Nobody Moved
I gripped my cup and looked at the cracks spreading from under my feet.
"Oracle," I said.
"Yes."
"What grade is it?"
A pause.
The kind of pause Oracle never did.
[ ORACLE: The following is based on information that I have gathered from sources around you since your arrival into this world. Oracle cannot confirm every detail but believes this to be broadly accurate. ]
[ Grade One — Civilian Level. No combat training. No real skills. Weak. ]
[ Grade Two — Militia Level.. Some basic training but nothing consistent. Weak. Can hold a sword. ]
[ Grade Three — Soldier Level. Professionally trained fighters. Full time military. Decent. ]
[ Grade Four — Veteran Level. Soldiers with real combat experience. They have been in fights and survived them. Strong. Toven's shadow stalkers were Grade Fours. He put all four down in a matter of moments. ]
[ Grade Five — Elite Level. Career fighters. High ranking skills. Real magical output. The kind of person a room full of veterans steps back from. Very strong. The Stone Marrow Beast Fen dissolved with one hand was a Grade Five. ]
[ Grade Six — Champion Level. Fighters who have gone past elite through either exceptional skill, exceptional power or both. Extremely strong. ]
[ Grade Seven — Warlord Level. The kind of person entire armies have historically reorganised around. Oracle has found few records of living Grade Sevens. Extremely dangerous. ]
[ Grade Eight — Legend Level. Three confirmed in the last two hundred years. Oracle has no reliable description for what this looks like in practice. Terrifying seems sufficient. ]
[ Grade Nine — Hero Level. One of a kind. The four people who sealed Valgrax a thousand years ago are believed to be all Grade Nines. ]
[ Grade Ten — King Level. The seven people currently in that viewing box. Oracle notes this classification may be an understatement for some of them. ]
[ Oracle is telling you this now because context seemed important. ]
"Okay? But wha—..."
"Im not finished!"
[In this world skills are assigned at birth. Completely random. No pattern. No inheritance. A king's child can be born with nothing useful and a farmers child can be born with something that changes everything for them. Most people get one or two. Three is rare. Four is the kind of thing that never happens . ]
[ There has been rumours that skills can be extracted from one person and given to another. Oracle has found no confirmed record of this ever being done. Nobody seems to know if it is even possible or how it would work.
[ One additional note. Magic capacity in this world does not recover quickly. Using it burns it down and getting it back takes days or even sometimes longer depending on how far you pushed it. The more you spend the longer you wait. ]
Okay s—....?
"IM NOT FINISHED!"
[ SKILLS ARE SEPERATE! Skills do not draw from magic capacity! They run on their own system !]
Oracle took a very long pause before continuing .
[Drifter's Dominion, Gutter Intuition, Unclaimed Territory. None of them touch your magic capacity at all. ]
[ Magic capacity is purely for spells. If you use it, you will feel it and you will be waiting a while before it comes back . ]
"Oracle."
"Yes."
"What grade is it?"
[ Oracle would rather not say. ]
"Oracle."
Oracle did not respond.
"Great..."
I looked at my cup.
Then the floor started to collapse.
Not like the others. An entire section of the arena around the size of a decently large house just flew straight up and came broke in the air. The sound it made had the crowd freaking out. An absurd amount of cold air was just pouring out from the hole.
Then it came out from the hole.
I saw its head first and it had dark scales and was stone coloured Then its neck came next and then the shoulders. Then all the rest of it, slowly pulling itself out of the hole it made with ease. The way it got out of the hole was the same way that something moves when it has no reason to rush.
It straightened up in the arena.
It was massive and took up around half of the arena.
"ORACLE!"
"Yes"
"How big is this arena again?
"The arena is apponimtely 188 meters long and 156 meters wide, covering just under 6 acres of ground.
"THATS LIKE THE ROME COLOSSEUM BACK IN MY OLD WORLD. THIS MONSTER DRAGON THING IS TAKING UP HALF IT."
It looked at me.
[ ORACLE: Ancient Earth Dragon. Age predates Kingdom records. Known weaknesses: none confirmed. ]
The entire stadium was quiet.
Forty thousand people and nothing. Just the sound of some ancient thing breathing heavily in a space that wasn't built for it.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...." the announcer said nervously. "AN ANCIENT EARTH DRAGON HAS COME THROUGH THE ARENA FLOOR. AS A REMINDER! THIS IS NOT ON ANY APPROVED LIST. THE COMMITTEE IS REVIEWING—"
He kept talking.
But I stopped listening.
The dragon breathed out.
Just pressure. It felt like a wave of something that moved through the air and made my ears start to ring. It looked at me the exact same way that my old landlord used to look at me with when overdue rent. Like he had already come to a conclusion on how this was going to go.
"Oracle," I said.
"Yes."
"How do I use magic in this world?."
A pause.
[ ORACLE: Three things. Intent. Channel. Release. Intent is what you want. Channel is the path through your body. Release is letting it go. ]
"That tells me... NOTHING!."
[Most people take about three years on the channel part alone... ]
"I HAVE AROUND TWENTY SECONDS!."
"You have more raw magic in you right now than Oracle can read. You have no training and no class and also no technique. What you do not need is precision. What you need is a direction. Pick something. Point everything at it. Let go!"
"Is that.... ALL YOU HAVE!"
"That is genuinely all Oracle has right now."
"USELESS!"
The dragon took one step toward me.
The floor cracked under its foot just from the weight. One step and the stone had already gave up.
Then, I had this ripping feeling that started in my chest.
Not like the one that I had in Phase One when it had been quiet. This one felt like everything behind a door that was deciding to come through at once.
The dragon stopped walking.
Its head tilted slightly.
[ SKILL ACTIVATION NOTICE ]
[ CELESTIAL BEGGARY: Full activation. ]
[ Reserve at critical levels. ]
[ Oracle note: Release this. Oracle does not know what happens if you hold it. Oracle also does not fully know what happens if you don't. Oracle is aware that is not helpful. ]
My Magic Capacity number went blank.
The dragon inhaled.
I looked at my cup.
Then I closed my eyes.
I thought about the south quarter, the flood the old man outside the shop with six weeks of waterlines on the walls and kids in the cold and twelve thousand gold that went nowhere. I thought about the alley behind the fish market that I ate my half loaf of stale bread.
I thought about the shoelace.
I opened my eyes quickly
I looked at the dragon.
I looked at the cup.
I wound up.
All the way back. The kind of throw that starts from the shoulder and takes the whole body with it. The magic inside of me was ripping apart through my chest. I focused on my hand, on the cup and focused on the pain coursing through body until something behind my eyes started to blur from the pressure of it, and then I whipped it forward and let the cup go.
The air following the cup tore.
That was the only way to describe it. The moment the cup left my hand the air around it split open. Not like an explosion. It was like the space itself had been cut in half. There was a visible warp that rippled out from the cup as it flew. The crowd, the viewing box, all of it warped for half a second like a reflection in broken water.
Then the wind came.
A massive amount of air that came off the warp and went in every direction at once and when it hit the arena floor, the stone didn't crack. It split. A line tore across the entire arena floor from one side to the other with the stone separating and the crack shot up both walls and kept going.
The arena groaned.
The whole thing.
All of it at once.
Like the it was deciding if it wanted to stay up.
The first ten rows of the crowd got hit by the wind front and every single person in them flew backwards.
There was banners that got violently ripped clean off their poles. Debris, dust, torn cloth was all spinning up into the air in and went around fifty meters high before it died down.
The cup was still moving
Still spinning.
Still trailing was that warped ring of light behind it like it didnt notice it had just split an arena in half.
"WHAT—!" the announcer said in awe .
He stopped.
The mic went out from the wind.
It came back.
"HE THREW THE CUP. RYMUR KAITO HAS THROWN THE CUP! I NEED EVERYONE LISTENING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT JUST HAPPENED. HE THREW A CUP. A REGULAR CUP. AND THE AIR— THE AIR SPLIT.... I SAW IT... THE ARENA— THE ARENA FLOOR HAS SPLIT IN TWO LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. THE FLOOR HAS SPLIT FROM ONE WALL TO THE OTHER FROM THE FORCE OF A THROWN CUP AND I DON'T—I DON'T HAVE WORDS FOR THIS.
He took a short breathe.
"EVEN THE KINGS CANT BELIEVE IT!. THE CANDIDATES ON THE SIDELINES CANNOT BELIEVE WHAT THEY JUST WATCHED."
King Vord Ashenmere of Drenmark was standing completely still. The expression of a man who had seen a lot of war.
Archmage-King Serel Dunveil had also stood up.
Queen Mira Voss had not moved at all. She was watching the cup.
High-King Orath Solen had his eyes closed and his hands folded like he was praying. Like he had decided this was a religious moment.
Brenn Earthwalker was at the very front of the viewing box, both hands on the barrier looking down at the arena floor. Not at the dragon. Not at the split in the stone. At me. The expression on his face was the same one he had when he walked down to the arena floor during Phase One..
Moments later.
The cup hit the dragon in the chest.
The warp ring collapsed on impact.
The sound it made was not the sound of a cup hitting something. It was not the sound of anything that had ever happened in this arena before. A cataclysmic boom that went through the stone and then through the seats and through the crowd, through the walls, and the crack in the arena floor grew wider.
The dragon flew back.
A lot.
Its feet carved massive holes in what was remaining of the floor as it slid and it hit the far wall with its back and the wall cracked from top to bottom and chunks of stone fell off it.
It had its head low and was breathing hard. The scales across its chest were deeply cut open.
It shook its head once.
Slowly..
The same way something does when it is trying to remember where it is.
It then looked at me.
Still alive.
But it looked different than it had thirty seconds ago.
"THE DRAGON— THE DRAGON IS STILL ALIVE LADIES AND GENTLEMEN. IT IS STILL ALIVE. THE ARENA IS IN TWO PIECES AND THE DRAGON IS STILL STANDING AND SO IS THE CANDIDATE. I WANT TO RETIRE EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY. I HAVE SEEN ENOUGH. I HAVE SEEN EVERYTHING THERE IS TO SEE IN THIS JOB AND I AM FINISHED—"
The crowd erupted.
Not the respectful cheer they had given the kings. The raw kind. The same kind of cheering of a people who just watched something happen that will be talked about in the history books.
My legs went first.
They just stopped doing their job. I was just standing in the middle of the arena with a dragon bleeding dark across from me and my legs just quietly decided right there that it was time to take nap.
I stayed up. Just barely.
Everything felt so much slower than it should have been. My thoughts and my vision. The noises from the crowd that had been so loud a second ago were starting to sound like it was coming from underwater. I felt like any magic capacity I had built up was all gone. The throw had taken everything andF what was left was not a lot.
"Oracle," I said.
My voice came out wrong.
"Yes," Oracle said.
"I don't feel great."
[ ORACLE: Magic depletion. Severe. Your body is not trained for this level of output. You have burned through more energy than most people use in a lifetime]
"Okay," I said.
"Kaito you need to—"
"Yeah," I said.
The dragon raised its head.
Even after being so damaged. Even with the cracked scales and the dark blood and the wall behind it in pieces. It still raised its head. I was still standing in the middle of the arena with nothing left and nowhere to go.
Then from the viewing box, a single voice.
"HALT!"
It was Brenn Earthwalker.
The word hit the arena like a mom who found out her son was failing all his classes.
The dragon stopped cold.
Moments later.
Officials flooded in from every entrance at once. The remaining arena doors slammed open and there was a bunch guild colours were moving fast and shouting things at each other I couldn't quite follow.
The announcer's voice came back over the stadium.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! BY ORDER OF THE ROYAL VIEWING BOX THIS EVALUATION HAS BEEN IMMEDIATELY HALTED. I REPEAT THE ROYAL GAUNTLET PHASE TWO IS HALTED. THIS IS NOT A TEMPORARY PAUSE FOR REVIEW. THIS IS A FULL STOP BY DIRECT ROYAL INSTRUCTION. ALL CANDIDATES PLEASE REMAIN SEATED. ALL ARENA STAFF MOVE TO YOUR ASSIGNED POSITIONS. THE EVALUATION WILL RESUME AT A TIME TO BE ANNOUNCED PENDING
"FULL REVIEW BY THE ROYAL—"
The rest of what the annocer said got lost somewhere between my ears and my brain.
"SPECTATORS ARE ASKED TO REMAIN CALM. WE WANT TO ASSURE EVERYONE IN ATTENDANCE TODAY THAT ALL SAFETY PROTOCOLS ARE—"
My knees hit the floor.
I didnt feel it happen..
"—IN EFFECT AND THAT ARENA MEDICS ARE ALREADY—"
Across the arena floor the cup sat in the rubble. I could barely make it out from here.
I looked at it.
Everything went dark.