The dark ceiling above him was familiar, even as it remained shrouded and distant. Is everyone I meet here a fucking serial killer? Zahn’s thoughts remained dark as the early day’s light began to shine outside and his dim room slowly began to gain outlines and shades again. First was the village and they seemed normal. But no, real first contact was that group of horsemen and that dick who gave my Psychic. He blinked on the altar, cradling his head in both hands as he considered the idea. Wait so he used Mind Battle and I won, so I sent him off to nowhere and got the attack. When I used it on… her… she got the win when I knelt on purpose but I stayed in my head. So she was already expecting some kinda serial killer sneak attack when I was just talking to her, and the first humans I saw after Tutoralina were raiding and burning that village. Then the wizard and his tower, who acted like I was the fucking nutjob. He grimaced in the darkness at the memory, And then I stole his book anyways. Maybe he had a point.

Flicking his hand to summon the book in question, he opened his floating Grimoire’s pages to find the inscribed book within his book and its awaiting chapters. Trying to turn the inked pages by swiping his hands across them started flipping the drawing but after a few dozen turns it stubbornly stopped at the beginning of chapter three and displayed a message over the out-of-focus first page.

Please consult your Master for further instruction on: Shaping Spellforms, Magical Elements, Adjusting Spellforms, to continue your study.

Blinking at the error he’d forgotten before his cycle of life and death began back in the Dungeon, Zahn looked up from the book and found the clock in his eyes showing past six in the morning. Noise had begun to filter from outside his small safe room and he didn’t yet feel up to facing death once more. Sitting properly on his stone rebirth altar he pulled the tome closer and tapped at the error message. I do know a spellform, from that fire puzzle. Would shaping and adjusting be similar enough to something I can pull off already?

With his questions brimming at the top of his mind he flipped back through the pages to his Fire section and then past the rune he knew from the classroom. On the next two pages were a set of symbols with no accompanying text, inscribed with red lines that held their own inner light. The left page held the formula for magical fire being a triangle split into thirds, the top point holding the Magi shape meaning Fire-type mana, the right third’s sigil meaning air from the physical world, and the left point’s meaning heat of any kind. The triangle was wrapped in a circle of dashes and dots that slowly spun around the pattern as if reminding him the formula was there.

The page on the right held a larger and more complicated shape, a star sitting mostly in the bottom half of the page with its upper point stretching longer and directing the blast of the contained spell. Each point of the pentagram had curving lines etched thinner and lighter than the primary star, curving back and around to connect to other points in a consistent repeating pattern. Each of the points had its own symbol in it with several different modifiers and markings that Zahn didn’t understand from his Magi mastery yet regardless of how small they were written. Within the largest section sat the triangle of Fire he’d added back in the puzzle wall in order to activate the spell and shoot the raging floor boss they’d been trying to deal with at the time. Shaking his head to clear the memory he traced the shape with his fingers and felt each crimson stroke to be physically bumpy and even rough to the touch. Tracing the thinner and further away lines felt even smaller and fainter until he pressed too hard on a corner and his magic book gave him yet another surprise.

The entire five-pointed shape spun in place as if on a diagonal axis and quickly lost a recognizable star classification. The mass of lines and curves spun as a single unit over and over in place, mesmerizing the low-level as he tried to decipher how to read the spinning shape. After several rotations the pattern lost speed and began to settle into another shape, finally resting as something five-pointed and decked with several curving lines arcing all around back into the shape’s now different background. Each of the runes he’d recognized as within the points of the original shape were now seemingly scattered among the chaotic lines and the idea of drawing something like this became far more daunting.

Trying to push on a different corner had no effect until he felt a dribble of mana tumbling down his arm, and as the warm energy reached his fingertip the image began to spin an another axis again, turning without a breeze. Flipping the next few pages with a sigh he found the Psychic section and chuckled at the overly dramatic stylized drawing of a vertical eye on the first page.

Turning back to the Fire pages he found the images back to where they had started, pretending to be a star and everything. Opting to manage the triangle instead, Zahn stretched to stand from his cold stone seat and shuffled over to the dusty ground and knelt. Using the fire pages as a light, he dragged the Grimoire closer to the ground and began to sketch the Fire triangle large in broad strokes in the dust.

Crafting the straight lines was simple enough, but the finer Magi script began to make him reconsider his dusty medium. Removing dust pinch by pinch from the shapes became something he restored to before his own heavy breaths scattered the designs anyways.

“Argh! Just fuckin’ work!” Slamming a fist against the wooden floor caused a surge of dust he had to roll back from and try to cover his face with bare arms. With eyes tightly closed he felt heat rising in his face before the tingle of Mana Sight activating went off behind his lids and the world changed again.

As he sat on his heels trying to breathe in the dust cloud the solid stone of an Altar was glowing with power and gathering more from somewhere underground. His own bodily outline from laying on the rock was glowing blue as if hot in thermal vision, with the shape losing definition as it sank into the meter-high block and spread out like food coloring in a pitcher. Along with his apparent donation came lines of varying thicknesses trickling mana in from each direction underground, with each line shooting deep into the rock before branching outwards as they faded from view. The altar’s surface was covered in intricate engravings just below the top stone, sunk into the upper layers. The engravings encircled the complete inside edge and even marked the general regions of a human body with Magi runes and interconnecting spellform lines.

“Who knew altars were so complicated?” Zahn’s stupefied question was muttered into his own arms but still felt far too loud in his deadly environs as he brushed off the awe of magical rebirth. Rolling backwards again, he found his magic book within sight and found the thing to be glowing red brightly and floating on a basket of blue lines as it kept pace with him near the hip. His back found the doorway leading out, and crawling away from the dust cloud seemed as good an idea as any other at the moment. Scrambling to his feet as he found breathable air, the arena’s grounds were different than he’d last seen them.

In the center, where a wide stone circle embedded in the sand had marked his bouts with Burnato and his accidental round with a strange magic spider was being filled with a wooden platform in segments, each standing over five feet tall. The stage portions were being dragged into position and tied together at the legs before the next was bound in place, reminding him of temporary docks back home for summer lake adventures.

His floating magic book hovered into sight on his left, prompting Zahn to snatch it out of the air and close it before tossing it upwards to disappear. Each of the man-sized wooden doors in the wall stood wide open with fighters carrying various items in or out nearly everywhere. Even without being able to see past the wooden structure Zahn could see more people moving on this side of the arena than all the fighters he’d seen the day before combined. With all the bodies moving around, the lowbie couldn’t easily tell where he could hide from the next violent encounter and was debating a dash to the left when a voice found him.

“Oi, you! Where’s your post? No, nevermind. Where are your clothes?” Zahn’s eyes were drawn to the right where he saw the metal skull door also sat wide open and approaching him from its direction was a hairy man in loose clothes and holding a slab of wood in one hand and a pencil in the other. “I told that bloody Ringmaster to have his crew ready and able to work, why aren’t you outfitted already? First group yeah?” The barrage of questions had no end or bearing on the Player’s silence as the man scanned his wood block with pencil until he tapped at a spot with a nod.

“Ah, I see. You’re that fella who had a web accident? Gotta keep your attention on your surroundings, lad.” He squinted at the flabby single digit standing silently near the wall of the busy work area. “You don’t look dead. Or like a level twenty-three. I don’t care, just do your job. Find your group leader and report in, flattened fella,” the man’s dismissal was as abrupt as his arrival, pointing with his board in the other direction and letting Zahn glimpse a list of names sorted into groups carved into the plank. Looking in the direction he was pointed, he found the door immediately left of the animal gate had the least amount of foot traffic and smallest members moving through it.

He nodded back at the apparent foreman who had already turned away and was muttering about ‘crazy gladiators’ before walking carefully across the stream of traffic past one doorway and into the next. Past the door sat a short hallway ending in a circular room with a sunk in seating area around a fire pit and a series of exits surrounding the hub. Bodies walked past in the arena without pausing at the lowbie’s explorations so he took the opportunity and slipped inside the common area to try and find something that would fit him.

The first doorway led to a dark cell that almost fit the description of a bedroom but felt cramped and carried a strange vinegar smell. The second and third rooms had similar issues, until he found the fourth had a closed and locked door and the fifth finally bore evidence of use. Straw lay scattered around the floor and a desk complete with wooden chair was bolted to the wall across from an actual bed. Between the two furnishings sat a closed chest with what looked like a sock caught in the lid hanging out the side. Jackpot.

Entering the room and opening the clothes chest, Zahn found it mostly empty and had less than a complete outfit waiting inside. He found the only pair of pants and pulled them on, grumping at the poor fit leaving his shins bare. The box lacked a proper shirt but he found a strange thin poncho and drew it over his bare back. Almost like a real human, he mused silently. Leaving the room and closing the door behind him, the Player stalked back through the common area on bare feet and spied into the main arena to try and get an idea of what to do next.

Sunlight streamed over the wall above him, filling the circular sandy area with bright yellow light that made the tired wooden segments the fighters were hauling around look polished. Groups of muscular men pushed against wooden struts or pulled on ropes in teams to move the raised platforms around and fill the inner circle with a taller circular stage, for what performance he couldn’t begin to guess. Outside the central stone circle, the four smaller combat rings he saw so heavily used yesterday were going ignored and even used as staging areas to assemble the next few pieces.

It was during his careful monitoring of the workforce outside that his solo adventure came to an end, and he was spotted by one of the armored men from that dawn. Three the axe-wielding psychopath shouted something Zahn couldn’t make out but noticed as the long weapon waved through the air and pointed at his hiding place. From on top of the stage several bodies straightened up to reveal not only Burnato but also the scythe woman in her dress and the foul chubby Ringmaster who had directed Zahn to die.

The shorter angry man yelled something and waved, which prompted the scythe bearer to grin and leap into the air, clearing an impossible height of well over thirty feet before landing in front of his doorway in a plume of sand and dust. The Player fell back from the exit with wide eyes as she neared and pointed her blade at him.

“I’ve been hearing a lot about you, little pest,” her grin matched the light and charming tone of her voice, but the unsteady stare in her eyes made the lowbie wish he was back underground. “And now my Master is very interested in that projection trick you manifested last night. Were you trying to climb out?”

Zahn’s light was slowly cut off as she was joined by the hammer man in the doorway, who pointed with the polearm he’d used to kill Z just hours ago. “Well damn, he is back! C’mon, no point in dragging it out.” For someone who casually murdered his conversation partner before breakfast, Hammer’s tone was genial and calm as if talking to an old friend being stubborn. “If the boss lets One of her leash, you won’t respawn painlessly ever again. Know when you gotta play along, my man.” Keeping his hammer behind him, the man leaned in and extended his open hand as if their last meeting hadn’t ended in murder.

Glaring at the offered hand up, the Player stood and brushed off his strange shirt to nod at the pair and silently follow them towards the wooden construct. Being led past the bustle of busy work made him feel better about finding clothes, and it was easy to see the horde of workers scurrying around the sands ducking past his guards as if the numbered fighters were some menacing threat. Glancing between the pair that were apparently named after odd numbers, he could see no level above either and the woman dubbed ‘One’ had a brighter red skull for her level than Three did. He refocused forwards and tried to use his Observe on her, but aside from a smirk back towards him the Ability seemed to fail.

Walking up the only finished set of steps allowed the Player to appreciate the scale of the fighting stage they were setting up around him. If he guessed the circular prison to be a good nine hundred paces around then the arena filled up at least two thirds of the circle’s area, with the stage rising more than a man’s height above the sand providing a great view of the seats above the foreboding stone wall. The seats were crude wooden benches that he’d expect to see in re-education yards, and similar to the ones he’d seen at the Temple he was respawned at back in Twin Towns. Back before the Guild and their love of stabbing me in the back…

Internally grumbling at his own reflections, the Player grouched at the lavishly dressed man leaning over a table set onto the wooden stage. The man who Zahn assumed was the Ringmaster was decorated in half a suit that looked spun from a red silk and hanging beneath the coat a long robe covering his feet. The red outfit had layers of an undervest and tie in varying dyes and his thick fingers bore gem studded gold rings on each finger as they stabbed at what seemed to be a roster.

“So, my little pissant intruder has a projection trick, I hear.” His voice remained the same as back in the altar room, even if the temper fueling it seemed to have faded. He looked up from his table to glare at the lowbie and his escort standing on the far side. “You even stole his clothes. Do your kind honestly have no respect for the dead?”

Zahn’s eyes flickered from one fighter to the next looking for a clue. With stony faces meeting him at each angle, he opted to ask the obvious. “What dead?”

The Ringmaster straightened up with a growl as he kneaded his back. “My reports are thorough. The capture team returned before dawn to find you pinned to the wall at the gate, trying to escape. You summoned a projection of the spider from yesterday to do so and became caught in your own trap.” His steady gaze prompted Zahn to blink and he smirked as if having won a point. “Not only did you mock the fallen with your little performance, you became trapped in the same way he died. Fitting for a filthy Player like yourself.”

Zahn ignored the stifled gasps and muttering around him as he tried to puzzle together what he’d learned. “So that guy who Burnato let get hit by spiderwebs died? And you think I had something to do with it. Bullshit. Hell, I don’t even-”

Before he could finish explaining how the purple magic was a mystery, he heard a rustle of cloth and felt a body pressed against his back and something cold against his neck. Blinking at the sudden change he saw the Ringmaster holding up a single finger and glaring silently at him. The man’s stillness seemed to fill the area before he spoke, breaking the spell.

“One of my promising young fighters suffocated yesterday. It was not the fault of any other fighter, and his killer was killed in turn. We held a service for him, after which the esteemed Burnato found you skulking around where the monster was slain, before being found again later with a magical copy of that same monster. Your disgrace and lies cannot be overlooked, but I am willing to be lenient.”

The fat man lowered his finger and Zahn felt the dress of One slide aside as she glided away on silent steps. He rubbed at his exposed neck as the Ringmaster continued his speech under the hot sunlight.

“I will make use of you. You break in and antagonize, cause chaos. I will give you a choice,” he leaned against the table again and poked at the roster with a finger. “You will create projections for my men to train with. You will create them to be challenging but not able to inflict serious wounds on my men. We will supply you with several live specimens to sample before creating various projections, and you will maintain these projections for as long as we require. You will do this,” He raised his voice to drown out Zahn sputtering about how he didn’t know how, “or you will take the place of those projections! I know your kind will return until you’ve been reduced to nothing, and I will make use of your extended life.

“You will stand against my fighters and give them something to defeat so that their Skills may grow. Men training to fight men cannot perform at their peak besting mere beasts. If you refuse to create copies of beings so my gladiators can spend their time training instead of catching, then you will become the target for my champions.” He smirked as Zahn tried again looking around the arena for an escape. “I feel rather generous giving you this choice, considering the amount of hassle you’ve already caused for me. Become useful, or I will make you into something useful. You cannot replace my missing fighter but you can die for my men.”

Zahn didn’t see a quest offer arrive, nor did the individual colors for the fighters’ name plates change from neutral to friendly. Looking around at the people standing on the stage he saw a number of men dressed in construction gear and carrying simple hammers staring at the group with wide eyes, abruptly turning away or looking busy as his eyes found them. Returning to the table and the paunchy crimson Ringmaster, the custom found himself wishing for something devastatingly clever to say.

“You don’t have a quest to offer me?”

The fat man scowled as if stung. “I am not going to offer you money or experience you insolent pest. This is the only way you stay alive and I regret making the offer already. Take him below, let the little puke feed the Fodder until he gives the right answer.”