Forged Destiny [Book 7: Ch. 12]

He swung forward aggressively, but always measured. Unlike the Soldiers from Mistral I'd bested at Ansel, he was neither cocky nor underestimating me. His swings, while large and powerful, weren't wild. Each one was delivered with a plan to follow up if it missed, and they did miss, though not because I was able to dodge or deflect them with a flimsy iron bar. They missed because I gave ground rapidly, putting as much distance between us as possible.

Up above and all around, the audience hollered and cheered. Blood sport. That was what this was; blood sport mixed with some crazed method for producing stronger fighters for the Greycloaks. Take a large number of weak people and make them fight to the death. If fifty people was culled down to five, then those five would be a high level. If those five slaughtered one another, the one remaining would be even higher. The Exp gains would be cumulative in a way. It wasn't fifty people at level twenty, but fifty at twenty becoming twenty-five at level twenty-two, and then ten at level twenty-four or five.

Like a Miller refined grain, the Greycloaks refined their prisoners, feeding off them.

The monster before me was one of them.

"You're going to run out of room eventually," he jeered, forcing me back. When I tried to dodge to the left, he cut me off, attacking again to drive me back towards the arena's walls. "Ah, ah, ah. We're not playing run around the arena all day."

"Tch." I grit my teeth. He'd seen through that plan. There went the Barbarian stereotype. "Not much of a fair fight if I don't have a weapon," I tried. "Throw me a pity knife?"

"Who said this was to be a fair fight?"

The sword whistled above my head as I ducked. Lacking any other options, I charged forwards to try and close the distance. Though a sword was melee, it was still in a sense a ranged weapon. Crashing into the Barbarian, I grappled with his arms and shoulders, making it so he couldn't use the two-handed monstrosity properly.

—Forged Destiny [Book 7: Ch. 12]