Chapter 12: Crowd Favorite
Yund clapped Victor on the back, put his big, meaty arm over his shoulders, and led him back to their staging area. On the way, he said, “I told you those things are weak. You made minced cutlets of ‘em. Listen, your next fight isn’t in this bracket; we gotta wait for the first bracket fights to wrap up, so you might have twenty minutes or an hour. Go shake out the cobwebs, get some water, and be ready!” Then he propelled him toward the rope, and Victor slipped under, looking for their big water barrel.
Sarl was standing near the barrel, and he handed Victor a cup. Victor drank deeply, sighed, then scooped the cup into the barrel to refill it. While he poured water over his head, shirt, and arms, trying to get some of the blood off, Sarl said, “Hey, Victor, I wanted to say I was sorry to see what happened to Yrella.” Victor looked up sharply, squinting at Sarl’s face, and he saw only sincerity.
“Thanks, man.” He felt guilty inside like he should have a nice thing to say about Yrella whenever she came up, but he just didn’t have those kinds of words. Not right now, in the middle of a Fight Night and covered in blood.
“I take it you won your fight, eh?”
“Yeah, one of ‘em.”
“You have more than one? As far as I know, I only have one today.”
“Yeah, you heard him. They’re short or some bullshit. I have four fights. Well, three now.” Victor shook his arms off, then downed a third cup of water, loudly sighing as he hung the cup back on the peg.
“Four? That seems extreme; I’d be tempted to wonder if Boss was trying to get rid of you.”
“Nah, man. I think he knows about my Core. He saw me fuck that guy up the other night, and I think the guy who helped me make my Core told him about it.” Victor had been thinking about Yund’s change of attitude toward him, and it only made sense that the guy who Yund paid would tell him whether he’d had any success. It seemed like a rage-attuned core was perfect for Victor’s situation. All Yund had to do was drop him in a pit with only enemies and tell him to go nuts. Victor didn’t know how effective something like Berserk would be among high-tier fighters, but it seemed to be borderline overpowered at his current level.
“Your Core?”
“Yeah, he paid some guy to help me figure out what kind of Core to form, then help me with it. Didn’t you get a reward for winning that fight with me?”
“Oh, he offered me a race fruit or extra time off my sentence. I took the time-off.”
“Does that motherfucker ever let us take a shower or something?” Victor asked, looking down at his shirt and jeans.
“Aye, if you win enough fights, he’ll reward you with things like baths, extra meals, prostitutes, even, as you’ve seen, special things like racial upgrades. He’s more generous with fighters with long contracts.” Sarl clapped Victor’s shoulder. “It’s good that you have won your first three fights. It means you’ve got a fighting spirit, and that’s half of what you need to survive the pits, or so Kurl says. He’s been fighting the longest among those in my pen - there are seven of us.”
“What’s the other half?” Victor almost didn’t want to ask.
“Luck! You need to be lucky with who you get matched against, with injuries, with sickness, with your manager; is he poisoning you so he can make you throw a fight? Did he do any of a hundred other things to ruin your chances?”
“Hah, well, today’s the first time I’ve had a skill for it, so I’m still learning its limits. It says it has a long cooldown, but I’ve used it in both fights, so it can’t be that long.”
“‘Long’ can mean anything from a few minutes to a few days. It sounds like your skill is usable after a few minutes. I think the System calls it ‘long’ because, in a fight, twenty minutes is the same as forever.”
“That’s the fucking truth.” Victor had never known how long six minutes could be until he’d started wrestling. They were back at their section, and Victor made a beeline for the water. Ponda clapped him on the shoulder as he went by, and Victor actually felt like the big guy was being friendly. Sarl wasn’t there this time, and Victor figured he probably was off fighting. For a minute, Victor wondered if he’d be back. Would he die in this fight? At that moment, Victor decided he didn’t want to get close to any more fighters. He already felt like he’d be gutted if Sarl died, and he hardly knew the guy. He couldn’t handle any more Yrella’s, that was for sure. He grabbed a cup and began the process of hydrating.
After drinking his fill and washing some of the blood from his hands and arms, he sat back against the wall and contemplated his attributes. It was evident to him that his Berserk ability was the only reason he was alive right now. It allowed him to go all-out offensively while holding his body together against the stabs and pummeling he’d inevitably take. He decided to stick with his strengths for now and spread the points around his physical attributes. When he was done, his strength was up to twenty-five, his vitality was a solid fifteen, and his dexterity and agility were both at twelve. When he applied the ten attribute points he’d banked, the surge of Energy that flooded through him, presumably making the improvements, was intoxicating, and he closed his eyes, just absorbing the good vibes.
Victor’s third fight for the night took a little longer to come around. According to Ponda, a few fights had turned into real brawls, dragging on for a while. He said that some of the tier two and three fighters had abilities that made them very hard to kill. In any case, the time finally came, and Ponda led him back toward pit number two again, right near the center of the warehouse. However, something new happened this time when Victor stepped onto the platform: people started cheering and clapping. A few of the spectators even shouted his name. “Don’t get too excited,” Ponda said, standing next to him. “They cheer for you because they’ve already seen you bleed tonight, and they’re happy you didn’t slink away to the infirmary.”
“Is that an option?” Victor couldn’t stop himself from smiling along when Ponda laughed and shook his head.
“Not unless you can’t walk.”
“Fighters ready?” Victor looked at the familiar judge and nodded along with Ponda. He glanced around the pit and saw he only had to fight one opponent; a tall, striking woman with blue skin and pale green hair and eyes. She wore leather pants and a tight cloth shirt, and she looked like she’d just come out of a beauty salon - she was so clean, her hair so lustrous. She frowned and nodded in Victor’s general direction.
“What the fuck?” was all he had time to ask before the judge shouted for them to fight. Ponda gave him a little shove, and he fell toward the sand and mortal combat with the most beautiful person he’d ever seen.
“Victor, hmm? I heard the crowd - they like you.” Her green hair bobbed in a high ponytail as she circled him. He licked his lips nervously, not liking the idea of beating up a beautiful girl. So far, there weren’t any weapons in the pit, so he moved in close to grapple; he wanted to test the waters a little. She met his attempts to grab her neck or wrists with easy deflections, and when he tried to slip in for a single-leg takedown, she hopped back and gave him a shove, so he stumbled to one knee. He smiled, kind of enjoying the competition, and when he started to stand, turning to face her, her snap kick caught him on the forehead, and he stumbled back onto his ass, bright stars blooming in his vision.
The kick caught him by surprise, and Victor knew he was being dumb, taking her more lightly as a threat just because she was hot, so when she flashed in with a straight punch aimed at his throat, he pivoted and swept her legs, sending her crashing into the sand. Victor had always had a strong ground game, and he was on her before she’d gotten her hands under her. He slid around behind her, grabbing her head in a chokehold. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was recoiling at the idea of choking this girl to death, but more immediately, he just wanted to immobilize her. That’s when an ear-shattering sound ripped out of her throat, sending a visceral shockwave of piercing needles into Victor. He felt like someone was peeling his skin off as he rolled away from the girl in the sand, thrashing like a man on fire.
This time when his vision went red, it wasn’t from rage but from blood. Blood was sheeting down into his eyes, coating his face, arms, and chest. Had she actually shot him with a thousand needles? Where the fuck did they come from? He groaned, rolling in the sand, and then he felt a thunderous concussion as her foot slammed into his kidney. He gagged, rolling again, trying to get some distance. The deep throbbing pain from his lower back told him he’d taken an injury, unlike anything he’d experienced before. Something inside him was broken. He pulled his knees up to his chest, turtling up while struggling for breath. That’s when he heard her giggles. She was fucking giggling while she stalked around him in the sand. He caught a glimpse of her as she darted in front of him, then she was behind him, and he tried to spin to keep his legs between them, but she didn’t come in for a kick or punch; she screamed again, and thousands of tiny, fiery points of pain ignited along his shins and knees. Blood darkened the denim of his jeans, soaking them through, and Victor inhaled sharply, wanting to let out a scream, but the fiery pain was too intense; his scream choked in his throat.
“Does it hurt, boy? I’ve heard from reliable sources that it does.” Her voice had a lilting quality, light-hearted and teasing. She giggled, and Victor closed his eyes and activated his Berserk ability. Instantly the fiery pain all over his body went silent, and he thrashed onto his back as his body surged with burning rage-attuned Energy. “Dying already, boy? I haven’t finished entertaining the crowd yet.” She screamed again, and Victor felt the tiny needles hitting him all along his stomach, arms, chest, and neck. They didn’t hurt, though; he just knew they’d hit him like you’d notice water running over your hand at the same temperature as your body; it didn’t burn or feel cold; it was just there. He hopped to his feet, his face a terrible visage of steaming blood, baleful red eyes, and snarling blood-flecked teeth.
The beautiful Ardeni woman’s smile fell away, and she took a step back. She raised her hands and screamed again, and once more, Victor felt the pressure of something hitting him, though it didn’t bother him anymore. He roared in a fury and was on her in a heartbeat. She tried to drive him aside with a spinning round kick, but Victor punched her shin as it came at him, cracking the bone. She wailed in pain, but before she could fall, Victor was on her, sliding behind her, one powerful arm around her neck, squeezing her larynx into the crook of his elbow. He roared up at the sky while he crushed the life from her, and the crowd roared back. Her body went limp, and Victor paced around in the sand, still holding her tight in his arm, looking for something more to fight.
When he came back to himself, he noticed the notification in his vision:
***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 8 base human. You have 5 attribute points to allocate.***
When he reached up to dismiss it, the girl’s corpse fell away, and he realized he’d been holding her this whole time. The crowd was going wild, chanting his name, cheering the blood-soaked monster in the middle of the pit. Victor took two steps away from the body and vomited.N0v3lTr0ve served as the original host for this chapter's release on N0v3l--B1n.
