3…

Arcturus breathed steadily in the way his father had taught him, working to regulate his airflow and ensure a calmer mind before he fought.

2...

He shifted stance one last time and moved to face the enemy to his north — one of two men — with the intention of breaking through him to gain positioning to watch the other three while he tried to remove one target immediately.

1…

His jaw clenched and he tightened his two-handed grip on Perdition to try to steady his thunderous heartbeat.

“Begin!” Tylariel called at the same time as his HUD timer reached 0.

Arcturus exploded into motion with every ounce of his System-enhanced speed, racing towards the club-wielding simulacrum of a human vagrant. His sword was kept low, sweeping forwards with his movement as he rapidly approached his bearded foe.

Perception Check successful!

The vagrant swung his club with a yell, aiming to crack Arcturus’ skull; but it was telegraphed.

Arcturus’ instincts kicked in and he dropped his weight to duck under the swing, coming back up with a quick slash of his aetherblade — thankful for its disproportionate lightness — in an attempt to bisect his foe.

Unfortunately for Arcturus, he’d overestimated his own speed; and the beggar dancing back before his blade could do fatal damage. Instead, red mist sprayed into the air and a bleeding rend showed up across the man’s chest, staining his rags with vital fluid. In tandem, Arcturus noticed a red 48 flash into existence above the vagrant as his sword connected.

Floating damage text? Well, that was useful!

Unfortunately, his brief jubilation at scoring a hit distracted him a moment too long.

A feeling of brutal impact sent radiating waves of pain through his right arm, and Arcturus found himself flung off his feet and rolling across the floor, his right arm throbbing in agony. He gasped for air as he came to a halt and looked around frantically, his mind already working to centralise his location the way he’d been taught.

The culprit, one of the women, was immediately apparent given she was readjusting her club when Arcturus spotted her — at the same time as her companions were charging towards him.

He gritted his teeth and pushed himself to his feet, snarling in pain at the feeling of what was very likely a heavily bruised, if not fractured upper arm. Tylariel hadn’t been kidding; these ‘minions’ weren’t playing around.

Arcturus had managed to keep ahold of his aetherblade despite the hit, thanks to the reflexive tightening of his left hand, and he raised it in front of him defensively while wincing at the pain in his right arm.

His muscles did not enjoy being worked after that hit.

The second man was in the lead this time as the group converged on him and Arcturus stepped forward to meet him, watching his opponent’s movements as he waited for an opening.

The moment the vagrant swung — another telegraphed attack, thankfully — for Arcturus’ head, he didn’t aim to duck. Instead he brought up his aetherblade and tried to slice right through the club, prioritizing disarming his foe over dodging.

Strength Check unsuccessful!

Arcturus barely had time to exclaim in surprise when his sword was smashed aside, and the club slammed into his helmet and staggered him. Thankfully the force was greatly reduced thanks to his failed but enthusiastic attempt at a block-and-slice, and Arcturus found himself both angry and disoriented.

Hadn’t Tylariel said Aetherblades could cut through damn near anything?

Distant laughter told him his Mentor knew exactly what he was thinking, and Arcturus cursed.

Having turned the hit to his head into some sort of momentum to get away, Arcturus was thankful for his helmet when he turned back to face the band of enemies. If not for the armour, he’d very likely have been concussed or knocked unconscious by the blow. He had a feeling Tylariel would stop the training before any critical damage occurred, but… Well, he couldn’t rely on that. Not really.

He was on his own.

Get your head in the game, idiot.

Arcturus glanced back towards his enemies and saw them advancing cautiously towards him again, this time moving as a solid group. Worse still, he noted, was that the man he’d injured was already looking partially recovered. His wound, such as it was, had partially sealed itself.

“Fuck.” He cursed under his breath as he glanced between all four enemies, and then at his Health and Mana bars.

His Health had taken a hit, and was sitting at 103 / 133, while his mana was still 133 (63) / 133. A growl built up in his throat, and he decided to take a risk. His aetherblade wasn’t working, and his physical attributes clearly were overmatched. It was time to use the one resource he had a feeling he had an advantage with.

His [Telekinesis] awoke like it was eager, and Arcturus ignored the flash of a blue -3 from his Mana bar. With his left hand holding Perdition, he raised his right arm and conjured four telekinetic knives with a thought and once again ignored the flash of blue in his HUD that informed him he’d lost even more mana.

The vagrants hesitated for a moment at the appearance of monochrome fire licking the silhouettes of the pure force weapons, and Arcturus chose that moment to strike.

The knives lanced out at the encroaching group like bullets from a gun, and Arcturus could almost feel them slice through the air resistance to punch into the aetheric constructs. Three of them cried out in pain as they were telekinetically shanked, while one of the women actually managed to accidentally — so Arcturus hoped, at least — shatter their knife against their club.

“You like that!?” He shouted defiantly, before throwing out his right arm with a wince and generating four large lances, this time, of telekinetic force. When these appeared, a flicker of fear flashed onto the vagrants’ faces and Arcturus scowled at them.

They weren’t real. What did their fear matter? They weren’t real.

A snarl left his lips and he set the lances to spinning as the vagrants stared at the outlines hesitantly, looking between them and him. Finally their ‘programming’ seemed to win over their hesitation, and all four raised their clubs to charge at him.

Arcturus grinned and, instead of backpedalling, charged directly at them as a mad plan formed itself in his mind.

The first swing of a mace was dodged narrowly as he closed in, and he took another in across his protected spine with a grunt of pain — though he didn’t allow the hit to disrupt his focus, maintaining the spinning lances and repositioning them quickly.

Another crack of a club against his armoured ribs sent a cough of spittle and a little blood out of his lips, but he wiped it away and ducked another swing at his head.

He was in the middle of them now, and they’d fanned out to surround him.

It was perfect.

Arcturus shouted in rage and drew deep on his mana reserves, picturing and implementing a simple shape: A cage of four sides, made of bars instead of solid walls to conserve a small amount of mana. Thankfully none of the vagrants had stabbing weapons, which meant that when the telekinetic cage came into existence around Arcturus, their clubs impacted ineffectually against it.

And then the Lances made themselves known.

Four rapidly spinning razor-tipped spears of telekinetic force slammed into each of the vagrants, carrying them towards the cage with the momentum of the impacts as Arcturus positioned himself in the middle of an abrupt square made of telekinetic lines. As each of them slammed, screaming, into the telekinetic construct Arcturus grinned.

The cage was dismissed a second later, and Arcturus wasted no time in bringing Perdition to bear against the dazed and impaled vagrants. The lances vanished one by one as he swung for their heads, rapidly decapitating one man and one woman in fountains of red — all while doing his best to ignore the wet, all-too-real sounds of their heads hitting the floor.

He dodged a desperate club-swing from the second woman, and stepped into her range to punch her viciously in the throat. Her eyes widened as she attempted to suck in air, and Arcturus took the chance to step back and ram Perdition into her chest at an angle; right where her heart would be.

The simulacrum’s eyes rolled up into her head as blood and foam bubbled from her mouth, and she dropped like a puppet with her strings cut when he tore his blade out of her side in a spray of red mist, organs, and viscera.

Arcturus turned to find his final, and initial enemy staring at him with wide and terrified eyes.

Guilt and pity surfaced in his mind, only to be wrestled down and crushed.

They weren’t real.

They weren’t real.

No more doubt or hesitation stayed his hand as he rushed the vagrant, ignoring the pain of his ribs and the aches along his spine. The man raised his club defensively and Arcturus snorted, throwing out his right hand and generating a blade of telekinetic force, which he promptly tugged towards him at knee-height. The simulacrum’s legs were severed below the knee-caps and he screamed, only for the sound to cut off a moment later when Perdition entered his mouth and slammed down into the floor behind his head to split his skull in twain.

Arcturus staggered backwards and heaved for air as the exertion caught up to him, glancing through his hud quickly as he saw new notifications crop up.

⚔ COMBAT REPORT ⚔

Congratulations, you have defeated 4 enemies!

Minion Simulacrum (Level 6) 55 Experience Minion Simulacrum (Level 6) 55 Experience Minion Simulacrum (Level 6) 55 Experience Minion Simulacrum (Level 6) 55 Experience

REWARD(S)

220 Experience

Your Aetherblade Wielding skill has risen to Level 2!

A wave of nausea rocked him as he read the notification, and he tore off his helmet in the same moment as he turned around, crashing to his knees as he vomited; black and white spots appearing in his vision while his stomach heaved, and acid burned his throat.

Arcturus gasped for air, and then vomited again — right arm, ribs, and spine throbbing in agony as he struggled to keep his torso upright on trembling hands.

“F-fuck!” He rasped out as he gasped for air, spitting blood and bile onto the ground.

“Take a moment to collect yourself.” Tylariel said dispassionately from somewhere nearby. “We’ll be going again shortly.”

“What?!” Arcturus demanded, staggering up to his feet shakily and turning to face her. A warm, wet towel hit him in the face almost as soon as he turned and Arcturus stumbled in surprise more than anything else.

“Clean yourself up.” Tylariel instructed in the same ruthless tone. “That was one round, Apprentice. That shouldn’t have even made you break a sweat, let alone get concussed and empty your lunch on my good training room floor.”

Arcturus worked to clean off his face and armour quickly, surprised by how little blood there was on the steel as he wiped down his arms and chest. “Mentor, I only have three mana left and—”

“Then you will need to make do with low Mana reserves, or doff your aetherblade and rely on your psionic gifts. You will be permitted a twenty minute rest break after the next round.”

“What happens if I get killed?!”

“Then I was wrong about you.” Tylariel said coldly. “This is not your soft shard, Arcturus Regis. There will be no coddling here. You will fight, you will overcome, and you will thrive — or you will die, and I will shed no tears for such an unworthy end. You have one minute until we go again.”

Arcturus stared at his Mentor’s impassive face, and then threw the towel aside with a snarl. “Fine! Bring it on! You wanna break me? You’ll have to try harder!”

Tylariel nodded curtly, as if that was expected.

“Good.”

What followed a minute later was one of the most harrowing experiences of Arcturus’ life.

Four more simulacrums appeared, and despite his reservations, he faced them with Perdition active. At least to start.

Within the first few moments of the engagement he’d managed to use a weak telekinetic hook to trip up one of the male vagrants enough to take advantage, and had put his aetherblade through the simulacrum’s stomach with a snarl of pain and rage, using his anger at his Mentor’s callousness and fear for his life combined with his throbbing injuries to fuel his determination.

Realising he was incapable of keeping up with the faster, stronger foes around him using his Aetherblade; Arcturus had deactivated Perdition and instantly freed up another 70 Mana. Wasting no time, he’d used it to generate a veritable plethora of telekinetic blades and lash out. Where his skills as a duelist were lacking, his telekinetic ability — disproportionately upskilled during his fight with Jakob and the others — turned the combat into something far more manageable.

Right up until his Willpower Check failed due to his concussion.

What had previously been an arsenal of telekinetic weapons fizzled out of existence when his head rebelled against the exertion placed upon its damaged self, and Arcturus had nearly had his skull rung again by a sudden swing of a club.

Only a very lucky stumble, due to his backlash from losing his [Telekinesis], had saved him from a potentially fatal hit to the skull. With no time to waste, he’d managed to brute force his [Telekinesis] enough to throw a blind wave of jagged spikes out from him and wound all three of the remaining simulacrums enough to throw them off.

After that he’d released the skill again, grabbed the club left behind from the first of the new wave that he’d killed, and taken the fight to his foes.

Initially their greater strength and speed had been a source of frustration for him, until he realised that they were limited both by their lack of magic and their predictability. A combination of clever and subtle uses of [Telekinesis] to hook feet, smack heads, or throw off swings had allowed him to play around their relatively telegraphed attacks and dance within their guards.

He’d traded body shots on himself to learn their patterns and combinations, after which he’d prioritised attacks against kneecaps, ribs, and elbows: Primarily protecting his head while allowing his breastplate to get hammered as he traded progressively more damaged ribs, a broken collarbone, and a ruined right leg for a nauseating combination of distended, useless, and broken limbs across his foes’ bodies.

When he’d finally managed to kill them, it had been a brutal, agonising, and bloody affair: His borrowed club rising and falling repeatedly to smash teeth, crack skulls, and shatter jaws as gore and viscera coated him in deepening shades of red.

He’d vomited directly onto one of the dying simulacrums mid-execution, by the end, due to a mix of pain and nausea — and had actually seen it react in disgust and panic at what had happened.

Ten minutes after Tylariel had announced the start of the second round, Arcturus lay bloody and near-unconscious beside two corpses with their heads pounded in beyond all recognition. Eight dead or dying simulacrums surrounded him in different states of destruction, making the training arena look for all the world like some morbid battle royale site.

Not even his Mentor’s threats to break him herself had managed to rouse him by the end of the second round, and even as Arcturus saw the notification happily informing him he’d reached Level 5; his consciousness had started fading.

When the darkness finally came, he welcomed the reprieve.