The pain was so intense and quick that I didn’t even realize I had passed out until I was coming to. The professor’s voice was the first thing I heard. “What did you just do to yourself?”

  “Probably something stupid,” another voice answered. One that I recognized, though I didn’t know why they were here of all places. My eyes popped open and caught sight of a beastman with my head on her lap as she stared down at me. I watched as the little pointed ears on top of her head danced. Seeing them caused me to subconsciously reach up to rub them.

  She managed to swat my hand away before I got close. It was hard enough to stop the impulse, for now. “Who are you?” I asked in an attempt to try and distract both of us from what just happened.

  Her cheeks flushed, “Yeah, I keep forgetting about the changes. Well, that and we only met for a few minutes. My name’s Nancy.”

  I bolted off her lap. Turning in my seat to face her as I realized why I recognized her voice. “You’re the one that healed me when I nearly froze on my first day.” She nodded. “I thought you and your party were going on to the next town. What are you two doing here?”

  “We did,” she sighed, “but the region is just too small for the number of players flocking there.”

  “Why don’t they just move on to the next or at least spread out?” I asked, confused about why a game developer wouldn’t have fixed it by now.

  “It is not always so simple,” the professor cut in. “If I had to guess, there are no easy paths to the next town?”

  The tips of her ears flopped a bit as she nodded. “Very few people meet the minimum level requirement to make the trip, and that’s if you can find a guide willing to make the journey.” While she spoke, my eyes were locked on to her ears as they continued to move. I wondered about how much different they must feel for her. She must have noticed my staring because they flattened to her head as she continued. “They are a bit sensitive. Same goes for my tail. Though at least I don’t have to worry about my ears getting stuck in a door or grabbed by people.”

  The way she said this made me think that it was a common occurrence. “So, are you participating in the tournament?”

  “Nope.” Her eyes rolled, and something smacked the floor behind her. “Apparently it is limited to humans only or something else stupid.” She huffed and crossed her arms. “I don’t remember this town being so specist.”

  “Unfortunately, I fear it is getting worse,” the professor sighed. “Earlier, there were some guards that surrounded me and demanded I go with them. If not for Kyren, I might have been killed or jailed just for being in town while not being human.”

  “Just great.”

  “How did your species change?” I asked her.

  “SoulStone.” Her face darkened as if she just realized something. “Which means that this will become a bigger issue as more people use it.”

  “Will everyone who uses it become something non-human?”

  Nancy shook her head. “Only one more person in my party changed species. The rest just gained a few abilities but otherwise stayed human.”

  “Kyren, your next match is up in a few minutes.” The professor’s words drew my attention from the cat girl to the screen that hung over the arena. Sure as shit, my name was on there. Apparently I was supposed to fight someone named Ellen Ripley.

  A soft chuckle came from the cat girl. As I rose, I shot her a questioning look. She waved it off. “You’re not an alien; so you should be fine. Just don’t let her get ahold of any acid or a gun.”

  What she said made no sense. It wasn’t until I was halfway down the steps that her words clicked, making me turn and yell back at the two of them. “Wait, guns work here?”

  “Of course they do,” the professor yelled back. “Physics works here in the game in the same way it does on Earth. It is not the locals’ fault their technological progress took a back seat to magical progress.”

  My mind tried to work through the implications of this new piece of information as I made my way to the room downstairs. This time I wasn’t the only one there. A woman was leaning against the wall and, like me, she didn’t have a single weapon visible. However, unlike me, she seemed to be wearing something that looked like a flight suit. As I looked her over, she did the same. We only stopped when the receptionist spoke up: “Kyren Vulpier, Ellen Ripley, go ahead and head to your spots.”

  I gestured for her to precede me into the tunnel. She rolled her eyes but led the way to the arena floor. Like last time, there were two circles of magic to indicate where we were to stand. I reached my spot and pulled my sword out as I watched my opponent. Just before she stepped into the circle, she stopped as she started to pull things out of her inventory.

  The first of which was a stocky tube. As that materialized in her hand, a cylinder thumped into the sand. It took her a minute to get the thing onto her shoulders before she finally connected the dangling hose to the tube.

  A moment later, a small yellow flame appeared on the end of the tube. I was pretty sure I was looking at a flamethrower of some sort. Though, the thing looked crude as hell. Likely something that she or someone else had made as an experiment rather than something meant to be sold. “If you don’t want to get burned, give up now.” Her voice was loud enough for me to hear clearly even from this far.

  This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  I shook my head. I was fairly sure my Fire elemental control would allow me to manipulate the fire, or at least divert it enough to avoid being hit. Before I could say anything, the announcer’s voice reverberated around the arena. “Round two. Ellen Ripley versus Kyren Vulpier. READY! FIGHT!” It seemed that the people running this tournament were not going to give either of us any time to prepare. Then again, I could have taken my time to reach the circle like Ellen had. That had given her all the time she needed to prepare.

  Without waiting or preamble, a gout of liquid fire roared across the space between us. Parts of the stream fell short and landed on the sand where it continued to burn. The rest of it managed to reach where I was standing. While the faceful of fire surprised me, I didn’t react like someone hit with a flamethrowing usually would.

  The heat was similar to that of a hot summer day inside my old place of work. No fan or air conditioner there to help cool us off as the sun turned the metal structure into an oven. While the heat was uncomfortable, it had nothing on the liquid as it made its way down my body and under my dress.

  With a quick jump back, I shivered as the odd sensation of a viscous and heated liquid made its way down my chest. It was a feeling I had never experienced in that location. I mean, why would I ever need to put lube on my chest of all places? She altered the angle of her weapon enough to reach me a second time. I jumped back again as I tried to avoid the stuff.

  We did this dance several times before I finally found her weapon’s limits and stayed outside of them. Too bad it was plenty far enough that any spell I threw at her would be noticed well before it hit. In fact, I wouldn’t be able to do anything to her unless I got closer, which meant I would have to be willing to get lubed up even more than I already was. At least the little I had gotten on me had mostly burned off at this point.

  Wait, did I really have no other options? I knew I had my fire magic, but what about my new elements? While I doubted I could pull off any sort of shadow movement like those Patric used, what about Water or Earth? Now, I know what you are thinking. These were elements I just unlocked. Elements I had never used in a spell, let alone trained with. There was a good chance something would go wrong but something about this situation and these two elements had my mind flying. Ideas popped into my head before discarding themselves. Moments later, I settled on one that sounded promising. Of course, it all depended on whether or not I could pull the spell off before I ran out of mana.

  With another leap, I jumped back as far as I could. It would take her a while to walk close enough to resume her firing. I took the time to form a thin rod out of Earth runes with a few Water runes mixed in. Both runes came to me as if I had always known them. As the last rune fell into place, the spell activated. A thin spear of earth formed in thin air as the mana comprising the spell condensed.

  Given the number of holes and the addition of water to the spell, I was sure that this spear was weak as hell. But I wasn’t going for strength. If I needed strength to punch through her defenses in addition to the flames, I was screwed. Next came the hard part. I had to layer a second and third spell down on top of the first.

  While I had no clue what it would do, I was hoping that a layer of Dark runes would provide some help in getting the rod to its destination before burning up. But it wasn’t the fire from the flame thrower I needed to protect it from. It was the ring upon ring of fire runes that I surrounded the spear with that it needed to block.

  My head pounded and the world narrowed as I finished the last of the spells. I struggled to hold the construct in place as each spell activated. The spear darkened as if shadowed before rings of fire shrouded the thing in spinning fire. Not sure how long I would be able to hold the thing, I took aim and fired.

  Parts of the firebolt from hell flickered as it zipped from me to my target. A line of fire hung mid-air as it connected the two points for a fraction of a moment. Not that it was time or air that removed the line. A shockwave of shrapnel, fire, and steam erupted from my targeted spot.

  I stood there, frozen in place as I waited for the ringing of my ears to stop. All while I waited to find out the results of my attack. As the cloud of steam and dust was blown away, it revealed the damage.

  My opponent was stock still. We as one looked at the damaged wall behind her. There was a crater in the damned thing. I was sure that if it had hit her she would have likely turned into lots of tiny pieces if not outright vaporized. “In a sudden twist, Kyren Vulpier is the winner.” The announcer suddenly boomed.

  As soon as my first foot moved to carry me out of the arena, it gave out. My body crashed to the ground as the world started to turn grey. While I could hear people as they ran out to help me, I couldn’t make sense of what they said or did. One of them shoved a bottle into my mouth. They forced my lips to close around it before sealing my nose. Left with no choice, I swallowed the vile liquid. It tasted like stale water mixed with glitter. The only reason I didn’t spit the stuff up was due to the hands that kept my mouth closed until I swallowed a couple of times.

  The world slowly regained its color. As it did so, I found that I could make sense of the conversation going on around me. A man was talking. “…mana-deficient. I thought you travelers would be smart enough to not push your luck.”

  Another man laughed. “If anything, it is the opposite. We will constantly push our luck. Some of us will even go so far as to die multiple times. All so we can find and push our limits more the next time. And, as we can see from this last fight, it sometimes pays off.” Given their conversation, I was fairly sure that one was a player while another was an NPC.

  The other man scoffed but changed subjects. “Looks like she is coming around.”

  “He,” I grunted out as I tried to push myself up. “What happened?”

  “What?” the man said before waving off his question. “Doesn’t matter. You played it close. You nearly passed out from mana exhaustion which is not something I would recommend. Given that I only saw you cast the one spell, I would recommend you either refrain from using such spells or find a way to increase your mana pool.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind,” I muttered as a sudden headache assaulted me. “Is there anything you can give for this headache?”

  The other guy handed me a small strip of some sort of bark. “Chew on this.” While I took it, I eyed it with suspicion. I had expected something more like magic, a potion, or even a pill. “It is a strip of willow bark. While it is not as effective as most over-the-counter painkillers, it is what we have access to.”

  Not seeing any other choice, other than to live with the headache, I put the piece into my mouth and started to chew. While I knew the effect wouldn’t be instant, I was happy that my chewing didn’t make my head ache any more than it did.

  With some effort, I got up and let them help me down the tunnel and into the waiting room. Instead of continuing, they sat me down on one of the benches off to the side. “Wait here and rest until your next fight,” I didn’t want to argue, not with how much effort it took to walk even this far. I didn’t want to know just how much work it would take to go up and down those stairs.

  With a simple nod, I turned and laid down on the bench. Closing my eyes as I tried to rest at least a little bit before my next fight.