Jensa’s opponent was a battle chimera, a drow who’d basically bio-modded himself right out of sanity and was basically nothing but a killing machine. Bone grafts, explosive muscle growth, launchable bone spikes, some tentacles for gripping and rending fun, implanted diamond-hard claws, implanted psychoceramic scales for playing with colors and camouflage, even a whipping tail for that brutally dangerous edge.

She struck just once, weaving her way through his attack pattern in one burst of speed, and driving her sword Hawk right through the nexus of his decentralized brain and blowing banefire through his system.

His tail, two tentacles, and two lashing hands hit the walls rat-tat-tat, spraying some effulgent ichor from his body that couldn’t be called blood anymore, and his burning eyes and snapping, overlong jaws dripping poison gaped down at her in complete disbelief at the Sword that had followed a whirling spiral path around him, and was now thrusting up under his composite-reinforced ribs, through his throat, and all the way up into what was left of his brain.

His organic components gave way rather violently, and Jensa was sent flying, taking the impact of rupturing biochemicals igniting smoothly, landing firmly, plowing a trough in the floor, and not even leaving the starting ring.

Our new bookies turned around and saw our toothy smiles. Funds were passed over as our eyes didn’t leave theirs.

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A young drow Warlock, out to gain some fame and ascend to higher surface. They didn’t spend as much time in the arenas, as they were more Klaw-focused and looking for real combat instead of murder games, which tended to be the focus of attention-hungry Amoureans. Still, he was a trained killer in black carapace armor, dual-wielding long and short blades, looking sneeringly confident of his chances of success against a breshkt like Keva.

Completely dismissive of him, Keva approached, mirroring his motions effortlessly, closing straight to weapon range as their blades crossed.

Three seconds later he was dead, as his finesseable, fractal-edged sword was beat aside effortlessly, his wired reflexes set him to dodging as he tried to get his knife into position to parry the blow that was coming, and the point of a sword far too heavy to be moved so deftly cut down and across as she followed his footwork easily.

He watched his knife hand go flying into the air as it crossed paths with the edge of Flair, and the skirl of his own blade followed his jerking retreat to somehow crash through the crystalline lens of his own helm and into his eye.

His scream of pain was muffled as he moved to counter, slashing blindingly fast twice, missing once, batted aside the second time, and then he looked up as she caught his descending severed hand without looking, and drove the hooked poniard that hand was holding, and the neurotoxin on it, into his other eye.

He was mostly dead as he faltered there on his feet. The neurotoxin began to ravage his system, bursting blood cells and turning years of conditioning and killing of hapless slaves and rivals into sloughing meat inside his armor.

Keva turned and walked away without looking back, glancing slightly up at the group of Warlocks in their carapace armor who’d come to watch one of their own get blooded and no doubt celebrate afterwards.

Natural Fencer. Her ability to feint and read an opponent in a fighting situation was unrivaled, and among the sword-crazed Ranthas, her Talent was hissingly acknowledged as being about as good a complement for Natural Swordswoman as could be expected to exist.

She had his fighting style broken down within seconds of him drawing his weapons, his overconfidence in his skill and armor, his inferior strength, his lacking skill and reliance on his boosted reflexes and agility, and that damn inferior pure finesse fighting style.

Keva had been a street thug in her last life, a knife expert and close-quarters throatslitter who preferred to kill his opponents up close and personal. He had worked as an enforcer and bodyguard to several zwilnik bosses, his superior instincts getting him out of several combat situations that had claimed those around him, knowing when to fight and when to cut and run.

All of that survival instinct and combat sense had been useless when the cultists came down, burned his mind to a crisp, and turned his body into a screaming pslave.

She acknowledged that her soul had belonged to a psychopath who enjoyed plying his knives in all sorts of situations outside combat, but even now, his rage at what had been done to him by the Warp came through the cycle of reincarnation fine and dandy.

These demented, deluded elvar fucks who thought they were getting away with something hit all those anger buttons. Keva was a far, far better combatant then Kevan had ever even dreamed was possible, and while he was a merciless, emotionless killer who could kill at the drop of a hat, administering some repayment on his behalf for contributing such a perfect Talent was a fine way of saying goodbye to him and becoming something greater than his survivor’s-mentality ever dreamed.

Those Warlocks would be more light exercise when they came for revenge, and move the lot of us up to a higher venue. Post-Ten Levels and capability in combat waited for nobody, after all, and these Warp-crazed bastards deserved to be shown what a true fencer could do to them...

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The pink-haired bitch realized I was playing with her about twenty seconds into our fight, when I stopped casually parrying all her attacks, pretending I needed to dodge her knives, and began to slap her, her overdone cleavage, lack of armor, and pink hair all over the place.

She couldn’t outrun me, although she really tried, dancing all over the place and trying stupid spin moves until she ran into my fist, then my elbow in light succession, pounding her back off her feet with a broken nose and cheekbone, and sans a few teeth, too. She got back up, spitting blood in wild-eyed sadomasochistic delight that she thought would get a rise out of me, and I just looked at her in casual disdain.

To be honest, the girls had obeyed the paradigm of Make Ten First and gained far fewer Secondary Levels than I had, which meant they were only behind me because breaking Ten was a such a PITA. However, there were bunches of post-Ten drow who might be tempted to come down and crack open the Second Ceiling for us. The drow actually had more Melee Levels, while I had been relying on my Rantha Levels for raw combat capability, my Melee still at Ten as I rounded up all my Secondary Classes and those precious Skill Ranks needed for all these damn tech and knowledge Skills I needed to keep maxed out.

Still, them Rantha Levels and their continuing Stat buffs and +1 BAB per Level were nothing but sweet, even if they were expensive as hell.

This bitch was not any faster, more agile, or coordinated than I was... actually, she was a good bit less, although I really wasn’t showing it. However, she was also messing with someone with a Strength north of 40, equivalent to a very high-end robot or cyborg, and with a Might over 50, meaning I could rage-flip a battle tank.

Finesse-style is a weak style combat. You MUST have an absolute edge in speed, precision, and agility over your foe, and the only way to do that if you are weak is to have light weapons that can’t really parry effectively if your opponent has any knowledge of how to fight you.

It was probably unsurprising that my Martial Lore was still at 12 Ranks, and I definitely knew how to fight bouncy-bouncy finesse fighters.

The key was Way of Fire, +2 TH vs Dodge and Dexterity bonuses... or, -2 to an opponent’s bonuses from those. If you have that at... IV, which I could as a Twelve, that was the equivalent of taking their precious Dexterity bonuses to avoid me down by 8.

8 points of dodge in a universe where the rarity of exceptional evasive ability means there isn’t a whole lot of solid AB, is utterly massive.

Rule of Valus: If you are fighting an opponent using Finesse style combat and you are using Power Style and Armor, improve your Armor by +2 as you cover your vulnerable spots with brute strength.

In short, a finesse fighter had no choice but to strike at weak points, i.e. very small targets. You didn’t have to be grandly skilled to deny them those points. Shift an inch out of ideal position, and something meant to slip into a crack in your armor, down a seam, against a bone, instead just scrapes against armor and fails to do much injury, since they had no way to power through the armor.

In short, throw your armor against their weapon while they are using all them fancy moves, and then punish them for it.

For this purpose, Bracers of Force Armor and Crystal Shield’s Way of Iron both worked just fine. So did Nogging some Golden Armor.

Yes, she had Psychic Weapons, which meant preternaturally sharp and edgy, and I didn’t care, as I had a whole lot of Energized Armor and Nat Armor to take her hits, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.

She scraped and cut at me, and generally couldn’t hit me, and when she did, it scraped off expanses of skin and muscle away from where she was intending to hit me, and she simply couldn’t break through my DR.

Her end was rather brutal, as I just shut down her offense and slugged her casually whenever she got close. Bones cracked and broke, flesh split and began to fail, and suddenly she didn’t look all that graceful and agile, even as she was trying to suck in the pain and enjoy it.

But it wasn’t just pain. I was hitting her in ways that were making it deliberately harder for her to move, so trying to act like bones were not poking into parts of her anatomy was just a non-starter.

Finally, I got bored, rolled my eyes as she tried another flicker-quick play of poisoned short blades, cut off her hands as she tried to block Chalice, and put my fist right through her face and made a severe indentation on her cerebral cortex, small as it might be.

She twitched and hung there on my extended fist for a handful of seconds as the already quiet crowd went silent.

I tossed the body casually over my head and behind me as I headed for the exit.

Her sisters up in the stands promised some after-duel entertainment was coming.

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We were known trouble-makers. Well, trouble-stoppers. Those who caused trouble with us tended to stop. At least, anyone and everyone who’d tried to pressure us had abruptly stopped permanently.

We got pretty well-known for wandering around and people jumping us, not knowing who we were, and then dying rather abruptly. It simply added to our rep in the gladiatorial pits, and so we moved up the listings.

We fought a lot of stuff. A lot of it was captured cyborgs, monsters, aliens, and various slaves, as well as drow trying to make it, or failing after trying for too long. There were some umbvar, too, skins getting darker by the day, and not treated any better than anyone else as we efficiently and mercilessly cut our way up the rankings.

Oh, there was a constant assortment of poisoners, assassins, mercenaries, cutthroats, bravos, bully-boys, slaver squads, suborned soldiers, and other fine, upstanding citizens of Gloomheart who attempted to cancel our progress, or simply capture and enslave us, possibly selling us off for big money.

There were also a rather large number of people behind such individuals who got mysteriously dead. When that happened, a whole nuther rep of ours began to grow, as the interested noted that those who made moves on us tended to die in interesting ways soon thereafter, a highly valuable skill in drow society!

Given how utterly dispensable we were, we were the perfect patsies, and getting paid in lots of crystalweight was simply pocket change for many of these individuals. Other job offers began to float past us, and when we proved marginally interested in killing highly protected individuals at the behest of other highly protected individuals of fine moral standing, well, paying us to off people in the arena was also viable, because that’s what others were trying to do to us... only they didn’t know what they were getting involved in.