I always cherished the silence before a death match. It was the time for me to dump my thoughts, seek memories of my previous matches, review my game plan, and think about my parents. I wasn’t really into all the New Age positive-thinking self-help bullshit, but the silent moments had always helped me with these high-stake duels.

The clock on the wall dinged, and the doors to my locker room opened to the tsunami of my entourage. Seven men swarmed over me as if I were a magnet. Two were my trainers, two were my bodyguards, and the last was my cornerman; Dini Hayes. He muscled his way to me first.

“My man! Champ! Champ! How you feeling?” Dini’s weathered face wore a big smile when he asked the question.

“You just saw me ten minutes ago.” I felt a smile come to my lips, and the man began to rub my shoulders.

“I know, Champ, and I missed ya for ten minutes. Your muscles feel good. You’ve got power in them! Powaaah! Gonna take this fool out! No one beats the Champ! You hear me? No one!”

“Thirty seconds!” one of the studio executives yelled at me from the doorway of the locker room. He was one of the corp suit types. Complete with slicked-back hair, a fake smile, dead eyes, and a suit that cost more than most people’s yearly rent.

“You’ve got this, Leo.” My best friend, Garf rested his hands on my arm. “Gonna be easy mode.”

“Pew, pew, QQ for the entire nation of Korea, bro. This guy’s going to commit seppuku after you curb stomp him.” Jax was my other best friend, and he laughed as he sat on the locker room bench next to me.

“That’s Japan, bro.” Garf rolled his eyes at my other friend.

“So? You’ll kick this guy’s ass so bad he’ll turn Japanese, and then he’ll commit suicide with a katana through his stomach.” Jax made an exaggerated motion with his arms across his stomach as if he was cleaving himself with an invisible sword, or he was rowing a canoe. His long blond hair swung around wildly with the motion.

“Dude, that is so fucking wrong,” Garf put his hand over his face and sighed. “Koreans and Japanese are totally different, and you don’t commit seppuku with a katana, it is a long sword. You use a tanto.” Garf actually was Korean, or at least, his great grandparents migrated over in like the 1980’s or something. He was more American than anything else, but I knew enough about Asian cultures from playing their video games and watching their TV shows to understand that you didn’t get the two ethnicities mixed up.

“Tanto? Isn’t that the guy with the Lone Ranger?” Jax asked with a bemused smile.

“Ten seconds!” Mr. McPlasticCorpman yelled from the doors, and he opened them to reveal the long hallway leading to the stadium.

The roar of the crowd sounded like the song of all the oceans amplified a hundred times.

“Robe on!” Calic, my physical trainer, shouted as I rose from the bench.

The thick, pure white, velvet shroud fell over my body, and Calic took his turn to pat me on the shoulders. He was quite possibly the most muscular black man on the planet, but I supposed that was expected since he was also one of the best muscle and movement coaches in the United States. He was a man of few words, though, and he said nothing else as the entourage walked out of the locker room and toward the stadium.

The roar of the hungry crowd was even louder in the concrete tunnel, and a dozen cameramen sprinted toward me from the open area of the stadium.

“Leeee Ohhhh!” The chanting filled my mind to euphoria.

“Leeee Ohhhh!” I breathed in strength and felt my muscles flex as I walked.

“Leeee Ohhhh!” The cameras were on my face now, but I walked through them, and the lenses parted like the Red Sea.

“Leeee Ohhhh!” The stadium lights were turned off so that the crowd could get pumped for my arrival. As soon as I walked out of the locker room corridor, the air filled with explosive fireworks, laser light shows, and a deafening siren wail of electric guitar music.

The crowded stadium went insane.

I almost wished that I had worn earplugs. The sound was a few notches below deafening, and I struggled to keep from wincing. I’d dealt with much worse pain in my life, and I managed to keep my trademark smirk glued to my face.

I raised my fists in the air, and the crowd’s intensity almost boiled over.

“Leeee Ohhhh!”

“Leeee Ohhhh!”

I felt Dini tug on my robe, and I continued my walk of forty yards toward the center of the stadium. There was the digitally lit battle ring, and the two omni stations where my opponent and I would battle for dominance.

The ravenous crowd reached out their arms in my direction, but the tunnel was too wide for anyone to touch me, and the sides of the path were lined with armed security dressed in riot gear. A few women somehow managed to scream my name over the din, and I saw some of them raise their shirts to show me their breasts. I was able to ignore them, however, and even a sprinkling of a dozen panties didn’t distract me from walking to the center of the stadium.

Jin Eun Kyung was already in the battle ring, and he had an entourage of eight men and three women standing behind him. The championship officials were also there, and they gestured for me to stand in my spot, exactly two feet away from the Korean challenger.

Hands pulled my robe off, and I felt a bunch of palms smack me on the back. I stood now only in my skintight Omni suit, and the crowd’s roar had subsided a bit so that the officials could begin.

My eyes met Jin’s, and I studied the man. Perhaps ‘man’ wasn’t the correct word. He was little more than a kid. He was only nineteen years old and had apparently bragged to his nation that he would enjoy his first alcoholic beverage after he took my title. Even though he was young, his body was made of mahogany, and his Omni suit hugged his muscles as if it was painted on.

The material of his suit was as white as the robe Dini had pulled away from my shoulders and had the Korean yin-yang flag symbol painted on his chest. My own suit was black, and I had the stars and stripes on my back.

Jin was as old as I was when I first became world champion.

The announcer’s voice caught my attention. He had already introduced Jin, but the audience didn’t need much of a reminder. The Korean was something of a phenomenon and had come out of nowhere late last year. He’d flawlessly defeated every international opponent in the last year. Even Ivan Tsatsouline, who had been Russia’s champion, and my top rival, for the last three years.

“In the red corner; standing at six feet and two inches, and weighing in at two hundred pounds even. Returning for his tenth world championship title, in his own hometown New York City! In the Bronx! The reigning World Champion of Astafar Unlimited! The One. The Only. The Master. The Victorious. The Undefeated. Leo, The Lion, Lennox!”

Now I did wince as the crowd screamed my name. They had upgraded the old Yankee Stadium to fit in more people, and Astafar Unlimited had decided to hold the World Championships here, partially because of the new and improved stadium and partially because I had grown up in the Bronx, and they figured it would get more people to come to the event at a higher ticket price.

They were correct. There must have been over a hundred thousand people in the stadium, and the seating area climbed the sky like a tidal wave of rainbow sparkling water. Earlier this year they had thought about renaming Yankee Stadium after me. No one really played baseball anymore, and the last memories of the sport were long forgotten. The New York mayor had asked me if I wanted the honor, but I had declined. My father had once spun me the tales of the old game. I didn’t feel as if I deserved to take the name from the city landmark.

The announcer gestured to the line between Jin and me. We stepped up to it and shook hands. The man was a hothead, and I wasn’t surprised when he pushed his chest against mine.

"Lions make their women hunt for them. Your career will be over in a few minutes,” he hissed as he pushed his nose against mine and glared into my eyes.

I laughed.

Maybe Jin had expected me to get mad or to throw an insult back at him, anything but my laughter. My smile threw him off, and one of the officials stepped between us and pushed our chests apart with his arms. The crowd loved the exchange, and I kept wondering if they could possibly scream any louder.

“The battle is three rounds. Each round will have a small time assignment where the fighters will be allowed to pick their skills. Gentlemen, please take your places in your omni stations and prepare for battle!” The announcer raised his hands and elongated the word ‘battle’ so that it lasted half a minute.

“He is going to pick the Arcane class,” Bantog said as my entourage huddled around me. He was a small Filipino man who was my fighting instructor. Bantog probably weighed one hundred and twenty pounds soaking wet, but the man was a master of practically every martial art on the planet, and I once saw him bend Calic around like he was forming a pretzel out of raw dough. I had hired him six years ago, and his knowledge of the Filipino weapon martial arts, along with the historical European martial arts, kendo, and fencing, had helped raise my professional game level to heights I’d never dreamed possible.

“He might do Summoner, but I agree with Bantog,” Garf yelled over the screams of the crowd.

“Doesn’t matter what he picks, Leo’s gonna smash him, but I’m picking DaggerDancer class,” Jax said with a smirk.

“Champ!” one of the officials yelled and pointed to my omni station. I nodded at him and then entered the wire mesh of the machine.

The techs attached the visor to my head first, and then pushed the audio buds against my ears. Then they tightened the movement brace against my stomach. They asked me to check the running pad, and I executed the required set of running, jumping, squatting, and strafing check patterns on the mobile platform under the omni station. The green lights flashed on my eyepiece after I finished the test, and the techs moved to attach the sensors to my triceps, forearms, and gloves. Then the techs asked me to test my upper body movements, and I complied with the standard test sequences of swings and blocking movements.

“Skill selection starts in ten, nine, eight, seven,” the announcer began to yell, and the crowd counted with him. My visor tinted, splattered with white, turned to a string of flashing data terminals, and then the universe of Astafar Unlimited materialized around me.

I was in the avatar selection screen, and I saw that the branding and background had been updated to show the World Championship games. My avatars floated in the sky like Shaolin monks that had achieved enlightenment, and I walked toward the one I almost always used. It was one of the Corina race themed ones. Half human and half cat looking. Mine, in particular, had a large mane coming off the back of his head and shoulder area.

“Three, two, one! Let’s get ready to rumble!” The announcer shouted, and I could hear the crowd scream past the noise-cancellation technology of my ear pieces.

I stood in a dusty stone room lit by only a dim lantern. A dozen different tables lined the sandstone walls. Each table bore the weapon sets of the various classes. I would have four choices for each off hand, four choices for my main hand, or I had three choices if I wanted to pick a two-handed weapon. Each piece of equipment had different effects on the various skills that I could use, and my avatar would be able to carry two unique sets of equipment.

The selection timer appeared in the air. The lettering was a digital clock display, but the numbers burned with a detailed fire, and it began to count down from thirty seconds.

I walked to the Defender-class table, and my body was suddenly wrapped in a gleaming suit of full plate armor. The Astafar Unlimited programmers had created special armor for my tenth world series, and there were etchings of lions all over the silver plates I now wore. The Defender wasn’t a class I had ever played in a World Championship, or that anyone had ever seen me play. In fact, it was known to be the worst class for one on one dueling. It did almost no damage, and only had a series of de-buffs, bleeds, and skills that served to soak up damage in dungeon crawls. I was known for playing a two-handed ax-wielding Zerker class, or a DaggerDancer, or even a Distorter.

I grabbed an iron shield with my left hand, then a dagger with my right. The game accepted my selection and the weapons appeared on my hips. They were weightless of course, everything was virtual in the game, but I felt some satisfaction when I saw them on my body.

I next reached for the two-handed maul. It was a massive looking weapon, and there were more lion designs on the side of the metal head. Most players of Astafar Unlimited would believe that the maul was the only useful way to play a Defender class since the weapon added the occasional armor breaking and stun chances to strikes, but they argued that it was too slow to swing for most duels.

They were correct, but I picked the weapon regardless, and held my arm in front of me so that it looked like the virtual weapon’s massive weight rested on my armored shoulder.

The clock was at twenty-four seconds.

The tables crumbled into dust on the floor and a wooden display shelf sprung from the ground in front of me. Astafar Unlimited had over six hundred skills to choose from, but a player was only allowed to use eight ‘active’ skills, which could be triggered, along with two ‘passive’ skills, which were always working.

Build crafting was a giant, complicated part of Astafar Unlimited and the developers were constantly tweaking skills to ensure that the gameplay stayed fresh. I had spent countless hours of my life analyzing, debating, and testing various skill combinations with the different classes. I was fortunate that Garf and Jax were both world class players, and they understood the skill combinations of these games better than I thought the game designers actually did.

Eighteen seconds.

I lifted my left hand to the wooden panel and gestured at the skills that hung suspended on the shelf. As I pointed at each one, they illuminated with either a white or blue glow. The white meant that they were base skills that any class had access to use. The blue meant that they were unique to the Defender class. I closed my fist as I pointed to the first one, and I saw it fill an icon slot at the bottom of my visual space.

Slot 1- Unleash the Red (Base) - The next attack will cause the target to bleed weapon damage x 1 for 30 seconds. (Dagger- Bleed lasts for 90 seconds and can stack 5 times) (Maul- Target has a 50% chance to be stunned for 3 seconds) - Skill has an 8 second cool down.

Slot 2- Flick (Base) - Toss your weapon at the target causing 50% weapon damage. (Dagger - causes Bleeding) (Maul - Target has a 25% chance to be stunned for 3 seconds) - Skill has a 10-second cool down.

Slot 3- Trip (Base) - Attack your target’s legs causing weapon damage x 0.5 and slowing them for 5 seconds. (Dagger - causes Bleeding) (Maul - Target has a 25% chance to be stunned for 3 seconds) - Skill has a 12 second cool down.

Slot 4- Passive Aggressive (Defender) - If your next attack hits, your target’s damage is reduced by 40% for the next 10 seconds. (Dagger - causes Bleeding) (Maul - Target also attacks 10% slower for the next 10 seconds) - Skill has 14-second cool down.

Slot 5- Shield of Justice (Defender) - for the next 5 seconds, all damage received is reflected onto the attacker. (Iron Shield- ends all movement debuffs on you) (Maul - skill not available) - Skill has 15-second cool down.

Slot 6- Lawful Seizure (Defender) - Your next attack has a 90% chance of removing all of the target’s buffs. You will acquire these buffs for half of their remaining duration. (Dagger - transfer your debuffs to target) (Maul - you gain the buffs for their full duration)- Skill has a 10-second cool down.

Slot 7 - Justice is Calling! (Defender) - Battle cry, all opponents within a 40-foot range are pulled toward you. (Iron Shield - ends all movement debuffs on you) (Dagger - Target receives 3 stacks of Bleed) (Maul - Target is stunned for 3 seconds) - Skill has 10-second cool down.

Slot 8 - You are Guilty! (Defender) - Battle cry, target opponent’s debuffs last twice as long. (Iron Shield - ends all movement debuffs on you) (Dagger - all bleeds last another 30 seconds) (Maul - each skill on cool down has a 50% chance of being reset) - Skill has a 20-second cool down.

Slot 9 (Passive) - Lawful Evil (Defender) - If your target is bleeding, you gain 15% of the bleed damage as health.

Slot 10 (Passive) - I am the Law (Defender) - 20% damage resistance, debuffs have a 20% chance to not activate on you.

There were ten seconds left on the clock, and I stepped toward the exit door of the prep room. Maybe I should have felt nervous, or I should have felt the adrenaline coursing through my veins like a molten fire, but I only felt the same sensation that had plagued my mind for the last year: Boredom.

Jin couldn’t see my skill selection, but the world would once the timer reached zero, and the doors opened to the arena. Dini would then tell me what class and skill selection Jin had picked, and he would coach me through the battle. Well, in actuality Dini was the only one on my crew with the microphone that would communicate into my ear piece. Jax, Garf, and Bantong would scream at my cornerman, and he’d process their recommendations, the battle, my movements, and then distil his strategy into what he said into the earpiece. A lot of fighters would use multiple feeds of audio from their coaches, but I always found it too distracting to have a bunch of people screaming in my ear, and Dini was the corner guy who Jax, Garf, and I used when we did our World Championship Team Battle events.

We’d already beaten Germany for that title a few weeks ago.

“Champ! You got this! Feel good! Ahhhh! You will control the man, Champ! Control him!” Dini’s voice was half angry shout and half joyful laugh. I didn’t know quite how he did it, but I was convinced that he was the secret weapon to my victory. Perhaps he wasn’t so secret; the man was courted daily by other teams and organizations for his corner work, and I knew that plenty of offers exceeded what I paid him, but we were friends, and I did pay the man millions of dollars every year.

The doors opened, and I heard the screams of the crowd through my earpieces again. The Astafar Unlimited designers had created a new arena for this match, and I didn’t know quite what to expect when the duel began, but I was still a little surprised by what I saw when the virtual door opened.

A bridge of white marble stretched for sixty feet over blue sky and fluffy white clouds until it met with a high column of stone that extended like a vertical wall. A white marble staircase hugged the alabaster polished rock there, and I sprinted across the bridge toward the steps while I dropped my hands to my waist to weapon switch to the dagger and iron shield.

“He’s running DaggerDancer, Champ! Mobility build! He guessed you were going to be running your usual! Oh, Champ! You gotta hear this crowd! They don’t know what you are doing!” Dini was giggling in my ear piece, and I only grunted when my feet hit the stairs.

The older VR games had set a limiter on how fast your avatar moved through the game world, but Astafar Unlimited had changed the industry when they decided to enable players to move as fast as they could spin the traction pads of the omnidirectional station. The idea caught on like wildfire, and soon the entire world was playing the game. In many ways, the technology was a blessing. Every gamer was in good shape from walking, running, crouching, jumping, and fighting through the virtual world.

The stairs spun around the massive, towering sky column for hundreds of yards, and there was no guardrail on the right side, just a long, long, long drop to the ground of the virtual world. I could make out the shape of Astafar Unlimited’s main continent ‘Corbya’ below me, and I could see the ‘Valon’ string of Islands off of the coast.

I had reached the top of the stairs before Jin did, and I was a quarter of the way across the arena before I saw his Yamman lizardman avatar poke a scaly head above the edge of the arena. He carried two short swords in taloned hands, and I tried not to smile when Dini yelled his encouragement in my ear.

“He is nothing before you, young man. You are the Champ! The Champ! He’s not going to know what hit him!”

Jin’s arm flashed, and a red colored dagger spun across the arena toward me. It was his class’ Red Bullet skill, and I triggered Shield of Justice a fraction of a second before the spinning dagger hit me. The weapon bounced off my shield like a ping pong ball, and then sped back toward Jin. I always turned off the damage numbers on my user interface display, but I kept the health bars active, and I saw about an eighth of his health drop. It was a surprisingly rookie move for Jin to make, and the attack was going to leave him stunned and bleeding for a few seconds.

I smashed into him like a virtual freight train.

Except that my build didn’t have any real heavy hitting skills. My dagger struck him a split second after I triggered Unleash the Red and I saw the bleeds stick to him. Then I used Passive Aggressive, and another stack of bleeds was added. I triggered Trip as Jin’s first attack hit me, and I decided not to bother trying to block his strike with my shield. He used Blind Blade, and the entire world went an opaque gray as the effects of the blindness came to my headset. I could tell that his attack triggered after my snare slowed him, and I knew where he stood, even though I was blinded. I used Lawful Seizure and then swung my dagger to where I knew Jin was still snared. I didn’t feel the weapon hit, of course, but there was a slashing sound in my audio, and my blind was transferred to my opponent while I gained his enchantments.

The DaggerDancer class didn’t have many self-enchanting skills, sometimes known as ‘buffs,' but one of the most powerful was an activated skill named Rage of the Shadows. It gave an increased attack speed and increased the chance of a critical strike. The buff was actually able to self-renew itself with every critical hit, and DaggerDancers could continue to eventually stack up to ten copies of the buff on themselves for a crazy high damage output. I wouldn’t be able to use the skill to add more stacks of the buff, but if I got lucky with my critical hits, it would be possible to hold onto the buff for the length of our fight.

I stepped to the side, and Jin’s twin swords snaked out to where I had stood only a moment before. His avatar had black smoke over his eyes, and I burned through all of the rest of my skills that weren’t on cool down to stack up a bunch of bleeds on him. Then I dropped my hands to my waist to switch to my maul before I used You are Guilty! I got a bit lucky with my resets, and all of my grayed out skills popped back into color to let me know I could use them again.

“Yeahhhhhh Champ! You strike! You dodge! Pivot! Destroy!” Dini’s voice was shouting in my ear, and I stepped behind Jin to attack a few more times with my maul.

Jin’s health bar was at the halfway point now, and every tick of the clock saw the bleeds rip another 5 % of his red life bar away. I’d taken a bit of damage from his first hit, but Lawful Evil had given me it all back with its vampiric properties.

Jin’s stuns cleared, and he used Dark Step to teleport thirty feet away from me. I knew that he had the skill on his bar since it was standard on these builds, and I switched back to shield and dagger before I executed Justice is Calling! My battle cry pulled him back to me and added a bunch more bleeds to his hefty stack.

The Korean challenger was in trouble. Most of the standard DaggerDancer builds relied on heavy upfront damage combined with evasive skills. There were a few healing type skills that a player could equip for the class, but they diluted the damage per second and quick strike abilities of the class. Jin had counted on me playing one of my usual classes, and he had thought that he could beat me in a game of quickness.

His only hope was to attempt and burst me down with a quick series of strikes, but I switched back to my maul with a hand drop, triggered Passive Aggressive again, and made a massive overhead swing. Jin sidestepped the attack easily, but I had expected him to try and avoid the attack. I brought the back handle of the weapon around to tap him quickly on the shoulder, and it activated the triggered debuff.

Even with the 10% attack speed debuff, the lizard avatar went crazy with dual short sword attacks. The maul was a terrible weapon to parry with, and though it didn’t weigh anything in my virtual hands, the game mechanics made it so that you could only use your chosen weapon as quickly as the rules allowed. If we were using real life fencing foils I could have blocked every one of the Korean man’s strikes, but moving my hand that fast with a maul would do nothing.

It didn’t matter that I couldn’t parry.

I am the Law gave me a 20% damage resistance, and Jin was debuffed with a 40% damage reduction along with a 10% slower attack speed. I also continued to heal from the many stacks of bleeds on him, and his life ran out a few moments later.

I was at 95% health.

“Leo The Lion wins round one!” the announcer shouted over my ear piece, and I heard the crowd echo through his microphone.

My vision blurred to a rainbow swirl of pastel colors, and when they became organized, I was standing back in the prep room in front of the skill shelves.

The timer appeared again, but it counted down from sixty seconds instead of thirty.

“Champ, you are fighting strong!” Dini yelled.

“What should I switch out?” I asked.

The second round was always interesting. Jin had no way of knowing what I would pick for my class and skills, so he had made an educated guess based on my previous matches. Now that I had mixed things up, and picked a class that no one had thought was suitable for dueling, he had to come up with an entirely new game plan. He was going to have to either change his build to attempt to kill me even quicker while mitigating my offense, or he was going to have to change his skills so that he could survive longer. On the flip side, he knew that I knew of his choices. I could also change my skill set build during this round break. Then all the choices that he would make would have been for naught. Winning the first round really put me at an advantage, since Jin had to react to my victory by trying to guess if I would change my winning build or not.

“Switch out Lawful Seizure for Eye for an Eye, Champ!”

“Yeah, that was what I was thinking.” Eye for an Eye was a Defender Battle cry skill that returned 60% of the damage that I took to the attacker for five seconds. It was slightly different than Shield of Justice because I still took damage with Eye for an Eye, and it wasn’t a 100% return, but now that I knew Jin was playing a DaggerDancer, Lawful Seizure wasn’t that useful.

“Replace Flick with Severe Sentence, Champ. It is too redundant with Justice is Calling!”

“Got it,” I said as I took out the ranged throw and switched it with the melee attack.

Severe Sentence was a Defender attack that always did critical double damage. If I used a dagger, it added a bunch of bleeds and snared the opponent, if I used my maul it knocked back the enemy. It was probably the only useful skill on the Defender class for direct damage in duels, but I hadn’t wanted to include it because I was worried that Jin would play an Arcane or Summoner class. If he had picked one of those, then I wouldn’t be able to get near him without the aid of the Flick skill.

“Go to your quiet spot, Champ. I’ve got the words for you. Can you feel the power in your body? Can you understand that the universe is not just around you, but inside of you? It is, Champ. The universe wants you to win. No one can beat you, Champ. You’ve got the mind. You’ve got the body. There is nothing in your way. Do you see yourself winning?”

“I do,” I said to Dini.

“Say it louder, Champ! This place is roaring with your fans. They all want you to win. Can you hear their love, Champ?”

“I do,” I shouted a little louder into the microphone that was positioned on my VR helmet.

The doors opened to the bridge, and I sprinted toward the steep staircase that wrapped around the wide pillar of stone. I ran up the stairs quicker than my first time, and my legs gave me a pleasant sensation of exertion as I reached the top. Jin hadn’t emerged from his side of the stairs again, and I continued my sprint toward his side of the arena.

“He’s hiding on the stairs Champ. Be careful!” Dini warned as I got half way across the hundred foot arena.

I saw Jin’s lizard avatar poke his head above the stairs, and then he hid again. I guessed his strategy was to get me to come down the stairs, where he could use his daggers or short swords to rip me to pieces. The strategy was probably a bit better than his alternatives since Justice is Calling! wouldn’t be able to pull him out from behind cover.

There was no timer on these matches, but I didn’t want to wait for too long. The developers often warned that they had ‘mutations’ that would affect the world after the two-minute mark at random. It could be anything from a shrinking arena to the wind that would push us off the top. They could even change around combat rules so that damage was doubled, or skills recharged twice as fast. Anything that messed with the dynamics of the game skills would probably aid Jin more than me since his DaggerDancer class was heavily leveraged on being able to quickly roll through all of his skills for big bursts of damage.

I held my shield and advanced to the edge of the arena so that I could try and look down the stairs. My opponent was ten feet below me, but he jumped up so that he could see the edge of the top flat part of the arena.

Then he turned into a puff of smoke.

“Watch out Champ!” Dini shouted, but I’d already guessed what was about to happen, and I sidestepped without even looking behind me.

I was just a touch faster than Jin, and he missed his attack on my back. I guessed that he meant to use the single knockdown attack that was available to the DaggerDancer class. It was called O Goshi and would have launched me off of the edge of the arena. Shield of Justice wouldn’t have helped me since it only reflected damage, and neither would have Eye for an Eye.

I reached down to my waist and switched to the maul. Then I spun on my heel and triggered Severe Sentence as I swung the two handed weapon. Jin’s O Goshi attack had caused him to step to the edge of the arena, and my dodge had been perfectly timed. My own blow smashed right into Jin’s scaled back, and his avatar launched into the air as if he was being pulled on a zip line. He tried to twist in mid-flight, but it was too late, and he fell off of the arena.

I stepped to the edge and watched his form break through the clouds below. A few seconds later it faded from the view. I wondered for a second if they would actually log him out of the game, move him back to the prep room, or just let him fall for the half a minute it would take to smash into the distant game world ground beneath us.

“Champ! Champ! You did it!” Dini’s scream of joy brought me back to the arena, and I heard the cries of the crowd penetrate the ear pieces I wore.

I raised my maul into the air and smiled.

“For the tenth year in a row! Leo the Lion has held onto his title!” the announcer screamed.

I felt hands tear at my suit sensors and someone pulled off my visor. Jax, Garf, and Calic helped get me out of my omni station, and the announcer ran over to raise my arm up to the gathered crowd.

“Leeee Ohhhh!”

“Leeee Ohhhh!”

My friends were hugging me now, and I gestured to them with a bow. The crowd knew who Jax and Garf were and I heard their names being screamed out along with mine.

“Leeee Ohhhh!”

I looked across the battle ring and saw Jin step out of the omni station. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and he buried his face into the shoulder of one of his trainers. I could understand the young man’s agony. His entire country was watching him, and he had failed.

“Leeee Ohhhh!”

Garf took my other hand and raised it in the air, and Jax grabbed my other from the announcer. The crowd went beyond insane, and it looked as if a mass of fans were pushing aggressively against the two deep wall of armored security.

Now there would be interviews, and more interviews, and after parties, and then more after parties. I probably wouldn’t get to sleep for two days, but maybe that was okay. We had all planned on taking a few weeks off, and our manager had booked us a resort stay on some private island somewhere in the Caribbean.

I tried to force a smile to my face, but I failed. I knew the truth about my career, and it saddened me somewhat. What would I do with the rest of my life? Where would I go? Could I find another purpose?

Jin had been the best in the world, but the battle had been too easy.

Could I find a new challenge?