Valdan stood with a sword covered in blood. Despite how many times he’d swung it in an arc, he just couldn’t get rid of the blood.

  Heaving, he took in his surroundings. The black sand was not stained with blood as he had expected. For some reason, the sand seemed to absorb all the blood. Whenever the blood touched the sand, it barely lasted long enough to be noticed, disappearing as if it had never been.

  However, while the sand absorbed the blood, it did not absorb the corpses.

  And five littered the ground.

  His stamina running terribly low, Valdan faced his remaining enemies. Taract stood with a half-burnt face, a sneer on his lips, and bleeding from a sword wound to the shoulder. Farog stood beside him with his glaive in hand. To Valdan’s satisfaction, the man could barely hold it up. Finally was the woman named Enna.

  Valdan watched them warily. While his mana was running low, he surprisingly had more stamina than mana. His class wasn’t very mana intensive but with all the moving around and ducking and dodging, he’d expected to have less in that category.

  “Farog dies next,” Valdan said simply.

  Farog’s glaive wavered at Valdan’s words. Its blade tipped down, landing on the sand. The man tried to act it off as simply a different method of holding the weapon. But Valdan had been in enough fights to know that fear had weakened him further.

  “You’re one to talk,” Taract said. “Keep pretending to be alright. It will make your death sweeter.”

  Valdan kept his annoyance from his face. Taract was right. He was weak as well. Taract had found a gap in his defense and had driven one of his daggers into his side. And Farog had given him quite the terrible cut to his back.

  Valdan was still bleeding from both wounds, and his interface had informed him of his health stat dropping below forty-five percent not too long ago.

  Luckily for him none of the injuries were fatal. But they were injuries that would kill him if they were not healed early enough.

  I have to end this fast.

  “I’m out of mana,” Enna said suddenly.

  Judging from how heavily she was breathing, she was most likely significantly low on stamina as well.

  “And you thought it was wise to announce that?” Taract asked in disgust.

  Enna shot him a glare. “The knight should be out, too.”

  “He’s a knight,” Taract snorted. “Out of mana just means that he doesn’t have access to one of many weapons. Keep your head on straight.”

  Taract wasn’t wrong. The truth was that what made a knight different from a normal soldier or even the citizens of Bandiv was simple. Most people, criminals and innocent alike, only knew how to fight with their skills.

  Children were not trained to fight before gaining their interface, and the average person was not strict enough or foolish enough to dedicate their time to learning how to fight without using their skills. Why? Because unless your life depended on it at all times, it was foolish.

  “What if you run out of mana and can’t use your skills?” Valdan had asked a soldier once upon a time when he’d been younger. “It only makes sense to learn it.”

  The soldier had sighed. “What’s your weaker arm?”

  Valdan had raised his left hand.

  “And are you good with it?” the soldier had asked.

  At the time, Valdan had not been, and he had replied with the truth. “No.”

  “But what if you lose your right arm?” the soldier had asked.

  Valdan, knowing the question had been rhetorical, had given no answer. That conversation had summed up the reason people didn’t learn to fight without their skills. Unless you lived a life that had you fighting against people every day, which was rare and mostly common among knights and soldiers, focusing on how to attain full combat capabilities without your skills was as important as learning how to use your weaker limb.

  And if for some reason you were an adventurer, there was still no reason to learn how to fight unarmed and without your skill. After all, what were you going to do when your skills ran out? Fight a monster with your bare hands?

  No.

  The inability to fight fully without skills, while not very smart, was not unreasonable. But right now, it seemed his opponents were suffering the ‘not very smart’ part of it.

  “We should call a truce,” Farog said. “None of us are in a condition to fight.”

  Taract turned an incredulous look on him. “Did you already forget the reward for victory?”

  “There is no reward if we die.”

  “And you think the king is just going to let us walk free?” Taract asked, jabbing a disrespectful finger in Brandis’ direction.

  Enna looked to the king before returning her attention to them. “I’d rather just go back to my cell,” she said, with a touch of fear in her voice.

  Taract scowled at his companions. “I can’t believe this. This is why that fool looked down on us. This is why he only expected us to tire him out.”

  Fool?

  New worry sprouted to life in Valdan’s heart.

  There’s someone else.

  He didn’t know if he had it in him to handle someone else. He was confident that he could kill the remaining three in front of him and escape a new enemy. But with no chance of escape left to him, he doubted escape would be possible.

  I have Aiden’s technique.

  But even as the thought bubbled in his head, he knew that he barely had it. The technique took a lot of stamina from him. And right now, he wasn’t even sure that he had enough mana to use the technique designed to face multiple opponents.

  “All of us will fight here,” Taract said. “And the knight will perish. Then we can go back to our lives of freedom.”

  “And you believe the king will just let us be?” Farog asked in disbelief. “I know what you did, Taract. Do you believe the king will allow a man like you free?”

  Taract smiled something dangerous. “He swore a system-oath. He does not have a choice.”

  Valdan’s jaw dropped. Just how deeply was the king willing to punish him? Just how deeply did the king want him dead?

  There was no one alive that did not know that you did not swear a system-oath so casually. It was madness.

  This is madness.

  “I still say that we bargain,” Farog insisted. “Sir knight, what say you?”

  Valdan had taken the slight reprieve to catch his breath. He had regained a small portion of his stamina, something too insignificant to truly matter. Still, he breathed less like a man about to pass out from a loss of stamina and more like a man who’d just run a race and was preparing for the next one.

  “What say me?” he asked with a voice as calm as he could muster.

  “A truce,” Enna offered, supporting Farog to Taract’s dismay. “We call an end to it here. We go back to our life in prison and you go back to your life doing whatever you want.”

  “This is madness!” Taract hissed. “You would deny yourselves a chance at freedom?”

  Farog rounded on him, snatching him up by the fabric of his shirt with one hand. “I will grant myself a chance at living!”

  Valdan took a deep breath and let it out. He still had enough mana for a few more skills. And, surprisingly enough, the whisps of yellow sword apparitions hadn’t stopped blinking in and out of existence. He could still see them. He could still study them.

  But they held little of his attention now.

  “I’m sorry,” he said finally.

  Taract smiled in triumph. “You heard the knight,” he said, laughing at Farog. “He’s sorry. He has no intentions of letting us live.”

  Valdan watched Farog and Enna’s faces fall.

  “Must we do this?” Enna asked. She gestured sharply at the corpses that littered the grounds. “Must you continue trying to kill us? You know it makes you no better than the very people you put away for killing those weaker than them.”

  Enna had killed her family the moment she’d gotten her class. Father, mother and brothers. Investigations had proven that they had not been a good family to her during her childhood. They had been… terrible. A family not fit for any kind of child.

  During her capture, there had been debates about whether the massacre of her family had been justified. Perhaps she would not be in this situation if that had been her only crime. Unfortunately, she had gone on to become something of a vigilante, killing families of children she thought were being oppressed. Then she’d gone the extra mile of killing families that did not stand up for their oppressed child, regardless of whether they could or not.

  So now here she was.

  “I cannot allow you walk out of here alive,” Valdan said simply. “It is not permitted.”

  “Permitted by who?” Enna spat. “Your king?”

  Valdan sighed. “He is system sanctioned, child,” he said. “He is the king of Bandiv.”

  Enna’s eyes widened in anger. “Child?!”

  “He called you a child,” Taract laughed.

  Enna was at least as old as Valdan. She’d been killing for a very long time before she’d been caught. From what he knew, she had skyrocketed to level forty-nine—an impressive feat if you were not killing people—in two years. Sadly, it took more than just killing to get to level fifty.

  In summary, she was not a child.

  I guess Lord Lacheart is rubbing off on me.

  “You know what?” Enna snarled in anger. “I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

  With negotiations obviously at a failure, Valdan took his stance. “Killing you will bring me no joy.”

  Taract looked at Farog who still had his shirt in his hand. “Can you unhand me so we can achieve something useful here now?”

  With a frown, Farog released him.

  “This isn’t over,” Farog said. “We will have words if we survive this.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Taract said, nonchalant. “We really won’t.”

  Farog frowned. “We—”

  Taract stabbed him in the jaw with one of his daggers. It was a straight path, the weapon’s blade going in from beneath the mouth, under his jaw, to disappear into his head.

  Farog’s eyes rolled up into the back of his head and the man's life was gone.

  Enna jumped away, putting significant distance between him and her. “What the hell?!”

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  Taract withdrew his blade and Farog’s lifeless body crumpled to the ground. “And then there were three.”

  Valdan could not say that he was surprised. Trusting Taract was one of the worst things a fellow human being could possibly do in their lifetime.

  “Control your fear, Enna,” Taract said, casually cleaning the blade of his dagger on his pants. “I’m not going to kill you.”

  Valdan took the moment to look up at Brandis. His king seemed completely unbothered by what was happening. Instead, King Brandis had a thoughtful finger against his mouth while he stared at Valdan.

  Something beyond Valdan’s understanding was going on and it worried him that King Brandis was not bothered by whatever was happening here.

  Elaswit, however, looked visibly appalled.

  …

  “What is the meaning of this, father?” Elaswit demanded. “Why are you doing this to Sir Valdan?”

  “Because he was dishonest. Disloyal.” Her father didn’t seem in the slightest bit bothered.

  “Don’t lie to me,” she told him. “You lie to Derenet, but don’t lie to me.”

  “First of all,” her father’s finger remained against his lips as he spoke, “I do not lie to your brother. I keep secrets from him. There’s a difference.”

  “And me?”

  Her father spared her a brief glance. “I keep secrets from you, too, Witty.”

  As much as Elaswit loved her father’s nickname for her, she disliked it when he called her by it in public. But that wasn’t what this was about. Her annoyance could wait.

  “I can see your foot tapping like a dancer, father,” she pointed out. “Something is afoot.”

  Her father glanced down, and his foot stopped tapping. He looked at her from the corner of his eye. “Something is afoot? Because my foot was tapping? Good one, I’ll give you that.”

  Elaswit’s displeasure deepened. Despite what her father said, a play on words had not been her intention.

  “What are you doing to Sir Valdan, father?” she demanded. “This is not like you. And Aiden will not be happy to find out. What happens if he barges in here?”

  “Lord Lacheart will not suddenly barge in here,” her father said casually, while Valdan and the two men and the woman remaining in the arena continued to face off against each other. “He does not know of this place.”

  “Aiden knows far more than we give him credit for,” Elaswit pointed out.

  Her father took his finger from his lips. “You are right. He has always proven to be quite… resourceful. Too resourceful. Almost as if someone…” he shook his head as if dispelling the thought. “No. It’s not possible.”

  “Maybe your ‘advisor’ has been telling him things,” Elaswit suggested, knowing very well that she was being derailed from the initial problem.

  “You and I both know that he is not my ‘advisor.’”

  “But you won’t tell me what he is.”

  This time, her father turned his head to look at her. “Maybe if you inherit the crown, you’ll get to know, as I did.”

  Elaswit frowned. She didn’t want the crown. Now more than ever.

  Looking away from her, her father let out a tired sigh, placing his finger back to his lips. Elaswit knew what he wanted to say and really hoped that he would not.

  “What the hell?” Elaswit gasped as one of the men in the arena stabbed the other in the head.

  Down in the arena, Valdan turned and looked up at them, unbothered by what had just happened in front of him.

  “Why is this happening, father?” Elaswit asked. Her demanding tone was gone now. In its place was the worry she’d had for Valdan since the beginning. The same worry she’d had when he’d been cut, burnt, and stabbed.

  The same worry she’d had as he’d taken life after life.

  “There’s no way Valdan deserves this,” she pressed. “Not for something as simple as dishonesty.”

  Her father said nothing. He simply watched the arena with squinted eyes, as if seeing something he was trying to decipher.

  Terrifyingly enough, the man who had just killed his companion was also the one who had given Valdan the hardest time in the entire fight.

  “Stop this, father,” Elaswit pleaded. “If you do this, you will make an enemy of Aiden Lacheart.”

  “I am doing this because of Aiden Lacheart.”

  “How?”

  In the arena, the remaining man and woman went after Valdan. Unlike what had happened for most of the fight, skills did not fly. The arena did not grow slightly colorful in any way. They used nothing but their weapons, surviving as best they could.

  Valdan stood his ground. The lady fought like a savage beast who had surrendered herself to the truth of death. The man smiled as he darted in and out of Valdan’s reach, trying and failing to land a blow while escaping Valdan’s sword by the skin of his teeth.

  “Lord Lacheart is at level forty-nine, Witty,” her father said. “Level forty-nine. He has become Valdan’s equal in level, and Valdan believes that his skills are significantly superior to his peers. We’ve even seen it firsthand. What do you think that means?”

  “That we have a powerful ally,” Elaswit said, knowing that it was the wrong answer.

  “That is an honest way to look at it,” her father said. “Sadly, all it means is that Aiden Lacheart is powerful, not that we have a powerful ally. And of everybody walking upon the face of Nastild, Sir Valdan is the only one he trusts. The only one that can keep him in check.”

  A part of Elaswit’s heart dropped at her father’s words. Even though she knew it to be true, a part of her had always hoped that she would’ve succeeded in becoming Aiden’s friend. What Aiden did not know was that before she had spoken to him, she had met with the rest of the summoned.

  He had only been the last to meet her because his situation was special, different from that of his peers, and she did not want to do anything to put her on the bad side of her father and his advisor.

  And very much unlike Aiden, the other summoned had treated her as any subject would treat a princess. All of them except Lord Lacheart the older. For some reason, he’d treated her as a nuisance.

  Elaswit gestured at the fight. “What does Sir Valdan keeping him in check have to do with this?”

  “In a few months, Aiden will be significantly more powerful than Sir Valdan,” her father said. “When that happens, who will keep Aiden in check?”

  “You will allocate another knight to him.” The answer was quite simple.

  But her father shook his head. “To do that will be to tell him that we wish to keep him in check. Aiden might not be an ally, but he is definitely not an enemy. If he finds out that we are trying to keep him in check, he will become an enemy. We do not want that.”

  “So you kill his friend?”

  Her father turned to her with a very fond smile. “You remind me of myself from when I was younger. Simple, straight to the point. The political machinations your mother has led me to understand, absent in your eyes." He paused. "I miss it.” Then he placed a soft hand on her face. “You are my daughter.”

  And mother wishes to make me just like her.

  “Father,” Elaswit pressed.

  Her father took his hand from her face as Valdan cleaved the right arm of the woman from her body. Her arm went flying and the black sand absorbed the blood that sprayed from the injury as quickly as it dropped.

  The woman panicked, dragging herself across the ground. There was terror in her eyes as she tried to survive. Valdan’s expression was empty. There was no pity on his face as he turned his attention on his other opponent.

  Even now, nobody used a skill. Elaswit knew that it was because none of them had the mana for it.

  “There are three types of people who step upon the threshold of level fifty,” her father said suddenly, eyes returning to Valdan’s struggle against one man with two daggers. “There are those who meditate upon it, learn it as one learns to control their emotions, picking and choosing what affects them and what does not. Then there are those who fight and struggle and push and pull. Those who only step upon it, kicking and screaming covered in someone else’s blood… something else’s blood.”

  He fell silent as suddenly as he had started talking. His eyes remained on Valdan, and Elaswit had a feeling her father wasn’t watching the fight. He was watching Valdan. Only Valdan.

  “He fights differently,” her father mused.

  Impatient, Elaswit pressed for more information. “And the third kind of people that reach level fifty?”

  Her father blinked, as if having forgotten the conversation only to be reminded.

  “The third are like your uncle,” he said. “Those who will themselves into the level. They realize that it is time to reach level fifty and they simply level up. They will the Manifesting Skill into being.”

  “And how did you get to level fifty?”

  “Valdan believes that he has no talent, stuck trying to get into level fifty for the longest time,” her father continued, ignoring her question. “But the truth is that his problem lies elsewhere. Since the arrival of the summoned, he has spent most of his time thinking and planning on how best to test Lord Lacheart. How best to grow him. The littlest time left to himself is spent training and trying to push himself into level fifty.” He smiled softly. “That is why he hasn’t stepped upon that threshold.”

  It felt sick and twisted to believe what she thought her father was trying to say. “So this is all to get him to level fifty?”

  “It is the path we walk, my child. The path of blood and rage. Valdan is still at level forty-nine because he hasn’t fought so hard that his life depends on it in a long time.” He looked at her. “His body has not seen what it can do when pushed beyond its limits.”

  “This isn’t pushing his body beyond its limits, father!” Elaswit objected even though she knew she was wrong.

  She just couldn’t stand the barbarism on display in front of her. People being forced to kill each other when they did not have to.

  A gasp escaped her lips when Valdan’s opponent slipped beneath one of his sword swings and stabbed him in the side, just below the ribs.

  Valdan let out a pained grunt that echoed through the entire amphitheater as he dropped to his knees. His opponent tried to pull his dagger free, but Valdan grabbed his wrist with one arm and punched him in the face with the other.

  The blow sent his opponent staggering and falling to the ground, leaving his weapon in Valdan’s side.

  Valdan rose to his feet. He let out a terrifying roar as he pulled the dagger from his side. Heaving terribly, covered in far too much blood, he tossed the dagger to the side, far away from him and his opponent.

  “He must want to live,” Elaswit’s father said to no one. He could as well be speaking to himself. “He must crave it. And if he has no will to live, then he must have the desire to outlive the enemies in front of him. He must reach from the brink of death to seize his enemy by the throat and pull him down first.”

  Elaswit felt nothing but disappointment and sadness. “That’s dark.”

  “We walk a path covered in blood and death, Witty. As bright as we make things seem, our lives are ultimately dark." Her father let out a sad sigh. "Our duty is to find beauty in the darkness.”

  In the arena, Valdan raised his sword one more time against his opponent.

  “Why?!” his opponent asked in confused rage. “Why won’t you just die!?”

  Valdan’s only response to him was silence. If Valdan had words, he could not say them.

  Nothing of what was happening felt like her father. Elaswit knew this as surely as she knew her youngest brother had a terrifying mind.

  “This was not your idea,” she blurted out to her father, knowing it to be true. “You would not think of doing such a thing.”

  Her father smiled sadly but said nothing.

  “This was mother’s idea,” Elaswit pressed. “She’s always the one concocting terrifying schemes. Schemes that bank on the heartless. And if not her, then it will be your advisor… but it can’t be him. He doesn’t care about someone as ‘insignificant as a [Knight of the Crown]’.”

  The day Elaswit had heard the old man say those words had been the day she’d understood that he was far more than just an advisor. No one honestly called a [Knight of the Crown] insignificant and meant it.

  Not even her mother. And her mother found a lot of things to be insignificant.

  Her father leaned forward suddenly with a frown on his lips, and Elaswit turned just in time to watch Valdan pierce his sword into the heart of his opponent. He pushed it in slowly, with much strain. It was a sign of how low his stamina or his health was running.

  Valdan stood over his opponent, as his blade forced the man to his knees. Blood spilled from the man’s lips as he looked up at Valdan with a terrified and bloody smile. Valdan stared into the man’s eyes as he pushed down on his sword with both hands, forcing the blade until it burst from the man’s back and pierce the sand.

  “You may have won this battle,” the man said in his dying moments. “But I have made sure that you will not win this war.”

  When he died, he simply went limp, held up by the friction of Valdan’s blade against his insides.

  “He didn’t achieve it,” Elaswit’s father said, his voice drowning in worry. “He didn’t reach level fifty.”

  He was leaning so far forward that his only options were to either get up or fall off his chair.

  “Your plan failed?” she asked.

  Her father’s brows were wrinkled with worry, his eyes wide with disbelief. “But it’s right there,” he muttered. “How has he not grabbed it. It’s staring right at him.”

  “Tell him.”

  “If I tell him, it won’t work.”

  “Well, the fight is over,” Elaswit said. “You’ll have to find another way to get him there. Preferably, something more humane.”

  Her father shook his head. The motion was so slow that it became gravely ominous. “The fight is not over.”

  Elaswit stared at her father. “What did you do, dad?”

  Her father’s face fell in resignation, and he sat back, defeated. “What I thought I had to.”

  “Whatever it is, you can still—”

  A voice pierced the silence of the death that had enveloped the arena. It was calm yet carried over the entire space even without the sound enchantments that normally conveyed sounds to those who sat higher up the amphitheater. It was gentle as well. Gentle but cocky.

  “So, this is what has become of you, Valdan of the slums.”

  Elaswit looked at her father in horror. “What have you done?”

  “What was necessary.” Her father sounded as if he was trying to convince himself. He sounded like a man who had made a mistake. Then he spoke again, muttering to himself. “What have I done?”

  Elaswit could not remember a time when her father had ever sounded as unsure of himself as he did in this very moment. The realization was dawning on him as Elaswit watched Derendoff, former [Knight], and attempted murderer of Aiden Lacheart, walk into the arena, great sword in hand.

  Derendoff held the great sword casually to the side, watching. He stepped forward, his feet carrying him slowly.

  He studied Valdan. “I can’t believe these halflings brought you down to this state.” He shook his head. “I always told the king that you were not worthy of the title he had given you. The title of [Knight], I could understand. A child from the slums elevating to become a knight? It’s a good motivational story for others from the slums. But a [Knight of the Crown], a title even I did not possess?” he scoffed. “It was disgusting. And now, here you are, proving my point.”

  Derendoff looked to the stands, to Elaswit and her father.

  “But he is still king,” he continued. “Despite his flaws and weaknesses, he alone is king.”

  Valdan kept his eyes on Derendoff as he pulled his sword from the corpse of the man he’d killed.

  “Is this why you are here?” Valdan asked. “To kill me out of jealousy? Is this why you waited to have me weakened before showing your face?”

  Derendoff sighed.

  He gestured to himself. “Level fifty-eight.” He gestured at Valdan. “Level forty-nine, because I do not believe that you have what it takes to cross the threshold. Believe me, I did not need to weaken you. I simply did not fight with them because they were nothing but lesser things than I am. I will not stoop so low.”

  Valdan nodded slowly as if he understood, then he shook his head. “Ever so blinded by your own hubris.”

  Derendoff scowled, then schooled his expression. “You have allowed your title get to your head. A sad thing. Still, you did hold the title, even if you did not deserve it.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “It means that,” Derendoff stabbed his sword in the ground, “even if you are not deserving of it, I will end your life with the strongest skill I have. I will show you what a Manifesting skill looks like. Go to the gods, knowing what you could not achieve.”

  Elaswit turned and grabbed her father’s arm. “Father, stop this!”

  “I cannot.” It was all the answer he could give. “I swore an oath. I thought he could do it. I thought…”

  Elaswit turned her attention back on Valdan. In his state, he could not win against a [Knight] above level fifty.

  I have to stop this. Elaswit stared at the arena. But how?

  Derendoff, for all his faults, would not kill a child of the king. The problem was about how quickly she could get to them.

  Derendoff raised his hand to the sky, fingers splayed. “Goodbye, Valdan.”

  To Elaswit’s surprise, Valdan did not look scared. He pulled himself to his full height, took in a deep calming breath and said, “I guess all things come to an end.”

  Then he took his stance.

  Elaswit’s father sat forward suddenly, confusion and shock on his face. “What the hell is that?”

  Valdan stood, his center slightly lowered. He had his legs placed firmly beneath him and held his sword back and away, sword arm extended behind him. It was a stance Elaswit had only ever seen on one person.

  Aiden Lacheart.

  What do you plan on doing, Sir Valdan?

  Derendoff held his hand to the sky and fixed Valdan with a condescending gaze. One word left his lips, and it heralded everything else.

  “Come.”

  Bleeding and dying, Valdan moved, vanishing from Elaswit's sight.