The Arena of Sin – even in the darkest of nights, it was lit as bright as day. A contradiction that… for the most sordid place in the city to also be the best illuminated.

Massive grids of Limelight shards, fuelled by the Embryonic Dungeon in the city, shone upon the scenes of blood and death that were routine on the greyish-white sands of the Arena. Such was the popularity of the blood sport that even external participants paid good coin to register to fight against established Gladiators. Rather than a simple form of entertainment; battling, and winning, in the Arena was swiftly becoming an endorsement of one’s martial prowess.

Sand stood with his eyes closed, enveloped in the darkness of the solid wooden cage he was surrounded by. The sound of the spectators penetrated the thin planks and fell in his ears. Their excited buzzing carrying a primal excitement, the hunger for blood and death. He gripped the handles of his weapons, a circular shield and a dagger, tighter.

Sand had been escorted out of his cell, taken to the armoury to select his weapons for the fight and then made to walk down a corridor with a stone door similar to the one in his cell at its end. After he had passed through the door and into the cage, the door had slammed shut behind him with the rattle of chains and the grinding of rock against rock, blocking his avenues of retreat.

The cage wasn’t so much to keep him in as it was to keep the vision of the audience out. He didn’t even need a shard; the fragile wood would splinter if he threw his entire body weight against it.

“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN." A loud voice cut through the buzz of the audience. "Welcome to the Arena of Sin. Tonight, we are going to witness the most anticipated match of the month: a challenge for the Red Mage championship of the Jhelum conglomerate!” The announcer paused, letting the cheers of the audience drown him out. Waiting for them to settle down, he continued with his magically amplified voice, “But before the main course, we have a little appetizer. Two new additions to our stellar cast!

“In the left-hand cage, we have the Undead Doctor. Don’t be fooled by his age or size. Sponsored by Lord Silveros, this little man is as cunning and dangerous as they come! He didn’t hesitate to chop his own arm off to kill a Sand Wyrm when he wasn’t even a mage. And now with a Phlebotomy shard and an Undead Marrow, he can cure you,” he paused for dramatic effect before continuing in a stage whisper, “… or he can kill you.”

Within his cage, Sand sighed. So much for making his opponent underestimate him.

The announcer continued, “In the right-hand cage, we have the Three-eyed Flame Demon. Sponsored by Lord Fors, this ferocious demon cut his way out of a nest of Desert Rattlers and lived to tell the tale. And now, with the Flame Pupil shard and the Third Eye shard, this demon is ready to burn the world down.”

Even if he had read the shard profile of his opponent off the parchment tossed into his cell by the warden and created a reasonable strategy to deal with it, Sand couldn't help but frown.

The Flame Pupil shard was an offensive shard that caused whatever the mage looked at with it active to burst into flames. It was an extremely hard to deal with shard that carried a correspondingly high cost for using it. Every use would cause the eye the mage used it with to suffer flame damage. Unless the mage had a corresponding healing shard to counterbalance its effects, it would blind him. Another drawback was that since the range of vision broadened with separation from the mage, the flames produced would get spread out over a large area the further away from himself the mage aimed his attack, reducing their intensity and effectiveness. Thus, the shard was only considered good for short to medium-range offensives.

The Third Eye shard on the other hand was a tracking shard. The shard itself looked like a crystal eyeball and when it was fused by a mage, it would integrate into his forehead and turn into a third eye. Its specialty lay in the fact that it gave the mage another source of visual input passively and when mana was poured into it, it had the additional active skill of locking onto any target of the user’s choice in their field of vision. After that, as long as the shard was active, the target would remain in the user’s sight no matter the distance or obstacles in the way. Magical barriers or materials could still shield the sight if the shard Tier wasn’t upgraded.

Separately, these two shards might seem unimpressive, but when they came together, the target locking of the Third Eye shard and the tricky offensive of the Flame Pupil fit perfectly making focused long-range attacks possible. Another advantage of the combination was that by using the Third Eye to cast the spell, the mage bypassed the need for a healing shard as the resilience of the crystal eye formed by the shard was much more than a human eye. All that was needed to heal any fissures it accumulated was mana.

“A Third Eye shard that came from a Sand Wyrm, hmmm, is this revenge on the Undead Doctor from beyond the grave?!” joked the announcer. “So, ladies and gentlemen, aarrre you rreadyyy!”

The cheers this time were deafening.

“Then… BEGINN!”

With the rattle of chains, the door to the cage was winched upwards and Sand had to squint his eyes against the sudden influx of light. As soon as the gap between the ground and the door was enough, Sand crawled his way out of the cage and began sprinting towards the other door that was being raised. His opponent was a ranged attacker while he was a close-combatant. His tactic was clear – he needed to close the distance between them. As he ran, his booted feet kicked up clouds of the greyish-white sand that covered the Arena.

The entire Arena was roughly the same size as the sand-pit where the Silveros family cultivated their wyrms. The audience seats were stepped and sloped so that everyone had a panoramic view of the amphitheatre. The highest few rows were reserved for mages while the seats below them were occupied by the mortals. The most important personages had their own private boxes.

The Arena was quite large. As such, despite his initiative, Sand wouldn't be able to reach the other door in time but he still pushed himself to reduce the distance between them as much as possible.

When the Three-Eyed Flame Demon exited his cage, he was surprised to see Sand already halfway across the Arena. Recovering swiftly, he grinned fiendishly and instead of kiting Sand and attacking him with his shards from afar, he rushed to meet him in the centre of the Arena.

Sand frowned again. He would have preferred if the lanky man with dishevelled hair had wasted his mana by taking distant shots at him. But the man was too astute. Since there was a rule that the Gladiators had to enter a fight mandatorily within a week of receiving their second shard, and this was the man’s first match, it meant that he definitely had very little time to familiarize himself with the usage of his second shard. While combining shards was a very powerful ability, it required a lot of practice to pull it off with the degree of speed and accuracy required during a fight. And it had quite high mana costs as well – higher than both shards used separately. So, whether the man had depleted his mana reserves to practice the skill or if he had foregone practice in favour of conserving mana, forcing him to attack long-range was advantageous to Sand.

The reason Sand had charged towards him was to intimidate him into thinking that letting him close was a really bad idea and making him commit to kiting him from a distance. Unfortunately, the man hadn't fallen for it and counter-charged him.

Sand’s gaze grew sharp as his battle-calm descended upon him and his mind took note of every single detail of his opponent, ready to react to his every action. The most dangerous section would be when he entered the medium-range. It was at that point that the Flame Pupil shard would demonstrate its true threat. And since the man would be using his Third Eye to cast it (without activating its skill), he didn’t need to worry about the backlash as much. So he could afford to be free with his skill as long as his mana sufficed.

But Sand had prepared for that eventuality. The moment he entered the range of the shard’s effectiveness, he lowered his stance and dug into the sand with his shield while running, scooping up a pile of sand. Just as the middle of his opponent’s forehead split and revealed a crystal eye that sparkled a fiery red, Sand heaved upwards, throwing up a curtain of sand between the two of them that blocked his opponent’s line of sight.

Flowers of flame bloomed on the airborne sand, blasting it away. Bursting through the burning sand with his shield raised, Sand ran at full tilt towards the so-called Flame Demon.

Startled at the failure of his skill, the Flame Demon’s charge stagnated. Clenching his teeth, he attacked again, his Third Eye sparkling on his forehead. This time, Sand had no choice but to block it directly with his shield. He staggered from the impact of the flames but his momentum kept him powering through. The parts of his body not covered by the shield, his legs and his lower torso, caught fire.

But he was already prepared. Having padded his clothes with torn strips of his blankets, it would take time for the fire to eat its way through. That time would have to be enough.

Nearing Flame Demon, Sand let go of his grip on the handle of the charred shield and caught it by its edge. Spinning on his heel with his momentum, he threw the shield at his opponent, the still-burning disc of wood cutting through the air like a flaming frisbee aimed unerringly at the man’s throat.

Hastily drawing the sword he had brought out of the armoury, Flame Demon tried to deflect the projectile, only to have his sword knocked out of his unsteady grip, leaving him unarmed and with his arms akimbo.

Seizing the flaw in his defence, Sand rapidly closed the gap between them and lashed out like lightning with his dagger, scoring a deep wound on the man’s neck. Sand’s chest glowed red as he activated the Phlebotomy shard and blood practically fountained out of the gash. Without prolonging contact, he immediately jumped backwards and dashed away.

Not a moment too soon as the dying man desperately lashed out with his shard, turning the area all around him into a sea of fire. His face was twisted in a silent scream as he ineffectually tried to stanch his wound. Collapsing onto the ground, he writhed about, spewing blood and fire in all directions.

Slowly, his struggles subsided as he ran out of both blood and mana. With a final few twitches, he lay still; his glazed eyes reflecting the image of Sand watching him from a safe distance.

Even though he had won; even though the crowd had gone wild, showering him with adulation… Sand couldn't bring himself to take pride in his victory. It felt too pyrrhic when – as a man who held the ideal of emancipating humanity – he had slaughtered members of his own race and would continue to do so just so he could survive.

Closing his eyes, he took a deep breath, taking in the stench of blood and fire. Exhaling slowly, he let all the uncertainty flow out of him along with the stale air. When he opened his eyes, they were bottomless dark pools devoid of any fluctuation. His goal was the rise of humanity…

For that, he could make any sacrifice... even if that sacrifice wasn't his to make.