It was finally time for John’s last match in the Arena. The crowd was going wild that day. He could hear them chanting from the preparation room. They were chanting his opponent’s name. It seemed like John had lost many fans. This was the opponent’s home ground after all. The majority of the audience would be Hatishi.

“I wouldn’t show any mercy in this match if I were you,” John’s attendant said. “Ramba’s known to be cruel and vicious. He will look for any weakness you show to strike you down.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” It would be good to have another subordinate.

John walked onto the arena ground. This would be the last time he fought on its white sand.

“Introducing, the Metal Man, the Cyborg of Carnage, the Bringer of Damnation, the Champion of Hatish, the one and only Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaambaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”

“Ramba! Ramba!” cheered the crowd.

Ramba was as big as the Empress’ Death Walkers, but not as broad. He was as thin as a stick. He had eight mechanical limbs. Four he used for walking, and four for using weapons. He reminded John of an octopus. In one hand he held a cannon with five missiles in the magazine. Each warhead was as big as John’s body. In the other hand he held a glaive, crackling with blue electricity. In his third hand he held a mace. It looked like an ordinary mace, but John had seen its kind on the root way. It would explode with an overwhelming force on impact. In his fourth hand he held a mini rail gun. His face was covered by a metallic mask and its eye holes were tinted with a red material, making him look like a demon prince.

As soon as the gong sounded John fired lightning at Ramba. The lightning didn’t seem to affect Ramba at all. Weren’t metal men supposed to be weak to lightning? Maybe that only worked in the games John used to play on Earth. Ramba fired off a missile. John strengthened his aura shield until it formed a sphere around him. The missile hit his aura shield. The explosion tore through the ground of the arena, creating a big pit. John jumped out of the pit and wove Dark Rainfall. Dark blades fell on Ramba’s head, damaging his metallic exterior but the exterior soon healed itself. He must have been using nanobots to repair himself. Ramba’s clothes disintegrated revealing a full metal body. With Ramba’s healing factor this was going to be difficult. If he wanted to kill Ramba he’d have to do it in one shot.

Ramba fired the rest of his missiles at John. John’s aura shield was fluctuating. His aura reserves were running low. He had enough to wrap aura around his glaive but not much else. He’d have to do this the old fashioned way. John phased in and out of the aether, Ramba’s rail gun firing at him constantly. He dodged the shells by a very narrow margin. The shells had left scrapes on his armor. He soon closed the distance and Ramba was forced to defend himself with his glaive and mace. John felt like he was fighting two people at the same time. Ramba was proficient in the use of his weapons, and John could see the sheen of internal energy wrapping them. It was so similar to aura and yet so different, like a calm sea was different from stormy ocean. Martial artists were such a pain, he thought for the umpteenth time.

John knew that if he got hit even once he would die. Ramba was incredibly strong. He struck and parried the glaive while dodging the mace, hoping to gain even the slightest opening. Then Ramba hit the mace on the ground, which exploded beneath John. John was off balance and barely managed to stave off Ramba’s glaive. He phased the next instant, directly behind Ramba’s head, and struck. Ramba had seen it coming. He leaped away. John had only managed to scrape off a bit of his metal skin. John could see the nanobots on the metal he’d scraped away through his perceiver circuit. They swallowed the metal and jumped back on Ramba’s main body, healing him once more.

John phased behind Ramba again and again. The cyborg was forced to leap away each time. Eventually he’d make a mistake. John phased so much that he thought he was going to get swallowed by the aether. It was seeping into his body like water from a broken dam. He knew that if he kept this up he’d lose his anchor to reality and be lost in the aether forever. What other choice did he have?

Finally, Ramba made a mistake. His leg got caught in the pit he’d made when he’d first fired his missile at John. John took this opportunity to lunge his glaive into Ramba’s eye. Various colored liquids flowed out of Ramba’s mask, the red of blood along with black, orange, blue and green fluids. The whole cocktail stunk. While Ramba was in shock John struck again through the same wound he’d made.

“Mercy,” pleaded Ramba, his voice a low mechanical rumble.

John stopped his strike and took a step backwards. He did not see Ramba’s mace come towards him. It him on the chest and exploded. He flew back from the impact, hitting the Arena’s walls. Ramba fired his rail gun as John flew backwards. John couldn’t feel one of his arms. He looked and saw that it was gone, shredded away by Ramba’s continuous fire. He was now a disabled person. John knew he was not very bright, but this was stupid even by his own standards. His attendant had even warned him about it before the match started. Was he going to die in the Arena? He wove fire, cauterizing his wound, with the few dregs of aura he still had left.

John screamed in pain and rage. Something inside snapped within John at that moment. Aura was sucked into his body with great speed from the air, causing a whirlwind to appear over the Arena. Thunder sounded from above and it began to rain. With the Hatishi’s precise control over the weather, rain falling now should have been impossible. The authorities would have never allowed it to happen. John felt like a balloon, his aura circuits expanding within him from the sudden increase in energy. This was too much energy. He’d implode. He had to use it now.

John roared, weaving light into his body. Weaving aura directly into the body was dangerous. His organs were messed up as it was, he didn’t mind messing them up some more. Light shone through his skin, making him look like a shining celestial. Blood was flowing out from his skin, unable to withstand whatever it was he was doing. His thoughts vanished as though sucked away by the light. John was functioning purely by instinct now. He flashed towards Ramba as fast as light. He moved so fast that fire burned around him, and there were even small explosions in his wake. Ramba tried to defend himself, but each strike of John cut through his limbs. Ramba was soon legless and armless. John finished him with a cut to his torso, dismembering Ramba into two. Unable to keep up his present state anymore John fainted.

When he came to he was lying on a hospital bed. There were machines all around him, connected to him by tubes. Human medical technology seemed far inferior to Elven. John stared at the hand he thought he’d lost. They had somehow transplanted a new one. There wasn’t any indication to show that he had been crippled. Apart from feeling a little sore it was just as good as the arm he had been born with. He saw Sor Al and her apprentices sitting by the wall. Relar and Sariel were half asleep. Sor Al was wide awake and looking at him.

“They’ve given me a new arm?” he asked her.

“It was grown in a vat from your DNA and then attached to your body. The Hatishi are skilled in regrowing human body parts. Dismemberment seems to happen quite frequently here. You should not have shown Ramba mercy.”

“I cannot go around killing everyone I encounter.” It was nice to subordinate people and see his power grow. With the Clown and the Mountain he had two reliable pairs of hands to help him create his expeditionary fleet.

“He was your enemy.” Sor Al was wrong. This was the Arena. They had been mere competitors, not life or death enemies.

“So was the clown, but he did not pull any funny business on me.”

“Pull any funny business? Your expressions are so strange. Ramba almost killed you. Learn from that experience. Do not trust so easily.”

“I won’t. Sor Al, why did you train me to be a killer? Shouldn’t children be allowed to grow in a peaceful environment?”

“War is a near constant in our galaxy. Even now, there are hundreds of worlds fighting against each other. Many human children learn to fight from when they can lift a weapon. Trained killers are everywhere. Such a universe is deadly for someone who is weak but ambitious. If all you want is a home, a family and a steady job you can choose to live at the mercy of your masters. If you wish to rise above them all and live by your own rules you must be prepared for opposition. Only the paradise worlds think children should be kept away from such activities, but war has never ravaged them.”

“But why did you choose me?”

“You have all the qualities of becoming a great warrior. I wished to train you. Even if I could not tie you to the elves permanently I could ensure that there were friendly relations between you and my people. And about that Alutien. He has been punished. You need not concern yourself with him anymore.”

Alutien...John had almost forgotten about him. It seemed like such a long time ago that he’d been fighting the war. In reality, it had only been a few months.

John lay convalescing for a few more days and was then escorted to a ship with Sor Al. Their destination was the capital of the Oor Empire, the planet Tanis, where a new life awaited John.