Learn to fight naked and you can never be disarmed.

It was a line from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and a perfectly good philosophy to follow. Unfortunately, it didn’t translate to being comfortable while walking naked into battle, with easily a hundred or more alien spectators, some humanoid and others not so much, surrounding him on all sides. It took serious effort to convince himself that they were leering at him and not his bits.

“You can always cover yourself with your hands rather than fight,” Inanna suggested.

Lukas did not deign to reply. Instead, he looked around at everything but the jeering spectators. He was standing outside a large circle that had been marked with the same sigils he’d seen painted on the walls.

“Step inside,” Nihil said in fluent Ualbesh from behind him.

“I can’t fight unless these are removed.” Lukas lifted his arms to show the bracelets on his wrists.

“Step. Inside.” The man’s voice rumbled like shifting tectonic plates.

Not wanting to enrage the man any further, Lukas calmly walked forward. The moment he stepped into the circle, power saturated the air around him. It was potent, almost unbearably so. His hair stood on end, and an instinctive awareness from the omphalos within was telling him to get out as quickly as he could.

Without warning, the bracelets opened with a harsh click and fell off.

It felt as if a lightning bolt hit his chest, an agonizing ribbon of power that nearly brought him to his knees. His lifeforce, no longer restrained, ripped through his body with reckless abandon.

The rush drove the shame away. The rush made him confident. The rush felt good.

Lukas was ready to fight. To tear his opponent to shreds.

Amidst a howling cry of cheers and shouts, a tall, lean female stepped into the ring. He felt the word “female” was more apt than “woman” because she was far from human. And if the humans in this world were called “bremetans,” then this creature wouldn’t classify as bremetan either.

She had bright red hair that extended into a mane all the way down her back and continued out into a long, muscular tail with a sharp metallic spear end as a tip. She had two pairs of purple eyeballs, one set above the other, constantly registering his every move. Her lips opened to reveal long, thin fangs and her hands brandished nails—or rather, claws—that were jagged and easily the size of her fingers.

“QUON—NAN! QUON—NAN!” the crowd chanted.

Quonnan. Solana had referred to her as a kasha earlier. When Lukas checked the Screen for more information, he ended up finding nothing. Then again, he didn’t think he had come across that particular term before. And that was assuming tales of this creature even existed back on Earth.

Solana chose that moment to grace everyone with her presence. The cacophony of cheers made him wonder if she was some kind of hotshot among the local hierarchy. The mysterious woman moved with a feline grace that complemented her looks as she casually sauntered along the periphery of the circle. Lukas noted that the crowds dutifully stepped back to allow her space.

“This is a trial by combat.” Solana spoke in clear Ualbesh. Every single entity fell silent as soon as she began to speak. “Our fighter Quonnan will fight Lukas Aguilar, who, by his own admission, is an Outsider.”

And just like that, the whispers began. Angry, furious whispers. The gazes shifted. Leers turned into looks of speculation. Those that were jeering now sported calculating eyes, with several bearing caution in their expressions. Hell, even Quonnan’s gaze had shifted from being predatory to outright calculative. Just what was it about being an Outsider that was so special?

“The rules are thus.” Her voice pierced the silence. “Everything goes. Lifeforce. Mana. Possession. Any other tricks the Outsider might have up his sleeve. The battle is only over when one of the two fighters is dead.”

Lukas narrowed his eyes. Somehow, he doubted Solana was setting up one of her own fighters to die. No, it was more like she didn’t believe he was capable of killing the kasha, should it attempt a similar possession.

The idea he had implanted in her mind had borne fruit.

She didn’t want him dead. She wanted him possessed, then to observe the results for herself. She wanted to see if he, the Outsider, was actually immune or had something unique about him that could be of potential use for her. And she had no qualms about sacrificing one of her own warriors for her little experiment.

“A woman after my own heart.” Inanna chuckled.

“Second,” Solana continued, “all attacks must be concentrated within this circle. If either one of you tries to break this circle open, I will kill you myself. Third, it is customary for participants to speak their last wishes before the trial commences.”

Quonnan was the first to speak, her tone curt. “Who cares about last wishes? I want to kill him, and then, I want that body.” She pointed at Lukas with a clawed finger, all the while slowly, playfully, licking her lips. “It looks juicy.”

A flash of sudden displeasure appeared on Solana’s face, before it was covered up with careful neutrality.

Lukas tipped his head forward imperceptibly, before refocusing on the task at hand. A last wish was granted to a person before his execution. Unless the rules were vastly different here, it meant he was allowed to ask for anything within reasonable limits.

But what could he ask for? Clothes would help preserve his modesty—whatever was left of it. He could ask for food or water, or maybe even weapons to fight against Quonnan. All of them were sensible wishes, but none of them would contribute to the upcoming fight in a meaningful capacity.

The odds here were long. He was alone, surrounded by monsters that only looked human. Given the kasha’s confidence, Lukas had to trust that she was going to be tough as nails. But even if he managed to kill this one, there was no way he could take them all down by himself.

He needed some kind of edge. A game changer.

In fact…

A game changer was exactly what he needed.

He narrowed his eyes and reflected on what he had known about these creatures.

One. They were ethereal and capable of manipulating the elements. At the very least, the ether element, if the yurei and the reiki were any indication.

Two. They loved to possess others, and got really excited when they found something they couldn’t possess.

Three. Solana could have just killed him in that prison, but she didn’t. Instead, she arranged this spectacle. Somehow, giving him a messy, public execution didn’t seem like her style.

Four. The same black-haired beauty had mentioned his status as an Outsider to the crowd, but nothing about his supposed immunity against possession.

Five. It was clear that Quonnan had nothing to gain from this twisted caricature of Make-A-Wish. Chances were that it was another opportunity that could be twisted in his favor.

Six. No one here knew about his Soul Siphon ability, or his true nature as an anomaly.

“Why don’t we make it interesting?” Lukas finally said out loud. “Let’s make a bit of a game out of this trial?”

The chamber became intense all at once, as if a hundred throats all inhaled at the same time. Lukas could practically feel the air around him saturate with sharpened interest.

“You are supposed to make your last wish,” Solana informed him drolly.

“And I am stating it. My last wish is to make a game out of this trial.”

Solana cocked her head, studying him. “This trial is already a game, Outsider.”

“Then surely you wouldn’t mind changing the stakes. What if you could get more out of it?”

Quonnan narrowed her eyes. “What more could you lose than your life?”

Lukas gave her his meanest version of a patronizing smile before casually ignoring her and turning toward Solana. “I’ll tell you how I did it.”

“Did what?”

“Stupidity doesn’t suit you.”

Her stare intensified.

“…And if you win?”

“I go free. Unharmed, physically and spiritually.”

Solana threw her head back and laughed. “You amuse me, Outsider. But I’m not letting you go just because you somehow managed to defeat her.”

“Not very confident in your fighter, are you?” Lukas jerked his head in Quonnan’s direction. “What was it? Nobody volunteered, so you chose the only one you could bribe with candy?”

“Leader…” Quonnan growled, gathering herself into a crouch, ready to pounce. She flexed her hands. It sounded like a popcorn popper. He tried very hard not to think about how her claws could tear him to shreds with a single slash.

“Tell me, Outsider.” Solana’s expression bore as much resemblance to a smile as a shark did to a dolphin. “What stops me from torturing you until you simply spill your secrets?”

“Because if you wanted to do it, you’d have done it. And also, it’s boring.”

“You are suicidal,” Inanna proclaimed with amusement.

“I still will not agree to it, Outsider,” Solana said, shaking her head.

“Chicken!”

“Must you antagonize her so?”

Solana looked like she’d like nothing better than to wring his neck with her bare hands. Meanwhile, he stared at her with a wolfish smile on his face, enjoying every second of her reaction. It was clear she hadn’t been talked to like this in a long time, if ever.

Then her expression shifted. Lukas watched with growing dread as things moved beneath her face, shifting and rolling where nothing should have existed that could shift and roll. As easy as it was to think of them as humans with special abilities, they were something far more terrifying than he could comprehend.

“Very well,” she said at last. “I won’t kill you or restrain you. But you will be under my employment.”

Lukas felt his jaw hit the floor. Just what was it with these extraterrestrial and supernatural women wanting to have him under their employment? First Inanna—

“Take a moment to think before you finish that sentence.”

He banished the thought immediately. “Employment?” he began angrily.

“Enough chatter!” growled the kasha, who looked like she was going to evaporate out of sheer anger. “Now get ready to die!”

“…Right,” Lukas said, observing the kasha in front of him. “Duel time.”

“You are a fool if you think this will be easily settled.”

Are you offering your help?

Inanna sniffed. “You should know by now, mortal. I am always offering. It is your reticence that keeps you from accepting. In a fight such as this, my power could be the difference between crushing defeat and overwhelming victory. With my aid, what monster can hope to touch you?”

Drop it. I’m no one’s puppet.

A little cold spot formed in the pit of his stomach, but before he could act upon it, the horn blew.

“Let the trial begin!” Solana announced.

Lukas took a deep breath, the very act bringing him a level of clarity that would’ve been impossible otherwise. And for the better too, as Quonnan moved in for the kill right then, her claws piercing through the air, reaching for his throat, ready to decapitate him with a single blow.

He threw himself back as the claws tore through the space his neck had occupied just a moment ago, the tip of the claw skimming so close to his throat that he could feel it on his skin as it passed. His dodge had left him momentarily off-balance and in the short amount of time it took him to regain his footing, Quonnan was already on him.

Using the momentum of her missed strike to fuel her motion, she spun around in a full circle, her hair trailing behind her like a cape, and slammed her left leg into his abdomen. Lukas was caught between bending like a bow, distraught under the absolute agony, and being flung into the ground like a rag doll. His back was severely bruised by the rocky terrain, and he could feel something wet and sticky on his back.

He coughed up blood. He must have clipped his head at some point because stars were swirling in his vision.

By the time he had managed to sit upright, the panic had already set in. That could have been a critical blow. Already he could feel one of his ribs cracked and, given the pain that was trying to take over his sanity, he was sure that he would soon lose consciousness if he didn’t do something. Had she managed to hit him a little higher or lower…

He’d be dead. Or at least broken, bleeding, and utterly at the mercy of this creature that wanted to take over his body and claim it for her own. A creature that was currently looking at him like a hungry wolf as she prepared her next blow.

He had to get up. Fighting back wasn’t an option because if he didn’t manage to get up any time soon, he wouldn’t live long enough to have a chance.

And the worst part was, he hadn’t even been able to follow her attack. Quonnan had been simply too fast for his eyes, and her reflexes were too quick for him to counter with Kinetomancy.

So he breathed. And focused. And poured more lifeforce into his system. The raw power moved into his bones and muscles, bringing with it a strength that his body did not possess. His sense of pain dulled and the adrenaline reached a new high.

Get up! he chided himself. He’d faced quite a number of monsters inside the Crypt of Fiendish Worms. The formless ghol trapping him to the wall, the massive khorkhoi that had caught his trail, the numerous monsters he had taken head-on. And he had survived all of them.

So he could survive this too.

Quonnan walked toward him slowly, like a predator closing in on her wounded prey. “How disappointing!” she replied in Felleisen. “I thought you would be different. But you are all the same. You are all prey.”

The cold feeling in his chest returned, and Lukas knew, right that moment, that if nothing changed, then he was going to die. The realization galvanized him. Quonnan screeched out a vicious war cry and lunged at him, ready to tear him down like useless meat.

Lukas raised both arms at her. Raw kinetic force exploded out of him, smashing into her chest like a sledgehammer. He could see Quonnan’s eyes widen for a split second, and her fork-like tongue escaped her mouth as she was flung twenty feet back and slammed against something invisible. Her body bent in half as it bounced off the circle’s invisible barrier and dropped to the floor.

Only, he had other plans.

Grabbing her falling motion, Lukas shoved her to the right, smashing against the invisible barrier there. The kasha’s battered form bounced off and crumpled to the floor again like a dishrag. Even with his disoriented vision, he could see a mesh of skin, blood, and something that looked awfully like bones sticking out of the portion where the chest was supposed to be.

The kasha wasn’t moving, yet her eyes seemed to glare at him hatefully.

Lukas pushed himself up, wincing at the sudden jolts of pain that arose from his stomach. Prophylaxis was working, but there was only so much it could do mid-battle. He pumped in even more lifeforce, which eased the pain, if only by a little bit.

“Get up!” he taunted, staring daggers at the fallen kasha. “I didn’t even hit you that hard!”

Conjuring a single, pulsating orb of lifeforce in his right hand, he launched it in her direction. It ended up hitting the ground easily two inches away from her body, ripping out chunks of rock from the floor and sending it flying.

Lukas wobbled. His coordination had gone wonky, but there was no way one could survive getting their chest blown up. Right?

His hopes were dashed when the kasha raised her left hand and pulled out the bone sticking out of her chest before discarding it. She punched herself right below the heart region, twisting her body in ways that shouldn’t have been possible. Then she got up and cracked her neck, as if nothing had happened.

“Interesting trick,” she replied in Ualbesh.

“My next trick involves bunnies, I swear,” he replied, his body still shaking. “Just stand there and give me a moment. Or ten.”

Quonnan did not rise to the taunt. Instead, a hot wind blew inside the circle, making the hairs on Lukas’s back stand on end. A flash of sensation flickered over him as the kasha drew in power.

A lot of power.

He took a defensive stance, utterly clueless about what the kasha was going to do to him next.

If she decided to launch a melee attack, he’d be a goner. Maybe if he was lucky, he could stop her using Kinetomancy and try to blast her head off—body-possessing parasite or not, there was only so much one could go after getting one’s head blown off.

“And you believe she will grant you the chance?” Inanna questioned. “That creature is your better in skills, experience, and ruthlessness.”

Always the shining ball of optimism, aren’t you?

Meanwhile, Quonnan’s clothes dissolved into smoke, forming a clinging, almost crimson mist that drifted around her in spiraling tendrils. He watched with surreal fascination and growing horror as the mist became sullen, glowing flames.

Is she—

A cry of pure fury tore through the air.

Quonnan turned her palms up, and searing points of violent light appeared at the center—her skin blistering and dissolving and opening the way for something else as waves of shimmering heat shimmered around her body.

The kasha howled and hurled a sphere of liquid flame, easily the size of a basketball, at him.

Lukas sidestepped like a nervous horse, but it hadn’t been enough. The fireball missed him, but the residual heat left a lasting impression on his left arm, below the elbow. The skin blistered, but he ignored it. Blistered skin was the least of his troubles right now.

I guess we now know what element she uses.

“Fire,” Inanna replied wistfully. “My favorite among the elements. Note that the parasite is the user, not the physical shell.”

And wasn’t that the truth? Little by little, Quonnan’s body was dissolving. He could see the skin singeing and charring, as more and more heat exuded from her body. What had the kasha said? She’d possess his body and make it her own? That meant her own was disposable.

Though, why she’d want to risk burning her future body was beyond him.

“Look.”

The kasha’s body slowly healed, reforming in a twisted sort of way. The tissues were forced back into place while more of them were being formed, filling in any gaps. The burnt skin was being knit, and charred flesh and bone were being put back into place.

ETHER CONSTRUCTS

False Construction of Biological tissue through Metamancy.

“Ether constructs? It looks exactly like human tissue.”

Quonnan was reforming the outer structure. Not exactly healing, but rather creating a shell to keep the structure in place. If the shell was anything like the ones the yurei had crafted earlier, a solid physical blow should do the trick. That and fire—

Lukas narrowed his eyes. Why would a creature of fire use an ability that made her specifically vulnerable to her own element? Unless it was immune to it—no, that wasn’t it. Regardless, one thing was certain—possessed bodies or false constructs, they all followed laws. If it was a human body, or even remotely human, it was fragile.

It could be broken. It could bleed. It could burn.

And after a certain point, no amount of bullshitting could get it back into working order.

He just needed to ensure that he survived until Quonnan burned herself to bits. And then—

“You burned the ones back there. It did not stop them from possessing you.”

I know. Nothing stopping her from attempting that right now. But I know she won’t.

“Oh? How so?”

Her ego. I’m just hoping she’d immolate herself before that happens.

“Can you guarantee your win?”

Well, I can’t keep living in fear.

“Give up!” Quonann spat. “I’d rather not destroy your body.”

“I’m trying to let you down gently, you ugly freak!”

An orb of searing white heat came hurling in his direction. Raising his right hand, Lukas grabbed the motion of the incoming fireball and tugged it slightly toward the left. A second ball came hurling toward his manhood and Lukas managed to deflect that too, hastily raising a shield of pure force. The kasha had apparently decided to take him seriously, and the smell of charring flesh saturated the arena as she kept shooting fireballs relentlessly in his direction.

Just a bit more, Lukas thought, hiding behind a shimmering wall of force. Kinetomancy, he was finding out, was a rather versatile tool. The sheer number of applications of motion manipulation was mind-boggling. The tenth sphere smashed against his makeshift shield and exploded upon contact into a cloud of flame that expanded along the length of the entire shield.

Quonnan let out a cry of frustration. Her thought process had been obvious. If she could keep pouring fire at him, she’d eventually burn through it, or exhaust his ability to hold it up. Lukas had been cheating, slowing down the momentum of the fireballs right before they slammed against his force shield, and once it became too hot for him to handle, he dissipated it and created a new one to take its place.

Unfortunately, it was a stalemate that couldn’t last forever.

He had to do something.

“DIE!” Quonnan howled. Lukas barely managed to look past his shield and found a small inferno where Quonnan had been standing. Her body was aflame, and the smell of sulfur inundated the air. She planted her feet and inhaled—

“Oh crap!”

—before opening her mouth and unleashing a torrent of flames at him.

Fire, in general, was difficult to argue with. Especially when it was coming at you like a great, angry, monstrous serpent ready to swallow you whole. Trying to punch it with lifeforce was a stupid idea, as was trying to punch lifeforce bullets into it. The former would burn him alive, while the latter would explode upon contact…and then burn him alive.

Trying to raise a wall wouldn’t work either. The sheer momentum of such a massive attack would not just smash past his shields, but also send him flying. Even in the best-case scenario where he managed to stop it, it’d leave him completely drained. It would be like trying to stop a truck head-on.

He’d be paste on the floor. Burnt paste. So instead, Lukas redirected it.

Kinetomancy was about more than catching objects midair and sending them flying in different directions. It was about manipulating the vectors of objects—their mass, their density, their gravity, and most importantly, their direction. He had seen Inanna stop the khorkhoi’s tail midway as it was about to descend.

But in reality, she hadn’t stopped it. No, she had simply snatched away its momentum, bringing it from motion to rest in the blink of an eye.

And then, she’d returned the motion and altered its direction.

Inertia Negation and Motion Reversal, she had called it. And that was just a broken fragment of what true Kinetomancy was capable of. Lukas couldn’t replicate that. He didn’t have the skill or the power reserves to pull it off. But what he could do was redirect an existing motion into a convenient direction as long as it wasn’t facing much natural resistance.

And so, he did.

His stance widened, almost instinctively, and his right hand moved up, while his left stayed at the bottom, palms wide open as if holding something and guiding it upward along a slanted axis. The torrent of flames crashed against him and was guided upward through the invisible convex surface, its own momentum propelling it along the path. The motion carried the devastating power of those flames up against the roof of the cavern, exploding out like some volcanic geyser.

Lukas would have described it as beautiful if he weren’t too busy trying to keep himself from getting scalded.

Quonnan screeched out something. Lukas was too preoccupied to hear what it was. Instead, he slowly pushed his right arm downward, slanting his imaginary convex surface further, bending it in a misshapen U. The last thing he could see was her widened eyes of dismay and understanding as she realized the consequences of what had just happened.

The torrent of flames smashed into her in one massive explosion, enough to push him back by several steps. The noise was terrible. The destruction was appalling. Almost every inch of the floor caught in the blast radius had been blasted apart if not melted into slag. And yet, the magic circle stayed as it was. Unwavering.

Which was good, he supposed.

He fell to one knee, exhausted, his nigh-transparent force shield disappearing the very next second. He had never moved something of that much momentum before, and it had been incredibly taxing. Gods, if he hadn’t been prepared for that blow…

Lukas exhaled. He really didn’t want to think about it. Not when—

There was a sudden sound of a rushing wind.

“Oh come on!” he yelled. “Give me a fucking break!”

“OUTSIDER!” Quonnan—the true Quonnan—rose out of the smoldering bits of the fallen form. The wraith, if she could be called that, did not look human at all. Even in her translucent form, Lukas could notice the lizard-like countenance, with bright red filaments extending out into a massive tail. She had a pair of claws for arms, but her lower regions had been fused into an ethereal tail that merged with her filamentous mane.

This was the kasha. A body-possessing parasitic species, capable of generating fire.

And since the Screen had not awarded him any Experience, Lukas held no doubt that destroying the body amounted to little more than nothing as far as killing her was concerned.

“I. WILL. HAVE. YOU!” the kasha roared.

“YOU’RE NOT MY TYPE!” Lukas yelled back, bracing himself as the kasha dove at him.