Kaya and the Rat-King took center stage.

Kaya bounced back and forth, loose and limber and grinning. The Rat-King, meanwhile, wore an expression that could’ve belonged to a rock face. He looked bored at an existential level.

“Begin!” cried the referee.

Kaya burst out with a lively cry, fists smoldering gold. The Rat-King did not move. She halved the distance between them, then halved it again in a bound. The Rat-King did not move. Screaming, she smashed a heavy fist gilded with goldlight straight into the Rat-King’s face.

And still the Rat-King did not move.

It was as though she’d tapped him lightly with her knuckles. All her force had gone straight into his head with no backlash at all—he didn’t so much as stumble. Her energy had been swallowed whole, gone elsewhere, made void, like that. The only indication she’d done anything at all was a tinge of light red on the man’s face.

He stared at her with flat eyes, utterly unimpressed.

Then that redness moved. It went from his face to his cheek to his neck to his shoulder, arching down the arms, into a hand—all in the space of a heartbeat.

And then that hand smashed straight into Kaya’s gut. Dorian saw her midsection sink in, saw her splutter and choke, face stark white.

It was like she’d been struck by a charging bull. There was a first CRACK! as her life-saving treasure shattered in an instant. Then she was blasted straight into the force-field, splattered against it with a loud THUD, and collapsed spread-eagled in the sands. The gold sputtered out.

Instant knockout!

Dorian winced. She seemed to be okay. Alive, at least? The Life-saving treasure had taken the brunt of the damage. She was groaning and dry-heaving.

It all happened so fast nobody seemed to know what to make of it. Even the announcer was caught off guard, apparently, since there was no declaring of the winner. Only a long stretch where the only sounds that filled the stunned silence were the sound of Kaya’s retching.

At last—

“And the winner is—“

“WAIT!”

The strangled gasp came from Kaya. She’d had propped herself back up to her knees, smiling through a mouthful of blood. “Is th-that all you got? C-come back here!” Shuddering all over, she stumbled to her feet. “I’m—not—done—“

The she coughed up a mouthful of blood—and a small chunk of meat. Her own meat. An internal organ, struck so hard it’d dislodged.

She stared at it for a second.

Then she blacked out. She landed face-first in the sand. This time she did not get back up.

“…”

“…”

“And the winner is… the Rat-King!” cried the announcer.

As the Rat-King stalked off, as the crowd roared and bellowed, Dorian frowned at the huddle of medics carrying Kaya off on a stretcher. She’ll be fine! …I think. A noteworthy weakness of Jez’s powers: unlimited ammunition was great! But all the quivers of arrows in the world were useless if your bowstring was snapped.

This Rat-King’s power seemed to be energy transfer. The redness where Kaya had struck went into his fist, which went back into her—a redirection, but with much amplified force. Something told Dorian, though, that this little display only scratched the surface of what he could do. Hmm… he’d need to take special care with this one.

***

Matches went by without incident. Ma Yun squished his opponent. Lin Zhang had made it to the Top 16 too—she scalded her enemy in an blitzing inferno. The semifinals drew near.

Kaya, mostly recovered and back at his side, was chipper as ever. Weirdly so; she was humming and grinning like nothing had happened. Which was so unlike her that Dorian was slightly concerned. Did she get hit so hard she’s gone loopy?

“Uh... are you okay?” he asked.

“Hells yeah!” She said with a grin. One of her teeth was missing. “I got to beat up a buncha people, and I had a great time doing it! What else could I ask for?”

Then she squinted. “Urgh—yea, that Rat fellow. He wasn’t even hurt when I hit him! No fun."

She hmphed. "I gotta learn to hit harder. Way harder. But the rest was awesome! I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.”

Dorian blinked. “Uh... sure. Good for you, sis.”

Yeah, she’s lost it. But hey—if it made her happy, who was he to judge?

***

The other fights passed in a blink. The only fight of note to Dorian was the Rat-King’s fight with Ma Yun.

Young Master Yun advanced on the Rat-King with frightening speed for a man of his sheer girth; each step drove a deep imprint in the sandstone terrain. This time the Rat-King’s lips were pursed, his posture hunched, hands high in a boxing guard.

Young Master Yun struck out with a roar. His whole left arm had taken on a strange metallic sheen, shimmering with swirling gray qi—and he lurched as it did, as though the limb had suddenly gotten a great deal heavier.

The Rat-King blocked the blow on his arms. But not even he could absorb that monstrous force. There was a sharp CLANG! and he was tossed into the air; nimbly he landed on his feet, wincing. Where it struck his forearms flared a bruising purplish-red.

Above, his health bar was docked ten percent. And that was a shot he’d blocked!

In came Young Master Yun again, not a hint of gloating on his face, placid as ever. It must’ve been a hell of a mindfuck: seeing this massive meatball of a man blitz you at lightning speeds with fists that could shatter a man’s spine to fine powder with but a touch—all while wearing the dullest expression imaginable, like he was taking out the garbage.

But by the look on his face, the Rat-King’s mind was still distinctly unfucked. In came Young Master Yun, grunting as his fist went metal-form. Up came the Rat-King’s arms—again! Dorian frowned. One would think he’d learned to dodge this time.

Except Young Master Yun struck, and this time the Rat-King did not budge under his block. There was a furious CLANG! —but this was not steel on bone. This rang much higher: the sound of steel striking steel.

The crowd gasped. The Rat-King’s forearms were the same metallic shade as Ma Yun’s; they were as shiny as Young Master Yun’s too. The King hadn’t merely stolen his momentum, and his energy—he’d ripped the man’s Technique.

The King’s eyes narrowed, even as Ma Yun’s widened. Then the King struck back.

Hook to the stomach, quick as quick, then up-top when the big man blocked low. There was a sharp CRACK! and Ma Yun groaned, clutching at his nose; then the blows rained down again. Blindly the big man struck out but the Rat-King slipped with ease. A punishing one-two—BANG-BANG!s shivered the grounds, rattling the stands—and Ma Yun was sent stumbling over himself.

Not bad. Dorian stroked his chin. His fisticuffs are fine. Good fundamentals. That wasn’t what gave Dorian pause, obviously. That ability. What were its limits? Did he need to be struck to use it?

Surely he couldn’t steal the Javelin itself—but could he rip its ability, shadow-strike?

As far as Dorian was concerned this was the one man between him and that sweet, sweet Tear of the Dweller… a treasure that, Dorian dearly hoped, would grant him the time-dilation boost Pebble had speculated on. Good gods would that be useful!

The rest of the fight was one-way. The Rat-King butchered Young Master Yun, whose shocking durability was still, in the end, tenderized via sheer brute force. Each strike the Rat-King landed would’ve easily done Dorian for half his health—if not more. Young Master Yun simply bellowed, desperately grasping, finding nothing, cringing as qi-hardened fists sent new shockwaves up his mangled flesh.

It did not look like a fight between two Peak Earth-Realm experts, among the most deadly of the Oasis’s fighters; it was simple bullying. The poor Young Master was left a bleeding mess by the end of it—so swollen in the end that he simply collapsed under the weight of his own bruises, dry-heaving blood, and blacked out.

The Rat-King did not celebrate, even as the crowd roared his name, even as the announcer heaped mounds of praise on him—“Through to the finals! A spectacular performance!”

Instead the Rat-King whirled around. His eyes found Dorian’s, his lips curling into a seething snarl.

Dorian simply cocked his head.

Why did he get that same feeling from the man’s fight against Kaya?

The sense that he was still holding abilities back?

Come to think of it, not once had he summoned a Spirit Weapon—and at this level Spirit Weapons were the lifeblood of combat!

Hmm. This might prove trickier than he thought…

***

It was soon his turn again. The Semifinals. Things were getting serious.

The announcer called out, “Io of the Heilong! Miss Lin of the Zhang family! To the stage!”

Dorian strode up. He wasn’t at all nervous. Lin Zhang had gotten favorable seeding—she hadn’t had to fight one of the top-five once, and he’d run through two already. Plus, she knew him, and he gathered—wincing—that she rather liked him. At least in a fight that’d serve him well.

Across the arena, a bare sandy basin like a drained lake, Lin waved at him, smiling.

…Huh? Ah, well. Why not? He waved back with a grin of his own. She lit up.

The referee called out, “Begin!”

Almost at the same time, Lin cried out, “I forfeit!”

“…”

“…”

She shrugged. “What? I couldn’t beat you anyways. I’m not even a top ten seed! This’ll save me the pain of getting beat up, right?” She winked at him. “Best of luck in the finals! Come visit me at the Guild sometime, mmkay?”

Then she skipped away.

“…”

The Rat-King, standing on the sidelines, looked on with a mix of horror, shock, and utter disgust. Dorian could guess what was running through the man’s head—I had to take down Ma Yun! This motherfucker gets to the finals with a godsdamned wave?! He found it far funnier than he should have.

***

“A little sweetener, before our final match of the Tournament,” said Oasis Lord Zhang with a wry smile. “Think of it as an incentive. The Tear of the Dweller is perhaps the single greatest treasure I have had the pleasure of consuming or owning. It contains within it the essence of the Dweller’s perception.”

He glanced about the arena, then at Dorian and the Rat-King. “You may have heard rumors that it has to do with time. This is only partly true. It dilates subjective time: for the Dweller can slow his own mind’s perception of time so drastically that one second can seem as ten!”

Yes! Pebble, you beautiful little gnome. You were right!

The crowd ooh’d, but Lord Zhang was not done. “But time is not the only element of perception. So is vision. So is smell. These senses are all transplanted: from the body of a godbeast to your own.”

He took a moment to let that sink in. “Forgive me my immodesty, but it is nearly Oasis legend that I have not been struck by a single enemy blow in the past century. If any of you have wondered why, now you know.”

By this point not even the Rat-King could feign disinterest. His pitch-black eyes were fixed on Lord Zhang, unblinking.

“Of course… the fighter who wins this Tear”—he gave a clear side-eye to the Rat-King—“shall have to swear allegiance to the Oasis, and to wield its powers to the Oasis’ defense!”

The implication was not lost on Dorian. Yeah, I’m guessing the Lord thinks I’m about to be crushed.

Which meant just about nothing to Dorian. The opinions of lesser men meant very little to him.

Which also meant that the only opinion he valued was his own.

He felt a brash hotness rising up in his chest, a fighting spirit.

He smirked. He was of the opinion that he was about to win himself a lovely little Tear.

“Fighters!” said the Oasis Lord. “To the stage!”