The mirage chamber in Yaresh was one of the in the world aured the test design innovations. Seating was arranged by rank, not because of privilege but because the projes in each se were tailored to different perceptual speeds. When gold rank fighters were just a blur to lower-rank spectators, it required a curated experience of repys and slow motion for them to enjoy the experience.

  Jason had seen some of this in the VIP se, finding it startlingly simir to sports ce oh. There were even entators. That audio hadn’t been piped into the VIP room, it had been pying quietly in the partit’s lounge.

  The projes not only slowed things down but allowed the audieo see through things they normally couldn’t, like the darkness Jason had pluhe arena into. While it looked impressive to the naked eye, it wasn’t ducive to keeping track of the a.

  From the stands, the arena was filled with shifting shadows, dang like a fire that absorbed light instead of shedding it. Just enough of the arena’s illusionary sunlight filtered through to create a perpetual murk. Occasional fshes of purple and e lit up the dark for fleeting moments, revealing glimpses of disturbing silhouettes.

  Ihe darkness lurked dark and alien figures. They had a multitude of arms like the branches of barren wirees. The limbs jutted up from trunks that were vaguely human-shaped, before twisting down like the legs of a spider. Csped in the pointed fingers at the end of each arm were vicious daggers. Ornate ws of glossy red and bck, they would not have looked out of p a sacrificial altar.

  The core bodies of the monstrosities were only the size of a person, but they crowded the arena, leaving no space to hide. What had once been ay ring of sand was now a bizarre garden of horrors, stolen from a lunatiightmare and hidden in the unnatural dark.

  In the middle of this was the fshing form of Prince Valdis. Like a fabled hero, he dashed through the nightmare creatures, fending off daggers with his gleaming sword. Too fast for almost ao follow, only the projes showed his struggles in any prehensible way.

  ***

  Valdis was a gold ranker, and he hadn’t gotten there by ever letting himself take the easy way. He’d fought monsters and cultists. Hunted down neancers and soul engineers. This was not his first time dang through the madness of some wizard who turhe world around him into a on.

  Valdis was as orthodox an adventurer as Jason was bizarre. His essences were on; his ability list full of famous, yet basic, abilities. It was not hard to research what Valdis was capable of, pared to the strange ability binations Jason was unleashing. Even so, others found Valdis extremely hard to beat. Yes, his abilities were simple and predictable, but they were on as dirt for a reason.

  Surprise was all well and good, but surprise worked once. Speed, effid versatility worked every time. Valdis was a sword master first, and everything else sed. Everything he did was either to advance his training or eliminate an obstacle to that training. If he hadn’t found someone he loved in his team, he wouldn’t have married because it would have been too much of a time sink.

  The result of all this was that Valdis was not intimidated by the terrifying dispy Jason utting on. Yes, it was a field of nightmares, but Valdis had sin nightmares before. His mind was razor focused on what to avoid, opportuo strike, and ameliorating mistakes already made.

  It was iing that he was fighting the very in of the System to which everyone now had access. It had told him about the mistake he had made in attempting to cut down all of Asano’s familiars. Not only had most of them survived, but it had acquainted Valdis with one of Jason’s more annoying abilities.

  You have sinned.You have suffered 210 instances of [Sin] for attag [System Administrator] and his allies within his aura. This ot be resisted, circumventing ability [Sword Soul].The message read as if the afflis were retaliation for attag the inator of the system, but that was just how the system referred to Asano. This was a fun of Jason’s aura ability, afflig any who came after his allies. Even the normally potent affli-abs power Valdis possessed was uo stop it, although the affli alone did little. The issue was how it ied with Jason’s other abilities to reduce resistances and increase ic damage.

  It wasn’t hard to get information on Jason’s core abilities. They were much less on than those of Valdis, but Jason had been around long enough, and was famous enough, that many of his powers had been tracked and catalogued. The Sin affli only increased any subsequeic damage, not dealing any itself. It meant that Valdis o avoid follow-up attacks, but avoiding hits was what he did.

  Jason’s familiars were almost unreisable with twisted tree-branch arms sprouting from them. Urees, however, they were extremely mobile. Valdis was stantly on the move as they shadow-jumped through the gloom, stantly occupying the space he was in. It took more than raw speed to evade them, even with the speed Valdis had at his and. Fortunately, he had no she of evasion abilities.

  Even amongst orthodox sword-masters like Valdis, each adventurer’s power set had its own nuances. Valdis’ specialty was force projes. Bde projes helped him attack at range or increase his damage up close, but his real signature was afterimages.

  He had a ste of evasion powers that left behind images that, at low rank, had been illusions that made useful distras. At gold rank, they did so much more. Many of his afterimage abilities now produced full force structs. Some were dangerous and explosive, a threat to arying to hunt him down. Others were hardy, long-sting and could even fight on their own.

  ***

  The crowd was eating the battle up and the entators pyed up the dark wizard and shining hero narrative.

  “Keep an eye on those repys, folks. At any given moment, our valiant prince seems on the cusp of being taken down, only to escape the clutches of sinister sorcery yet again! And remember, this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it a is being brought to you by Barrington’s Barrels, the best coopers in Upper Fisker! If you’re buying a barrel, you’d best be buying a Barrington’s Barrels barrel. Gods bedamned, who writes this crap?”

  “Ted, they still hear you. Putting your hand over the pickup doesn’t stop the sound projector.”

  “What? Oh, sorry, folks, there was a little magical issue with the annou system there…”

  ***

  Valdis dashed through the arena, barely a blur as his gleaming swords deflected the rain of daggers stabbing at him from every dire. His raw speed, incredible as it was, wasn’t up to the task of fending off the forest of bdes alone. His abilities left behind afterimages that would fight bad slow down the pursuing familiars, or even explode and wipe one or two of them out.

  The afterimages were key to buying Valdis enough breathing room to devise a terattack. He was still in a stant state of flight, but he was at least free enough to sider how to turables. The critical point would be identifying where Jason himself was amongst all the shadows and dagger-wieldiacle arms.

  While Valdis was w to give himself space, Jason wasn’t idle, sending out an array of spells. All of the familiars echoed his ting, so Valdis couldn’t trace him by sound. It was also impossible to track his location by aura, when every familiar possessed a perfect replica of it. What Valdis suspected Jason didn’t know was that he was already sneaking ara trick from his sleeve.

  The advantage of having such a well-known power set was that people didn’t expect to be surprised by it. But, as Valdis had learhat expectation could kill. While the gist of his power set was a surprise to no one, few people outside his own team knew every quirk and nuahat was especially true as he ranked up, not just from fresh aspects to the abilities but synergies that people weren’t expeg.

  Valdis couldn’t see through darkness with his perception ability, but it did give him perfect awareness of his surroundings within a short dista was the erstone of his uny ability to dodge and deflect attacks, and perfect for someone needing to track a storm of daggers jabbing in from every angle. What was much less known was that it gave him the same ability to sehe space around each of his long-term afterimages. While it seemed like he was being chased around the arena at random, he was, in fact, building a work of perception nodes.

  While this was happening, Jason tinued his attack. Spells were flung in Valdis’ dire, and even he couldn’t dodge every attack from the forest of arms. The cuts from the daggers weren’t a threat by themselves, but the afflis they delivered were a different story.

  You have been struck by special attack [Punish] wielded by [Hand of the Reaper].You have bee ic damage. Damage increased by all instances of [Sin].You have suffered instances of [Sin], [Wages of Sin], [Thief of Spirit], [Creepih], [Rigor Mortis] and [Weakness of the Flesh].Your resistances are reduced by the aura [Hegemony].You have failed to resist.Ability [Sword Soul] has absorbed the afflis, ing them.Capacity of [Sword Soul] has been diminished.You have been struck by [Ruin, the Bde of Tribution].You have suffered instances of [Ruination of the Blood], [Ruination of the Flesh] and [Ruination of the Spirit],Your resistances are reduced by the aura [Hegemony].You have failed to resist.Ability [Sword Soul] has absorbed the afflis, ing them.Capacity of [Sword Soul] has been diminished.Sword Soul was aremely powerful defensive ability. Not only did it absorb almost any affli, but passively buffed his other abilities for any unused capacity. It gave Valdis breathing room against someone like Jason, but he’d never experies capacity draining so far or so fast. Many essence users and monsters had a few afflis, but the rapid depletion of his Sword Soul capacity was more terrifying than all of Asano’s theatrics.

  There were some afflis that Sword Soul wouldn’t absorb, however. More Sin stacks piled up as the afterimages fought off Jason’s familiars. It also didn’t stop wounding effects, like Jason’s famous bleed attacks.

  You have been struck by special attack [Leech Bite] wielded by [Hand of the Reaper].You have suffered [Bleeding]. [Sword Soul] ot absorb wounding effects.As you have aing [Bleeding] effect, you have been drained of health and stamina.You have suffered instances of [Leech Toxin], [Tainted Meridians], [Thief of Life], [Creepih], [Rigor Mortis] and [Weakness of the Flesh].Your resistances are reduced by the aura [Hegemony].You have failed to resist.Ability [Sword Soul] has absorbed the afflis, ing them.Capacity of [Sword Soul] has been diminished.You have been struck by [Ruin, the Bde of Tribution].You have suffered instances of [Ruination of the Blood], [Ruination of the Flesh] and [Ruination of the Spirit],Your resistances are reduced by the aura [Hegemony].You have failed to resist.Ability [Sword Soul] has absorbed the afflis, ing them.Capacity of [Sword Soul] has been dimihe bleeding aic damage were stag up, with all the Sin stacks Valdis had taken, but he was gold rank. It would take more than that to slow him dow alo him in real dahe true threat was his Sword Soul running out, at which point afflis would start nding on him like bricks from the sky. He o hunt Jason down before his Sword Soul was expended, but Asano was making himself hard to find.

  Jason was almost indistinguishable from his familiars, ed in a cloak he turned bd sprouting the same of arms. In the gloom, there was no telling the difference, visually. This was where the experience Valdis had built up came into py. As the son of the Mirror King, Valdis was more experiehan most with people using illusions and mirror duplicates to hide themselves.

  Using essence abilities was the key to being a good adventurer. Going beyond them was the key to being a great one. Valdis has spent years learning the hard way how to spot the potential tells that differentiated a magi from their es, duplicates and illusions.

  Some made a mistake with disguising their aura, while others left small visible fws in their disguise than a keen eye could spot. The real experts didn’t make such mistakes, however. The secret to teasing out their real location was in watg behaviour, and that was the case for Asano. His aura trol erfed the gloom covered minor visual insistencies. But Asano and his familiars were not the same entity. Even disguised as his familiar, there were subtle differences in the way he moved.

  It shouldn’t have mattered. Even with perception powers, Asano was so hard to make out that anyone busy dodging daggers in the dark wouldn’t notice. What Valdis had learned from hard-earned experience was that the things that shouldn’t matter were often the keys to victory. His work of afterimages wasn’t just fending off shadow familiars but also letting him watch them.

  One of his afterimage variants sted a long time, making his search for Asano possible. They were turning red, which he’d never seen before, but whatever Asano was doing, it didn’t seem to work. The afterimages were immuo most afflis and weren’t beiroyed, and that is what mattered. They let him keep a, a him spot one of the creepy arm trees moving a little differently thahers. Without hesitation, he pounced.

  Part of being an orthodox human essence user was being very focused on special attacks. Valdis had a smasbord of such abilities, for killing things in every situation. Some specialised in cutting dowral monsters, others in crag armour or breag magical barriers. For Jason, he appeared out of nowhere and unleashed his attack for absolutely killing the damn thing right now.

  Cross Ssh was one of the most on attacks in the world. Easily obtaihrough the sword esse allowed for multiple, near-instantaneous strikes. At low ranks, it was a solid workhorse of a move, useful for dropping weaker creatures in a si. As things grew much tougher at silver rank, it became a mana effit means to pile-on damage. At gold rank, however, it became a differe entirely.

  At gold rank, a mana-intensive, long cooldown variant became avaible. It could inflict tless strikes so swiftly that it bent time itself to do so. It became such a trump card that Valdis had lost his fight with Sophie Wexler when he was gobsmacked at how she tered it. She had accelerated time herself, perfectly blog each strike with raw skill, then punched him in his astonished face.

  That was not something Jason could do. Valdis’ sword passed right through Jason’s body before he had a ce to react. Through his ned through his head. Through his limbs so many times they were not just cut off but cut to pieces, all in a single instant. It was so fast that Asano was still standing whearted to fall apart.