“No, he’s just a brute,” Ayula said, as he and his friends watched a projection of Fahptis and Herb Mask fighting. A glass panel blocked out most of the sound from the arena below, which was partitioned into eight very eye-catching zones. The architects had outdone themselves this year.

  “He’s the most legendary brute, though,” Dolo retorted from her sofa. “He literally unsheathed Stormsong.”

  Ayula scoffed. “It’s not even doing him any favors right now.” He reclined on the ridiculously expensive sofa and popped another grape in his mouth.

  Dolo had snuck him and Medi into one of her uncle’s private viewing booths here in the arena. It was nice.

  “Fahptis really knows his business,” Ayula continued. “Such clean technique. He’s mastered both sword and whip, and he has better gear. It’s too impressive.”

  Medi laughed while shoveling grapes into his mouth. “You’re just mad that our guy beat your guy in the last trial.”

  Dolo sniggered.

  “Nobody beat anybody,” Ayula groused. “Environmental advantage is all it was. Besides, now everyone will see why Herb Mask turned down a one-on-one fight from Fahptis in that round. He knew he’d be outmatched.”

  “Herb Mask is fighting off more of those monsters than Fahptis, though. He’s not even giving his opponent all of his attention. That’s how you know he’s a killer.”

  “Oh, please. He’s not getting past that ice armor. His mana control is certainly ridiculous, but that’s about it. He’s pretty mediocre.”

  “Herb Mask literally took an empowered stab to his sword arm and brushed it off,” Dolo said.

  “Any Body-enhancer can brush off a cut or two,” Ayula said. “Fahptis has taken so many hits in this fight, and that hasn’t slowed him down.”

  “Oh shut up,” Dolo said. “Herb Mask’s a killer monster.”

  “Fuck yeah!” Medi said, tossing grapes into the air.

  “You're going to clean that up,” Dolo told him in a faux-stern voice.

  “Anything for you, my fellow Herbivore,” he replied.

  Dolo groaned while Ayula laughed with incredulity.

  “Please, Medi. Please, don't say that out loud ever again.”

  Ayula chuckled. “Yeah, that name is never going to stick.”

  “You just wait,” Medi said. “Herb Mask’s faithful Herbivores know he's the real deal. And he knows that his faithful fans are the real deal. He’ll—ha!” he broke out laughing.

  Ayula scowled at the projection.

  “Who has the better gear now?” Dolo crowed at him. “I don't see Herb Mask twitching on the floor.”

  “And just from a little lightning bolt,” Medi teased while laughing. “Oh, look, they might team up. See? Everybody eventually joins team Herbivo—Oh shit! Oh shit!” Medi broke out into laughter again as Fahptis was hurled backwards from another lightning attack.

  “He’s running! Ha ha!”

  “You're laughing,” Ayula said. “But Herb Mask has no way of fighting two of those… giant… ah—ancestors’ blight.”

  “I told you!” Medi declared, tossing his entire bowl of grapes into the air. He jumped in front of Ayula and pointed at his face. “Didn’t I fucking tell you?”

  Ayula smacked his finger away. “You're spraying saliva, idiot.”

  Dolo whooped. “This means Herb Mask was pulling his punches all along! He killed two of those eels! And Fahptis couldn’t even handle one. He ran!”

  “It was a bad matchup,” Ayula retorted weakly.

  The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  “He literally dragged the fight out to embarrass Fahptis,” Dolo said. “He could have ended it in seconds!”

  Medi threw his hands in the air. “Ha ha! Herbivores for life!”

  “No,” Dolo and Ayula said at the same time.

  Ayula returned his gaze to the projection as Herb Mask looted the corpses, tearing out their embedded heartstones with just his hands. “Maybe…” Ayula grumbled. “Maybe my assessment of the guy was a little off—”

  “I can’t hear you?” Medi squawked with a hand cupping his ear as he approached.

  Dolo laughed, touching her forehead. “Three realms, Medi. I’m on your side, but you’re so annoying.”

  ***

  Caen pushed through the wall of fog and stepped onto the marshy soil of a wetland. The faux sky above was as bright as a clear noonday. The zone stretched out before him: clusters of thin trees, patchy ground, boggy land, and pieces of muddy water.

  “It’s toxic,” Goat Mask said, twirling a finger around. “The air.”

  The cloying scent of rot was prominent. Caen’s heart rate suddenly slowed down. He immediately paired his resilience with Blood-healing and used a spell to correct that.

  “Fuck,” muttered Jum, the other member of their party. An enchanted basket was strapped to his back. “So, what, Venefic zone?”

  “And Blood-healing,” Caen said, pointing at a group of beetles floating in a nearby pond. They were half as tall as he was, and their gray carapace bore the clear signs of necrosis. Their soul structures were frailer and duller than was usual for most living things. Their auras were abnormally still, not even a trace of movement. He felt an impression of ‘wrongness’ from it.

  “Undead,” Jum said, hefting his enchanted stone hammer.

  The creation of such was forbidden by law in Rialgar and several other parts of the world, as far as Caen knew.

  He noted many smaller beetles flying towards them. Undead as well. When he pointed them out, Goat Mask quickly slid his large metal canister around and concocted a pink-tinged gas within. He used this to burn down the beetles as they arrived.

  The first large beetle they encountered didn’t stop fighting even after Caen sliced it right down the middle. There was no blood either. More of these beetles attacked their group as they proceeded through the zone. Jum smashed them with his hammer; Goat Mask supported him by flinging Chymical solutions that ate through carapace. With a Kinesis spell, Caen plucked out the heartstones of the few undead that had any.

  As they moved through the zone, the afflictions got worse. Their limbs and body parts spasmed, there were aches in their joints and muscles, and their heart rates fluctuated dangerously.

  Caen couldn’t cast Blood-healing spells on his teammates as those would require physical contact; they were all wearing thick armor, even Goat Mask. Between resilience and the occasional Blood-healing spell, Caen was able to counteract a great deal of the zone’s afflictions, so most of the fighting fell to him. Jum and Goat Mask offered support every time they got swarmed by the undead beetles. Both of his companions could shield themselves while still fighting, which was a relief.

  Caen had tried using his spores on the undead, but they’d been unaffected by them, so he stuck with using Stormsong. The awakened weapon sometimes called out directions in combat, which Caen struggled to follow due to the fact that he was relying heavily on resilience in this zone, and thus lacked his other passive augmentations.

  Caen harvested more heartstones. He found a few red and orange ones—which granted immunity—and hauled those corpses to the others, so they could use the heartstones for themselves. Goat Mask used a few undead corpses to brew chymical solutions on the fly, which was fascinating to Caen. He could always ask his questions later.

  They came across a few Cullers, but were ignored: Cullers preferred to eliminate easier prey.

  Participants in larger groups than Caen’s drew even larger swarms to themselves. Many bowed out mid-combat or due to the afflictions in the zone. Some of the afflictions would stop once they left the zone, but others would only diminish over time.

  Close to the end of the zone, they were chased by an undead beetle the size of a house, along with many of the smaller beetles. Jum kept the smaller creatures off Caen while he cut down the large beast. It spat brown blobs of a toxic substance that reminded him of the ants in the Odaton-plane Plane. Whatever Caen couldn’t dodge, he blocked with Chasma, though he had to be careful, as a portion of his armor had a gash in it from his fight with Fahptis. After taking off the creature’s legs, he decapitated it. Removing its heartstone caused the squirming undead to grow still and begin to vanish.

  He retrieved the other heartstones, and they rushed towards a nearby totem pole, which was the anchor for a safe area. They walked right through the wooden structure and into an extradimensional space. All the afflictions disappeared as soon as Caen stepped into the safe area. It was cylindrical and framed by the totem pole. There were twenty-odd people in here right now, but the safe area could take about thirty-five participants at a time.

  “No mana here either,” Jum grunted as they huddled together on the floor.

  Caen checked for himself. He could not attune mana here. The announcer had warned them about this before the trial began. Mana efficiency was very important in this trial. He began stretching out Chasma to cover his sword arm. This would lower its overall density, but he needed the extra protection since his armor was damaged. He used his own Flora affinity to shape the fragment, so it was slow work.

  “Hey,” whispered a man with a long braided beard as he walked up to Caen's group. “I’ve been to the next three zones and back. For a few heartstones, I could fill you in.”

  Caen and the others ignored him; he eventually left. Aunt Vensha had told Caen that this was a frequent grift among participants in the third trial. There was no easy way of determining if he was telling the truth.

  After a few minutes of respite, they left the safe area and headed for the wall of fog up ahead. Several of Caen’s afflictions returned in full force, but he’d already used Blood-healing to take care of the more bothersome ones while they’d been resting. Caen tore through undead as they ran.

  Pushing past the wall of fog brought them into the next zone.