The necrochymists were the masters of the drow biosciences and alchemy, truly twisted mad intellects who’d happily sacrifice whole worlds to their experiments into the nature of life and souls without batting an eye.

They were certain to operate on themselves as well, and couldn’t even be called drow in any real sense. Their own bodies had been replaced, mutated, cybered, grafted, and hybridized so that little of their own genetic structure was actually intact. But that was fine, as they were the ones who ran the Vats that the powerful drow reincarnated themselves into. If their bodies gave way, they chalked it up as another interesting bit of knowledge, decanted themselves into a new one, and resumed the process of making themselves into another life form better than the original.

What it meant was that they were scientists of the worst kind, not fighters, but they were so damn smart they figured they could fight anything and beat it with the right mix of technology and genetic weapons.

He was probably right, but I wasn’t going to give him the proper time to come up with such stuff against me.

His sprayed adhesives couldn’t cling to my Vajra. His monofilament nets were sliced apart and couldn’t break my Nog armor, which didn’t give a damn for molecule-wide fibers, only kinetic energy could force past it. Poison clouds turned into zesty healing treats. Nanite shotgun loads were scissored apart inside my Vajra before they could start eating me. Power fields were a nice tingling sensation. Whips and tendrils got themselves cut short by Sunder Mode, despite being made of molecularly-hardened materials. Saw blades and snippers lunging and flashing were minor annoyances that went spinning away one after another, to the disbelief of the one using them in his perfect pre-calculated attack patterns that should have left me no way out and no way to deal with them.

I didn’t even look the once-drow in his glass eyes after I bisected him, and Lightningphasing combined with shadowfire and Banefire blasted through his corpse. His associates might be angry that he wasn’t going to be coming back, or curious, or more likely just loot everything he had while laughing in mockery of him. True Death made sure that not even totally independent clones of him could survive; his soul was going to Gloom, and I’m sure the plane enjoyed the light snack.

There were only three of those twats among the gladiators that had come down, so something so smart being so dumb was pretty rare. I did indicate to the girls that if they saw any of them to make them a priority, as they could take out whole groups of contestants quickly with their gear-ups... and were, in other areas.

We were all performing mass style analysis of these gladiators, although having stolen the experiences of the bikini-bitches, it wasn’t all that new. Those Bladewitches had naturally seen all the stuff like this many times, and fought against a lot of it personally, too. Thus, while we did have to make adjustments for facing them ourselves... that whole Know Thy Enemy thing was very strongly applying, and we hadn’t seen anything that was truly original yet.

The creature most likely to make the thousand by itself was the shoggoth. It was fast, strong, a powerful fighter, hard to hurt, and it healed itself, as well as being simply massive and converting the dead into annoyances it could spit out at its enemies. The oozes weren’t all that fast or powerful, but they were lethal if they managed to get on top of you and start dissolving you into more ooze, healing them up nicely and generating more jelly for the continuous fight.

The fact the shoggoth could command them to go after the drow and not the contestants was a minor and subtle boost on our side.

The Kundi and the Mothertree might make it; it basically depended on how much the drow focused on them. Since they attracted the drow, they also attracted those hunting the drow. Both mother biovores were taking advantage of it to not kill those attacking the drow, thus helping them kill the drow, and raising their own chances of making it to the end. The girls had explained how it all worked, and the queens weren’t dumb, as it turned out. There was only one of each race left alive now, and their job was to live, generate more of their kind, and eventually eat these drow out of existence.

It wasn’t going to and couldn’t happen, as the drow had solutions to both races if they ever truly got free, but they could still be a nuisance.

The kill counters came down, gladiators and survivors were butchered, and more than occasionally a drow joined them. The gladiators soon realized that if a drow was close to one of us, we promptly went and killed them, and soon they were herding drow towards us if they could, or attracting our attention and making it harder for the drow to move around if they could... which was aided mightily by the fact they couldn’t make low-gravity bouncy leaps all about when near us.

This kind of thing naturally attracted the attention of the drow, especially when we started sporting a dozen insignias and were obviously going for them instead of anything weaker. The girls prowled in the area of the queens, using them as flank guardians and impromptu butchers when desired, and the queens of all three races had no trouble eating, skewering, or chopping drow apart who came their way somewhat out of control. The girls reciprocated by hunting the drow around them that their massive figures attracted.

But still, the slaughter of the contestants continued unabated, and the magical 2000 number cycled into place.

------

The hush was almost reverential, and the drow gladiators actually retreated, snickering and smiling as they did... except for the few who couldn’t outrun me and my girls, who died rather messily and got fed to the queens.

The only reason for us to back off was when they started converging together, as one of us against two of them could be quite annoying, and might force us to use our Shields. Of course, once we did that, we were going on a major kill blitz... and if all four of us worked together, we were going to mincemeat these people.

I picked off a couple more drow masters who couldn’t join up with their fellows in time, adding their badges flagrantly before the eyes of their own. They had a mixture of amusement, fear, and anticipation in their eyes as they watched me and saw their own ilk burn in shadowfire. They didn’t know the implications of that yet, but they would soon enough.

Then the hunt would be on for the shadowfire only the hyn could cultivate, and wouldn’t that be interesting to see what the drow would do for something they couldn’t extort or enslave or make themselves... because the Void Brothers were going to feel them coming, and it was they who were at the heart of the process...

Fun times all around.

I glided back towards the girls as the high masters reached the edges of the arena, and the barrier opened to let them pass. The count went up to 2100.

The survivors and us had killed 312 of the drow, which was a pretty damn impressive number from a historical standpoint. It meant 1688 survivors were still alive. Usually, the dead drow were under fifty, and a short number of one-on-one fights would quickly result in the top thousand consisting of all drow. That we had killed enough drow that the masters coming down still didn’t make a thousand... meant that some of the survivors were actually going to make the final thousand!

All these new drow were post-Tens. Naturally, the numbers skewed to the lower end, Eleven through Thirteen, and boosts in Melee Fighter. The true elites would advance their Elvar Levels too, but those were the true monsters of the Arena, those who had kept their positions for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Some truly ambitious or talented people in the top thousand might vie with the top hundred, but it was unlikely on the face of it. They had earned their position in blood, and it would take a truly powerful challenger to bring them down... and then survive the inevitable challenges from multitudes of drow eager to face the newest and weakest member of the elite.

I wasn’t particularly respectful of them, because I knew that me and the girls, and anyone who had killed one of them, were going to be their preferred targets. They wouldn’t be messing around with the weak, because it was simply no challenge to them... meaning more survivors still had a chance.

But the survivors outnumbered the lesser drow less than two to one now, which did not bode well for a lot of them.

But that was okay, because the smart ones were moving up on our flanks as I gathered with the girls. They knew we had no designs on them at all, and every drow we killed was another one of them that might live.

It was going to be a race to the bottom. The only question was whether the elites would wade in before a thousand was reached, going after those they considered worthy opponents.

Which me and my girls most certainly were.

I could hear the heavy breathing of those still living behind me. All of them were wounded, and tired. At the same time, their will to live was burning strong, and they knew that some of them were going to make it. The more drow they killed, the more of them would!

The drow merc captain only had two of his company left, the others fallen in combat along the way. His carapace armor was gouged and split in several places, scuffed and bruised, and the arrogance in his eyes was now replaced by a lethal fatalism.

The urgob chief had one of his armored flunkies still alive, although that one was heavily wounded, and he was pretty banged up himself. The hobgoblin captain he’d taken as a vassal was also amazingly still alive, by dint of focusing completely on making sure the urgob could kill anything he had to fight, creating openings, and hemming opponents in.

A lot of cyborgs of various sorts were still alive, races in power armor, and the reptoid with the runes on his skin had managed to stay alive. They were all arranged in tacit agreement, the small and quick warding the big and powerful. Goblin lightning spears from the dead had actually been picked up by a lot of them, giving them reach and the ability to strike at bouncers who thought themselves out of range, restricting movements and allowing strikes from a safer distance. Not safe... as all these drow would have wire or chain weapons with reach for just such a thing themselves.

If it had been a company of Marked, Empathic Healing against our Healing Factors would have kept them all pretty topped off in Health, but they were on their own. Many of them were well within one or two-hit range from these drow, and both they and the drow knew it.

Not so me and my girls. There were no visible wounds on any of us, and we weren’t moving like we were tired, either.

The drow had spread out to surround the survivors. Despite being outnumbered, it was obvious who was at a disadvantage. Even the three queens moved up around me and the girls, knowing where the greatest chance to live was. Standing next to a twenty-foot insectoid biovore, a thirty-foot botanical biovore, and a multi-ton twenty-foot blob of unicellular doom, knowing they did not want to kill me, was kind of a surreal feeling.

Purloined memories said this kind of ending was both normal and unusual. Mostly, the survivors would be panicking at this point, turning on one another in order to be one of the few to make it to the end, if at all possible, and the drow would just sweep in and clean them off. But now, even the monsters were sitting there, waiting for them.

Certain of the elites were filtering towards us, ready to have some fun. Others were holding back haughtily, waiting to see if there really was anyone worth dealing with themselves. They probably wouldn’t act until the thousand and the rules changed to guaranteed one-on-one duels.

There she was, hanging towards the back and being given a very wide berth. There were at least six cameras on her from every angle, dressed in white against obsidian skin, the better to show off the blood of her enemies. Her figure was flawless, radiating sex and violence, lithe as a dancer, dangerous as a coiled blade, every movement a picture of grace and control. Her pink hair swayed behind her with a life of its own, accentuating every step with supreme arrogance, untouchable skill, lethality, and danger.

Madame Lolith, the Spider Queen, the undefeated champion of the arena for over two thousand years, considered the deadliest drow combatant alive.

She had her eyes on us, without any doubt whatsoever... but she was probably going to hold back and have us ‘earn’ her attention, as entering any fight against her was a bastard glory of its own, she having acknowledged you as worth her time to kill.

Which was plenty cool, as the vibes I was getting off her, and purloined memories said she was an Eighteen, and at least an Advanced Drow!...