Josh looked down at the little man. He looked up at Michael. “I'm not going to argue with you here. But you really sure you wanted to do that?”

  Michael took a few long, deep breaths. “Yes,” he said at last. “I am sure.” He reached down and rooted around in Hawk's pockets for a moment. Finally, he pulled something out and threw it to Josh without a word.

  Josh caught it, and recognized it immediately. The Slaver's Collar. Presumably, it was the same one that Hawkins had used on him.

  “This is a bit of trust,” Josh said. “You don't want to keep it yourself?”

  Michael shrugged. “What am I supposed to do with it?”

  “Sell it?” That would be a terrible idea. “Keep it safe?” That might be worse. “Throw it down a pit and forget about it?”

  “No.” Michael shook his head. “No. It is not my responsibility. You were its last victim. You can decide what to do with it.” He hefted Hawkins' body over his shoulder; it looked tiny compared to him, like a child. Red mist spilled out of the corpse, but it avoided the big man like oil and water. It sank down into the ground in moments. He turned to leave.

  “Wait!” Josh called, suddenly remembering his situation. Watching the little drama unfold in front of him had distracted him. He still had one enemy to deal with, and Hou Zheng was about twice his level. “Don't you want to stick around? Help me out for some extra karma? Do the right thing?”

  Michael paused briefly at the mouth of the cave. “I don't know who is right. I just know Hawk was wrong.”

  Then he left without another word. Josh didn't try to stop him.

  Hou Zheng and Josh were left alone in the cave. There was a long, awkward silence.

  “This day has been a bit off to me,” Josh said at last. “Usually there's not so much talking and dancing around before we get to the fighting bit.” Even Mizuno had only had a brief rant before the fight. This was honestly just plain awkward.

  The orc coughed politely. “Yes, I agree.” He sighed. “You know what I should have done from the very beginning? Get you alone, explain the situation, and if you didn't want to take the bribe, have a simple duel. Nice, easy, clean.”

  Josh shrugged. “Wouldn't have been against that, to be honest. Would have been terrible for me, but I can't say I hate the idea.” He knew from experience that solving disagreements with duels was not a good idea in the long term, but it certainly felt good in the short term. Then again, that might just have been because he had a solid record of winning those kinds of duels.

  Hou Zheng smiled. “I suppose it is slightly more fair, now. You've gained some levels, and I've gained some...” He winced, as if even thinking about his face hurt. “...debuffs.”

  Josh's missing fingers throbbed. Yeah, he knew about long-term physical debuffs, that was for sure. God, he wished Sarah was a high enough level to make regeneration potions.

  Getting back to the topic at hand, he considered for a moment. “Was that your original plan? Before Anna attacked? Talk it out, then offer a duel?”

  “Perhaps.” Hou Zheng looked off into the distance, as if he could see something Josh couldn't. “Well, to be more specific, no, it wasn't the plan. I had no plan. I was simply investigating the strange dungeon, and ran into the girls completely by accident.”

  Josh nodded. “Getting ready for your little army-moving trick.”

  “Not quite. To be honest, I was genuinely interested. Dungeons are something of a hobby of mine.” He held up his wrist and pulled back the sleeve, revealing his bracer. It didn't look any different from before. “Did you know, this device is kludged together from four different item creation disciplines? Runecraft, magic imbuing, gemcrafting, and elemental spirit blessings. All four are the disciplines found in dungeons.” He chuckled. “Sometimes I feel like this thing works simply by confusing the poor dungeon so much that it just does what I want by default.”

  “It's a nice piece of shine, to be sure,” Josh admitted, seeing an opportunity. “How about we make our little duel interesting, and call that the prize?”

  Hou Zheng looked surprised, and let his sleeve fall over the bracer again. “I'm not entirely against it. But then that isn't a prize for me, now is it? Since I already have it. What do I get if I win?”

  Josh gave him a flat look. “You get my life. I'm calling that more than fair.”

  He considered for a moment. “No, apologies, but this bracer is more valuable than your life.” He shrugged. “Or mine, for that matter. And before you ask, it will become useless to you on my death, so threatening me is an exercise in futility.” He thought a bit longer, then nodded. “Bloodstones,” he said.

  Josh narrowed his eyes. “The ones you offered earlier?”

  “No,” he said, to Josh's disappointment. He pulled a single blood-red stone out of thin air. “Just Mechanist. Jael has the rest. Still, it is quite valuable to a developing civilization trying to stamp out the wildfires.” He absorbed the stone back into his storage ring. “I don't have much else for you in my storage ring, but at least that's something I know you want.”

  Josh took a moment to consider that Hou Zheng apparently thought of an invaluable bloodstone as worth less than a bracer for manipulating dungeons, then pressed on. “So you want this to be a duel to the death, then?”

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Hou Zheng chuckled. “I certainly don't intend it to be, no. I will accept your surrender at any time, assuming you offer me the same courtesy. Then, we will go back to the plan of evacuating you off this world.” His eyes suddenly went sharp. “If you offer me false surrender and betray me, however, I will dedicate my own considerable resources to burning down your City before my employer even escapes.”

  Josh snorted. “Don't worry, I'm not in the mood for committing any war crimes today.” It was a fair deal, and if he looked like he was losing, he'd take the offer. He might try to sabotage everything later, anything to save the City and the human race, but he wouldn't stab Hou Zheng in the back.

  Of course, that didn't mean he would be fighting fair. He just wasn't going to use that specific trick.

  “All right, that's a decent prize,” he said. They even had a few unclassed kids back in town who they could give the stone to, and immediately start getting more. Once he had realized the orc had a few bloodstones up his sleeve, he had asked that a few kids be kept in reserve. They weren't happy, of course, but they'd live. “What are the rules?”

  Hou Zheng actually barked out a laugh. “Rules? In a fight? I forgot you were British.” Then he frowned. “Wait, how are you British? Isn't that country long dead?”

  “That's... complicated.” He hadn't been born in Britain, but his parents had made sure that he and his sister got a proper education in culture that Oxford would be proud of, as they put it. Even Mary's family had something similar going on, though they had lost a bit more over the years. “But it's not as though we've had duels every day. I don't know your culture's rules on the matter.”

  The orc nodded. “Fair enough. The rules are simple: No outside interference, to death or surrender. Or incapacitation, I suppose.” He shrugged. “After all, if I can take you without you stopping me, then you've already lost.”

  Josh carefully did not let himself grin. He wondered if Hou Zheng had missed the giant loophole, or if he didn't care. After all, for Josh to get what he wanted, he'd basically have to kill him anyway. There was no other way to get the bloodstone out of the storage ring.

  For a brief moment, Josh lamented that he didn't have a Rogue build this season. If he did, he would be able to steal directly from the storage ring. If he had ranked up those abilities enough, which he didn't always bother with. He definitely used the Rogue class more for the assassination than for the thievery.

  Josh took a deep breath to center himself, then smiled. “Ready?”

  “When you are.”

  Without another word, he pulled a firebomb out of his storage ring and threw it at the orc.

  Josh and Ruth had gone through many varieties of grenades, bombs, and explosives over the course of this season. Basic steam grenades worked on low-level monsters and swarms. Ruth had been enjoying her metal shrapnel grenades so far, but they were less effective on opponents with shrouds to protect them.

  The firebombs had been the solution to that. Shrouds didn't do well against constant, clinging damage. They were best against single, solid hits, with some time to regenerate in between strikes. They couldn't make napalm, but biodiesel was clingy enough to do the job.

  The firebomb Josh kept in his storage ring wasn't like the giant ones that he had given to the throwers for defending against the siege. Those were cheap and simple, basically just a big ceramic jug made with his [Stonecrafting], with one of Ruth's fire runes. You activated the rune, and by the time the jug shattered from being thrown, the rune was hot enough to set it all ablaze.

  This was a smaller, more concentrated version of the same idea. Sarah had made plenty of flammable liquids that he had been able to borrow, and Ruth had put an actual rune-chain on this one. There was still the fire rune, and it still operated the same as ever. Josh put magic in it, and it started to heat up. Then he put magic into the rune-chain, and threw it as hard as he could.

  By the time the firebomb reached Hou Zheng, the rune-chain was glowing with power. Right before the jar shattered, the rune-chain activated. The gravity effects took hold, making the jar and everything inside it cling to the orc like a limpet.

  Less than a heartbeat later, it exploded into flames.

  It wasn't perfect. Without the rune-chain actively maintaining the effect, it would die out in seconds. Furthermore, Josh had hit him in the chest with the bomb, and the flames were clinging there, to his leather armor. Josh doubted it would do any real damage, even without his shroud.

  But that was the thing about shrouds. They covered the entire body. That meant damage anywhere counted as damage everywhere.

  Before Hou Zheng could do much more than flinch back in surprise, his shroud was already flickering. Before Hou Zheng could draw his weapon, Josh was running forward in a low sprint. Before Hou Zheng could defend himself, Josh had his sword out of his storage ring.

  His sword was a product of his [Metalcrafting], one of the first weapons he had made from scratch. It was impractically sharp; he doubted it would last more than a few swings against any opponent. Even with his ability to make more instantly, it wasn't something he would use in a normal fight.

  But it was a perfect channel for his [Empty Chop] art.

  He had known from the beginning that channeling the art through his ax gave a slightly different effect from doing it with his bare hands. That wasn't a surprise; it was how plenty of weapon arts worked. Like how spells worked better when channeled through some sort of mana focus.

  Since he had first learned the art with an ax, and that had been his preferred weapon this reset anyway, it didn't really occur to him for quite a while to experiment more. When he did get a minute to sit down and try some things, the results were nothing to write home about. For most weapons, the art didn't work. Anything without a sharp edge was right out, and piercing weapons worked just enough to drain his stamina and mana without doing anything, thus shattering his hopes of using the art with a bow and arrow.

  But swords? Swords worked great.

  The arc of silver energy that flowed out of his weapon this time was so dense that it looked solid. It was longer and thinner, a precise razor instead of the solid effect he got when doing this with an ax. He knew, from the experiments Darius had made him perform, that the attack was more delicate like this. It couldn't pierce armor to any real degree, and shrouds laughed it off. It wasn't very useful against any monster higher than about level thirty, when they started gaining resistance to mundane weapons.

  It cut through flesh quite nicely, though.

  Josh's aim was true, and his art sliced through Hou Zheng's wrist so fast and so clean that the orc just stared dumbly for a moment as his hand hit the floor. Josh didn't wait for blood to start fountaining out of the stump, or for Hou Zheng to start screaming in pain and rage. He didn't wait for the high-level combat cleric to start throwing around spells that would reduce Josh to a smear of ashes.

  Josh scooped the severed hand up off the cave floor—the hand with the storage ring on its finger—and ran full tilt, ignoring the bellows of fury behind him.