"You know, Paprini, my daughter — there is an obscure truth in following the fighters who didn't come in the first wave."
"Really? I thought they were just weak and incompetent people wanting to kill creatures and leave before the event ends." — the girl with small caprine horns gestured with the tone of someone who had arrived at a conclusion and was comfortable with it. — "Besides, father — what were you thinking putting me in charge of taking care of someone as weak as a… damn, I don't even know how to pronounce the name of that race. Human."
Seated in the ivory chairs filling the Colosseum, father and daughter observed the fights a few meters below with the privileged angle of those who had chosen the spot with care. Unlike them, almost nobody liked following what was called internally the leftovers. The main event was by far the most watched — the strong ones seeking glory existed in a symbiotic relationship with the audience that wanted to see them seek it, each feeding the other's need, the spectacle being a two-way product where producers and consumers swapped positions as the moment required. It was extremely rare to find someone strong who wasn't in the arena for honor, demonstration of power, political influence, or some combination of the three — the motivators that made the presence obvious to any observer who knew where to look.
For that same reason, the events following the main one — the leftovers, as they were called without ceremony — had an audience close to zero. The emptiness of the stands communicated what most had decided without deliberating: that what happened there wasn't worth the time to watch.
"The obscurity has always been exactly in that, my daughter." — the father said, with the patience of someone who had prepared the conversation in advance and was executing it in the order he had planned. — "What would you think could come from the weak and incompetent? But what if among them there existed someone who simply didn't care about glory, influence or demonstration of strength? What if there existed someone seeking something specific — that to obtain it they would need to show power without limitation, without being able to hide, using sagacity and intelligence in the place where others would use only brute force?"
"That doesn't exist, father." — she said with the certainty of someone who had been raised within a logic and hadn't yet found a convincing enough reason to question it — not because the logic was perfect, but because the alternative would require undoing and rebuilding things that had taken too long to build. — "I've never seen anyone who belonged in the main event go down to someone clever. Strength doesn't lose to tricks. Our race is strength and confrontation — we don't hide while we have the strength to knock everything and everyone down." — she paused, with the look of someone who had arrived at a different conclusion about the real reason for her father's presence. — "Tell the truth. You're here to bet money like everyone else around us."
The adult turned slightly red. Some children were inconvenient precisely because they were too intelligent to be deceived — his was inconvenient in a way that he simultaneously lamented and admired, the admiration and the lament existing in proportions that varied according to the conversation. There were things he couldn't hide from her, and there were others he couldn't say directly to her, and the two categories overlapped in ways that made the conversations more complicated than they should be.
Some of his own race's dogmas were, in his opinion, more harmful than any external enemy. He himself had had his share of fights where he had realized that extreme strength simply wasn't enough — situations where the opponent had arrived with something different from strength and had won with exactly that. But saying it openly bordered on taboo. Suggesting that strength wasn't always the best answer to anything was the kind of thought his race treated as weakness before treating it as heresy — first as a sign that something had failed in development, then as a threat to the cultural coherence his entire race had built around a premise that couldn't be questioned without threatening what had been built around it.
Even to his own daughter, he couldn't say it directly.
But she liked riddles. And he had a good one — or at least had one that had worked before, in other contexts, with other interlocutors who had arrived at the same place by the path he was now trying to build.
"Very well, my daughter — tell me what is the strongest creature you know."
Paprini was confused by the question — not by the incoherence, which she had learned to expect from her father's questions, but by the apparent distance between what had been said before and what was being asked now. Her father always had some relationship between what he said and what he wanted to say, she had learned that over years of conversations that seemed random before revealing themselves to be deliberate. The problem was that the relationship was rarely obvious before being revealed — and trying to find it before its time was an exercise in frustration that she had attempted and had abandoned with the specific maturity of someone who had learned that some things needed to be received before being understood.
After thinking longer than any young person could without losing patience — and reaching the limit of that time — she simply gave up on finding the connection before the moment and risked the answer that truly frightened her to say, for what it implied about the hierarchies in which she had been educated.
"Dragon?"
"Perfect. Finally something we both agree on." — he said, with the smile that appeared when the conversation was going where he had planned. — "Now tell me: how many dragons have you seen or heard of in the Oasis?"
"Father, you know none. Even being freshly out, I know that hardly anyone of our race has actively encountered dragons — they are extremely…"
"Reserved."
Paprini realized where her father was going before he finished the word.
"I understand what you're trying to say, father. But what does that have to do with what we're seeing here? This human clearly isn't a dragon. And while other races dangerous even to us are fighting in the main event, we're wasting time watching someone who can barely get out without using tricks and cowardice in every fight."
It was genuine resistance — not the resistance of someone who had understood and was refusing, but of someone who had gotten close and was stopping before the last step because the last step would require revising something comfortably in place.
The pieces were all on the table. She couldn't see where to fit any of them. It wasn't the first time her father had put her in this position — but this time the pieces seemed more disconnected than usual, as though they belonged to different games that had been mixed without intent.
"So you give up?"
"Of course not." — a pause — the kind that was less pause and more choice of direction. — "I just don't know where to start."
"Very well. Then analyze what you see and tell me."
The girl organized what she knew with the specific methodology of someone who had learned to organize before concluding, the sequence being more important than the speed. Her father had insisted she memorize even the weakest races — frustrating at the time, when every hour spent on irrelevant races seemed like an hour stolen from races that mattered. Useful now, when the irrelevant races were exactly what was in front of her.
"Humans. Main planet unknown. Low strength, low intelligence, low mana and magic. Only identified quality: versatility — which in practice means absence of specialization more than presence of advantage. One of the last races to enter the Oasis and the last to manage becoming a Lord. No recorded achievement. No risk of extinction."
"What do you think?"
"Weak. Nothing more to say."
It was the same conclusion for many other higher-ranked races that observed them. The absence of risk communicated the absence of relevance — races nobody bothered to eliminate were races nobody bothered to fear.
"Right. Understanding what humans are and how weak they are — what are you seeing in front of you?"
The girl stopped trying to win the discussion and began to really see — with the difference between the two being all the difference, the first requiring what was seen to confirm the position, the second having no position to confirm.
The fight was difficult — the three creatures the competitors would face were opposites in power and uniqueness, each forcing the competitor to mold to a different type of threat that the others didn't prepare for. Strength and resistance against the Cave Brute. Mobility and distance against the Fire Tongue, which required thinking in three dimensions because the enemy operated in three dimensions. Sagacity and mental control against the Cannibal Fae, which required not what you could do but what you could avoid doing when your own reasoning was being rewritten in real time.
There were ways of dealing with each of them separately — but the arena eliminated most of them because the arena didn't offer separation. Without the right and anticipated countermeasures, even she would find it difficult to get through all three fights without suffering some type of damage.
She could use the hypersonic power against the Cave Brute, the sound destabilizing the regeneration before it could compensate for the accumulated damage. Agility against the Fire Tongue — she was fast enough that fire wouldn't be a real problem, as long as she maintained movement and didn't let the angle establish itself. But the Fae — without an external item, which the arena prohibited, she didn't know how she would approach the Fae. The combination had been chosen for the event with the precision of something that had been tested before: it was impossible for a single race to be naturally efficient against all three types at the same time, the combination existing precisely to ensure that any strategy would have a gap.
"I see a cunning coward. But intelligent."
"Yes, I agree." — the father said, with the tone of someone who had arrived at the same conclusion by different paths and had found satisfaction in the meeting. — "But I also see a coward who is demonstrating powers that don't match what one would expect from a weak race."
Finally a piece clicked into place — with the specific sound of something that had been out of place and had found the right place, the position being obvious in retrospect and impossible to see before.
He was a weak human — but one who could do something she didn't know how to replicate with the resources she had. Something was wrong. Strangely wrong in the distribution of what existed and what should exist. The girl who had arrived with skepticism and impatience sat slowly, her eyes fixed on the arena below — with the specific focus of something that had decided what was in front of it was more interesting than it had calculated it would be.
The father felt the progress with the smile of someone who had planted the seed and was watching it begin to open — not with haste, but with the certainty that it was opening. He had learned that this was the moment to say nothing more, to let the silence work.
He knew that the veil covering his race was difficult to remove. For his people, only strength mattered — not as a value among others, but as a value that eliminated the need for others. But he believed there was another way to read a fight, a way that didn't replace strength but made it more efficient than it could be alone. And he wanted her to learn — not because strength was insufficient now, but because there were situations where insufficient arrived without warning.
While his race found it honorable to take the blow simply to demonstrate they were strong enough to receive it, others chose not to take the blow in the first place. His race called that cowardice. He called it cunning — the difference between the two sometimes being only who had survived to name what had happened.
Something that even the strongest races should understand — and respect. After all, even his own race knew what it was to be in that human's position — fighting just to exist, without the guarantee that existing would be enough. Luck had smiled on them in the form of a wall and millennia of improbably successful survival. But luck had also done something he suspected was more dangerous than any external enemy: it had made them forget what they once were, at the expense of what they wanted to appear to be.
✦
The girl observed with attention the moment the human had summoned the giant and unknown creature — exactly at the instant the Cannibal Fae had cast the power, with the timing that had been so precise that she had almost shouted from inside the stands, because she had calculated it was too late and had internally prepared the reaction for what she thought would come.
She had seen the moment the power had hit the human. Had calculated it was too late — with the certainty of someone who had seen what the Fae's power did and had mapped the speed of progression. The other races had attacked as soon as the Fae appeared — which was, in her opinion formed by training and racial example, the only correct approach for that creature: eliminate before being eliminated, speed being the advantage that compensated for the lack of natural defense against illusion.
But the human had waited. Had let the power be cast — with the calm of something that had calculated that waiting was the strategy and had committed to the strategy even when every instance of immediate analysis said waiting was a mistake. And only then had he summoned, using that specific window — the moment where the power had been invested but hadn't yet produced a complete result — to kill the Fae before the illusion became definitive.
As she analyzed the choices she had observed, she realized they were better than anything she had considered for herself. The realization arrived slowly, with the specific resistance of a truth that contradicts what you had believed before — arriving not as revelation but as accumulation, each of the human's choices being more logical than the previous, the whole being more persuasive than any part.
The races that had tried to attack the Fae at the first moment they saw her had less than twenty percent success — and the reason was simple but had the kind of simplicity that was only obvious afterward: the Faes were fast, and the speed had been underestimated by everyone. Even some races she was certain would have managed had failed and paid with their lives, with the specific surprise of something that had miscalculated the most important variable.
She swallowed hard with the realization that she would very likely be part of the eighty percent that wouldn't survive — not from lack of strength, but from excess of confidence in her capability as an answer to a problem that clearly wouldn't be resolved that way.
The more she thought about the approaches the human had taken — which had seemed cowardly and senseless on initial observation, which had defied every instinct her race had developed — the more she realized they were superior to what she would have done. Not superior in terms of efficiency, but superior in terms of result and effectiveness, which was the measure the arena used and which she had been educated to ignore.
Who could guarantee her hypersonic power would work in a direct exchange with the Cave Brute? Its regeneration was real and documented — any direct exchange was an exchange in its favor, and an exchange in the enemy's favor was a strategy that would require justification she couldn't formulate convincingly. And the Fire Tongue — she still had doubts about whether her agility would be sufficient to neutralize the three-dimensional attack angle of something that didn't need to be on the ground to be dangerous.
The fragile-looking woman with the crossbow had been, more than any other variable she had observed, the part she had least calculated. The Archons were a competent race — but that one seemed above average in ways that made the whole more than the sum of its parts.
In the end, each of that human's choices had been calculated before being executed — with the anticipation of someone who had mapped the field before entering it, not the physical field but the field of possibilities, the set of what could happen and what should be done when each possibility materialized. As though he knew what could happen and had prepared — not just physically, but mentally.
The answer was clear as the suns that illuminated the arena and her home planet.
"He knew how to win each of his fights."
"Exactly, my daughter." — the father said, with the smile of someone who had expected exactly that conclusion and had discovered that watching the seed sprout was different from simply knowing he had planted it. — "That's why I bet my entire salary on him."
"You did what?! You—"
✦
[ Ding. Ding. Unknown Quadrant — Arena 7523 won, no casualties. ]
"I won."
The word came out quietly — for nobody but myself, the kind of confirmation made out loud because the inside was still processing.
"Cursed place."
The Brute was strong — incredibly strong, with a resilience that was outside any context I had prepared to encounter. I had thought about summoning Zaetar countless times during the fight — I had felt the specific impulse of a hand moving toward the easiest option when the harder option starts costing more than you calculated. I had chosen not to — because I needed to prove myself, needed to understand what I could do without the shortcut, needed the fight to be information about where I was.
It was over an hour of accumulated darts at the joints, of constant dodges that cost more with each one as exhaustion accumulated, of waiting for the opening without forcing it — with the specific patience of something that had learned the difference between creating the opportunity and waiting for it to exist naturally, and had chosen the latter because the former cost more than was available. When it finally existed, the quick cut combined with Blood Magic was something the creature hadn't expected — it had learned that I made superficial cuts, had built a model of how I fought and had stopped updating the model when the model seemed sufficient. Its head flew before it finished processing that something had changed.
A clean death. Cleaner than it deserved to be, considering how much work it had cost to get there.
The Fire Tongue was easier than I had expected — with the difference between expectation and reality that sometimes worked in favor instead of against. The attacks were predictable in a way I hadn't identified on paper but had identified in person: there was a pattern in the way it calibrated position before spitting fire, a specific preparation that preceded the attack with enough consistency to be exploited. Morgana's darts and my agility proved more effective than I had calculated as a conservative possibility. It died before hitting the ground, with darts embedded in its head, without any of the fire attacks having gotten close enough to truly worry me.
The Fae was different from everything — from everything I had calculated and from everything I had read with the attention I had dedicated to preparation.
I had calculated she would conjure the magic while stationary — because most creatures that used high-cost magic needed stability to maximize efficiency. And I had been wrong: she conjured in motion, with the fluidity of something that had practiced conjuring in motion until the motion stopped being a cost. That was what had killed most of those who had tried to attack during the conjuring — they had planned for a stationary target and had found a moving target, the difference being enough for the plan not to reach its result.
Those who couldn't overcome her speed simply had no chance. The screams of the victims trying to tear the creature from inside their own bodies were the kind not easily forgotten — worse than anything the Walking Fungus had done, because the Fae made a point of keeping the victim conscious while feeding, the suffering being part of the meal and not merely a byproduct.
I had waited. Had let the power be cast — with the calm that was harder to maintain than any physical movement I had made in the arena, because it was calm against instinct, against every part of the nervous system saying that acting was surviving and waiting was dying. And even after the fight I still remembered the Fae's confused face, who had believed it would be an easy meal and hadn't even bothered to disguise its magic.
The illusion I entered was strange in a way I hadn't expected and wasn't prepared to fully articulate: it took me back to my home, but at the same time it wasn't my home. It was the kind of dream where you know you're not awake, but can't wake up — and every familiar detail made the trap more efficient because every familiar detail was an invitation to stop resisting, to accept what was being offered instead of questioning why it was being offered. My sister was there. It wasn't her — but it was sufficiently her that the distinction needed to be actively sought.
My luck was that Zaetar was fast. The Fae died before the dream became definitive — and upon exiting the illusion, the specific quality of real light versus dream light was the most pleasant thing I had felt in the arena until then.
Looking around while processing what it had cost, I saw the Orghaal was still alive — clearly having suffered severe damage from the Fire Tongue, its skin in places communicating a temperature that had been excessive, but it was standing.
There was something reassuring in seeing that creature still existing on the other side — not from affection, but from the simple logic that whoever had survived to there was someone who had found the path through ways different from mine, that I hadn't fully observed, but that had worked. When our eyes crossed for the first time, it nodded — with the specific gesture of recognition between two who had been through the same thing and didn't need words to communicate that they knew it.
I nodded back.
"Lord." — Morgana said, with the tone of someone who had noticed something and had calculated whether it was relevant enough to mention now or whether they should wait for a more appropriate moment. — "It looks like two Infernals are performing some kind of ritual?"
I followed her eyes. What was in the stands was a small Infernal running after a larger adult — the adult smiling with the quality of someone who had done something irreversible and had made peace with it before finishing doing it, the pursuer shouting something that wind and distance made inaudible — thank god — but that expression and gesticulation made comprehensible without needing sound.
"Ignore it." — I said, with the tone of someone who had seen enough things in the Oasis to recognize when something wasn't their responsibility to process. — "These people are crazy. Let's do what we need and get out of here. Tomorrow we'll probably encounter the main group."
The Griffin was getting closer. The list had shrunk. The objective existed in the same place it had existed since I had entered the arena — but the distance between where I was and where I needed to be had diminished with the cost of each fight.
Unfortunately I felt my cards couldn't be hidden much longer. The B-class enemies were coming — and B-class creatures were on another level entirely.