The Arena: A LitRPG, page 22
Of course ten minutes was an eternity in a fight, especially in one where a single mistake could cost you your life, but it was still a small victory, a target to aim for.
But Petra hadn't been paying enough attention to the fight as she'd analysed her handy work because the boar had once again impacted Jordan, glancing off his shield and punching him back again. Even through the wooden shield, the boar had inflicted another ten points of damage. And that meant Jordan only had three more hits left in him before he was out of the fight.
"You can't keep letting it hit you!" Petra shouted.
"I know!" Growled Jordan.
"Then have you tried moving out of the way?"
"I'm not fast enough, it'll hit me."
"You have to do something!" Petra replied.
Jordan again steadied himself and watched the arc of the boar as it began to circle back again.
"Alright Jordan," the Defender muttered to himself. "This is what you've been training for, you can do this."
He barely believed his own words as he uttered them, but Petra was right. He had to do something.
The boar lined up again, and charged as it had already done so many times.
This time Jordan didn't set himself on the ground. This time he readied himself to dodge out of the way.
The boar closed in on him and Jordan mentally counted.
Three.
Two.
One.
Now!
And he pushed as much power into his legs as he could manage, throwing his large, heavy body to the side at the very last second.
He'd done it. He was home free!
But then he felt something. It was odd, almost like a burning sensation and when he looked down to his legs, he saw that one of the boar's tusks had hit him, tearing into the flesh of his shin and sending him spinning through the air. He barely had a chance to close his eyes and brace himself for the hard landing.
Petra screamed as her friend was tossed aside by the boar and as she watched, his health points reduced to single digits, sapping away in that very moment. Nine. Nine health points were all her friend had left before he would be of this world no longer.
Petra knew she had to act. If the boar focused on Jordan again, even if he managed to get back to his feet and bring his shield up, then it wasn't going to be enough. So she did the only thing she could think of. She started to run.
Not away from the boar this time, but straight towards it.
The creature didn't see Petra at first, but when she opened her mouth to scream, it finally turned its attention to the Rogue. She was only pleased that the effects of Jordan's taunt skill had worn off.
Now the boar charged and the pair were locked in a game of deadly chicken. But Petra alone knew what she had planned. She couldn't afford to get hit by the creature, and its tusks were so wide that if she chose to dodge too late, then she would suffer the same fate as Jordan.
The distance closed in an instant, and the boar squealed in excitement as it tasted its upcoming victory.
But Petra knew what she had to do. At the last second she leapt high into the air straight over the boar's nose and she dove between its deadly tusks. The boar raised its head to try to run Petra through with its tusks, but Petra had chosen the one place where it couldn't reach to leap through.
Then, as she vaulted over the body of the beast, Petra extended a single arm and the point of her thin blade to again cut into the flesh of the Deadlands Boar.
The boar squealed and Petra smiled as a trickle of blood sprayed up from the boar's back. But when she landed, she didn't look back to see what damage she'd caused. She landed and kept running to put as much distance between her and the boar as possible.
Jordan had returned to his feet just in time to watch Petra pull off her acrobatic manoeuvre and it gave him an idea of his own.
"Get him between us!" Jordan shouted. "I've got an idea!"
Not having the time to ask what her friend had planned in detail, Petra looked back at the boar to make sure it was still focused on her, which thankfully it was. She could also see that her attack had caused another five points of damage to the creature, but that the poison effect hadn't changed in any way. She assumed that it therefore wouldn't stack with multiple inflictions.
The boar's health had slowly been depleting and as Petra watched, its health points fell below the halfway mark. They were almost there; they only had to hold on for a few minutes longer.
But a few minutes against an enemy they were having trouble even really damaging, whilst it seemed able to seriously hurt them with each and every attack.
Petra took heed of Jordan's instructions and started to run so that the boar would chase her down and end up between the pair again. She assumed that Jordan was about to pull the same trick as he'd already tried once so that she could get another hit in on the boar, but if things went the same way again it would mean Jordan's health pool would be depleted.
‘But he knows that, doesn't he?’ Petra thought to herself as she turned again to face the boar head-on.
Again, the creature charged at her and again she felt her pulse quicken, even from its already quickened state.
She held her stiletto ready, ready to strike out when the boar was close enough to her. But she also prepared to dodge just in case their plan didn't work for a second time.
Pulling his sword and shield to the ready, Petra watched Jordan as he once again cast his Taunt.
The boar put on the brakes again, and Petra plunged her blade into the meatiest part of the creature she could safely reach.
But it wasn't enough.
The boar still had a handful of health points left, and there wasn't going to be enough time for the poison to work to down the monster.
Jordan was in trouble.
"What have you done? You can't take another hit!" Petra cried.
"I know!" Jordan replied. "But it'll be OK, just watch!"
As Jordan spoke and as the boar charged, gaining more and more speed with every passing second, he knelt down on the ground and covered himself with his round wooden shield. In any other circumstance, Petra might've laughed at Jordan, like he was a bear trying to hide behind a narrow tree trunk. But looking at him now, all she could see was the last moments of her friend's life.
Her heart froze.
Petra couldn't move. She could do nothing to save Jordan, even if she had the ability to.
A second or so to go.
Petra glanced down at her knees. Her legs were shaking and her hands were wet with sweat. She could also feel tears beginning to well up in her eyes.
Boom.
The boar hit the shield, and then the wooden thing went flying high up into the air. Petra inhaled sharply and felt the first tear fall down from the crest of her cheek onto the dry sand beneath her. All that she could think about was how things might've been different if Titus had been there with them.
The boar had just five health points left, and now Jordan...
She looked to where the boar had just crashed into Jordan’s shield and where she'd been expecting to be greeted with her friend flat on his back surrounded by an expanding pool of blood. But what she saw made her heart skip a beat.
Jordan hadn't sat behind his shield in the hope that he could take the blow from the boar. In fact he'd thrown his shield at the last minute and rolled to the side, avoiding the momentarily blinded creature altogether.
"Jordan!" Petra squealed. But her excitement was to be short-lived because the boar was already wheeling, turning to make another pass. And Jordan was still between Petra and the boar.
Jordan looked briefly at his shield, which was a veritable mile away from him. He looked at the sword in his hand and then back at the boar, which was lining up its final charge. It didn't have enough health left to survive much longer, not even for another attack, and it looked to Petra like the creature knew this.
"Run!" Petra shouted. "Get away from it! You just have to hold on for a few seconds!"
Jordan blinked, dropped his sword, and broke into a sprint.
The large Defender wasn't exactly the most agile fellow - certainly not as quick as Petra but he’d certainly had some training - but he could see just as Petra had that a few additional meters between him and the boar could very well mean the difference between life and death.
Petra this time was not rooted to the ground. Coming back to herself, she too began running towards Jordan. She could see the look of utter terror crossing his face, the sweat beading off his wet hair as he tried to force more and more energy into his hurting and fatigued muscles.
Then she saw the snout and horns of the boar approaching from behind Jordan.
It wasn't going to be enough.
The boar would hit in a matter of seconds. It would kill Jordan, and then it would die, overcome by her poison. And she would be alone.
Petra pushed more effort into her sprint, running faster than she thought she'd ever run before. She had no idea what she was going to do if she made it to Jordan or the boar, but she wasn't going to let her friend go down without at least trying to do something, anything.
But she already knew she was too slow.
There was nothing she could do. This fight had clearly been beyond their ability to win.
And as she thought that, the word 'ability' stuck in her mind, and she did the one thing she hadn't yet contemplated in this fight. She activated her Blink Step.
The world around Petra turned silent and still.
But that wasn't right. It wasn't still. Everything was simply moving unbelievably slowly. But she could still move. She knew she didn't have long to make her move, and she'd already been told that she couldn't mount an attack at the same time as the Blink Step ability because hitting anything solid would result in her shattering every bone in her body, but if she timed it right…
Jordan watched as Petra sprinted towards him, just out of reach with nothing but fear and sadness written across her face. And then he blinked and she disappeared. It was like she was there one moment and simply gone the next.
And then he heard the squeal of the boar from behind him, and he turned to see Petra on her knees with her stiletto outstretched and the Deadlands Boar on the floor with a long bloody gash down one side, and an empty health pool.
They'd done it. She’d done it. Against all odds they'd managed to beat a beast more powerful than either of them, and they'd done it together.
But it had almost gone so wrong. As Jordan appraised the new stillness, he saw that he had just nine health points remaining, and Petra had twenty.
It could all have gone so differently.
But somehow they’d won.
Chapter 30 – The Voice in the Darkness
By the time Titus had woken up, he was alone in silence and relative darkness. There were torches lit all around that presumably were permanently so, and if they were lit by magical means as he suspected, then it meant that nobody was required to tend to them. The last time he'd been down in these dungeons, he didn't know what had drawn the Grandmaster to him, but somewhere deep down inside, he hoped that it was going to be the case again. Because if nobody found him soon, he was pretty sure he was going to die.
He had fifteen health points left after the beating by some miracle, and that would've meant in normal circumstances he was going to survive this, but beneath his health bar, there was a status he'd never seen before. The word 'bleeding' sat there like it was taunting him and after a few moments of looking at the word trying to understand what it meant, his health points dropped to fourteen.
It was strange, though. The dungeon was silent, but Titus had the distinct feeling that something had roused him. Like in the corner of his mind somewhere he could remember hearing something that got his attention and had returned him to his consciousness.
Another minute passed as Titus tried to remember what the sound was that had awoken him, or even if there had really been a sound at all. He felt like he was going insane. But that could well have been the pain that he was experiencing finally making its way up to his head.
His ribs hurt. His stomach hurt, his back, shoulders, and his legs hurt. His arms hurt, and his chest hurt. In fact, when Titus placed his attention on any part of his body at all, all that returned to him was the sensation of searing pain.
And then there was a sound. It wasn't speech or the sound of footsteps; rather, it sounded like a deep rumbling from somewhere deeper into the dungeon. Deeper, where the monsters awaited their fights in their cages.
But then, had there really been a noise? Because after waiting a little longer to see if it happened again, no noise came, and Titus was again left questioning his sanity.
Titus' eyes flickered as he tried to open and close them, but the light from the torches proved painful to look at so he stopped trying. Things were going from bad to worse though, when he saw his health points fall to thirteen.
Titus let his mind's eye fade to black as unconsciousness threatened to take him away again. But he greeted it, welcomed it even as he already felt the warming reduction of his pain begin to rise up from the tips of his fingers and toes, working its way towards his core.
Unconsciousness was a blessing.
Then he snapped his eyes open as he heard the rumbling again. It was definitely there, definitely real and if there was someone out there that could help him, then he needed to do whatever he could to let them know he was there.
"Aaarrrr," Titus groaned as he forced his eyes to remain open. He tried to look along the long dark hallway, tried to peer through the sections of light and darkness as they rolled away from him but he could see nothing, no matter how hard he tried, no matter how hard he squinted.
Then he remembered the red eyes that he'd seen once before down here. The thing - whatever it was - that had watched him and Petra as they'd fought for their lives against the Deadlands Boar. Another situation manufactured by Henderson to put his life at risk.
"Aughhhh," Titus tried again, but he hadn't realised the sounds he was trying to make were being restricted by the fact his mouth was full of blood. He hadn't even been able to taste it until this very moment.
Titus spat on the ground and felt a relief that he could now breathe a little easier.
And then he coughed. It was a loud cough, one that pained him as he curled himself up as tightly as possible, like it was a reflex to protect his broken body.
"Pain."
The sound was unmistakable. Whatever it was that had made the rumbling sound was now forming words. Actual words. And that meant help. The word was in such a low tone that Titus didn't think it was even possible for a human to reach such levels of bass.
"H... help..." Titus managed to cough. His words were quiet and malformed but they were there, and they were the best he could do.
"Suppressed," the voice replied. It rumbled, and if Titus had been able to feel anything past his injuries, he might've realised that as whatever this was that was speaking formed its words, the entire dungeon around him shook.
Titus couldn't do much more than what he'd already managed. Down to just ten health points now with no sign of the slowly falling number giving up, he knew he was living out his last few moments.
But then maybe he'd just imagined the voice. Maybe it was his broken mind and body just trying to rationalise what was going to happen to him in his last few moments. Maybe there was no voice at all.
"Help," the voice rumbled, almost like it had heard Titus' thoughts and had wanted to assure him that it was, in fact, real.
Not knowing if the voice meant that it was going to help him somehow or that it needed help itself, Titus didn't know what to do. He was done, though. The few words he'd managed to speak had already taken so much out of him that he had nothing left to give. The darkness was again invading the corners of his vision.
But then as if to answer his question there was a loud crash, followed by the clinking of chains and a boom so loud that it made the entire room shake like it had been hit by an earthquake. It lasted for a short moment, and then silence returned.
But then there was nothing for a long while and as Titus' focus returned and faded as if in cycles, he watched as his health points trickled away.
Seven.
He cursed the day his father had sent him to this place.
Six.
He cursed Henderson for doing this to him.
Five.
He cursed his stepmother for taking his father from him.
Four.
He wondered if Jordan and Petra had made it without him, or if they were already there, waiting for him in the afterlife.
Three.
Footsteps.
Footsteps? That wasn't right, was it?
"What've we told you about making a racket like that?" Titus heard a voice coming from beyond the darkness. "I thought those new chains were supposed to keep you quiet? Maybe we need to put a few more measures in place to deal with one as big as you? Don't you worry though, you'll get your chance to make your mark soon. Once they find an opponent who feels like taking you on."
Titus didn't recognise the voice, but he did recognise the sound of a wooden stick rattling against a set of iron bars. And that's what settled it for him.
The words that he'd heard.
The deep rumbling sound.
It was a monster. A monster that could somehow talk. And it had been trying to talk to... him? Was that even possible?
All of the monsters he'd seen both inside the arena and on the stone board where he'd accepted his own match didn't sound like they had any kind of intelligence to them. To the contrary, everything he'd seen so far simply suggested that these things were merely exactly what their name suggested: monsters. They had a single task - to kill their opponent in the arena - and beyond that, they were nothing.
Whatever had tried to speak to him though, it had certainly been more than that. Perhaps the word 'pain' could be forgiven as something that could be developed by a lesser being, but 'suppressed'? That raised far more questions in Titus' mind. Questions that he didn't have the strength or time to ponder.
