Chương 28: Ironhide's Secret

Sable had found out what she could about Gorren on the walk back to the wall. Level forty-seven. Class: Vanguard. Undefeated this season meant eleven fights. His usual pattern was a charged opening attack — heavy skill cost, big damage, designed to end things fast. If the first one didn't connect he'd chain into a rapid sequence, lighter hits, trying to find a gap in the opponent's defense. If that didn't work either, he'd wait. Patient, methodical, reading his opponent until he found the opening.

He'd never had to wait long.

'He's a finisher who hasn't been forced to think yet,' Sable had said.

'The opening charge is his highest-cost skill. If it misses, his chain options reduce for forty seconds. Stay standing at the forty-second mark and he'll be recalculating for the first time all season.' It wasn't reassuring, but it was a plan. The fighters' waiting area was a low room off the main corridor, two levels down. A few other fighters were already on the benches. He read their threads out of habit and put them aside. Gorren came in last.

Tall for a Vanguard-type, broad through the shoulders, with a fighter's face that had been rearranged and settled into something that didn't carry much expression. He looked at the room when he walked in, catalogued it, and sat down. He didn't look at Kaito.

'He's already decided how this goes,' Sable said.

'Good,' Kaito said, quietly.

'Let him.' They called Gorren's name first. He stood, rolled his shoulders, and went down the corridor to the pit without making anything of it. A few minutes later, the crowd noise picked up. Then they called Kaito's name. He went down. The pit smelled like packed earth and something metallic underneath. The crowd read as a pressure in his System-sense — two hundred registered people, their threads humming with whatever the arena did to attention.

He kept his Sight pulled in and focused on Gorren across the twenty feet of dirt between them. The Vanguard's thread was bright. Level forty-seven against whatever Kaito read as, and the gap was significant. The opening charge skill was already active — primed, loaded, waiting for the release signal. The signal started to build. Kaito moved left. The stamina spike in Gorren's thread told him a half-second before the body moved. He stepped left and the charge went through where he'd been standing.

The crowd made a confused noise. Gorren pulled up, turned, and his face showed the first expression it had held since he'd walked in. Not angry. Recalculating. The stamina read dropped. The chain options grayed in Gorren's thread. He came forward anyway, raw, unenhanced. Three fast hits trying to find a gap. Kaito read each one a half-second before it arrived and got out of the way of two of them. The third one caught him in the left shoulder. He hadn't moved quite far enough.

His whole left side went hot and he took two steps back to keep his feet. The burn on his right side pulled in sympathy — not tearing, not yet, but reminding him it was there. The crowd liked that. Something finally connecting. Gorren pressed. No chain skills, just reach and weight, working at range. Kaito kept moving. Not impressively — he wasn't fast enough to look impressive.

He just kept being exactly where the hits weren't, for another twenty seconds, while his shoulder throbbed and the crowd made the sort of noise crowds make when they can't decide if they're watching skill or luck. The stamina recovered. The chain options came back. Gorren reset. He was patient now. Moving slow, watching. Kaito read him back and kept his thread dim and waited. The second charge built. He moved left again. This time Gorren had expected the same direction. He'd already adjusted the angle.

The charge caught Kaito with a glancing hit across the ribs that sat him down on the dirt and took everything out of him for a second. The crowd screamed. He got up. It wasn't fast. It wasn't smooth. His right side had opened — he could feel it, the hot wet pull of the seal giving way. He got his feet under him and stood up because the floor wasn't a better option and he needed the money.

'His stamina is at fifty-two percent,' Sable said. Her voice was very calm.

'The chain option is available but the cost will reduce him to thirty. He'll use it once, then he has to wait again.'

'Where.'

'Mid-range combination. Three hits, left-center-right. The last one carries the skill enhancement. Dodge the last one and you can counter.' He looked at Gorren across the dirt.

'Dodge the first two,' Sable added, 'if you can.' Gorren came in. The three-hit chain was fast. The first two Kaito got mostly out of — took a hit on the arm from the second, something that would bruise — and he was watching for the last one, the enhanced one, watching the skill value spike in Gorren's thread as it loaded. He dropped under it. Came up inside Gorren's reach. He hit Gorren three times. Not hard, not clean — he didn't have the stats for hard or clean.

But Gorren's armor values had soft spots, and the Vanguard class had specific mitigation gaps at close range that Kaito had built into it when he'd designed the class tree. If you come across this story on Amazon, it's taken without permission from the author. Report it. He found two of them. Gorren's health thread moved. Not dramatically.

But it moved, and Gorren stepped back, and his stamina was at twenty-eight percent, and the chain options were greyed out, and they were in the third stage now — the stage the crowd had never seen. Gorren looked at him. Kaito looked back and kept his hands up and kept his thread dim and waited for the stamina to tick back up to a usable level. The crowd was very quiet. Then it ticked up to thirty-five percent, and the chain option came back, and Gorren made a decision. He didn't use it. He came in raw.

They traded for another minute, neither landing anything that moved the numbers much. Then Gorren found what he was looking for — Kaito's shoulder, still hot from the first hit — and went for it. Kaito read it two beats early and turned the shoulder away and put a hit on Gorren's neck where the armor gapped. The System registered it as a critical zone. Gorren's health moved more than it had in the whole fight. Gorren put his hands up. The crowd figured out it was over about four seconds after Gorren did.

The noise was confused rather than pleased. Kaito went to the side of the pit and pressed his arm against his right side and waited for the world to stop having that particular quality to it.

'You're bleeding,' Sable said.

'I know.'

'You need to close it.'

'I know. After I collect.' He was in the fighters' corridor looking for the pit-keeper when footsteps came up behind him and a hand landed on his arm — not grabbing, just present, a wide hand with a lot of weight behind it. He turned. Domrek Ironhide had one shoulder angled for the low ceiling. He was looking at Kaito with an expression that was doing several things at once: surprised, pleased, on the edge of laughing.

'I watched your fight,' Domrek said. His voice was deep and warm and had no hesitation in it.

'You were reading his tells. The whole fight. Standing right inside his timing and moving on it.' The laugh arrived.

'I have never in my life seen anyone do that from inside the pit.'

'I got hit three times,' Kaito said.

'You got hit three times against a Level forty-seven undefeated fighter while bleeding from something old.' Domrek tilted his head to look at the arm Kaito had against his side.

'You need food and something for that. Come on.'

'I need to collect first.'

'The pit-keeper is Dorva and she's at the end of the corridor and she'll be annoyed with you when you arrive because she's always annoyed with open-bracket winners. It takes her three minutes. Come on after.' He went after. The place Domrek led him to was a food stall off the main commercial street, low-ceilinged, warm, smelling of something with a lot of meat in it. The man running it looked up when they came in and his face changed in the way faces change when they're actually glad to see someone.

'Domrek. You won again?'

'As always, Ferrus. How's your daughter's foot.'

'Better. Finally better. It took—''Good. Tell her the advice I gave her actually works and she should do it for another week. Two bowls of the usual, please.' They sat. Kaito held his arm against his side and didn't mention it and Domrek didn't mention it either but slid a roll of clean cloth across the table without looking at him, the way you slide something to someone when you want them to do something without making it a thing. Kaito used the cloth.

'You fight for materials,' Domrek said.

'The open bracket pays more than the tiered circuit. You've done the math.'

'Yes.'

'What are you building.' Kaito looked at him.

'I'm a champion,' Domrek said.

'I've been in that pit long enough to know what different people are there for. Coin for the rent. Coin for the guild. Coin for someone who needs it more than them. Coin for materials.' He shrugged.

'You're precise about money in a way that people who need it for something specific are. What are you building.'

'Something complicated,' Kaito said. Domrek nodded.

'Fair.' He pulled his food toward him when it arrived and ate without ceremony. The man Ferrus came back to the table once to ask Domrek something about a street festival, and Domrek answered fully, asked two follow-up questions, and went back to his bowl. He gave the conversation everything while it was happening. It was the third time Kaito had watched him do that. Once with the scared man in the arena. Once with Ferrus. Now this.

'You're an outsider,' Domrek said. Not a question. Kaito ate a spoonful of whatever this was and thought about how to answer.

'What makes you say that.'

'The way you talk about the System. Like it's a thing you're reading rather than a thing you're in.' Domrek ate.

'We have a word for it. The world doors open sometimes. People come through. They're usually confused for a long time.' He looked at Kaito with that direct attention.

'You're not confused. You're the least confused outsider I've ever met, and I've met three.' A pause.

'Eirath gets who it needs. That's what the old saying goes. I've believed it my whole life and never had a reason to stop.' Kaito ate.

'The pits,' Domrek said, after a moment. His voice didn't change. Same warm, even register.

'Under the commercial district. You'll have walked past the entrance without knowing what it was. The door with the two blue marks and the guard who's never looking at you directly.' He ate.

'I was born in them. Sold at eight. Fought in them for fifteen years. Bought my freedom at twenty-three by winning enough for the price they put on me.' He said it the way you state a fact about weather.

'The pits are illegal. Have been for forty years. But the officials who enforce the law also have financial interests in the pits continuing, so the law is enforced in the sense that everyone knows not to say the word pits near a Compact officer.' He looked at his bowl.

'I fight here because the pay is good and the crowd is honest. The pay goes toward buying out the people still in the pits. It's slow. I've bought out twelve people in three years. There are several hundred down there.' He looked up.

'I'm not telling you this for sympathy. I'm telling you because you asked what I'm there for, and that's what I'm there for.' He hadn't asked. He noticed that. Domrek talked to him like his questions were already on the table.

'How much per person,' Kaito said.

'Depends on the person. Who they are to the pit owners. What kind of fighter. What they're worth to keep.' Domrek shrugged.

'Anywhere from a hundred gold to three thousand.'

'And your winnings per fight.'

'Seventy to one-fifty, most sessions. Depending on the crowd.' A look.

'Why.'

'I'm trying to figure out how long it takes you to buy out a person.'

'Too long,' Domrek said.

'Always too long.' He looked at Kaito with something that was weighing information rather than asking a question.

'You fight in a way I haven't seen. If you're going to be in the circuit for a while, we could share a session slot. Two-on-two exhibition matches pay double what the singles do. Better crowd engagement, the manager likes them.' He ate the last of his bowl.

'Think about it.' Before Kaito could answer, the door of the stall opened and a fighter he recognized from the waiting area came in, face tight.

'Compact registrar,' the fighter said, to no one specific.

'Coming through the commercial district. Doing a full sweep of unlicensed venues. The manager got the notice an hour ago.' He looked around the room.

'Three days. After that, anyone in the circuit without registered papers gets run through the Compact roll.' Domrek looked at his empty bowl. Kaito looked at the door. Three days. His face was on a Compact board. His papers were false, his name was false, and if a Compact registrar ran his thread through the roll, they'd match it to the wanted classification within a minute. He had three days to earn what he needed. With what he'd taken from the Gorren fight, he was less than a quarter of the way there.

'The two-on-two,' he said to Domrek.

'When's the next slot.' Domrek looked at him steadily.

'Tomorrow evening.'

'Put my name on it,' Kaito said.

'The false one. You don't need to know the real one.' Domrek looked at him for a moment.

'I know,' he said, perfectly simply, 'that you have a real one. That's enough.'