My tail couldn’t help but wag as I pounced in Harold’s direction. As I sailed through the air, my body shifted into the quadruped form I had used down below. My fore-claws hit the ground as I turned the leap into a bounding charge.

  I was on Harold before he could even process what I had just done and with a final pounce; I rended his throat with my claws. Bloody gashes obvious as I back away, returning to my bipedal form. The arena, silent.

  Now, don’t think me stupid. I know what I was doing as I turned around with my arms up in triumph. The sudden gasp from the crowd? Expected.

  What I didn’t expect was the metal pole through where the heart would be on a human. I honestly thought he would have gone for the head. Because the fight wasn’t going to be over that easily.

  Harold had already shown off a number of trump cards, so assuming he didn’t have one to protect against death would be stupid. Though if I’m to be honest, I look pretty stupid right now. Metal pole through my chest, ectoplasm oozing out around it.

  I guess I can’t really blame him for aiming there. In all of my dodging, I mostly tried to keep my center of mass from being hit. Not as some sort of misdirection, though it seems to have ended up working that way. Rather, it was because getting dismembered at the trunk of the body would take longer to fix.

  And no matter how good my healing factor is, I’m going to assume being stun locked while a mage roasts me with fire magic would kill me. However, a metal pole through my chest was categorically not going to kill me. Well, as long as the pole’s diameter isn’t bigger than my body.

  So I do this turn and look over the shoulder thing. Harold is there, panting heavily. Seems the life saving trump card required more out of him than he expected it to. That or I did a better job at trying to kill him than he expected.

  And then the shoulder turrets fire again. Those were really getting annoying! Worse, I wasn’t exactly in a position to dodge, what with a metal spear through my chest.

  I still tried, but those blasts seared my side. Though the pain did get me back into gear. I guess even if the attack wasn’t fatal to my current biology, it still managed to put me into shock.

  Well, the only way to stop the turrets is to win, and so, with a quick jerk, the metal spear is out. And at this point I could have used it as a weapon, but I decided against it, not knowing if it had any sort of ownership enchantments on it. However, I also wasn’t going to leave it for Harold to potentially use against me and so with a flick, the spear goes hurtling to the opposite side of the arena.

  I’m not the most proficient at spear throwing and so it tumbles a bit and smacks into the wall side on. A loud smack echoes across the arena and Harold glances over at where the spear hit.

  And by the time he looked back, I was on him. It wasn’t like we were all that far apart. Though, as I swiped at him, the magic barrier snapped into effect again.

  An annoying turn of events that meant he had let himself be hurt for the turn around. Well, I wasn’t going to back off this time. As Harold began to cast a spell, I grabbed onto the side of the magic barrier, causing sparks of magic as my claws scratch across it.

  Harold is sweating now. I guess there was a reason he let it drop so quickly the first time. This wasn’t free for him. Which was perfect for me!

  Oh, and he couldn’t seem to move. Though I figured that little tidbit after my next move. See, if my claws were working, what if I tried to take a bite out of it? Well, Harold was a bit surprised by that and stumbled backwards as sparks flew. He landed on the back wall for the thing and it didn’t budge.

  Which was quite convenient for me as it basically gave me free rein to keep gnawing on the shield. Sure, he began charging up a spell, but I could taste the shield wouldn’t last long. When I first bit it, the sparks had a sharper citrus flavor, which is weird.

  However, after a few moments it was like one of those sour hard candies where you suck in it for a moment and it goes from pucker city to sweet nothing. Except instead of sweet, the shield just changed to tasting bland.

  I’m sure this isn’t the strangest way for a person to find out they can taste Mana, but it certainly ranks up there. Anyway, I guess Harold expected his shield to last a little bit longer as his spell seemed almost finished when it shattered. He fell backwards onto his butt and I stumbled forward before catching myself.

  Harold tried to hold on to his spell, but there I was standing over him and so a quick stomp from me broke a leg and had him drop the spell. Though I guess he had some training to handle pain as he instantly tried to begin another spell as the shoulder turrets both send blasts into my chest. Which hurt, but there isn’t much room to dodge when you’re this close.

  I think he was expecting this to finally do something as when I ignored it and stomped his other leg; he seemed more shocked than in pain. Then again, maybe he was literally in shock? Either way, since he thought piercing my heart would kill me, I assumed the same would be true for him.

  So with Harold stunned from the pain and in shock, I am easily able to bring the claws on one hand together and like a bird peck, pierce his chest right through. Now, I’m mostly certain this killed him, however I wasn’t going to take chances on it. And without him resisting, it is actually quite easy for me to lop his head off. My claws are more than enough to do the job, if a little messy. Remember folks, double tap and confirm when possible.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  Around me, the arena is echos with a mix of cheers and gasps. It seems that while the humans had been frowning on Harold’s methods; they didn’t actually want me to win. Well, that is unfair. Not all the humans were like that. It is just that the loudest people were human and they’re booing me.

  For a moment, I pause. I just killed a man. This should be when the realization of what I did crashes down on me. When the questions of if there was a better way.

  None of that happens. Not just deep down, but on all levels, I realize it was only ever going to end with one of us dead. And yes, I acknowledge he was a human, that which I came from. Eh, maybe I’ll break down when I’m not in the middle of an arena of which half the crowd probably wants to kill me for one reason or another. For now, I can simply take it all in.

  Though I didn’t get to bask in the cheers and hate for long. A trio of vampires rushed into the arena from the way I had entered and without asking escorted me forcefully out. Heh, even if I’m not the most socially adept, I could tell despite being happy for my win, they very much did not appreciate my continued existence.

  This proved true an hour later. I had been waiting in various blank rooms, being moved from building to building, until we were near the center of the city. Then one last move brought me to a council chamber.

  There was a slight recoil from those nearest me, though what do they expect if they don’t let me clean up after a fight like that? Luckily for the councilors, a humanoid plant cast some kind of cleaning spell and cleared up the problem of me smelling like a battlefield and being covered in the blood of my enemy. Another being had been about to cast a healing spell as well, only to realize I didn’t have a scratch on me. Quite obvious when I only had my scales to protect my modesty.

  Soon enough, things get down to business and the main vampire representative just came out and said it to me straight. “We have nothing against you, but you can’t stay.”

  So yeah, that reason I was originally exiled from my planet? Welp, that followed me here. It seems they were fine with me running around when I was, to them, assured to die. Now though? Well, I’d outstayed my welcome and had proven to be quite a threat. Or at least, my rate of growth was threatening.

  By their common sense, I should not have been able to kill Harold, even if I didn’t end up dying. It still took forever for them to get around to what would happen to me. Oh, and since I had relatively decent relations with the vampires, they had them break the news to me.

  Yep, I was double exiled! Exiled squared! To be honest, I had forgotten by this point what kind of place I had been exiled to. This wasn’t just any inescapable sub-dimension. It was turtles all the way down, baby!

  It was at this point I found out they weren’t even sure that this was the top level. They simply hadn’t had anyone arrive here from another layer in recorded history. Anyway, I was being sent down.

  So I asked the obvious questions, “And what does that mean for me exactly? Also, what is it like there?”

  The vampire they had found to talk to me squirmed. He clearly got picked because he ranked high enough to matter, but low enough that everyone else could push this onto him. “Just as those back in the main universe have an idea of what they face when arriving here, we have an idea of what the next level down contains.

  “Unlike here, there is not a united city to succor the weak. The area you arrive will be a desert, which we believe is a blessing. As for what this means for you?

  “When you first arrived, things would have been better.”

  I stared him straight in the eyes, not dropping my gaze. Oh, and an interesting fact about my new body. Since my eyes are made of the same thing as the rest of my body, I don’t actually need to blink. The vampire found this very disturbing.

  So he kept talking. Sure, I could have asked him questions, but I had already asked the important ones. Since I don’t know what I don’t know, better to let him spill what he figures I should know. Sort of like when a cop asks you why they pulled you over. The correct answer is, “no, why did you pull me over”, but as with this situation, most people are too nervous to realize that.

  “So, the next floor is a ‘might makes right’ sort of place, right? And while we aren’t cruel enough to send on what your Talent is, the humans will tell them that you used to be human, if you don’t mind me using past tense.”

  I shake my head, “I’m not too attached to that label.”

  He nods, “Okay, anyway, the humans are going to hate you. Which here wouldn’t be the worst. The problem is that unless you find a good group, the non-humans will hate you for being human. So you’re going to end up with the worst of both worlds. Oh, and humans earned the rep.

  “Anyway, uh, I guess the good news is that the next place is much bigger than here? So at least you’ll have more space to hide in. It is actually kind of rare going by our records. Most news from places lower on the chain report that they’re all about the size of this area.”

  I nod, it was pretty obvious that even without them knowing my Talent, things wouldn’t be easy. Just one last thing to ask, “What’s the catch? You don’t suddenly have a giant area if it isn’t needed.”

  The vampire shrugs, “Not like something like this could be manmade. It doesn’t need a purpose.”

  I raise an eyebrow, “And the catch?”

  The vampire sighs, “The reason it is big is because it’s a funnel. The place pulls from a lot of realms like this one. Also, you don’t get to just settle there. A city doesn’t exist because the realm itself prevents it. You are forced to progress deeper or die and most people do the second.

  “The only reason there is still a population there is because if we don’t send people down, someone random will slip through.”

  After that, I don’t get anything else useful from him, mostly because he still denies that anything could be so powerful as to create this place. Once he is gone, I am led from where I was being held to back underneath the city. Though we quickly passed the arena and continued until we were under the plaza where I first arrived. Down below even the already deep cavern, there was an active portal of sorts at the bottom of a bowl shaped depression.

  Looked more like a rip in space that, as if it was a piece of clothing, had been partially sewn up so at least it wouldn’t continue to rip wider. Oh, and you couldn’t actually see what was on the other side because where it led shifted too quickly. Anyway, everyone else is pretty afraid to even get close to it, so they stand back and threaten me to go through. Not that I mind, though I can’t just walk into the portal without the last word.

  I stand right in front of it and turn back to them, give a jaunty salute and declare, “I’ma blow this pop stand!” Then I give them a double one-finger salute and fall backwards through the portal. Hah! They were so shocked they didn’t even manage to bring their weapons halfway up.

  Then I got knocked out AGAIN!

  My fault this time. Who thought it was a good idea to fall backwards like that? I was told there was a sand desert on the other side. And there was. I just managed to smack my fool head on a damn rock.