Dix was still contemplating his post mortem achievements when the scenery abruptly changed again. He was glad that he’d been lying on the floor when it happened, or he may have jumped into something and fallen over. Slowly getting to his feet he surveyed his new surroundings.

This new area was cavernous. The ceiling was higher than the light reached, and the walls were only barely visible, and very far away. There were a number of closer wall-like structures though. As far as he could see in every direction were rows and rows of weapon racks filled with every conceivable, and many inconceivable, melee style weapons. It looked like the medieval Matrix. Swords, spears, axes, maces, knives, staves, and hammers were all in great supply. There were even similar numbers of more exotic things like nunchucks, whips, flails, saws, scythes, claws, and grappling hooks. And then the truly exotic. Things that Dix had no name for, or even a way to explain them. Most seemed just as deadly to the wielder as they would be to an opponent. And was that a rack filled with Klingon weapons?

As he surveyed LARP nerdvana, he finally noticed that he had more company than just the weapons. Walking down one of the aisles, this one seemingly dedicated to weapons’ hafts without any heads on them, the male was periodically reaching out to stroke different weapons like they were cherished longtime lovers. Dix labeled his company as male, not man, because he was clearly not human. Considering the only people I’ve met here were either gods, or pixies that needed to die, I’m guessing he’s a god. The male was a centaur, if there was a breed of centaur that was made of lava. And was huge. Can’t forget huge. He stood about nine feet at the shoulders of the horse portion of the body, and had another six feet of man torso and head above that. The horse portions of his body were mostly black, with his muscles defined by the cracks that were glowing the red of molten rock flowing underneath. But his human sections were instead the same burning red of the lower half, highlighted by the yellow of even hotter rock. Except his eyes. They were the pure burning white of ignited magnesium. As he came closer, the most important thing about him became clear almost immediately. While he might look like an ambulatory volcano, he was not actually producing excess heat, causing Dix to sigh in relief that he wasn’t going to experience spontaneous combustion.

Eventually the volcanic centaur stopped stroking his weapons and looked up, spotting Dix almost immediately. His face broke into a smile almost as bright as his eyes, before his voice boomed out, “Ah, human, there you are! I hope you weren’t waiting too long, I tend to get distracted walking through the racks.” One glowing arm waved Dix to approach, as the other removed a haft from the rack in front of him. As Dix approached he started gesturing to the weapon he had removed. “Come over and see this. An amazing feat of weapons crafting. If you see here on the haft, there are many different choices for what to wield. Fantastic, but very difficult to master. And if you haven’t mastered it, then it is more dangerous in combat for you than your opponent. Let me give you a demonstration.”

During his short speech Dix noticed that the weapon was basically a wrist thick stick about double the length of the god’s forearm with some carvings that seemed to have a faint luminescence to them. Unless he planned to hit people with a stick in a multitude of different ways, there seemed to be no choices at all. This opinion quickly changed however when the centaur’s thick thumb slid against one of the illuminated carvings on the stick, and suddenly it was an axe. Abruptly, the god started lashing out with his weapon, the head changing with almost every stroke. First the axe, then a mace, flail, hammer, axe, morning star, a different mace, a single spike, back to the flail, and finally back to the axe again, before the head disappeared, once more leaving just the haft of a weapon. Dix was both stunned and excited. Sure, this weapon was almost impossible to wield, but it was equally capable in any situation, always having the necessary tool for the job. With a satisfied grin, the big centaur hung the weapon back on the rack.

Turning back to Dix, the grin dropped off the centaur’s face. He looked almost embarrassed. Suddenly he started shrinking, until he was only a foot or two taller than Dix. Thrusting out a hand for Dix to shake, his voice boomed out again, quieter, but not by much, “Ach, sorry about that. Got so excited I forgot to bring myself down for an easier conversation. And don’t worry, I won’t burn you. Name’s Roanoak. God of Crafters. Although here, I am only the God of Blacksmiths. Welcome to the Hall of Iron” Dix shook his hand, not actually worried about being burned even before it was mentioned. Before he could introduce himself, Roanoak had already moved on. “No worries about your name, the others already let me know. And sorry about the blasted pixie. No one wants to actually do the tutorial work, so even though we all hate her, we just keep her locked up so we don’t have to do it ourselves, or talk to her. And honestly, she scares most folks from your world less than I do. Anyways, come along, we need to get you some weapons picked out. Here, look at this one.”

Roanoak led Dix through the maze of weapons, talking all the while. He never stopped long enough for Dix to say anything, but constantly had him holding or using weapons. His conversation was almost completely on the weapons themselves, only deviating to speak about how Dix didn’t seem to know what to do with a great number of them. Over time Dix finally realized that not only had they been through at least one of every basic type of weapon in the Hall, but Roanoak seemed to know exactly which ones Dix was comfortable using, and had brought along a few examples of each type. All without a single verbal statement from Dix.

Eventually they reached what looked to be a large forge and testing area. The forging area was about the size of a football field, and had a number of different sized sections to it, presumably for Roanoak to resize himself to simplify working on weapons of different sizes. An area of roughly the same size was next to it filled with terrifying monstrosities. Or more accurately, monster shaped and sized training dummies. While there seemed to be almost every monster he had ever heard of represented, Dix quickly realized that there were really only about one hundred different types here. The reason for each was clear after a quick study of the differences between the dummies. Goblin, cyclops, drake, skeleton, slime, golem, wolf, giant spider, giant bat, zombie, ghost, giant, miscellaneous elementals, assorted humanoids, and more. All of these appeared to be things he might have to fight one day, and each of them needed to be fought differently. Certain weapons may also need to be used or discarded to fight each type of enemy. No matter how much Dix loved knives, he didn’t see them being particularly useful against earth elementals or golems. After another few minutes of study, Dix turned back to look for Roanoak.

While Dix had been studying the dummies, Roanoak had laid out the weapons he had chosen earlier onto a table. There was a selection of knives, swords, polearms, staves, axes, hammers, maces, and clubs. Each was sorted into smaller groupings, mostly matching with weapons of the same type, but not always. One of the staves was with the polearms, a sword with the clubs, a club with the swords, and something that seemed to be part hammer and part axe at the mid point between the two. The knives seemed to start with the smallest, then work upwards into the largest sword. There were quite a few more weapons than Dix had realized Roanoak had grabbed. Though all were finely crafted, there was no extravagance to any of the weapons. Just well made, functional, durable, tools of death.

Reaching to stroke a knife about halfway up the sizing scale, Dix flicked a glance at Roanoak and asked, “So, what’s the plan here?”

Roanoak laughed, and replied, “As if you can’t guess. Either way, I’ll give you a quick rundown. Right now you need to pick your weapons. You will need versatility in what you can use so that you are prepared to fight just about anything, but there are no rules. You can choose as many, or as few as you like. You will only be using these particular weapons when you go through your combat testing, not on Mantra. Feel free to try them out. The dummies offer a variety of different types of opponents that you may fight, and I can even animate them somewhat if you find it necessary. From this point on, anything and everything you do will be graded to determine your statistics and skills, as well as their values. The greatest benefits you can accrue to these values will be during your testing sections, but you can earn increases anywhere.

“As for the weapons arrayed here, these are the ones I feel you either have the most training with or that will most easily shore up obvious gaps in your needs while still being similar to what you already know how to use. Feel free to ask questions, but I can only give you generalities on the monsters. Weapons I can help more with.” Finished with his speech, Roanoak slid himself onto a bench to rest. Dix, meanwhile, was glancing back and forth between the weapons and the training dummies.

After a short time, Dix finally asked a question. “The dummies are accurate in showing the difficulties in combating the creature they are modeled after?” He was mostly focusing on the enemies that appeared to be more defensive, like the golem and the earth elemental, but would look at the skeleton as well at times.

Roanoak nodded and explained, “Yes, within reason. These are modeled after the common variants of each type. The golem for instance is stone, but iron, steel, and other metals are used to create stronger types which you may encounter. These things are mostly just examples to get you thinking about what difficulties you may have to overcome. Yes, later on you may be strong enough to tear an iron golem in half with your hands, but you’ll never live that long if you don’t first know how to kill a stone golem.”

Dix had a preference for weapons already, but Roanoak was making a very good point, one that he hadn’t yet addressed. His current choices were knives and a spear. The knives were something he was already quite good with, were easy to hide, had a broad selection of types for different uses, and should be widely available pretty much anywhere. He also had a great deal of experience fighting people with knives, as that was his main focus during his martial arts training. The major downsides to knives were their very short reach, thin blades making blocking difficult, and they weren’t long enough to deal any real damage to significantly larger monsters. You may as well be attacking a giant with a splinter at that point in time. To deal with these problems with knives, he wanted to add a spear. The length of a spear not only allowed him to reach a larger opponent but also to keep them at range, keeping him safer. Spears should also give him the ability to actually harm something like a giant, although he was still uncertain how much damage he could do to something that size. Yes, spears were more difficult to defend with close in, but the knives should cover that. And he did have some training in their use.

He chose a spear that more closely resembled a glaive, giving him the ability to slash as well as thrust, opening up a few different styles of use. The shaft was thicker than he would usually use, but it would be better for taking hits, and could double as blunt damage in a pinch. The blade itself was just over two feet long, allowing for deeper penetration, and a longer cutting surface. As for knives, he took a couple boot daggers, a stiletto, three karambits, a larger heavy bowie knife with a trench knife handle. It might seem like overkill, but as a long time collector and fighter, he preferred to be ready for just about anything. And fighting with knives oftentimes came with knives dropped during combat. Better to have a backup, than go searching on the floor while someone is trying to stab you. His only problem was what he needed to use to kill the sturdier enemies. It seemed some testing was in order.

First he took his current load of weapons and assaulted the humanoid dummies. There were a mix of features, builds, and additional differences from humans amongst them, some of which would affect combat. The reptilian types had tough scales that made slashing and stabbing more difficult, as well as the teeth and claws that seemed prevalent amongst the anthropomorphic types. A furrier humanoid seemed to have some sort of spur on the wrist that could shoot out a poisoned dart. He was unsure how long it would take for that type of being to regrow the dart, or if it had multiples. Roanoak was less than helpful when asked. Most of the rest of the differences were to be expected, although the variations in musculature and joints suggested that some moved in different ways than a human would.

Moving onto things that would present new challenges, Dix headed to the animalistic section of the training area. Although many were similar to things he had seen on Earth, or in video games, there were also quite a few things he’d never imagined. The difficulties to overcome here seemed to be also as expected. Tougher hides, sharper claws, longer teeth. Again the musculature was not well displayed, and the animated versions of the monsters didn’t move in a way that suggested they were at all correct. Flying creatures were next, but proved easy enough to deal with using the spear.

Dix next headed over to the smaller creatures section, thinking it would be a bit of a joke. He couldn’t have been more wrong. The first thing he tried to attack was a goblin. Three feet tall, skinny limbs, with big eyes and ears they looked just like he had always thought. The problem for Dix was that he had never trained to attack something the size of a child. People on Earth don’t have goblins, and don’t attack children, so suddenly having to make every attack three feet lower or designed to knock the opponent over so he could stab it while it was down required a huge change to his thought process during combat. When Roanoak pointed out that the dummies were much, MUCH slower than their real world inspirations, Dix got a little worried. Deciding to try something else, he moved onto the horned rabbit. Another staple of RPG lore, the bunny was hard to hit even moving at training dummy speed. And it used some sort of crazy rabbit parkour to attack from unexpected angles, and not just with its horn. Much like with the goblin, Dix was forced to try and grapple, grab, or otherwise knock the rabbit down before he could get a knife into it. The spear was totally useless with these enemies. At least the slime didn’t put up much of a fight.

Already feeling humiliated, he decided to see just how bad the large enemies would be. While by no means an easy fight, they were doable. And not just with the spear as he had previously thought. Dix had been thinking that a giant was just a scaled up person. Meaning everything was five times bigger, or thicker. Especially the skin, bones, tendons, and muscles. As it turns out, he was only partially correct. While most of the body was scaled up, the skin didn’t get that full scaling, and was therefore easier to pierce than he had thought. And due to the upscaling of the bones and such, the giants were actually less flexible than humans, meaning it was rather easy to use a couple knives as climbing spikes to ascend their back and then start slicing up tendons and arteries. Or drive a spear through them from behind. Even fighting them head on was easier than he had anticipated. So no matter how he did it, while the fights were exhausting and dirty, they were definitely doable.

Finally he moved onto the constructs. Skeletons were animated by magic holding the bones together, so trying to cut the arm off at the joint went right through the magical tethers and did nothing at all. The only way to disable them was to actually break the bones, something he couldn’t do with a knife. As long as they stayed out where he could get the blade on them he could cut the bones in half with his spear, or, with a proper wind up, break them with the shaft. The skull could be curb stomped into pieces once the rest of the skeleton was dismantled enough to stop fighting. But as he had thought, golems and earth elementals were impossible. No matter what he tried he couldn’t do anything to them with a spear and some knives, so he headed back to the table looking for another option.

In the end he was trying to decide between an axe with a heavy pick for a counterweight, and what looked like a baseball bat with blunted blades on the sides. He figured the pick on the back of the axe would be good on the sturdier construct, while the axe would be great for skeletons. The bladed bat just looked to be extremely user friendly, adapting into his sword forms easily, or just being swung as hard as he could to break stuff. While struggling to choose, he looked up at Roanoak and asked a question that had been puzzling him for a bit, “They have magic on Mantra right?”

With a smile, Roanoak replied,” Aye, they do. And it works much better against the constructs than most weapons. But right now, we’re doing melee weapons, so stop worrying so much about what you can’t fight, and instead focus on what you are supposed to be doing.” At Dix’s quizzical look, he sighed and pointed to the weapons on the table that Dix had set aside, ”You are supposed to be showing me that you actually know how to use all of those, not just showing off that you can use two types of weapons to fight just about everything.”

With a laugh, Dix set aside his spear and knives, grabbed the axe, bat, and a sword that looked fun and headed back to the dummies. Well, he did know how to use everything on that table, and after dying he figured he needed a good workout, so what the hell. Time to get to work.