Chapter 49: Cheating Randomness

As the next round of the tournament set up, Rick tried to get comfortable to watch. He'd never been very fond of watching professional fighting on television, since it felt strange without sensing lucrim along with it, like mere special effects. This was nearly the same thing, since their room was rather far from the arena, but he kept his eyes glued to the screen because Emily was participating.

Realizing that he was still just holding his can of serum, Rick popped it open and began drinking. Since the next time he fought was apparently random, he needed to be fully rested and recharged. Before he got halfway through the can, he saw Emily walk from underneath the arena along with the other contestants. They weren't given long before the buzzer sounded and the match began.

Before the buzzer had even faded, Emily had already leapt at her nearest opponent and swept her aura blade straight through him. It was in non-lethal mode, so it didn't cut flesh, but the man's aura was cleanly severed in two. The shock of it made him drop, but Emily was already moving on her next opponent.

But as effective as her first attack had been, none of her opponents were weak. The second managed to repel her sword with a burst of aura and a third counter-attacked, forcing her to retreat. Not just retreat, but leap across the arena to attack another opponent who was engaged in a melee.

This blow was more successful, though not enough to take him down. As Emily retreated and again struck opportunistically, Rick tried to get a proper sense for the fight. She certainly wasn't holding back in terms of raw strength, but she hadn't used her ranged ability at all. He wasn't sure if she was holding that in reserve or if she didn't want to use it at all in public.

In any case, he had to admire the sheer focus in how she fought. Whatever meditation she had been doing, it had effectively given her an edge. There were other fighters stronger, or equally skilled, but none approached combat with the same intensity.

Five of the fighters fell relatively quickly, leaving Emily and two others cautiously testing out one another. Rick was curious to see who would win, only for the buzzer to sound again. Already declared a tie? Though he found that disappointing, perhaps for the the sake of the audience the tournament organizers wanted to keep things moving forward.

All three victors returned along the routes back, receiving some cheers, but not overwhelming praise. Rick glanced back at Granny Whitney. "Do they usually cut off rounds that quickly if there isn't a clear winner?"

"They want the tournament to escalate in intensity, but that's hard to orchestrate." She answered without taking her eyes away from the screen where the results would be displayed. "So they manipulate the early rounds to weed out the weaker fighters and set up better final matches."

Then it was all entertainment, to some degree. Even though he shouldn't care about the results, he disliked that idea. How far would the tournament organizers go in order to package all the fights as an entertaining product? He even wondered if the randomization was rigged, though if that was the case, surely statisticians would notice and object. There was money riding on the results, after all.

Before Emily got back, the results from the fight appeared. Emily had earned them 6 points, with the other remaining fighters getting 5 and 4 based on how well they had done in the early part. Not overwhelming, but Granny Whitney seemed satisfied. Perhaps because they were now tied for first place.

Rick glanced at the screen again, this time focusing solely on the top five groups.

[1) Obsidian Thirty - 16 pts

1) Granny's Underground - 16 pts

3) Serpenza - 10 pts

4) Alger's Heroes - 9 pts

5) Branton Bulldogs - 5 pts]

The screen wheeled through the tiers again, coming to rest on the welterweight class. Anthony hopped up to his feet. "Alright, time for me to get us the lead back! I'll carry you all if I have to." As he turned around to go, Emily entered the room. He raised a hand for her to meet. "Passing the torch, eh?"

Emily ignored him and went back to sit down in her seat. Rolling his eyes exaggeratedly, Anthony headed out to the arena. Rick wasn't sure if it would be better to ignore her, but when he gave Emily a respectful nod, she nodded back.

When Anthony came out in the octagon, he seemed twitchy and unsteady on his feet, as if his withdrawal symptoms had returned. Though Rick spent a moment wondering if the prospect of the fight had somehow triggered his addiction, he realized there was a simpler explanation: it was an act.

Anthony held back as the match started, but when an opponent approached him, he reacted with shocking speed, releasing an aura sphere. Most such attacks just burst and did damage to aura defenses, but Anthony's exploded, sending his opponent flying backward. Immediately the act dropped and he began to aggressively attack the other fighters while Granny Whitney smiled.

His initial attack was very effective, but it wasn't enough to take the match. Another fighter using a style that looked like judo managed to "throw" his spheres, redirecting them to explode harmlessly at a distance. It seemed an effective counter, but the match was ended before either of them could adapt or pull out any other techniques.

When the results were displayed, Anthony had earned 8 points... but his remaining opponent had earned 9. Surprisingly, the victor was from the team called the Branton Bulldogs, which seemed like a boring local group not associated with any of the major players. Yet this victory had catapulted them higher in the rankings.

[1) Granny's Underground - 24 pts

2) Obsidian Thirty - 18 pts

3) Branton Bulldogs - 14 pts

4) Serpenza - 13 pts

5) Alger's Heroes - 9 pts]

Before he could voice a question, Malati did it for him. "Who are they? Some local club?"

"They're irrelevant, dearie." Granny Whitney seemed pleased now that they were firmly in the lead, beaming at all of them instead of pacing behind their chairs. "They have some strong fighters in the lower tiers, but they struggled to fill the classes above middleweight."

"We're winning, though."

"That doesn't mean anything, while the matches are still unbalanced. Every fighter matters in the end."

As if to make her point, the welterweight category came up again, this time without Anthony being included. That was twice in a row that the same category had come up - surely that couldn't happen randomly? Rick took a step back, remembering how Uncle Frank sometimes ranted about how people didn't understand randomness. In a truly random sequence, it would be more suspicious if there weren't a few oddities.

Still, he had to wonder if the organizers were leaning on or faking the randomized choice of power classes. So far they'd had multiple rounds at the lower classes, as if to get them out of the way to lead up to more exciting fights.

"Aww, yeah, who's the man?" Anthony came back into the room with a smug look. "I'm the man! We've got this now!" Most of them ignored him, but Granny Whitney handed him a drink and patted him on the cheek.

"Very good, dearie."

As the next fighters moved out, Rick went back to wondering if the randomization was being manipulated. Just as he was about to ask about it, he saw that he recognized someone in the next match: Tom. He towered over the others in the same match, wearing a sleeveless leather jacket and looking like he would come out swinging with his fists. Anyone who hadn't seen him fight in the Underground was going to be very surprised.

When the match began, several fighters immediately ganged up on him, charging from multiple sides. Tom simply exploded in a massive aura of electricity that sent his opponents flying in every direction. The electricity seemed to linger with him, crackling around his body, as he began to aggressively release more bolts of lightning at those who remained.

These weren't controlled bolts, just the slightly random but instantaneous ones. Some missed, but Tom released such an enormous torrent of them that some still landed. Rick realized what he was doing: expending all of his available power on a shock and awe offensive.

It worked. When Tom stopped unleashing lightning, every single one of his opponents was down. The repeated attacks had used up most of his reserves, but that wasn't obvious to most of those watching. All they saw was one fighter utterly annihilate his opponents, so they cheered raucously.

Malati turned to Anthony with a smirk. "You're the man, huh? Well, you'd better be ready to face that man, or you won't be carrying this team anywhere."

"Just a bunch of flashy shit." Anthony sat lower in his chair, glowering resentfully. "And a cheap surprise trick. I'll be ready for him."

The results came in and Granny Whitney frowned at them. Tom had received 12 points - the most from any single round in the tournament so far. It wasn't enough to unseat them, but it put Alger's team up near the top and proved what she had said about the matches just beginning.

Relative score didn't matter at this stage so much as who had the advantage in each power class. None of the other top contenders had been in this match, so their scores remained unchanged. The result was a rather impressive leap:

[1) Granny's Underground - 24 pts

2) Alger's Heroes - 21 pts

3) Obsidian Thirty - 18 pts

4) Branton Bulldogs - 14 pts

5) Serpenza - 13 pts]

That might matter a great deal to Granny Whitney and her rivals, but Rick tried not to get caught up in the results. He did need them to win for Granny Whitney to forgive his debts, but all he could control was his own matches. Instead, he focused on the randomization question.

"Is the match order really purely random?" he asked, watching as the tiers began to cycle past again. "What happens if it keeps coming up with the same power class over and over? Wouldn't that add a huge component of randomness to the tournament?"

"It doesn't work quite like that." Malati started to answer, but was cut off as the cruiserweight class came up on screen. "Well, that's me. Wish me luck."

She left without answering his question, and Granny Whitney didn't seem inclined to pay attention to him. Rick was surprised when Emily spoke up.

"The screen displays a wheel with five classes, but that's just a graphic displayed over the real calculation." Emily's voice was flatter than normal and she didn't look at him while she spoke. "Each selection is taken from a pool of remaining matches, which is weighted so that those who have fought most recently are less likely to fight again."

"That makes sense, thanks. Is there any chance they weight them to start with the lower tiers first? In general, I mean."

"Hmm. Possibly." Emily considered the question and retreated into herself, but he decided to try for the most relevant question.

"How often are each of us going to fight?"

Granny Whitney spoke from just behind him, making him a jump a bit. "It depends on how many fighters in your power class are eliminated, plus random chance. Most likely two times, but once if you're unlucky, three times if you're lucky. Lucky from my perspective, of course... more points for me, more injuries for you."

While they spoke, Malati's match had begun. It started with a few attempts to dominate the arena, but when none were successful, the fighters dropped back. They all had generation rates over 100,000 lucrim, so when fighting cautiously, they didn't go down easily. Though there were subtle shifts in the balance, the fight was actually a bit boring.

When he saw movement in the stands across from them, Rick tensed up. Had a brawl started? Was the American Basilisk using more hitmen during the event itself? A large group of people rose up, almost like a panic, but then they sat back down... and the group beside them rose up, waving their arms...

Were they doing the Mexican Wave? An audience at a high level combat tournament was doing the freaking wave?

While Rick was vaguely irritated by this development, no doubt the tournament organizers were deeply frustrated by the slow match. They didn't seem willing to cut it off early, however, so it stretched out. Only after three of the fighters fell did the buzzer finally sound. Malati was part of a three-way tie for first and no team was awarded very many points, so the rankings didn't change much.

Now that he understood the rules of the tournament better, Rick was feeling a bit more comfortable. He'd finished drinking his serum and felt like he was fully recovered. If he had to fight an average number of times, he was already half-way done. Things were going pretty well.

His stomach still flipped when he saw his power class come up on the screen again. The tournament wasn't even half over and it was already time for his second match.