After they ate, Yrella told Victor that they’d have two hours to exercise before they had to go back to their pen. She and Vullu led him out of the cafeteria to the large grappling hall. There were already about twenty others tousling, exercising, and lounging around on benches watching. “What keeps you all from rising up? Fighting your way out of here?”

“Aside from the fact that most of these assholes would kill each other just as soon as they’d work together, most of us that Yund feels threatened by have been tagged.”

“Tagged?” Victor looked at her quizzically. Yrella pulled her loose gray blouse up by her waist and showed him a bright blue tattoo on her hard, red stomach.

“Tagged. The ink is infused with an alchemical mixture that binds us to the control rods Yund and his lackeys have. It’s an expensive process, so they don’t do it to all of the fresh meat.” She winked at Victor and tousled his hair.

“Well, you’ve got some fucking tight abs.” He smiled at Yrella’s confused face, then looked around the room and said, “Any workout gear? Or I gotta wear my jeans and shit?”

“Your clothes? You’ll have to make do with what you have. Yund is a cheap bastard when it comes to us fighters.”

“Alright, Victor,” Vullu cut in, “let’s see what kind of fighting you do.” They were standing in a relatively quiet corner of the sparring gym, and Vullu sidestepped, facing Victor, beckoning him to come at him with one of his hands. Victor hopped up and down a few times, getting his blood pumping, then he faced Vullu, his center of gravity low, and moved toward him, circling with him, watching him for any forward movement. “Come, Victor, show me….” He couldn’t finish the sentence because Victor had feinted with his right hand, drawing Vullu’s eye, then he’d swept in low, grabbed Vullu’s back ankle/hoof, lifted it tight to his chest, and swept his other leg, dropping the goat-man onto his back.

***Congratulations! You’ve learned Unarmed Combat - Basic.***

“Ancestors! That was smooth! You didn’t even see him coming, Vullu!” Yrella laughed, mockingly offering to help Vullu stand, then pulling her hand back. Victor was too astounded by the message floating in his vision to pay them any attention.

“What the fuck is this? I just learned unarmed combat, basic. What the fuck? Basic? I don’t think so!”

“Do you feel like you know anything new? Really think about it; concentrate on what you know about fighting.” Vullu said, grunting and standing up. Victor did as he said and couldn’t find anything new in his head. It was weird, exhaustively trying to contemplate what he knew about something, but nothing was new as far as he could tell.

“Nah, I don’t think so.”

“I think the System is still trying to categorize what you know, at least with regard to fighting. Let’s go, try that again, and if you get it, keep going. Show me what you’d do next.” Victor nodded and moved back into circling with Vullu. This time he closed in and grappled with Vullu a bit, reached in, grabbed his neck, pulled on him, grabbed his wrist, pulled it, let him try to grab his wrist, and then rolled it out of the grip. Then just as Vullu was starting to get lulled by the push-pull of the grappling rhythm, Victor swept low and forward, grabbed both of Vullu’s legs, and drove him backward onto the wooden floor.

Vullu thrashed and tried to flop over, but Victor’s ground game was strong. He scrambled up, keeping his center of mass pressing down on Vullu the whole time, then scooped up his head and left arm in a lock, driving his full weight into his shoulder, pressing down on Vullu’s chest while he squeezed his head and arm. Vullu was definitely pinned, but now what? They weren’t in a wrestling match.

“Uh, you have me immobilized, but now what? What if I start punching you?” Vullu grunted, balling up his free hand into a fist and pounding it into Victor’s upper back and side. Victor hunkered down, so his head wouldn’t get hit and squeezed harder, going up on his toes to push more of his weight into his shoulder, bearing down on Vullu’s chest even more. “Ugh, that’s uncomfortable, but it won’t stop anyone with any decent points in strength and vitality. What are you going to do?”

“Alright, pinche,” Victor growled, then he hauled up on the smaller man, scooting his legs under him, so he was behind him, still holding his arm and head in a death grip. This wasn’t high school wrestling; why the fuck was he following rules? He let Vullu’s arm slip out of his grasp, but then he redoubled his hold on Vullu’s neck, wrapping it deep into the crook of his elbow and pressing on the back of his head in a full, rear-naked chokehold. He held it until Vullu stopped thrashing, then he let go, pushing the goat-man off himself and standing up.

***Congratulations! You’ve learned Grappling - Improved.***

Vullu had started gasping for breath almost the moment Victor let go. He and his buddies had played around plenty with chokeholds; he knew when to let go to avoid hurting someone. “Fuck yeah! Improved Grappling that time!”

“That’s a more specialized skill, but improved? How can someone without a class learn beyond basic?” Vullu looked at Yrella, and she just shrugged. He looked back at Victor and said, “That was a good choke, but you realize I haven’t been fighting back, right?”

“Yeah, well, I kinda could tell.” Victor shrugged.

“Hey, I just had a thought,” Yrella said. “Victor, do you feel like you know more about grappling now?”

“No, I don’t feel any fucking different.”

“Uncle’s arse, but you use that word a lot - ‘fuck, fucking, fuck, fuck.’ What does it even mean?”

“Fuck? You guys don’t have that word? It means a lot of stuff. It can mean the same as shit, or it can mean extremely, like if I said, ‘that is fucking cool,’ that would mean something is extremely cool. It also means sex. I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s all I can think of right now.” Victor shrugged. Yrella looked at him strangely, opened her mouth to say something, then stopped and shook her head slightly.

“Anyway, I was thinking the System isn’t giving you those skills; it’s just recognizing that you have them.” She turned to Vullu, “So it didn’t give him an improved skill; he already had it.”

“Ahh, yes. That makes more sense. If he’d just learned those skills, he’d have gotten Energy with them. Maybe even enough to gain his first level.” Vullu was nodding. “Victor, answer me this: have you ever learned to fight with any weapons?”

“No, not really. I mean, me and my buddies used to play around with wooden swords, but we never learned any real skills.”

“Yrella, will you go check out a couple of practice axes?”

“Axes? You sure that’s best for him to learn with?”

“Well, no. The spear would probably be better, but I like axes, so that’s what he’s getting.” Yrella shrugged and sauntered over through a doorway near Yund’s office. Victor watched her go, and Vullu snorted, “Don’t let her catch you looking at her like that, kid.” Victor jerked his head away and feigned a stretch.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, man.”

“Good, play it off. That one has teeth, and you have enough problems to deal with, you hear me?” Victor looked at the little goat-man again, more closely, and he had to admit the older guy could be intimidating when he wanted to be. He had a short gray beard, and a mostly human-looking face, except for those weird yellow-gold eyes with weird-ass irises.

“Hey, what are you, er your people, like called?”

“Ahh, no Cadwalli on your world, eh? Makes sense; I’ve never seen a wingless Ghelli like you.”

“The fuck? Ghelli?”

“Well, you look kind of like a Ghelli, though they’re very slight people - you’re too stocky, and, as I said, they have wings. Ahh, here she comes.” Vullu turned and held out a hand, to which Yrella tossed a heavy-looking single-bladed hand axe. He caught it, gave it a twirl, then nodded to Victor. Victor turned and took the axe Yrella was holding out to him. It had a stout wooden handle, and the axehead was broad and heavy, definitely bigger than his grandpa’s hatchet. He held a thumb to the blade and saw that it was rounded and smooth; he couldn’t cut butter with this thing.

“Alright, Victor. Stand behind me. I’m going to run through some standard axe forms, and I want you to mirror my movements. We’ll do each one five times at first, then run through them faster and faster. Victor nodded and took up position behind Vullu. Yrella stood to the side, scrutinizing him as he tried to copy Vullu’s movements as precisely as possible. The way Vullu moved reminded Victor of old dudes on VR doing that Tai Chi stuff - he moved slowly and smoothly, and Victor found it easy to mimic him, at least at first. After they’d gone through about ten different movements, repeating each one five times, like Vullu said they would, he picked up the pace, moving a little faster and only repeating the movements four times. Then he moved even faster, cutting the repetitions down to three. By now, Victor’s arm and shoulder muscles were starting to burn, and he was breathing heavily. Still, he pushed through - if coach Dorgan had taught him anything, it was to push through the burn, push past the pain. When they were on their next run through, doing two quick repetitions, a new message appeared in Victor’s vision:

***Congratulations! You’ve learned Axe Mastery - Basic.***

Victor stopped swinging in surprise when he saw a bunch of tiny golden flecks of light start to gather in the air around him. He rubbed his eyes and shook his head, wondering if he was about to pass out or something, but then the little motes of golden light rushed toward him, and he felt like he’d just popped an E-bomb. He shook his head and put his hands on his knees. “Whoah, fucking hell.”

***Congratulations! You’ve achieved level 1 base human.***

The rush faded quickly, and Victor stood up, feeling fresh, almost like he hadn’t been working out at all that day. “Well, I’m fucking level one now. Watch out, bitches!”

“That’s how things work when you learn a new skill, Victor. Think about the axe and what you know now about fighting.” Vullu held up his axe like a visual aid. Victor did as he said and was surprised that he did seem to know an awful lot about axe fighting that he had no business knowing. He knew what angle to hold the blade at for different types of chops, he knew about not extending his center of balance when he swung, and he knew about following through and using momentum to create new opportunities. The number of little facts he knew about axes was simply mind-boggling.

“Well, that’s nuts. So the ‘System’ just put a bunch of shit in my head? I could’ve used this during Chemistry class.” He held his fingers up, making quotes when he said System, and Yrella and Vullu looked at him quizzically. He shrugged and said, “Eh, never mind. So, like, can I get my axe skill even higher by practicing with you?”

“No, not really. You can get more fluid and increase your ability to the very edge of ‘basic,’ but you won’t be able to move to improved until you have a class that supports it.

“A Class? Jesus, this place really is like a game. So, how do I get a class?”

“You live long enough to get to level ten. Or, at least that’s when most races get their class. I’ve heard that some of the lower races, like Urghat, get a class much earlier, though they have terrible potential for growth.”

“Bro, you’re losing me. So, if I’m like you guys, I should get a class around level ten. Alright, let’s hope I can get there. Can you guys teach me more skills that will give me levels?” Victor looked from Yrella to Vullu, and they exchanged glances also, then Yrella shrugged.

“I could teach you some things with knives, spears, and swords. Vullu, you should teach him bludgeons. You’ll just have basic skills with them, but you won’t be helpless if they put weapons in your pit match. Vullu and I both have some Energy skills we could try to teach you if you had a Core, but you’ll need a few levels worth of Energy to build a Core. Oh, look at your status - do you have any Energy now?”

“Um,” Victor said, pulling up his status menu and looking at the little Energy label. “I have thirty over zero now.”

“Good, your body is absorbing Energy properly. We just need to help you build enough to allow you to form a Core. I doubt we’ll get there with just a few skills, though. You’ll get a lot more from killing your opponents in the pit.”

“Fuck. I keep forgetting about that shit, but I really have to fight to the death, huh? This shit is nuts.”

“Unless you want to sit down and die. Trust me; they aren’t going to throw you in there with a pacifist.” Yrella said, stepping forward and squeezing Victor’s shoulder. “You gotta get your head right, kid. This isn’t a joke. There are worse places on Fanwath you could be, but not many.”