After the heavily armored elf and dwarf finished showing off for the crowd, they turned and politely gestured for Luke and Bosa to do the same. The move surprised him for a half second before he understood. On Earth the contestants would be rude and trash talk their competition. But because of their glory sense, they wanted just the opposite. They wouldn’t gain much glory for defeating weak opponents, they wanted every battle to be against the strongest and toughest contestants possible.

  Luke didn’t really have a lot of experience showing off, so he did the first thing that came to mind, imitating the wrestlers he had seen. He posed and showed off his muscles, which weren’t visible because he was completely covered in his slim power armor. Then he held up his Chainsword and twirled it. The sword was made to fit his larger mech, so its six foot length looked enormous in his hands.

  Bosa took another route to show off. She strutted around like she was on the runway and elegantly spun the Ice Hammer around herself. She hadn’t thought to bring her own melee weapon, so she was borrowing another one of Luke’s large weapons. Once all eyes were on her, she stretched one leg straight up and over herself, ending it with a graceful flip.

  The crowd politely clapped, slightly less impressed with their display as they had been with the Hammer and Anvil. A voice echoed around the arena, deep and reverberating.

  “The Obayangbon Arena thirsts for glory! For our third fight of the Doubles Tournament, we have a special treat. All four contestants are new to the arena, but they aren’t young vessels. Each team holds a platinum and gold class. I won’t tell you which is which, of course. Either way, this will be a fight many will be discussing for ages. On the north side we have Hammer and Anvil!” The crowd cheered as the contestants raised their weapons. “On the south side, we have a first. The man in full armor is a human called Luke and his domestic servant Bosa is joining him.” More cheering, not quite as loud. “The battle starts in fifteen seconds, make your declarations now.”

  All across the arena stands, people stood up and shouted something while pointing at one of the two teams. The shouts muddled together and made it hard to understand, but eventually Luke pieced together what was happening. They were staking a small bit of their glory on the outcome of the fight. They were gambling with glory.

  “May the gods smile down on us all. All glory to the winners. Begin!”

  All four contestants burst into action.

  Luke dashed towards the elf while the dwarf ran towards Bosa. They threaded through the pillars and low walls, speeding up as they ran. Unsurprisingly, Luke and Bosa were much faster than their heavily armed opponents. As they neared the center of the arena, Luke used a low wall to suddenly redirect.

  As planned when they were in the locker room, Luke changed targets to focus on the dwarf nicknamed Anvil. This was their tentative plan, attacking two on one so they could defeat the first opponent together and the second one would be that much easier.

  He put on the speed, pouring every bit of his War Machine stats into speed. If the others were at a similar class level to him, he was probably the fastest and strongest one here. His platinum stats were augmented by an impressive class buff. The dwarf just had time to turn his head before Luke barreled into him. He didn’t have a chance to turn either of his two shields. They crashed together and he lifted Anvil off his feet with the force of the impact.

  Then everything started to go wrong.

  The dwarf named Anvil landed with both feet and his golden boots made a deep thrumming sound and shot out a sonic boom. The sound hit Luke like a punch and rattled him to his core. He could blurrily see the dwarf slide away, his boots providing some propulsion. Bosa hadn't been expecting the strafing move and she slammed the Ice Hammer into the ground, a flash of magical frost spreading from the impact point.

  Luke quickly recovered, but not quick enough. He saw the elf’s huge hammer coming for him out of the corner of his eye. He pushed back, trying to pivot underneath the swing, but it still hit him in a glancing blow.

  His Adept Inertia rune briefly activated and removed the danger from the sudden shift in velocity. But it didn’t remove the impact. Luke was still flung across the arena. As he flew, he did something he should have done earlier. He activated his Acuity and sped up his thoughts, time seemed to slow down. He twisted midair and got his feet under him, landing and sliding across the ground with a screech of metal against metal.

  The elf’s eyes went wide as he saw that Luke had seemingly shrugged off a two hundred pound hammer strike. He hadn’t even dropped his sword. He shook himself and raced forward to attack again. Luke met him in the middle of the arena. This time Luke was paying attention and managed to dip under the first wild swing. He swung his chainsword up, aiming at his back. The elf managed to dip his shoulder and the strike deflected off his pauldron. Luke started charging the plasma shot in his right gauntlet.

  Hammer pointed his hand at him and a sudden pressure descended. Luke felt the weight of his suit like he hadn’t in months, pressing down on him and trying to knock him down. He had suspected that the elf had a class that manipulated gravity, an easy guess when the man wielded an oversized hammer. Luke’s stance was perfect and so he didn’t tip over. Instead, he pulled his right arm up, changing the trajectory of his charging plasma shot.

  The elf smiled as he saw Luke struggle with the gravity, just barely able to raise his hand above level. He fired off the plasma bolt as soon as it was ready, aimed right for Hammer’s outstretched hand. The shot dipped slightly in the gravity field, but not enough to matter. It hit his heavily armored hand and knocked it away. The pressure on Luke immediately lifted.

  They both took a single step back and attacked again. This time Hammer used his power on himself instead of Luke and swung widely. Luke caught the elf’s enormous hammer with his sword, blade locked against haft. He barely managed to stay upright, the momentum of the hammer was immense. Another sonic boom sounded, but neither of them turned to the other fight. The elf grinned and pushed harder. Luke grinned back and activated the chainsword.

  The tiny blades spun along the edge of the sword, moving so fast they created a high pitched whine. In less than a second, the sword ate through the metal haft and the hammerhead fell to the arena floor with a loud clang.

  The elf formerly known as Hammer stared in shock at the short length of metal in his hands. Luke didn’t wait for him to regain his mental equilibrium. Instead, he dropped his sword and grabbed the elf’s hand. He yanked his arm forward and over his shoulder as he twisted. Using every bit of his enhanced strength, Luke threw the elf up and over himself. The trajectory had him spinning through the air towards the closest edge of the floating arena.

  Since intentional killing blows were outlawed, throwing your opponent off the edge was one of the more common strategies. That and lopping off a limb, but Luke didn’t intend on inflicting that level of gore. Even if it was a quick fix, he didn’t want to force his opponents to spend the money on a greater healing potion.

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  Just as the elf was about to fly off the edge of the arena, his trajectory suddenly changed. He fell straight down and slammed into the metal floor. A shallow dent formed under his back from the force of the impact.

  Luke started running. Damn gravity class. The elf had raised his gravity suddenly so he didn’t fly off the edge. He slowly turned over and started to get up. Luke slowed his dash slightly and timed his arrival just as the man stood up. The elf had to reduce his gravity to stand, so he would be affected by a shove Luke could produce.

  He slammed into the man and knocked him off the nearby edge. The elf made a comical eep as he flailed and fell towards the soft landing ten feet below. Luke made sure he didn’t have any last second tricks and spun and ran towards Bosa and Anvil.

  They were standing about fifteen feet away from each other, staring the other down. Bosa was missing a pauldron and had blood dripping from her ears. The dwarf was favoring one leg and had hoarfrost on his right shield. Both were breathing heavily.

  Now that Luke was here, the fight was basically over. The dwarf had his fancy shoes, but clearly no other ranged attacks. Luke decided to make an impressive entrance.

  He slowed down and activated his six foot long chainsword. He let it drag behind him casually, pretending the high pitched whine and screech of metal didn’t bother him. They both turned to him as he walked up.

  “You fought a glorious fight, Anvil. But without your Hammer, you have no chance against us. We haven’t even revealed our classes yet. Go on, yield. We will go on to win the Tournament and you can brag to your friends that you stood the longest against Hack and Crash,” Luke said. He was taking a little bit of a risk here, he hadn’t heard if yielding was a thing in these Tournaments. Thenubian had a word for it, so he hoped that meant that the dwarf would give up.

  “Hack and Crash? Is that our name now?” Bosa asked, a little too loudly.

  “You bet. So, what do you say, Anvil? A good story to tell your friends, or an expensive bill from the healer?”

  The dwarf narrowed his eyes and looked between the two. He dropped his shields and said, “Fine, but you better win the whole thing.”

  “Don’t worry, we will.” He said and posed.

  He stood back to back with Bosa and posed as the dwarf announced he was yielding. A fourth of the crowd shouted and leapt into the air. The remainder slumped in their seats and groaned. It seemed like there hadn’t been a lot of them betting on the human and his domestic servant.

  Luke shouted with joy along with the other winners and after a few seconds Bosa joined him. She whooped and jumped up into the sky. He laughed at her antics and led her back to the exit. The bridge extended again and they walked back to the arena. The same attendant from before led them right back to the same ornate locker room.

  Bosa started pacing back and forth the length of the room, excited and happy. “This feels so much better, you have no idea, Luke. It’s like the world has color again, I can breathe once more. We could go now and I would be so happy. I’m not back to where I was, but it’s so much better than it was before,” she said, just a bit too loud.

  Luke double checked no one had messed with his larger mech, the Black Mamba. Everything was untouched, including the lesser healing potions he had brought along. He took one out and held it out to her.

  “Oh, no. I’m not hurt that bad! Don’t waste a potion on me!” she said and held out her palms.

  “You are shouting. I think your eardrums got blown out. Come on, I can afford it.” He pushed the potion into her hands.

  Bosa touched her ears and seemed surprised to see blood on her hands afterwards. She quickly sobered up and took the potion. A short while later she said, “Thank you. I feel better.” She was much quieter this time.

  “Alright, let’s talk strategies for next fight. I think we both did good, but the next round is bound to be harder. I noticed you didn’t really seem comfortable with the Ice Hammer. Do you think you would be more comfortable with my chainsword?”

  “I couldn’t take that from you,” she started, then when she saw his expression, she stopped herself. “Actually, that might be better. It’s an overlong sword, but I’ve done some training with a sword and none with a hammer. I’m not really great with either, but I’m better with a sword.”

  “I’m good with both, they are part of my regular load out. So we’ll switch weapons. Now, we were lucky that those two were pushovers, but we can’t count on that happening again. Next round we should plan on revealing some or all of our skills. I know there are four total rounds, but I strongly suspect we need to bring our A game. You’ve seen me fight, would you rather I break out the portals or the tank?”

  “Gonna keep the helicopter in reserve?”

  “No, I don’t expect the heli will see action today. It’s basically immobile for three minutes while the blades spin up. It’s tank time.”

  “Well, then, let’s save the big guns for later. Let’s do portals this round. I’ll use my threads this round, see if I can tie them up and throw them off. Even if that doesn’t work, they’ll think I can control threads instead of needles.”

  Luke nodded. “It’s decided. Let’s practice a bit while we have the time.”

  They spent the next fifteen minutes practicing maneuvers until the attendant came to get them. The young orc gave them a longer set of instructions about the upcoming fight. Apparently, fights like theirs that lasted less than a minute were heavily frowned upon. Luke agreed to stretch the next fight out a bit. In reality, he wasn’t going to lose a fight so the organizers would be happy. But it didn’t hurt to conform to social norms for a bit.

  In exchange for playing along, Luke got the orc to agree to announce their team as Hack and Crash. They were the first ones on the floating arena this time, so Luke took his time posing for the crowds. There were a few more in the stands this time, apparently they were getting seats for the Individual Tournament that started right after this.

  “The arena thirsts for glory! On the north side, fresh off their first win ever, we have the enigmatic duo of Hack and Crash!” The announcer yelled. Bosa held up her Chainsword when he said Hack, and Luke held up the Ice Hammer when he said Crash. “On the south side of the arena we have the returning champions of Bounce and Fever! The battle starts in fifteen seconds, make your declarations now.”

  A pair of female elves stood on the other side of the arena, raising their matching shortbows and axes. The crowd yelled with delight. They wore medium armor, a mix of chitin and monster leather. The one on the left, Bounce, wore red, and the one on the right, Fever, wore yellow.

  Luke ignored the crowd standing and shouting who they thought was going to win. Instead, he stared at the women in matching armor. He noticed that they had slid their axes into the holsters at their sides. They clearly intended to start the fight at a distance.

  He couldn’t help but grin as he realized they had chosen the worst strategy to deal with his own plans. He turned to Bosa and subtly gestured towards the closest pillar in front of them. That was the signal he would place a portal there. She didn’t turn towards him, but nodded quickly, a motion that would mean nothing to their Kalibutan opponents.

  “May the gods smile down on us all. All glory to the winners. Begin!”

  As expected, the women reached behind themselves and drew an arrow from their waist quiver. Bosa rushed for the pillar and Luke fired three quick shots then followed her.

  The first shot was his suit’s lightning bolt. It crackled and buzzed as it arched through the air towards the elves. His second and third shots were his Vortex Door. One on the pillar, and the other aimed directly at the elf in red, Bounce. The portal wouldn’t form on top of her, but he was counting on the elf assuming it was an attack and ducking out of the way.

  Two arrows passed the lightning bolt, both aimed at where they were about to be. Luke stutter-stepped to avoid his arrow at the same time Bounce ducked out of the way of his Vortex Door spell. It hit the low wall behind her and started forming the portal.

  Bosa twisted out of the way of the arrow from Fever. Luke noticed that Fever's arrows were glowing red hot. The missed shot hit the ground behind Bosa and stuck fast instead of skipping off. A few moments after it landed, the red glow from the arrow pulsed and spread across the floor. It looked like it was turning the metal floor into lava. And it was spreading fast.

  Luckily for Luke and Bosa, they were about to be on the opposite side of the arena. They both raced forward and slid through the waist high portal, Luke right on Bosa’s heels.