The arena was a few floors beneath the main spread of the palace complex and was an actual arena compared to the scattered training halls and sparring areas. This was a place designed to show off a battle as opposed to training or growing as a fighter. Glowing stones covered the ceiling and were placed strategically along the walls and in the raised seating to allow people to see the underground space. They’d designed and built an arena for more than one purpose, but the biggest one was for Kay to show off. Avalon was too new and expecting too much trouble for Kay to go around accepting challenges from the people who thought they could take what’s his and use them to show off his power, but there would be a time for that. Exhibition matches were also a consideration, which is what it felt like at that moment, even with the sparse audience.

Guildmaster Gemglass and her vice guildmaster sat on one of the balconies that overlooked the floor of the arena, and Eleniah, Amanda, and a handful of Blood Guard sat on another, including Lauren. Isla was somewhere in the spacious room, probably in the best spot to eavesdrop on the two Adventurer’s Guild leaders. On the floor of the arena, Kay stood facing Honor Rodriguez, who was getting herself ready. Most of her armor had already been on, but she’d needed to send someone to get her helmet and weapons. Apparently, she hadn’t been expecting to fight Kay right then and hadn’t brought a few things. Kay, on the other hand, had everything he needed on him, or technically in him.

Eleniah had agreed with his thoughts when it came to whether or not to fight Honor and had had a few thoughts of her own.

“Of course, you should. Not only are they offering you the secret to getting a rare Class we could use for more than just you, but she’s also a strong tier five! Fighting her will let you practice with your new Class against a new opponent, and you can try and level some Skills that will let you get your next one. In fact, focus on Shape Blood; that’s the Class we need for all three of your priorities. “

“What about her supposed Class? Isn’t she supposed to get stronger against someone every time she fights them?”

“So what? If that’s a problem, just think of another condition that they can give us. One fight isn’t going to turn her into a perfect counter against you, and even if it would, we can sick me or Meten on her. We just won’t ever fight her, so she won’t have any extra strength against us.”

“What should I ask for?”

“I don’t know; you knew about this Adventurer Class because of Outworlder knowledge; what else is there that you can get from them?”

In the end, there was nothing Kay could figure out or get Honor to admit to the existence of before it was time to fight, so they’d agreed that Honor and each of her parents would owe Kay one favor each. She insisted that her parents would agree, as long as the favors weren’t something insane or asking them to betray anyone, so Kay took her at her word. The favor of three tier-six people was worth one fight, and their somewhat nebulous control over the Adventurer’s Guild made it even more enticing.

The servant who’d gone off to fetch the rest of Honor’s gear returned and held her weapon and shield as she put on her helmet. The helmet was what Kay would call ’a bucket helmet’ with rounded sides and a flat top that sloped slightly forward. There was a thin mesh over her mouth and just enough of a slit in the visor to give her as wide a field of vision as possible without sacrificing protection. She slipped her shield on and accepted her weapon from the servant once her helmet was fully in place and gave the short spear a few jabs into the air. Ready, she set herself across from Kay and nodded once.

In response, Kay forced droplets of blood out through the pores in his skin, the tiny wounds left throughout his body healing behind as he sent mana through himself and activated Healthy Blood. Each droplet stretched and swept over Kay’s clothing before they solidified into armor. Following the style of his Blood Guard’s armor, Kay’s helmet was also a single featureless piece that left no hint of his identity if his opponent hadn’t just seen him without it on. His armor for combat departed from his Guard’s in other ways, though, being slimmer and fitting closer to his body while also having several larger designs across it. Kay had followed Eleniah’s orders to work on Shape Blood and had done his best to make the armor he created, this time more ornate, without weighing himself down too much or decreasing the effectiveness of the armor. Since he’d been thinking about the topic so much recently, he went with a stereotypical vampire motif, with stylized fangs curling up above and below his face and Gothic reminiscence designs trailing up his arms and legs. Centered on his chest was a large stylized bat with its wings spread.]

He knew that there wasn’t an association between bats and vampyr here, so he wasn’t surprised when Honor tilted her head to the side in confusion, unaware of why Kay would use that particular image. Continuing without pause, he placed both hands together and pulled them apart, gathering and solidifying blood there to make it look like he was summoning a halberd from thin air. Anyone aware of his Skills, which was everyone there, knew what he was doing, but it still looked cool. Lowering the weapon to point at his opponent, he waited for the signal to start.

“What’s he doing?” He heard Amanda whisper from up above them. “Why is there a bat on his chest?”

“Vampires are associated with bats back in his home world for some reason; I think that’s just the first thing he thought of when I told him to work on his Shape Blood Skill.”

“Oh, so he wasn’t trying to intimidate her with it? That’s good.”

Ignoring both Amanda’s rude comments and Eleniah’s annoying ability to read his mind, he concentrated on the warrior across from him.

“Ready?” The arena’s caretaker asked from the raised platform near the center of the field.

They both nodded.

“Then fight!”

Honor pulled her shield up, the massive slab of metal covering more than half her body as she slowly advanced, shield raised.

Everything they knew about Honor’s Classes was that she got stronger the more she fought against an opponent, so Kay wanted to end the fight fast. Summoning a full body’s worth of blood from inside his spatially expanded veins, he threw all of it at her. The liquid spread like a net and wrapped around her, climbing around and under her limbs and trying to work its way through the gaps in her armor. She thrashed and struggled against it as Kay sent it burrowing deeper.

His eyes narrowed as he focused on trying to smother her. The armor was obviously enchanted since he wasn’t able to force a single drop through what should have been penetrable gaps, and she was still managing to swing her arms and legs through the liquid mass even as Kay worked to thicken it. He clenched a fist and started to solidify it into a solid prison.

A sudden surge of mana flooded through her limbs, and Honor threw them outward, releasing a blast of force that burst the hardening blood bubble around her and turned most of it into mist. She landed on her feet and dashed toward Kay, shifting her grasp on her spear to bring it down in a powerful stab. Kay reached out and grabbed it, using his armor to reinforce his arm and Blood Boost to match her strength as he wrapped his fingers around the shaft and pushed the point away from his body. Wrenching her attack to the side, he shortened his halberd and shifted it into a sword before bringing it back across her in a backhanded slash. She pulled her shield up and blocked the slash without an issue before ripping her weapon out of his grasp and coming back in at him.

They traded a few more ineffectual blows before Kay decided to back off and keep using his more magical abilities on her. As much as he wanted to work on his weapon Skills, he wanted to win more. Dropping under a thrust at his head, he liquefied a portion of his shoulder armor and sent a fire-hose-worthy blast into her chest and knocking her back. He molded an array of pointed armor-piercing darts in the air and sent them flying at her in waves. Honor hunkered behind her shield and tanked through the attack as she inched closer to every opening she got, but soon Kay was surrounding her in projectiles from every direction.

“This is why I hate fighting manipulators!” She suddenly shouted, “It’s too easy for you to surround me!”

A light blue glow lit up her armor and shield, and the darts that had been slamming into her started getting deflected as a protective field sprang up over her armor. She swung her shield up over her head, and another surge of energy flowed through her into her shield, then detonated in a pulse that swept out and destroyed the swarm of darts that were flying toward her. She slammed it down into the rock surface and charged forward, dragging a line in the floor of the arena as her shield began to grow, doubling then tripling in size as she tried to ram him.

Flooding his legs with hyper-oxygenated blood and mana, Kay leapt over the expanded tower shield right before she slammed it into him. She drew it back and prepared to smack him with it when he landed, but contrary to her expectations, he didn’t come back down, instead darting through the air to the other side of the arena before landing gracefully.

“You can fly? No, wait, you’re just controlling your armor and getting it to hold your weight in the air.” He could hear her scowl as she stomped in his direction, “Doesn’t that cost a shit ton of mana, though?”

Kay grinned under his helmet, not bothering to confirm her guess. It was mana intensive to life something else up using his blood. Something about using it as a cheat’s telekineses made it much harder, probably because the System didn’t want people to ignore entire branches of Classes. But with his new tier five Class and the general mana cost reduction that came with it, he was able to float himself short distances. He was pretty sure that the Class also made it so “cheating” was easier as long as he did it to himself, but he didn’t have any way to confirm that.

“This is going to be such a slog,” Honor sighed as she lined up to come after him again, “How are you so nimble? That’s not the kind of fighter I pegged you as.”

“Why would I fight the way you want me to?” Kay asked, deciding to actually respond, “I’m quite versatile.” He held out his hands, and floating balls of blood started gathering together as a pool of blood seeped out from under his feet. Simulacra rose out from the pool, faceless approximations of his own body, that reached up and grabbed the weapons he shaped out of the floating spheres. “I don’t even have to be alone if I don’t want to.”

“Dammit!” Honor swung her spear and bisected one of the simulacra that were charging her with no regard for defense, the easily sacrificed manufactured fighters trying to dogpile her at the cost of their own lives. Kay created more and more soldiers, arming them as they arose, even as he kept an eye on where the blood from the destroyed ones landed, planning out traps as the ground was stained with more and more blood.

“Argh!” Another flash of light traveled up Honor’s spear as she thrust it forward, and the energy split into a bouquet of spearheads that punctured everything close to her, turning Kay’s simulacra into dripping pincushions. With a second of breathing room, she flexed her whole body and shouted. Her spear grew into a huge pike, but it stayed proportional to her as the rest of her grew with it, just as her shield had earlier. In a flash, she went from a few inches shorter than Kay to almost too tall to fit in the arena, with the top of her helmet almost scraping the roof. She lifted up her foot and stomped down on the last simulacra near her crushing it into paste on the ground.

“Let’s see how you deal with me now!” She bellowed as she charged, the ground shaking beneath them with each gigantic footfall.