It was a gladiator pit through and through. They were down on the second basement level of the hotel. It was where most of the Nrv bandits galavanted. It was where their prime source of entertainment was.

  A giant pit in the ground, like it was reserved for dog fighting or some illegal activity. It was formed in a ring, with the pit sinking about 20 feet into the ground. No way up but a rope ladder held hostage above the pit, waiting for the two fighters to finish their scuffle.

  “It isn’t something to take lightly,” Cannon explained as they made their way to the pit. There was already a fight going on. Crowds cheering. Two looters fighting with sword loot in the middle of the circle, each looking to take the other's head off in a literal sense. “Whoever gets thrown in that pit with you will be eyeing to kill you. It isn’t a friendly sparring match.”

  “I think I get it, Cannon,” T’balt said. “A fight to the death. Winner takes the loot.”

  He watched one of the men in the pit fall over, blood spirting on the ground beneath him. The other called out in triumph and snatched the loot from his opponent's neck.

  It was a murder pit. Effectively, two go in and one comes out. But they weren’t slaves. People were challenged to the loot killer pit. Two people typically played the game of your loot is prettier than mine until it eventually led to a blood match. The winner took the other’s loot for themselves, gaining new power.

  A pit of lust and greed, pride and envy. All put into a bag and tossed in with the lions to be consumed like a prize. He hated these people, and he grew to hate Nrv even more. He laid eyes on him, sitting on a trash can on top of the pit, blending in with the others.

  How could someone sit back and watch his people kill each other? This was the end of times. People were supposed to stick together, not kill each other. It was the same attitude that would cause Nrv to see people like points unbothered when their lives were snuffed out for his entertainment.

  “We got a new challenger!” Vik had yelled above the screams to the beating of pans and trash cans. They disposed of the body down below, not bothering to clean the blood stains.

  “Listen. You be careful,” Cannon said. “I’m not trying to lose my biggest fan so quickly.”

  “The biggest?... Sure,” T’balt answered.

  Then, suddenly, one of the men kicked him, flinging him forward into that pit. He fell the 20 feet down, feeling every hurt of that fall. “Rude.” He saw Vikram’s greasy smile on him, but he didn’t care. His eyes were on Nrv, who hardly seemed to be paying any attention. He was locked in some handheld game, lighting up his mask.

  “IT’S A NEW RECRUIT!” Vikram yelled. “I HEAR HE’S GOT SOME PRETTY BAD ASS LOOT BUT HE AIN’T TELLING WHAT IT IS! TO ANYONE VOLUNTEERING TO FIND OUT GETS 35 POINTS, ON THE HOUSE!”

  T’balt scoffed, spitting into the ground. “35 points. That's all?”

  “Prove your worth, kid,” Vikram said. He looked upon the crowd of those raising their hands and volunteering.

  “Me, Vik. I’ll knock his clock and give that loot to ya on a sliva platta.”

  Vikram took note and gave the guy a chance, and then T’balt had an opponent jumping into the pit in front of him. “Hey there,” T’balt said.

  “Hey, you just some noob. Probably ain’t got no loot worth nothin nohow.”

  “Kill him anyway,” called Vikram from above.

  T’balt sighed before signaling with his hand for the man to come on.

  The man summoned his sword, coupling it with a great shield. “Like it? I call her Excalibur. Like the king did, eh.”

  “Sure.”

  The sword was shiny and large. It didn’t look like it should be held single-handed, but the man seemed proud of the sword-shield combo. But one activation of the sensitivity loot said that most of the man’s strength was going to just holding the sword.

  T’balt summoned his gauntlets as the man charged. He swung wide with the sword, letting his shield lag behind. T’balt swayed to the left as the man kept coming at him with overhands. “Is this guy serious?” He was clunky and slow. T’balt could walk and avoid his strikes.

  After a while, he let his gauntlets disappear. It was a showboaty move, and the crowd reacted as such, calling out curses and berating his opponent.

  “You should use both hands for that sword,” T’balt said eventually.

  “What?” The man responded, catching his breath. “You making a joke of me, eh?”

  “No, really. Your form sucks because you’re putting all your strength into trying to dual-wield with a two-handed sword. Your loot stack isn’t compatible. You’d do better using one at a time.”

  While dodging the man’s attacks, he thought to himself about how he would use them if he had that combination. One of the best parts about summons was just that. They were summons, meaning that one didn’t have to burden themselves with the weight of the weapon when they weren’t using it. So switching back and forth between offense and defense would be as easy as a thought.

  His opponent looked at him skeptically at first as the crowd rained their boos. Then he made the shield disappear and put both hands on the Excalibur sword. “Sure. So like this?” The guy was still young, probably younger than T’balt. He was surprisingly willing to follow his advice despite them being in a fight to the death.

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  “Yeah,” T’balt answered. “Feel how much easier it is to swing around?”

  Then the guy took some swings at him, instantly increasing his speed, power, and precision. It took some effort to dodge the attacks then, and he didn’t have to resort to clumsy overhands. He swiped and swung until he was sure he had caught T’balt off guard, and then he brought down the heaviest strike he could.

  But to his surprise, T’balt caught it in his gauntleted hand. “What?”

  “Yeah,” T’balt replied. Then he slammed a fist into the guy’s stomach, knocking the wind and strength from him. He went down like a rock in a lake, spitting and coughing up bile.

  T’balt left him there, disarming himself again and walking to the other side of the pit and leaning against the wall.

  “What are you doing?” the people called.

  “Kill him.”

  “Finish him.”

  “End it.”

  They bood, and T’balt ignored them, closing his eyes and waiting for the next thing to happen. “The match doesn’t end until someone dies. What part of ‘to the death’ do you not understand?” Vikram said aloud.

  “I’m not killing anyone today,” T’balt said. “So call off the match or fight me yourself. I won’t kill him, but maybe I might you.”

  “You’re a cocky little shit, aren’t you?”

  “Well, you know who I really want to fight?...” He looked over. “That short one in the robot mask. He’s your leader, isn’t he?”

  T’balt sucked in the collective gasps that swept the room. That got Nrv’s attention. He finally put down his game and looked at the one in the center of his pit.

  “No one gets to challenge the boss,” Vikram said. “You must have a death wish or something.”

  “Maybe I do,” T’balt said. “Or maybe he’s just scared of me.”

  Nrv stood up. That got a rise out of him. But suddenly, two more thugs jumped down into the pit, apparently taking exception to T’balt’s words. One in a fox mask and the other wearing a Japanese oni mask.

  The first one charged, eager to make a name for himself by taking out this new villain in their midst. He covered his forearm in a rock formation, looking to jam it at T’balt’s throat.

  T’balt elected to take the man head-on. They connected gauntlet to gauntlet as their fists sparked. But it was the rocks that burst with the impact.

  T’balt went to attack with the other hand, but his hypersensitivity activated. The other sent a flash towards him. He had a bow. It actually caught T’balt off guard for a moment, reminding him of Ellie. But his bow shot flaming arrows, not light.

  He was able to block the arrows with his gauntlets. T’balt launched himself. The man didn’t have the benefit of good reflexes. So he took a punch to the top of his hand, shutting him down.

  Rocks were then flying at him from the first guy, which he used for boxing practice, slaughtering each boulder as they came. The man then came at him, and T’balt flung fire at him, making sure to only get close enough for the man to pull up his guard.

  Then he jumped through the flame with a superman punch for the ages. And the thug was down for the ten count.

  Cannon’s cheers careened through the room. But it turned awkward when he realized he was the only one happy for the new guy.

  T’balt wiped his hands before placing them in his pockets. All of his opponents were still alive. He had become the pariah to the crowd. He wondered if Cannon would be proud of him. In his business, what T’balt would be doing would be called playing the heel. Though he did so by playing his morality card.

  “I thought you guys were gonna give me someone that at least had a chance at beating me.”

  Vikram was at the top of the pit, barking out all sorts of orders. While T’balt had locked gazes with Nrv, wondering if he’d done enough to get an audience out of the guy. But it did at least seem like T’balt had his full vested interest. Nrv was jittering in his legs, itching to fight.

  T’balt would’ve welcomed one, but of course, the Bear had to get in the way.

  “You’re going to chew on your words,” he said, and then 5 others jumped into the pit.

  And these weren’t the typical low-level thugs. Each one of them had an aura about them, like they were veteran fighters or maybe from a military background.

  He could see them sizing him up and spreading his attention by widening the gaps between them.

  T’balt activated the hypersensitivity, trying to measure them faster than they could him. It didn’t seem like he could straight-up read their loot. More like he could feel them before they used them. Like if one was ready to use flame loot, he could see the heat forming inside them or the ice frosting the hairs of their arms.

  When he couldn’t get a read on them, T’balt took a step back.

  One of them shot at him in a stream of neon light, zipping back and forth like the lines on a heart monitor. T’balt saw the attack coming, but it was so quick that he couldn’t move out of the way in time. That was the drawback of the hypersensitivity. It didn’t give him the ability to move faster like the reflex. Just to see.

  The man appeared in front of him with a series of kicks. One caught T’balt in the ribs, and he gasped. But he caught one of the attacks, flinging the man away.

  Another one was on him, and T’balt tried to catch him first with a punch from a gauntleted fist to the chest. The man didn’t bother blocking, or rather, he didn’t need his hands to block. The man was shirtless, and T’balt was sure he had punched his bare chest, but the impact was like punching cement. Immovable cement. His skin was hardened. He could feel the man cackling beneath his mask. “Tickles.”

  T’balt jumped back, retreating to reassess. But behind him, one of the men was scaling the walls of the pit, looking no different than a freakish spider. “Ohhh…” he said in the voice of a horror show clown. “Where are you going? We are just starting to play.” They grabbed T’balt by the arm, holding him still.

  The hardening one and another holding some strength loot charged at him, hoping to catch him vulnerable, while their partner had him.

  T’balt struggled, only able to dodge the attack by jumping above them. The wall exploded with the full force of their punches. He held onto the wall above him only by the grace of the spider, who was unrelenting in his hold.

  T’balt spun, hoping to break their grip. But the man’s arm twisted and contorted along with him. His bones should’ve been breaking with T’balt’s movement, but his grip was unperturbed.

  The spider tilted his head, turning it nearly 180 degrees around to look at T’balt in his terrified eyes.

  “What the hell?”

  “I told you. I want to play.” The spider's muscles clasped together, popping and cracking. Then his arm twisted back into place, spinning T’balt in the air and relocking his grip.

  The neon guy appeared then, with a kick to rock T’balt to the floor. The wind went out of him.

  He ached to recover, but then he found himself surrounded by shadows, jumping off the ground like some living slime. It threatened to crash into him in a rolling tide. But instinctively, he kicked off the ground, leaving flames in his outline. The shadows retreated, exposing the man using them.

  T'balt was backed into a corner, fighting to keep an eye on all five attackers. It was unfair. Five on one. Each of them were strong and coordinated. He was starting to doubt his chances in this fight.