with Jake winning both times handily. However, when they went purely unarmed, he got his ass handed to him every single time, which to Jake was awesome as that proved he had plenty of space to improve. In the same vein, Carmen was also happy she lost to Jake, resulting in the two of them wanting to do the fighting where they were at a disadvantage… while naturally still enjoying their victories.
Of course, after the fights, with Jake and Carmen both fired up from just having fought, everyone knows what would happen next...
Post-match analysis.
“You still get too easily baited into favoring one side over the other, and while you really don’t have many openings, if your attacks aren’t able to do proper damage and create enough space in their own right for you to retreat, you tend to find yourself in trouble,” Carmen criticized him, pointing to a magic whiteboard she had been carrying around all this time and had been great during her stay in the lodge. “Sometimes your attack pattern can also get predictable. You pretty much always aim for vitals spots, which I get feels natural, but it’s also the most obvious. With a weapon, that isn’t as much of a problem, but when unarmed, the amount of damage a single blow can deal tends to be limited even if you land a good hit on weak soft tissue.”
She made some basic drawings on the board as Jake nodded along. He’d been the one doing presentations after some of the prior fights, pointing out how Carmen tended to rely too much on her tough body after becoming a fully-fledged Runemaiden, which was a problem when fighting in the Colosseum as she obviously wasn’t a Runemaiden in there, meaning getting stabbed would actually result in her being stabbed.
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Unlearning bad habits of overreliance on her own toughness was something she seriously needed, as while she was incredibly durable, and Jake struggled to cause any real damage to her in a real fight, she was far from invincible. She’d learned that the hard way after asking Arnold to test a weapon on her, only to quickly learn that he apparently had bullets able to shoot straight through her using the powers of void magic. The Sword Saint could also pierce her defenses with several attacks, especially when he worked in the concept of erosion, targeting singular areas repeatedly to weaken them before striking. R̃
After discussing the fight, the two of them talked some more, got updates on the situation in the rest of the Milky Way, ate some food, and waited a bit before the cooldown was up, and they could dive into the simulated Colosseum of Mortals again to have another duel, this one with weapons.
Jake was still a bit surprised at seeing Carmen use a shortsword and a shield for these fights, but she explained it felt oddly similar to how she regularly fought, and it was better than going unarmed against Jake with katars. That didn’t mean she didn’t lose, with Jake not really ever having a hard time, but she insisted it was good practice, especially the last parts of the battle where she’d fought unarmed until blood loss made her fall over and end the simulation.
This was how they ended up spending the next day or so. Every hour, they would have a fight while filling the time in between just doing whatever they felt would be entertaining – after getting done analyzing the fight they just had, of course.
Their longest time spent in the simulation ended up being nearly two hours. Not because they were fighting all that time, but because they were experimenting with what was possible in there, and yes, a different kind of sparring was possible in the Colosseum, but that particular kind was definitely better in the real world, but that was neither here nor there.
In the end, they ended up spending a bit over a day staying at the lodge, as honestly, leaving at nearly exactly the twenty-four-hour mark would definitely have just been weird and looked pre-planned. Carmen and Jake went straight to fetch Sylphie, who had been chilling with Vesperia in a small home the True Royal had made for herself deeper inside the forest.
Throughout everything, they were being tracked. Jake considered for a while how to handle this, but on their way back to Haven proper, Sylphie now in tow, one of their stalkers honestly got too close, and Jake couldn’t hold himself back anymore.
While looking as if he casually took a step forward, Jake instead used One Step and disappeared, appearing in the sky above. A second step brought him down to appear in front of a thin human male wearing a casual outfit while standing behind a tree. The man’s eyes opened wide when he saw Jake, and he was about to speak when Jake made him freeze up with a quick Gaze.
“You should really get better at stealth or consider if this is really the career for you,” Jake said in a dry tone as he glanced about, purposefully looking directly in the direction of a few more observers as he spoke up loudly. “Not like the four others are any better.”
For the records, there were five others, but the last guy was pretty far away, and Jake only knew he was there due to his Bloodline, so he saw no reason to advertise how good he truly was at detecting unwanted observers.
“Now, I would normally just kill you or have you imprisoned, but I happen to be in a rush today, so I’ll let you off with a warning to not be so damn obvious it gets annoying,” Jake smiled as he turned to walk away before stopping after a few steps and speaking loudly again. “Oh, and do pass this on when you make your report to at least make yourselves useful: I will soon reach out, so be ready.”
With those words, Jake took another two steps, teleporting with both as he went back to Carmen, who was walking with Sylphie on her shoulder.
“Got rid of the stalkers?” she asked him nonchalantly.
“Yeah, that should be all of them… now let’s go,” Jake answered, the two of them picking up speed as Sylphie gladly was just along for the ride.
The spies keeping an eye on them definitely backed off, with all the people Jake let know he’d seen backing off entirely, likely doing exactly what he’d told them to. He was certain their bosses would be very interested in what Jake had just said. Now, he didn’t actually know which factions these people were from, but he assumed at least the majority were related to Ell’Hakan and the Holy Church, which he would soon make contact with, so he’d kept his words purposefully ambiguous.
Also, while this hadn’t been part of the plan, Jake had been told to act like himself, and he sure as fuck wouldn’t usually allow a bunch of horrible stalkers to follow him unnoticed without at least giving them a good scolding for their offensive lack of skills.
With them handled and having picked up speed, Jake, Carmen, and Sylphie quickly arrived at the teleporter hub in Haven. From there, they went to the outpost close to the Prima Vessel, where more spies – who at least were a lot more subtle – waited and observed what Jake and Carmen would do.
No one really followed them as they went to the now nearly empty Prima Vessel. Only Arnold was inside with that assistant of his, seemingly analyzing the thing while trying to take samples of the metal the Vessel was made of. Arnold also tested some odd magic while scribbling down notes, making Jake and Carmen decide to not bother him.
The guards Miranda had posted at the Vessel naturally let Jake and Carmen through, and they went straight for the teleporter. Carmen already knew what planet they would be going to, and people from Valhal would be waiting on the other side. Once there, the true trickery would begin, and everything would go according to plan…
… alright, maybe that was a bit too much to ask for, but hopefully, everything would at least go acceptably according to plan. Had to be a little realistic sometimes…
--
Kindroth sat in a chamber, a vast ritual circle in front of him, as his surroundings were filled with the radiance of the Great Bright One. He bathed in this light as he felt the presence of his Patron channel into him as they communed with one another.
They spoke for a long time, Kindroth feeling the burden on his body, but this was far from the first time he’d done this. In fact, this was the third time in only a few days he’d made contact with his god, with this time concerning the latest news surrounding the Chosen of the Malefic Viper and his actions. More accurately, the actions of him and the Runemaiden of Valdemar.
Some of the spies who kept an eye on Jake weren’t deployed by enemies but by people who were considered allies of Earth. Trust was still weak, resulting in several world leaders taking the approach of “trust but verify” when it came to the claims coming out of Earth.
During the last day, the top leadership of Earth had been hinting at something. Some big reveal or plan that many believed would fix the current challenges faced by the alliance Earth had established. Many were calling for a military response, but Kindroth had been one of the people firmly opposed to such an approach due to the fear of escalation. It did help that his own world was untouched, though that naturally didn’t come as a surprise.
Kindroth and his god discussed recent happenings, the decisions the elf had made during this time, and the plan going forward. They both reached the same conclusion from the newest updates and as the ritual circle faded away, Kindroth couldn’t help but let out a sigh.
“So that’s the kind of approach they’ve decided on… such level of foresight to have seen this coming is truly frightening…” he muttered before suddenly smiling. “Well then, better help make it happen as smoothly as possible while we sit back and wait for the grand confrontations between gods and their Chosen…”
As we reap the profits and claim our spoils of war, he thought, not saying that final part out loud, as he truly couldn’t suppress his smile.
One just has to love it when a plan comes together.