Tevarius looked down at his damaged spear, lips pursed, then threw it to the side. The wood clattered against the packed soil, but before the discarded weapon could come to a stop, a new spear appeared in the man’s hand. Instantly, Henry found his eyes drawn to it.

  The spear was slightly shorter, and somehow it looked like a giant harpoon, with one side completely straight, and another that was both sharp and barbed. It was made of a single piece, as far as Henry could tell, and as if it had just been pulled and carved out of the body that created it, it still had a pinkish hue that made it seem like fresh blood had permeated the bone.

  That thing’s a problem, he thought. He didn’t know exactly why, but just like the sharp fangs he had lined up on both sides of his ossified arm, he was sensing some powerful concepts from it. Nothing obvious or clear, but there was a certain weight to it, and as long as he didn’t know what it was capable of, he would have to be careful.

  Tevarius slowly exhaled as he lowered himself into an offensive stance, spear pointed forward. But while Henry braced and readied himself for another onslaught, none of that happened. Instead, a reddish glow emanated out of the man’s skin. It reminded Henry of those hot springs in cold climates, where whenever someone would rise above the water, smoke-like vapor would emanate out of their body. And as the red smoke continued to progressively pour out of Tevarius' shoulders, Henry noticed his eyes slowly taking in the color while his muscles grew taut and stood out across his frame. But the thing that seemed to change the most was the spear.

  It was as if it had been dipped in fresh blood. And just like his leviathan fangs, every instinct in Henry was screaming at him to not even let that thing touch him. Then the man charged and, within that same heartbeat, Henry found himself face to face with his opponent before he could even react. By the time he Blinked out of the way, he’d already felt the sting of the blade, quickly followed by an uncomfortable weightlessness of one of his arms.

  Henry reappeared on the other side of the arena and instantly heard the sound of liquid hitting the soil. Blood. His own blood, freely flowing out of his arm, but he couldn’t pay it too much mind. The man was lowering himself in the stance once more, and more of the red smoke was billowing out of his body. At his feet there was a severed black and yellow-striped arm, still twitching and curling.

  Henry looked at his stump and put one of his Octominds on the task. He sensed it push some healing into it, but there was still some foreign essence lingering, preventing his skill from fully taking effect. While his eyes were still watching Tevarius, he drew some Vitality essence out of his Aspect and let the Octomind continue. Now that Arcane Regeneration was empowered, the wound closed up, but he still had some work to do to fully regrow it.

  I didn’t even see him… and that sharpness is not normal.

  The kraken was sure. There was something going on with the bone spear. Earlier, Tevarius struggled to cut into Henry with his other spear, even with Blade-empowered strikes, but now with this weapon, he’d severed an arm like shears through fabric.

  Just like the leviathan’s teeth. It must be from a dangerous creature.

  Henry would have loved to know more, but he had no time to theorize or contemplate the origin of the weapon. Instead, many of his Octominds were pitching in to allow him to match the man’s speed. This time, he saw it when the lord exploded toward him, and he managed to Blink out of the way right as the blood-spear sliced down.

  Popping right above him, Henry swung down with the leviathan club, but with a shout, the man blurred away once more. Instead of a spray of blood, a geyser of upturned earth and dust came up right as his Octominds called the alert. With a pulse, Henry channeled a generous dollop of Guarding essence into Trickster’s Fortification, and barely a fraction of a second later, he felt the spear bite into the weaponized arm, aiming to sever the leviathan teeth from him.

  Henry teleported away, arm bleeding. It was cut halfway through, and it was bleeding profusely, but Tevarius didn’t manage to cut it off. Not fully. And interestingly, the man seemed to be crouching a bit lower.

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  Is he panting?

  It looked like it, Henry concluded as he spared some more Vitality to close up the wound.

  He’s burning through his resources too fast. I can outlast him.

  Henry was confident in that. It was hard to match this empowering skill the human was using, but he could easily outlast them.

  Should be easy enough. I’ve still got plenty of juice in the tank.

  ***

  Five fully severed arms later, and after Henry was forced to dissolve the club and hide the leviathan teeth to prevent them from constantly being targeted, Tevarius stood straighter as the red smoke stopped emanating off of his bare shoulder. His upper-tunique was now tied around his waist, and to Henry, he seemed almost confident in his victory. Which was fair, considering Henry's lack of arms.

  The man lowered his spear, still breathing heavily, and stretched his neck as a smile played on his lips. “If you surrender, I’ll make it quick,” he offered.

  Henry looked down at his many stumps. He wasn’t worried, but he was waiting for something to be ready, and as he checked on the progress of his Octominds, he figured it would be a few more seconds. Maybe even half of a minute until they were ready.

  Stall, then.

  Looking up at the man, he decided to answer with his illusory voice. Because why not. “Do you remember the other kraken you targeted?”

  The man’s brows twitched, but he kept his calm demeanor, projecting confidence toward the subdued crowd watching the both of them. “You, the crab, and the dolphin might have been guests of Thalis’ guardian, but that doesn’t mean we have to tolerate being overrun by monsters. Not when we lost our homes to your kind.”

  Henry tilted his head. The Octominds were nearly done. “What does that have to do with us? I get that you were… displaced because of monsters. But isn’t a monster watching over you right now? I don’t see you surviving in the middle of the ocean by yourself. And how about other people? I’m sure there were plenty of displacing wars in your history. Are you attacking humans on sight nowadays?”

  “That’s different,” he said between gritted teeth.

  Henry stared for a moment, then shook his head. “I bet it is,” Henry said. A quick peek over his mental shoulder told him his Octominds had finished purging all of the foreign essence out of his body. Still, he refrained from the next part as he continued speaking. “The kraken you tried killing is called Rocky. Do you know what Rocky would have done if you had come in peace?”

  The man was about to respond, but Henry raised one of his remaining arms. “That’s a rhetorical question. You can keep your mouth shut,” he said, summoning a glowing, vibrant green orb out of his storage and popped it in his mouth and bit into it. A surge of mana and healing magic coursed out of his beak and spread across his body, regrowing three arms in only a couple of seconds. To add to the effect, he used some of his own mana to regenerate the remaining two.

  He heard the crowd roar and saw the man bare his teeth, spear lowered once more, but Henry didn’t pay him much mind. He had a point to finish. “Rocky would have offered you a fish.”

  The man blinked, but Henry kept going. “I don’t know how he learned it. I don’t really know if he’s interacted with civilization before, but whenever he greeted us, he gave us food. Every time. He would have done the same to you. Probably. And I’m sure he would have tried to give something to every citizen of Thalis, but I don’t think he has a stash large enough for that.”

  Henry stretched out his arms and readied himself for round three.

  “It really sucks that the first human he met was you.”

  Tevarius roared and sprang forward. Henry, limbs crackling with red electricity, leapt forward to meet him.

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