Min-Jae returns to the rooftop just as the hour-long rest is reaching its end. He’s quiet and there’s still an aura of disappointment hanging over him. But who the heck knows, it's hard to deal with people. Why can't everyone be as simple as my minion and our future animal overlord? Things would be simpler then.

“Such a good boy.” I rub Biscuit's belly. The best-looking corgi that ever existed looks back at me, seemingly confused, but like the perfect being he is, he just accepts it and starts wagging his short tail. Emotional Support Corgi sure is a nice competition to ESM.

“Nat…” Min-Jae wants to say something but I interrupt him.

“You are young and dumb. But it would be nice if you stopped caring about useless stuff. And get yourself together, before the tournament ends, I have questions about your eye.”

“O-okay.”

I wave and then vanish into the Arena to face Swordmaster. This time the arena has changed once again. We find ourselves in the middle of a huge field covered in grass, tall enough to reach the middle of my shin as it sways in beautiful green waves with the motion of the ever present wind.

However, the stone pillars all over the place do serve to break up the scene somewhat. Some of the pillars are as big as buildings, while others are shorter than me. The sky has a slight orange tint to it, like on Earth just before sunset. There are no clouds but the sky makes it look like there is a ring around the planet, like those around Saturn.

“It's pretty, surely the nicest arena so far.” Swordmaster, like me, is looking around, neither of us willing to start the fight quite yet. The man didn't attack me while I was looking around so that's a point for him.

“Wanna bet this place actually exists outside of the tutorial? You might have a chance to visit it if you are lucky.”

“I don’t think that’s going to be quite so easy.” He shakes his head, “Even our closest star to us is lightyears away.”

“Not with that attitude it won’t.”

“I just swing my sword. Space travel is not for me.”

As he speaks he pulls out his sword, its beautiful blade formed of ethercrystal. It’s not difficult to guess what kind of abilities the weapon will have, or that it’s surely an epic grade item.

My opinion of the man having been thoroughly bolstered, I decide to mirror his approach somewhat. My mana seeps into my hand, extending and creating a sword. I push further, compressing it until it turns dark blue with swirls of light blue and purple inside. My Mana Regulator redirects a big part of my mana into Reinforcement and we face each other.

Swordmaster attacks first, silent, the grass around him barely reacting.

When I use kinetic energy to dash, a shockwave erupts in my wake, creating a ripple in the green grass. The grass loses some of its color and the wind becomes more distant as I slide deeper into [Focus].

The air reverberates as our weapons slash, just a single exchange making it clear that he is much more skilled when it comes to handling weapons. I, on the other hand, am stronger and faster thanks to the huge amounts of mana coursing through my body.

Swordmaster soon starts dodging my attacks, trying to predict and read them instead of barely blocking them.

We attack each other, the collisions between our weapons creating small shockwaves, while invisible slashes follow our blades, and sparks of mana explode into the air.

We find ourselves constantly repositioning and using the pillars as cover and angles of attack, we fight simply. Without relying much on mana and skills.

I find myself enjoying this even caught in the depths of [Focus]. There is something satisfying about moving my body and simply reacting to the movements of my opponent while he does the same. Swordmaster is very talented, also realizing that this could have ended long ago, so at times it feels like a lesson as he focuses on my weaknesses. When I fix them at least a bit, he focuses on another one.

Even so, ten minutes later, he jumps back a few times. More mana seeping into his transparent blade as it starts to shine while seeming to ignite the mana around him.

More kinetic energy flows out of my Vortex Core, and we dash at each other, the last exchange reducing him to white particles as the system teleports him out, and I follow soon after.

It takes me a few minutes to replay our fight and I feel my mood improve slightly. That duel was fun, with all this mana I almost forgot how much fun it is just to move my body.

The next duel is Brainiac against Bard, with Brainiac winning, and catapulting himself into the top 8 with me.

After that, it's Biscuit´s turn. Before he disappears, I wish him luck and promise a lot of jerky if he wins.

They wind up in the same arena, as I did, leaving a corgi and Gareth to face each other. The grass bends gently under the wind as Biscuit floats into the air.

“This is awkward. I’m going to feel terrible fighting you,” Gareth sighs.

Even so, Gareth still covers his body in a suit of silver armor as a crown of the same color forms over his head. Two orbs form over his shoulders. He doesn't seem to be underestimating his opponent this time around.

Dozens of purple tentacles shoot out from Biscuit, surrounding and grabbing Gareth, who tears some of them just with the sheer strength of his body as he cuts through others with weapons of his own creation, setting himself free.

But that little time is enough, and the orb Biscuit was preparing is ready. It's bigger than any I’ve seen him create before, the purple color starting to turn bright white. It seems like he’s decided to put everything into this single attack.

Biscuit falls down from where he was floating, tired. Every ounce of his mana concentrated in the orb making its way towards Gareth, who just got out of the tentacles.

Gareth groans in surprise, the crown over his head shining brighter. Gareth´s two silver orbs form into a single one and shoot towards the bright white orb, surrounding it.

As Biscuit´s orb explodes, Gareth keeps layering barrier over barrier until his crown starts to flicker, but it stays. The silver light of his barrier surrounding the orb extends further. The explosion stretches, making the barrier bigger before it weakens and Gareth compresses it.

In the end, the light of the explosion inside the orb dies off, and Gareth launches it far away, where it bursts open, and the intense heat scorches a huge part of the field.

Taking a few slow steps, Gareth stops in front of Biscuit, who can barely move, and looks up at the man.

“That was a very strong attack, I have only a tiny bit of mana left,” he says, clearly very tired, as he gently reaches out his hand towards Biscuit, who lets the man pet him.

Gareth smiles gently, “Can you please forfeit? I don't want to hurt you.”

Rather than complying, Biscuit moves quickly and bites Gareth´s hand.

At first, Gareth laughs it off, calling it cute, but soon a shocked expression appears on his face, and he jumps back, blood dripping from his hand before it heals over. His extremely durable body, damaged like that by a simple bite.

Biscuit shows his teeth, his usually gentle brown eyes glowing with a hint of purple. The shadow behind him expands, seeming much bigger than it has any right to be, a myriad of tentacles swirling inside.

Licking his lips for another taste of Gareth's blood, Biscuit seems much bigger than before, even though nothing has changed. His cute little mouth feels more enormous than even his disciple's and his teeth more dangerous.If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

The sound coming from him has a haunting and primal quality to it. Like the raw snarling of a terrifying predator.

Gareth doesn't get a chance to attack, and Biscuit disappears, forfeiting this duel.

Biscuit appears back in my lap, lying so that I can't see his expression or eyes. I can only see the shape of his body and the back of his head.

Slowly he turns around to me, and I get to see it.

His face is back to normal, a cheeky glint sparkling deep inside his eyes.

(Food!)

I quickly take what few bits of deer jerky I have on me and feed them to Biscuit.

Leaning up to his ear, I whisper, “I don't mind if you start eating planets or something. But try to avoid eating humans. They are dirty.”

We don't want him to get a taste of that. If he develops the same addiction to people that he has to deer jerky, it could be very dangerous.

(Food!) He shouts, his tone sounding disappointed. How could I dare think that he would eat anything other than high-quality deer jerky?

In the next fight, Wanderer beats Zenith, the lucky or unlucky Hard difficulty member.

Savant defeats Rook easily, and Tess beats Meridian, who is also from Hard difficulty.

Tacita faces Vesper, the scrawny man who beat Min-Jae. From the start, she seems to hold nothing but disdain for the man just from the way she looks at him. When he blends with his surroundings, she just lifts her eyebrow, and her eyes continue to move, clearly tracking the man who thinks he is invisible.

Cursing, he appears again, and she dodges a few thrown daggers before disappearing.

Vesper, with sweat rolling off his brow, continues to look around, swinging his dagger, and trying multiple skills, yet he finds himself unable to do anything.

One of his fingers falls off, followed by his ear, then a leg. All in quick succession, Tacita takes each piece without the man even noticing.

It's clear he is about to forfeit, but before he does so, Tacita appears, standing in front of him, her dagger sprouting from his neck.

Both of them disappear, the victor having been decided.

And once AnotherOneHere wins his duel against Luminary, the top 8 has been decided.

Group 2 - NonameGroup 3 - BrainiacGroup 5 - GarethGroup 7 - WandererGroup 9 - SavantGroup 12 - SsetGroup 13 - TacitaGroup 16 - AnotherOneHere

Warning. It is now possible to die inside the Arena.

Then there is no other message, but even that single sentence is enough for my mood to change. The vague boredom that’s plagued me up till now vanishing into the ether.

Just how much can you be excited for a fight if you know that there will be no consequences? No death, no real danger. Sure, it is fun to be able to go all out without worrying about useless stuff like breaking your body or having your brain melted under the pressure of your own mana.

But this? I really like it. This is much better.

Once again, the system gives us an hour before the next duel will begin, but I already feel myself getting giddy.

“Please don’t kill Brainiac, he is a dick sometimes, but he’s still a nice guy,” Dennis says moving closer and nudging my side.

Aaron joins in as well, “I mean you could beat him a bit, the guy deserves it for sure, but killing him would be too much.”

“Sure, sure,” I say, waving my hand dismissively. These little jerks just love that kind of joke. Or at least I think they’re joking. They don’t actually think I would kill the guy, do they? I mean, there is no real reason to, and even though he’s annoying at times, Brainiac isn’t that bad.

Noname vs Brainiac

Gareth vs Wanderer

Savant vs Sset

Tacita vs AnotherOneHere

Soon the event will be over, we just have a few more fights.

The Arena for the quarter-finals is different once again. This time it takes the form of a lake the size of a tournament city for sure. That lake is perfectly calm and the water at its deepest barely reaches my ankles.

The calmness of the lake leaves it almost like a mirror, the surface perfectly reflecting the blue sky. And there, far, far in the distance, stands a giant tree. I can’t even guess how tall it is, but it has to be a few miles high at least.

“Want to go check the tree before we fight?” I ask Brainiac, who is already opposite me.

“I don’t know, man, it seems really far off, and how long do you think the system will let us stay here?”

“We can test it out. You’re going to lose anyway, so you can forfeit in the worst case.”

“Ouch… you don’t have to be so direct.”

“So?”

“Damn it, fine, let's check the tree.” He sighs.

I float into the air and stop near him, grabbing him with one of my mana arms. In front of us, I create a pointy barrier and behind us, I leave an anchor to estimate the distance. Then I start releasing the kinetic energy stored inside my core while replenishing it through my thermokinetic heart.

Gradually, I increase the speed of our flight, ignoring the complaining Brainiac at my side. I continue to fly like that for a few minutes, but the tree doesn’t seem to be getting closer at all. I even use my eyes to check it, but I can’t detect any problem, and when I check my anchor, I land with a sigh.

Turning around, the anchor is just a few seconds of flight behind us.

“See, it’s the same in the games, you can’t leave the area.”

“We could,” I correct, disagreeing with him. “The system isn’t the problem, it’s this place. The lake seems to be causing this, and I can’t disrupt the effect or see through it. If I could, we would be able to reach the tree.”

“So it’s not the way the arena’s been set up? It’s just an effect of the place the system picked for our arena?”

“Yup.”

“Whatever, why are you so interested in that tree in the first place?”

“I think it might be alive like The Living Tree on the 4th floor, so I wanted to take a look. But it doesn’t matter if we can’t reach it.” I take a few steps, each sending ripples across the shallow lake and destroying the reflection on its surface, then I stop and face Brainiac.

He quickly catches on and takes a few more steps back as well, settling at the distance most comfortable for him.

The water around him ripples slightly, and a dozen or so projectiles rocket through the air, directly at me, each one the width of my pinkie and extremely sharp. There are even a few smaller and weaker ones mixed in, in a clear attempt to hide them.

All of his attacks seem to be made of wind, or compressed air now that I think about it, I mean it’s either that or something similar. Maybe vacuum now that I think of it?

I tilt my head to dodge two and step to the side to avoid a few more. I let three crash into my forearm without much in the way of strengthening, and blood is drawn, the projectiles nearly piercing through the limb entirely.

When I check the projectiles stuck in my forearm, I find that they do have some weight to them after all, and a sense of mass. Still, I can’t quite decipher what they are.

The projectiles that missed me are now returning behind me, and I send a disrupting wave toward them. Half of them disappear, and the other half ignore it. There is no mana on them anymore, and they fly just by their momentum alone, seemingly made out of solid matter in their own right.

I dodge and examine the attack for a bit longer, sometimes letting some hit me to examine them. There are a few more surprise skills Brainiac uses, but these projectiles are what interest me most so I take some time.

When I have had enough, I send a strong disrupting wave and then let a huge amount of golden flames seep out of my core.

At the last moment, I remember something, increase my control and stop the flames mid-air, the water under them sizzling and evaporating.

“D-did you just almost kill me?”

I quickly lower their power, the golden color turning yellow, and reduce the stream to a quarter of its size.

“Noname! Did you fucking forget we can die now?!”

I let the flames continue with a much slower speed toward Brainiac, and after cursing, he forfeits.

Outside of the arena, no one says anything, but Maya chuckles until Tess gently slaps her in the back of her head.