Chapter 16: Court, Concluded. Also, Math.

"Come on, you chicken shits! Someone come down here and fight!"

For the last twenty minutes, WeirdoRefereeGuy had been trying to convince the crowd to come challenge me. He'd tried cursing at them, threatening them, appealing to their pride and their sense of oppression, and it looked like he was close to begging. No one was coming down.

Which, honestly, was a good thing. I was at 294 HP and 348 MP out of my 1130 maximum, but I wasn't recovering anything. When I was at full strength I recovered about one MP every couple of minutes. Now, apparely I wasn't going to recover MP until I got rid of the worm infestation. That was going to put some very sharp limits on what I could do. Modify Flavor was extremely cheap at only 1 MP per minute, but even that could start to add up if I had to use it on dozens of challengers one after another.

{Why don't they just leave?} I asked Murray. {If they aren't going to fight, why stay?}

{It's warm here.}

That took me off guard. And made me a little sad.

"Also, dere hopin' ya die," Murray added in Ozurdati, hopefully only because Dog didn't have a word for 'death'.

{What?!}

"If ya die, alla ya Skills goes flyin' around. Audience might catch a few, 'specially if dey can run into da arena fast enough. Betcha dey'd really like to get dat distraction skill ya was usin'. What was dat, anyway?"

{Hm? Oh, that was—} I caught the referee's pointed ear twitching towards us and cut myself off. {I'll tell you later.}

The referee had stopped talking and was sitting on the floor of the arena looking irritated. His goat legs didn't bend the same way human legs did, so he wasn't able to sit cross-legged and had to spraddle them out in front of him while he curled his tentacle around himself and into the shape of a backrest.

The crowd had been nervously silent for a while now, so with the referee also being silent I was able to hear the click of the door opening at the top of the arena. I glanced up to see Eugene appear with Life Mage Aerith in tow, this time wearing a canary yellow robe with watermelon trim and an ultracanary collar. I was definitely leaning towards 'Aerith has no color vision.' Eugene waved me over as the two of them trotted down the steps.

The referee sat up with a hint of excitement, but he flopped back in loudly-voiced disgust when Eugene and Aerith stopped at the bottom of the steps. Eugene pushed his way into the lowest row of seats, forcing half a dozen of the viewers to budge over. With him out of the way, Aerith was able to come down and sit on the second-to-last step with his feet on the last. It left him close to my eye level. The referee shouted at me not to go up the steps or I'd be leaving the arena. I ignored him.

"Your friend messaged me while you were fighting," he said without preamble. "He claims you aren't healing, but you look pretty healed to me. A lot smaller, though. What happened?"

"Hi! Nice to see you, and thank you for helping me yesterday. I didn't get the chance to say it at the time and I'm sorry for that."

"Whatever. Why are you smaller?"

"Oh, I gave away sixty points of Spirit. See, Simon—"

"You gave away sixty points of Spirit?! Why would you— How did you— How do you even have that much?"

Behind Aerith and out of his eyeline, Eugene shook his head frantically.

I shrugged. "Just lucky?"

"Hey! In or out of the ring, bucko!" the referee shouted. "Stop distracting the champion!"

"Shove off," Aerith called back. "There's nothing that says I can't talk to him and if I don't step into the ring I don't have to fight."

The referee glared fiery daggers at Aerith but said nothing. After a moment he stood up and turned to shout at the audience on the far side of the arena.

"Why are you here?" Aerith asked. "Holding Champion's Court, I mean."

"Well...I'm Patched and I need to earn 553 Spirit in the next two days if I want to get home. Eugene thought this would be a good way to do it, but I beat the first few people too easily so they stopped fighting."

Aerith studied me for a long moment with a frown on his face; I had no idea what he was thinking.

"I see," he said at last. He studied me for another moment then shook his thought—whatever it had been—away. "Your weed friend here told me about your worm problem and convinced me that I should fix it."

"Oh wow! Thank you, thank you, thank you! How much?"

"We aren't paying him anything," Eugene said quickly. "He's going to earn a gazillion Attunement doing this. If anything, he should be paying us."

"As if. Your friend here is probably going to die without my help. You're lucky I'm not charging you."

"I'm not going to die! I'm doing fine!"

"You can't heal, right?"

"Well...no."

"Just yesterday someone tried to whack you for your Skills. You think they won't try again? Keep getting attacked when you can't heal, eventually you die."

"..."

"Thought so. Now, this Skill is very expensive. My bargain with your friend said that you would replace any Spirit or mana I burn. Agreed?"

Wow. I was giving up a lot of Spirit lately. Still, if it got rid of these worms....

"I can do that."

"Great. I'm going to heal you now. Hold still. ." Without so much as a by-your-leave he put his hand on my head and sent a torrent of heat and light pouring through my body.

Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 497 HP! Benefit is applied towards eliminating the 'Worm Infested' status effect. 4 worms have been destroyed. You are now at a -70 malus to Recovery. Status effect remains.

"Did that do anything?" he demanded.

"Uh-huh! It would have been 497 HP but it cured four of the worms. There's still 70 to go."

He stared at me for a moment in disbelief. "Vash the Mighty. Those things are damn hard to kill. I can only use this Skill five times per day so it's going to take several days to get you completely fixed."

I digested that for a moment. "My Recuperation goes up when the worms die off, so it'll work better each time. Will that help?"

"Recuperation?"

"He meant Recovery," Eugene said quickly. "He's new to the language, he sometimes forgets and mixes words up."

"No I don't! I have a terrific memory! I learned to talk in a week because I have such a good memory!"

Eugene gritted his teeth. "You do screw things up, Athos. Remember?"

Belatedly, I realized what he was saying: Don't let on that my stats were unusual in any way, because I didn't want anyone to guess that I had Dyadic Unity.

"Oh...right. Yeah, I guess I do get those words mixed up. Recovery, Recuperation...they sound the same, right?" In Ozurdati they sounded nothing alike.

Aerith gave me a narrow-eyed study, and then shrugged. "Whatever. More Attunement for me, I guess." He shook his head. "Still don't know why I couldn't sense the worms yesterday. If there were something inside you it would mean a gap where your flesh and your spirit didn't line up. I didn't feel anything like that when I scanned you yesterday."

I didn't know what to say to that, so I looked at Eugene.

"Dunno," Eugene said. "Like you said, he's a Foo Dog or something. Maybe your Skill doesn't work right on Celestials?"

Aerith grimaced and scratched his ear. "I don't see why it wouldn't, but that isn't relevant. A Celestial is pure spirit, but this guy here is flesh and blood with a spirit stitched to him, just like the rest of us. Physical intrusions, including living ones, would push the flesh aside and make it not match what the spirit expects to be there." He frowned. "Of course, his spirit isn't normal anyway. No flows."

"Does it matter?" I asked. "Maybe we could focus on the healing?"

"Of course it matters! If my scan is on the fritz it endangers all of my patients!"

"Well, maybe you could figure it out later?"

"Fine. ."

Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 541 HP! Benefit is applied towards eliminating the 'Worm Infested' status effect. 5 worms have been destroyed. You are now at a -65 malus to Recovery. Status effect remains.

"Are you three going to sit there nattering all day?" the referee called. "Come and fight! It's what you're here for."

"Fuck off!" Eugene shouted.

Aerith's eyes were unfocused and his fingers were twitching in a way that suggested he was paging through some of Mr. FloatyBox's messages.

"541 Attunement gained?" he muttered in confusion. He focused on me again. "Just how much Recovery do you normally have, dog?" His eyes widened. "Wait. You had seventy worms in you. Is each one giving you a -1 to your Recovery?"

I shifted uncomfortably. "Maybe?"

"So your Recovery is normally...what, 122?"

"Something like that." It was Recuperation and it was 123.

"Do we need to discuss this here?" Eugene asked. "You're here for healing, not interrogation."

Aerith glared at him. "Don't push me, boy. I don't need this job."

"Hey, I get it," Eugene said, smiling and spreading his arms. "It's a cool puzzle and it's confusing. Everyone knows you're one of the best healers in the city. That's why I came to you. Someone with your expertise and concern for your patients, no wonder you're intrigued. Still, my friend is really hurting and you'll get a crapton of Attunement by helping him. Is it such a bad thing to do the healing first and worry about the puzzle later? Like you said, it's going to be a few days before you can get it resolved either way. You'll have time later. Right?"

"I suppose," he said. "All right, I've already burned a point of Spirit."

I booped him with my nose. {: One point.} Energy flowed out of me and into him.

He shook in head in bemusement. "That is one hell of a Skill. Okay, let's do this again. . . ."

Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 596 HP! Benefit is applied towards eliminating the 'Worm Infested' status effect. 5 worms have been destroyed. You are now at a -60 malus to Recovery. Status effect remains. Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 647 HP! Benefit is applied towards eliminating the 'Worm Infested' status effect. 6 worms have been destroyed. You are now at a -54 malus to Recovery. Status effect remains. Skill 'Enhanced Rapid Recovery' has amplified and sped up your life processes! You recover the equivalent of 693 HP! Benefit is applied towards eliminating the 'Worm Infested' status effect. 6 worms have been destroyed. You are now at a -48 malus to Recovery. Status effect remains.

Aerith snorted. "Lucky numbers. I'm at exactly zero mana so I didn't drop a Spirit, but I still need a top up. Do your trick, dog."

I glowered at him for a moment; I'd been handing out Spirit left and right lately, but I suppose I had agreed, and keeping him happy was important. I chuffed my annoyance and then booped him. {: One point.} Once again, life force flowed out of me and into him.

"That is an impressive trick," he said.

"You're welcome."

"I didn't say thank you. You owed it to me."

I really, really, really wanted to gnaw on his shoes just a little bit.

"You could be a little nicer, you know."

He snorted. "I'm perfectly nice. We had an agreement, I kept my side and you kept your side. No thanks needed, we're just both adults. Besides, if any thanks are owed it's the other way around. I came here when I didn't have to in order to save your life, dumbass."

"I'm not a dumbass! I'm very smart and you shouldn't be so rude!"

"Look, you—"

"Hey, guys?" Eugene said calmly. "You're scaring people."

Aerith and I both looked around, me guiltily and he unconcerned. The audience members had all shuffled away when Eugene, an armed man with the physique of a healthy warror, showed up. They seemed equally nervous about Aerith although I wasn't entirely sure why. He was tall and patrician but didn't seem particularly threatening. Now that we had started arguing in loud voices they were actively scuttling.

"Whatever," Aerith said. "They're just street trash. Anyway, that's my five shots for the day. We'll do this again tomorrow. I'll be at the bastion at noon." He stood up and walked back up the steps and out the door.

o-o-o-o

The rest of the day was exceptionally boring except for a few times when it was scary and then depressing.

The 'scary' part was the four other challengers who came at me. After Aerith left, Eugene had gone outside to try to 'drum up business' as he put it. He found four more people willing to challenge me; three more of the desperate homeless of the sort that had already attempted it and one trained, albeit inexperienced, albeit young warrior armed with a sword as tall as he was. All of them went down quickly enough although I did take a slice to my flank for my troubles. Ironically, it was one of the homeless guys who did it.

Of course, every time I beat someone they would then suffer agonizing pain as their Spirit was sucked into a spike which I would receive as a prize at the end of the competition. By the time sunset rolled around I was a very unhappy dog indeed.

"That was fantastic!" Eugene said as we walked (well, he walked and I limped) back to the caravansary. "You were amazing, buddy!" He scritched my ears and I leaned into it. "Great job. Damn I am so impressed."

I rumbled a pleased rumble.

"I didn't like it," I said. "Too many people got hurt too much. People died. Because of me, people died."

He shrugged. "Eh. It was their choice to step in the ring. After the first one they even knew exactly what they were facing. Just remember: If they were willing to be there it means that they felt the risk of being spiked was better than the life they were living. You gave them hope."

And then dashed that hope. This did not in fact help my mood. I hung my head a little lower and tried not to think about how much my feet ached from the cobblestones.

"Hey brother, c'mere," Eugene said, stopping and crouching down with his arms spread. I gladly accepted the hug, floomping my head on his shoulder as he petted my back. "You're okay, big guy. Look, we got 103 Spirit today. I can have a whole new crowd in there tomorrow, raring to go. All you have to do is play it a little cooler during the fights, make it look like you're having a little more trouble than you are. That's my bad; I should have briefed you about how to do arena fights in the first place. My bad, buddy."

"But I don't like hurting people," I whined.

"I know," he said, thumping my side reassuringly. "I know. Still, it was their choice. And this is the only way we're going to earn enough Spirit fast enough. You want to go home, right?"

I nodded.

He leaned back so he could see me, but he kept his hands on my head, fingers rubbing reassuring circles behind my ears.

"I'm going to do everything I can, okay?" he said reassuringly. "I'll kick in ten Spirit of my own—I'm sorry I can't give more, but that's all I can afford if I want to be able to fight. With what we earned today that'll get us to 113. If I spend the rest of my cash I can buy fifteen or twenty points, and I can probably get each of the other people from the caravan to contribute a couple of points each given how much you did for us. That'll get us to about 160."

His eyes went vague for a moment as he checked his character sheet. He smiled and nodded. "I've got just enough Attunement to sell an unlock for Body of the Titans; I'm not sure how much that will earn but I'll happily put it towards what you need. Hopefully Marcus and Estelle will kick in some. There's still a big gap between that and what we'll need. Champion's Court is the best option. I saw how easily you took those guys down. If you make it look a little harder and if I hustle a little more we can make what we need tomorrow, no problem. Okay?"

Reluctantly, I nodded. I didn't understand all the numbers or how he was counting with them, but 'a big gap' was clear enough.

o-o-o-o

"Athos! You're back! Where did you go?" Marcus called as soon as Eugene and I walked through the gate. He and Estelle had been sitting on a blanket, leaning against the horse trough and eating sandwiches.

"People died," I whimpered. "Two of them. They died because of me."

Marcus was too stunned to say anything. Estelle simply came over and hugged me. She was a good hugger.

"What happened?" Marcus finally managed to ask.

"We ran a Champion's Court," Eugene explained. "Champion stays in the ring, takes on all comers. Challengers get an unlock if they win and pay ten Spirit if they don't, with 10% going to the ref. Unfortunately, our friend here is a little bit too badass and pretty quickly no one was willing to challenge him anymore. We got 103 Spirit after fees. I'm going to kick in ten and I'll ask everyone else in the caravan to give what they can. Plus, I'm going to sell Body of the Titans—it's an Uncommon with utility in and out of combat, so it should be worth something."

"And the deaths?" Estelle asked, not looking up from where she was focused on me.

"You had to risk more if you wanted to fight in a group," Eugene said. "Three guys, fifteen Spirit each. Athos took them down no problem. Turns out that two of them only had fifteen. They ended up dead."

Marcus grimaced. "Ouch."

"Yeah. Dumbasses."

Marcus glared at him and then shook his head, letting it go. "We also spent the day looking for a way to raise Spirit. We think we've got a good option."

I perked up. "What?"

"We opened an account at one of the banks with our remaining cash." He chuckled. "All 2,033 stone of it."

That sounded like a lot—it would take me a long time to count to 2,033. It would probably buy a lot of bacon.

"Then we went and rented one of the dueling arenas for tomorrow," Marcus continued.

Eugene frowned. "You rented an entire arena for two grand? For an entire day?"

"No, we rented an entire arena for an entire day for 50,000 stone." He shrugged. "It was one of the smaller ones, only a hundred seats."

"So you're check kiting."

"Yup. Very illegal. Anyway, then we went to the Guard bastion and hired out a guard detail. There will be one Guardsman at the inner door of that place midnight tonight to dawn the day after tomorrow."

"How much was that?"

"2,000 stone, of which we had to pay 200 up front and the rest upon delivery, meaning after the contract runs out. Then I went to Wizard's Row and paid a guild wizard to notarize a thousand tickets for us."

"For a hundred-seat arena. Okayyyy...."

Marcus grinned. "That cost 10,000 stone, which we paid by check against that same bank account of 2,033 stone."

"Meanwhile," Estelle said, "I was over at a hotel supply shop renting five hundred cots and blankets, payable on delivery. They'll be coming in over the course of the day tomorrow and the next day, since the owner didn't have that many in stock and is going to need to source them. I'm not as good a haggler as Marcus so it ended up costing us 4,000 stone."

"You guys realize you're looking at the death penalty several times over, right? Check kiting is a big deal in this town."

"Of course," Estelle said. I had my head floomped on her shoulder and she was scritching my ruff, really getting her fingers under the fur the way I liked it. My eyes had fallen closed in pleasure. "Anyway, at this point we're up to 66,000 stone owed against a balance of 2,033. Finally, we hired an imp ticket-taker for 24 hours. He takes 5% of the door, minimum 8 Spirit."

"Is this going somewhere?" Eugene demanded.

"Finally," Marcus said, grinning audibly, "we went down to Pauper's Square and told the people there that we were selling tickets to a new shelter. The tickets are five Spirit each and they're good for three months, first come first serve. The place is guarded 24/7 and anyone with a ticket can come and go as they please. The place is heated, plus you get a cot and a blanket. I sold out of tickets in two hours. It would have been less but the imp could only spike people so fast."

"What."

Eugene sounded so utterly shocked that it motivated me to open my eyes. Besides, Estelle had paused in her scritching to watch Eugene. There was a tiny, very self-satisfied smile on her usually stoic face.

"Yeah, it was a busy day," Marcus said casually. He took a bite of his sandwich to cover the fact that he was looking inordinately smug.

"Did you earn enough?" I asked hopefully.

Marcus chuckled. "My friend, we earned wildly more than enough. Almost ten times what we needed."

I cocked my head. "How much is that?"

Marcus's eyebrows went up. "Five thousand Spirit. Five hundred and thirty-three of it goes to pay what you need, the rest gets converted to stones and pays our debts with a healthy profit left over."

"What's the exchange rate right now?" Eugene asked, frowning. "This doesn't sound sustainable."

"It's running low, only about 100 stone to the Spirit," Marcus said, shrugging. "So, yeah. Not sustainable as done. Tomorrow I'll look into ways to make it cheaper—discounted rate for long-term rental on the arena and the cots would go a long way. I wanted a Guardsman for the first day since they've got a lot more credibility. I can probably cut costs by renting a guardian golem instead of an actual Guardsman. It's technically a contract violation but it's unlikely that any of the customers will challenge us for it and it'll be just as good in practice. Better, actually. Golems don't get tired, harrass pretty homeless girls, or need bathroom breaks."

"It would still be smart for us to be in another Realm as of sundown tomorrow," Estelle said, her voice bone dry. She straightened up, giving my ears one last absent-minded scritch. I leaned against her leg, giving her enough of my weight that she had to brace herself.

"Marcus, this doesn't sound fair," I said uncertainly. "You said you promised all those people three months but you're only going to be able to do it for a day?"

Marcus shrugged. "First off, I care more about the three of us than about a bunch of homeless people. Second, if we earn as much Attunement as I expect on this trip then we'll be able to run it for four months, providing the extra month as a penalty payment for the discontinuity in service."

"'Discontinuity'," Estelle said. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"

"Problem?"

She shook her head. "Nope. Just saying that we should own it."

"Fair enough." He turned back to me. "We can run it for three days and still have money for weapons and supplies. If we want to spend those three days on propping up the shelter then we can do that. I can probably negotiate a cheaper rate on a warehouse somewhere. Fill it with heaters so that it's warm. I did it this way because it was fast and that was more important than best. If you insist, I'll sell Spatial Lock and put the money towards keeping things running until we can go with you for a bit and then come back. If I can earn enough Attunement to sell an unlock on that Rare that I earned from the lizard—"

"Stole," Eugene muttered.

"—earned from the lizard, then our money problems are solved for the foreseeable future and we can afford to run the shelter and also live comfortably. I haven't had time to check the prices but it will probably be enough to put it back in the arena with a Guardsman and still leave enough for us to buy some damn good equipment for the next run. Still, that's a lot of time spent not walking this path of yours."

"Oh, that's okay. We've got forever."

Marcus blinked. He and Estelle exchanged glances and then he looked back at me. "Athos...we don't have forever. It's actually a damn tight timeline."

"What? It's like...two hundred days!"

"Two hundred and twelve, and it's for twenty-seven domains. That's a little under eight days per domain and we might have to do fifty or a hundred miles in each one. Average walking pace on city streets is three miles an hour. If we assume twelve hours of hiking per day that's up to three days just to cover the distance. That doesn't include time spent looking for the path, having to backtrack, looking for food and water, destroying any of those things that interfere with the portals, or fighting. Plus, on rough terrain you're looking at more like one mile per hour, so three times as long."

"Where are you getting all that?" I asked, confused.

He looked at me in surprise. "Athos...do you know math?" he asked carefully. "You're literate, so I assumed you would."

"I can count forever! On the trail here I once counted to 11,372 just because I felt like it."

"Hoo boy. Okay, time for some arithmetic lessons."

"I'm going to order some food," Eugene said. "Athos, more of the mash for you?"

"And bacon, please! Lots of bacon."

"Sure. Have fun." He sauntered off towards the dining room.

"Okay, let's start at the beginning," Marcus said, waving me over. "Addition. Now, this is a number line...."

For the next two hours we went over addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. Addition and subtraction mostly made sense—that was just putting things in a pile and then taking them back again. Multiplication I had no idea what was going on. I memorized the times tables without any trouble but I couldn't understand what they were for. Division I sorta got...it was basically 'can you split this pile into however many piles that all have the same number of things in them', but then Marcus started talking about how you could divide any number by any number and there were these 'reminders' and 'quotes' and other stuff. It made my head spin.

All in all, it left me feeling very stupid.

"I wanna go to sleep," I whimpered. "The numbers are hurting my brain."

Marcus ruffled my ears. "Yeah, they hurt my brain at first too. Trust me on this, okay? We'll have about a week per domain, and that's not a lot of time. Plus, we absolutely must get you healed up before we start and from what you said that's going to take two or three days. We've got just enough margin to make that work but not a lot of extra. We're going to have to move fast."

"Okay," I said, my stomach dropping despite all the lovely warm delicious mash with bacon and bacon grease and more bacon that I had snorfled up. "I trust you."

I lumbered to my aching feet and stumbled off towards the stable. Maybe multiplication would make sense in the morning.