It’s said that Lumesh finally found William Oh on one of those nights of searching for his missing jaw. He possessed one of William’s servants, a black dragon, prince among his kind, aiming for revenge against William Oh.

The God of Death leveraged his power to dominate the will of the dragon, which resisted with its ancient raw will. Through the conflict, the lines began to blur, and the two fused to become something…more.

That’s why Loth the Luminary is often associated with the God of the Underworld.

Because going up against William Oh’s second-in-command is the second quickest way to find yourself meeting Lumesh.

-           Jason Salazar

“That, my friends…is Lord material, right there,” Baron Akul said to his guests as the youngling walked off the stage. It was a difference of night and day. Lords don’t have dramatic, entertaining matches where either side might lose. They crush their enemies, and oftentimes do so in a way that the enemy never even saw coming.

“You sure I can’t have him as a Vassal?” Rotwitch asked. “I need servants with high Resistance.”

“You don’t get any new Vassals until you learn to keep your hands off of them,” Bakton said, his scarred arms crossed and scowling.

The other Lords nodded in agreement.

“You guys suck.” Rotwitch pouted, her metal chair rapidly tarnishing beneath her.

“Remember, gentlemen…lady,” Akul said, glancing at Rotwitch. “We’ve all agreed that he is not to be made a Vassal if he wins the tournament. If he does lose the tournament, you have all agreed to abide by the rules of the auction. If you wish to operate in my city, you must keep your word.”

“From what I’ve seen, I am already eager to bid on him, but I was told the boy could steal Relics. So far, I’ve seen none of that,” Ghoul said, frowning.

“Hasn’t had to use it yet,” Marksman said with a shrug, his eyes glowing as he studied the young man. Akul was sure he had some means to peek into another person’s Status.

“Next up is my grandson,” Akul said, leaning back in his chair. “I’m hoping he can make William Oh demonstrate more of his Abilities, and create a better showcase for bidding…if William loses, of course. I asked the boy to make a show of it.”

“Which one?” Bakton asked.

“Both of them,” Akul said with a shrug.

***William Oh***

“Damn, dude, what was that?” June asked, her jaw hanging slack as she peered behind him at the arena, which was crawling with priests of Holdna.

Will removed the cannonball from his Dimensional Storage and tossed it to her. It was a solid iron sphere about the size of two fists clenched together.

It weighed around twenty pounds, and it had been moving at about…five hundred miles per hour. Give or take. Will was surprised it was that fast, but it was just his superhuman Acuity and Kinesthetics playing tricks on him, making him think it was closer to one hundred and still within the realm of something that could be seen.

The speed had been steadily going up along with his ability to perceive its speed, so that was understandable.

That wasn’t even the fastest it could go. I slowed it down just a bit, so I could catch it again.

Will had honestly been expecting his opponent to have enough Resistance that their skull would resist the strike enough that the force carried through the rest of their body, sending them tumbling and brain-damaged, but alive.

Apparently not.

Will sat a moment and simply took in the difference between himself at level four, when he desperately fought the kaith to survive, and his current level of ability.

Even though he wasn’t a traditional Warrior Archetype, Will had realized that he could probably tear through the monsters of the first three floors like tissue paper. That was how far he’d come.

It was just hard to see your progress when everything else around you got stronger too.

Will took the cannonball back from June and stared at it, turning the sphere in his hand.

Could I take out a kaiju with one of these?

Of course, if he lost his Rogue Ability-boosting equipment, he would lose about 40% of the Phantom Hand’s current speed and storage capacity. Nearly half. But still…

20lb cannonball at 300 miles an hour ain’t that bad either, but Karryn might’ve survived if I didn’t have the Rogue-boosting gear.

There was a rather large dent in the solid iron sphere that hadn’t been there before, so she might’ve resisted a slower speed.

The sheer force shattering her Resistance was the result of focusing his Build on exploiting the Phantom Hand.

Will still couldn’t spread death and destruction en masse quite like a Nuker, but one-on-one? Will’s enemy was doomed.

Eventually, my opponents will treat solid steel like soap bubbles, and I will be limited not by the force I can deliver, but the availability of materials that can pierce their Resistance. We’ll see what happens when we get there.

Will put the cannonball back in his Dimensional Storage and walked through the waiting area, looking for Loth.

The other competitors parted around him, maintaining their distance and staring at him.

Is there something on my face? Will wondered, wiping off his mask and coming away with a bit of Javelineer.

Ah.

Will ignored the hushed whispers and the distancing until he arrived at Loth.

“Thank you for doing this,” Will said.

“Happy to help,” Loth said, “as long as I get that auction ticket from you. I’ve been studying the itinerary, and there are some fantastic Sacrifices and Relics there that our Party would benefit from.”

“Deal.”

“In our next match, we have the grandson of Baron Akul, Nephir Akul, level 25 Potent Detonator, darling of our city and the favorite to win. He has dominated every match thus far with the overwhelming firepower that we have come to associate with the name ‘Akul’!”

The crowd cheered while Nephir waved. Lots of high-pitched squeals filled the air as he sent a white-toothed grin towards the stands.

“And his opponent, the level 23 Hive-wielding Saboteur, Loth the Luminary, a member of and second-in-command in the Party of William Oh. So far, she has won all of her matches with hardly any visible effort as her opponents invariably stumble into her devious traps!”

Never said I’d traumatize the guy personally…or all at once.

Will went up to the stands to get a better view, looking down at Loth and the dark-skinned young man facing each other.

“Fighters, BEGIN!”

Nephir rose off the surface of the arena floor as visible shields began to wrap around him like the petals of a rose.

Most of Loth’s traps triggered on body weight, so having someone fly above them was likely irritating. If she was bothered, she didn’t show it, clasping her clawed hands behind her back as she waited patiently.

“Kobold! I’ll give you the opportunity to withdraw!” Nephir said, a ball of fire growing on his fingertips, quickly expanding until it was larger than he was.

“I’m afraid I must decline, at the moment,” Loth said with a slight shake of her head.

“Very well. If you meet your end here, then it was meant to be!” Nephir shouted, throwing the vision-obscuring ball of fire.

In the moment when the ball of fire was between the two of them, a hole in the arena floor opened up beneath Loth, dropping her out of harm’s way.

An instant later, wrist-thick bands of spider silk lashed out, secured themselves around Nephir’s ankles, and whipped him down to the arena floor, which opened up like the mouth of a giant before snapping shut again to engulf him in total darkness.

Loth climbed back up out of the singed earth, waiting patiently on the corner of the arena as staccato explosions rocked the underground, causing bursts of flame to jet up out of the spaces between the tiles.

The entire arena bulged upward violently as Nephir seemed to try to blast his way out of the trap and regain altitude, but the floor seemed to be held together by potent webbing and some kind of Earth Ability that Loth’s insects were using, strengthening the stone against the blasts.

Ah, that’s what the Stone Shark Sacrifice was for. Giving her insects direct control over stone made her traps much faster and more cohesive.

This went on for about fifteen seconds, until the waves of insects worked their way through his shields and the screaming started.

Once this happened, Loth held out a hand, glowing with power, and the screaming turned into shrieking, doubling in panic and volume.

The spectators couldn’t see it, but Will knew what was happening. She’d hit her opponent with a curse that made a powerful insect chew its way out of him from the inside.

The sound of the baron’s grandson screaming echoed through the arena for several minutes, the only sign the young man was still alive, before his voice began to fade as Nephir presumably lost brain function.

The priests of Andover tensed, ready to call the match.

Loth raised her hand. “I concede,” she said before walking off the arena floor.

The shredded body of Nephir Akul was returned to the surface by a tide of insects, his body giving those last, just-prior-to-death gasps as the priests of Andover swarmed over him, bringing him back from the brink of death.

“And Nephir Akul wins…through surrender? Moving on to fight…oh. Oh, crap,” the announcer said, flipping through her notes before glancing off to someone beside her, forgetting to turn off her megaphone. “Are there any other Party members of William Oh in the tournament? Really? Damn…”

The announcer realized her faux pas and quickly turned the magical voice-amplifying Relic off.

Now, Will had no idea if Baron Akul actually wanted Will to traumatize his grandson to ‘teach him caution,’ or if he just wanted Will to not win so quickly so he could demonstrate more of his Abilities for the Lords waiting to buy him from the Baron…

Possibly both.

Those potent shields could present a problem to Will’s ability to secure a win, and if Nephir had full Charge, he could probably rain fire down on Will until he was forced to surrender or die.

So Will had asked Loth to put the fear of death into him and drain all his Charges before their match.

That way, Will still did personally engage with the baron’s grandson and traumatize him, fulfilling his request to the letter, without risking a loss.

***Baron Akul***

“I think your grandson is in some deep shit,” Bakton said, chuckling.

“…How much for the kobold?” Ghoul asked.

“She’s already in William Oh’s Party, so he has dibs if he wins,” Rotwitch said. “But if he loses…how much for the set? I’ve got some mutated Rings of Arcane Endurance from the Thirteenth Floor that you would not believe.”

Stephan declined to comment, still deciding how to feel about his grandson’s maiming. It appeared William Oh was crippling him prior to their match, in order to secure a total victory and do as Stephan had requested.

He’d requested it, so it was difficult to justify anger, but he just hadn’t expected Will to actually do it. Not that one-sidedly, anyway.

Is everyone in William Oh’s Party a Lord in the making, or is it just those two?

As it turned out, it was just those two, as June Perrier lost her next match, while Mason Lanover won with the baron’s Build, but only barely, through a close fight.

Alicia Zodiac won her match handily by flicking pebbles at her opponent, which seemed to only hit critical areas that numbed their bodies and made them collapse. She could’ve been on the path to becoming a Lord like Marksman if she hadn’t died already.

Reginald Thatcher, the Party’s Tank, hadn’t joined the matches, given that his Build was ill-suited for fighting Climbers.

We shall see how Nephir handles this loss, Stephan decided. It will be an excellent test of his character.

Either way things went, the baron intended to profit from it.

A servant approached from the side, leaning down to whisper in Stephan’s ear. “My lord, Frederick Wyrd has entered the city.”

Stephan’s blood ran cold.

The alleged engineer behind the slaughter of Oilton. Obviously a trial run for taking the city of Akul.

He wouldn’t dare start something with five other Lords present…probably.

“…Invite him to join the festivities,” Stephan said. There wasn’t much else to do besides keep him where he could see him. No one but a Lord had any hope at restricting his movements, and any fight they started inside city limits would level a huge portion of it.

We’ll have to operate on the assumption that he knows the coffin is broken.

In all likelihood, Frederick was going to try to kill him.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Stephan was used to it by now.