8

  LEVEL ONE: THE DRAGON STONES

  REMAINING CONTESTANTS: 9,799,991

  TIME UNTIL CULLING: 59 days

  NAME: JACK REN

  CURRENT RANK: 1,456,111

  Earl advances first, with me just a few steps behind, and Elizabeth at the rear, crossbow ready and spare knives tucked into the belt she’d liberated from the castle. The battle, it seems, is louder and more chaotic than ever. With every step we take toward it, my heart beats a little harder, a little faster. This, I tell myself, is stupid—because what am I doing near a battle?

  But then I remind myself that I simply don’t have a choice.

  We’re spotted by a pair of elves—or at least, that’s what Elizabeth called them, and that’s what I’m calling them, too. They, like the ones she’d managed to kill, are tall, slender, and beautiful. They both have bows and are wearing leather armor, implying that they’re either a higher level than us, and have been rewarded protection, or they’ve simply gotten lucky and found the leathers.

  Either way, they don’t have helmets, and Elizabeth shoots the first straight through his right eye.

  She does it so quickly, so coldly, that it freezes me in place. The elf, who looks so much like an ordinary person that it’s unsettling, collapses bonelessly to the ground, limbs twitching as his blood turns the grass red. There’s a faint, golden shimmer around Elizabeth that I now know means she’s just leveled up again. That’s good. The bad part is that leveling up seems to have distracted her.

  The remaining elf shoots back at us, and her arrow—I think this one is a she—cuts through the air between Earl and me and grazes Elizabeth’s cheek, summoning forth a wave of blood. Elizabeth flinches. Earl misses his shot—or, rather, the elf evades it, throwing herself forward into a graceful roll, coming up in one smooth movement, drawing another arrow and—

  And her arrow is coming straight for me. I can see it, almost in slow motion, as it warps and quivers and slightly spins, the sharpened metal point aimed for the spot right between my eyes.

  I surprise myself when I slap it out of the air. There’s a bright, stinging pain, and when I look at my palm, I see that the tip has cut me, but not badly. The arrow is lying harmlessly in the grass. The elf is wearing an expression of mild surprise, as is Earl, but surprise swiftly turns to determination as she throws her bow aside and draws a short sword from the sheathe at her hip.

  The elf runs at me. I run at her.

  I can see the overhand swing coming from a mile away, much the same as how I can see a punch coming. Unarmed or armed, some of the basic principles of fighting are the same, and it’s a trivial matter to shoot forward, into such close range that the blade can’t yet harm me. Instinctually, I throw a hard, left elbow, and feel the abrupt point of connection. The elf’s head snaps to the side. I grab her, throw her across my hip, and land so that I’m on top of her. Immediately, I hear my coach’s voice in my head—ground and pound, baby!—and I’m raining down punches until the elf is quite obviously unconscious. Except—no.

  She’s not unconscious.

  She’s dead.

  And I’ve been hitting her way harder than I’d meant to. Than I’d ever hit anyone.

  The elf’s face is a bloody, ruined mess. I think I’ve shattered her skull.

  I rise, shocked, nauseous, my arms bloody all the way to my elbows. I hadn’t meant to do that. I’d just wanted to put her out, to win, not to kill.

  Earl places a hand on my shoulder, steadies me. His voice tickles my ear: “You’re alright, brother. You’re alright. You did well. Just follow me. We have to keep moving and we have to move now, okay?”

  “Okay,” I whisper.

  And we’re off, bent low, moving fast. Distantly, I think about the fact that killing the elf didn’t level me up. Numbly, I suppose that the gap between each level widens. That is typically how it works in games, isn’t it? Each level requires more experience or whatever to reach. And since the sick fucks in charge of this place, in charge of The Reality Games, seem to have modelled the rules just like a game, I’m forced to conclude that’s how it works.

  There are goblins ahead, and just that mere thought alone is so ridiculous that I almost laugh—although there’s a part of me that also wants to cry.

  Earl comes to a stop, draws an arrow. The goblins have seen us and here they come, six of them, spreading out and advancing slowly. They’re all armed with various weapons. None of them are armored, except for one, the biggest of the lot clad in what looks like steel plate, the sort of thing you’d expect a medieval knight to be wearing. It gives me pause, because how the fuck is anyone even meant to get through that? The thing is even wearing a helmet, its bright, yellow eyes shining through the narrow slit of its visor.

  I don’t want to fight them. I don’t want to kill anymore.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  The goblins continue to spread out until they form a rough half-circle around us. They lick their lips with long, forked tongues. One of them, with braided, red hair, starts to chant under her breath, moving her hands around in slow circles. I don’t know what she’s doing, but I don't like it. I like it even less when the air starts to blur around her, when bright lights start to twinkle around her taloned fingers.

  Evidently, Elizabeth doesn’t like what she’s seeing either. She shoots the goblin in the head with her crossbow, and as the goblin topples back, silent now, the others charge forward with wicked cries.

  I meet the closest goblin, ducking beneath the swing of a brutal-looking ax, and ripping to the body with a right hook to the liver that’d disable even the toughest fighters. It does a whole lot more than that, though. I can feel the extra strength behind it, and as my fist makes contact with the thing’s armored abdomen, blue light flares around my knuckles, and I remember the golden words that’d floated in the air earlier, when I’d leveled up: Devastating Blow, it had said.

  And the effect is devastating. The goblin folds in half and drops to his knees, and as he drops, I throw up a knee with all my strength.

  I feel bone shatter. I hear cartilage crunch.

  The goblin hits the ground and doesn’t move.

  But there’s another right next to me, and it’s howling, eyes narrowed. This one is unarmed. A brawler, maybe, like myself, and this is confirmed a second later when it slams a fist into my stomach, knocking the air out of me, then following up with a kick that deadens my leg and lets me know I’ll be limping for the rest of the day. The thing is fast, and despite how much bigger I am than the bastard, it’s totally fearless, walking me down as though every advantage is in its favor.

  Meanwhile, around us, Earl and Elizabeth are fighting the other goblins. I’m too focused on the one in front of me to pay any attention to their struggle. I just hope they’re winning, because if they’re not…

  The goblin leaps and swings an overhand right, aiming for my head. It’s hard for the thing to reach me, since I’m so much taller than it, and the blow is overall clumsy, so it’s easy for me to get out of the way and return fire with a four-piece combination that leaves the goblin reeling. Then, without even thinking, I see my chance and spin, throwing a wheel kick with all my weight behind it. My booted heel makes contact with the goblin’s temple. A knockout blow.

  Except, instead of knocking the thing out, I cave in the side of its head, blood spraying.

  I stare down at my palms. I’m so much stronger now than I’d realized. It unsettles me.

  Golden words float in front of my face.

  You have leveled up!

  Name: Jack Ren

  Contestant level: Four

  Current rank: 447,135

  Reward: New skill

  Choose from one of the following:

  Advanced Acrobatics

  Stone Hands

  “Stone hands,” I immediately say through gritted teeth, because I’m in the middle of a fucking fight and don’t have to think, to consider what they might mean. It’s hardly as though they’re giving me any real information to work with, anyway.

  I feel the difference immediately, just as before: the extra strength, the speed, the power that flows through my body.

  And when I step forward and hit another goblin, this one so busy with Earl that it doesn’t even notice me, my fist goes straight through.

  I stare down in shock. My hand is in the goblin’s torso, having exploded through the leather armor and buried itself deep in the creature’s side. Blood pools. I feel the wet, warm insides of the thing. It starts to shriek and, panicking, I rip my fist out, which kills the goblin. Viscera coats my knuckles and I whirl away, nausea disabling me, unable to stop myself from splashing the grass with vomit.

  This is too much. I can’t do this.

  By the time I recover enough composure to straighten up and wipe my mouth, Earl and Elizabeth have dispatched the others. They both inform me that they’ve leveled up. Earl’s at level three now and with a wide grin, he tells me that he chose Warrior as his class. He holds up an immense sword that’s appeared out of thin air, looking very proud of the thing.

  Elizabeth, meanwhile, is fixing her hair. She looks totally unbothered by the carnage around us. All three of us are covered in blood. Calmly, she states that she’s now at level six, but provides no further information about what, exactly, that entails. Which bothers me, because it feels like she’s deliberately withholding information. Is it because she doesn’t want us to know exactly what she can do? In case things ever sour between us? I don’t know. But I don’t like it.

  I open my mouth to say something, I’m not even sure what.

  But Earl’s pointing across the field. His eyes are wide. His earlier confidence has totally vanished.

  “Uh…” he says. “Maybe we ought to run.”

  And then I see what he’s pointing at.

  There’s a giant wading across the field.

  Not a literal giant. He’s maybe seven foot tall, but his aura is such that he exudes immensity. He’s clad head to toe in black, steel armor, which is covered in jagged, spiked points. The spikes are so vicious that there are pieces of flesh, the remains of goblins and other things, impaled upon them.

  And in the man’s hands is a sword.

  It’s as long as I am. It’s black, like his armor, except the blade is on fire. The flames are a deep, mesmerizing blue, ethereal azure, and they dance and coil as the giant swings his sword, which cuts an elf in half with no resistance at all. Golden light flickers around the giant, signalling another level, and very briefly, we all catch sight of the ghostly numbers moving around.

  Seventeen.

  This person, this thing, is level seventeen.

  The figure stops and catches a human by the throat. He lifts the human, who is twisting, struggling, screaming for help.

  The hand around the human’s throat squeezes.

  The human’s neck collapses.

  Now the figure’s head turns. Slowly as he, or it, scans the field for a new victim.

  And then it stops. Its gaze finds us.

  And it charges.