Valdan grunted as he ran into a tree, shoulder first.

"Fuck," he swore as he turned himself away from the tree, rolling off its bark.

Aiden ignored Valdan's word. The knight rarely swore. Now, it happened quite often. It seemed like the time he was spending with him and his brother was corrupting him in his own way.

Ted shot out of nowhere. His feet slammed into a different tree, and he jumped off it, throwing himself to the ground. Hitting the ground in a roll, he threw himself back up. Both trees shook from the impacts, their leaves falling to the ground.

Ted looked back when he got up to his feet.

"Close or far?" he asked, eyes scanning the trees.

"Less questions," Aiden said, walking past him. "More running."

Valdan followed him, panting. "How are those things so fast?"

They'd been sprinting for three hours straight. They hadn't gotten any time to rest, and Ted was suffering from it the most.

"How are you keeping up?" Ted asked as they all fell into a jog. "You don't have a combat class."

The wind rushed past Aiden's ear as he ran, almost cutting out Ted's words. But he heard his brother loud and clear. He also heard the sharp and quick footsteps behind them. The creatures that were chasing them were getting closer.

Aiden's breath came in sharp, ragged gasps as his feet pounded against the soft, uneven forest dirt. The thick underbrush tangled around his legs as he ran, but he pushed through it, muscles burning with the effort. Sunlight filtered through the canopy of leaves above. Each ray cast shifting patterns of light and shadows across his path. Everything was trying to be a distraction, even the thick smell of damp leaves and tree barks tickled at his nostrils.

Beside him, Ted and Valdan kept up with him. Their feet crashed against the ground in a chaotic rhythm, loud even in his own ears. Valdan was breathing harder than Ted, despite his class being more fit for stamina demanding activities than Ted's.

Aiden's eyes darted ahead, scanning the dense trees for whatever new path they could take, but every path seemed to be the same as forests tended to be.

He dodged a tree as he ran.

"This is all your fault."

Aiden spared a quick moment to look to his side. He found Ted keeping pace with him on top of something that looked like a sabertooth if it was a leopard and not a tiger. Its entire structure was built for speed instead of strength.

Ignoring his brother, Aiden pushed himself faster. [Weave of Lesser Speed] was currently keeping him at equal pace with Valdan, but the weaving was running out. This was his fifth instance of using it in the last three hours. He didn't want to think of using another [Weave of Lesser Stamina].

"Your plan was shit!" Ted snapped, still keeping pace.

Aiden's plan wasn't shit, and they all knew it. Something had just gone wrong.

"How was I supposed to know that they could run for three hours straight," he shot back. In fact, he was completely dumbfounded that the monsters had not lost interest in them at this point.

He could still hear their feet as they scrambled after them. They were fast and determined. Aiden hadn't known Salamanders to hold a grudge this deeply.

Suddenly the ground beneath them seemed to shake. Guttural growls rippled through the air, chilling Aiden's blood. His head snapped around, his eyes wide with worry. They needed to run faster. Then their pursuers came into view.

All eight Salamanders scurried around the trees, limbs moving so fast it was hard to keep track of every step they took. Each one was fourteen feet long and came up to Aiden's chest.

"I do not think this is the time, Lord Lacheart," Valdan said from Aiden's side, running faster. "We made some mistakes and now here we are. How could we have expected them to be so fast."

Ted shot Valdan a baleful look but didn't say anything. Then, as if changing his mind, he scowled.

"How could we have known they would be this fast?" he asked. "Gee, I don't know Valdan, maybe when we saw one swallow a diving bird with nothing but a very quick snap of its neck."

"Reaction speed does not entail movement speed, Lord Lacheart." Valdan was panting now, struggling to get his breath out.

Aiden had a feeling the man's stamina was running low.

"New plan," he announced, more than happy to stop Valdan from talking.

"You owe me three gold coins if this one doesn't work," Ted muttered.

"One gold coin," Aiden corrected, ducking just in time to avoid a low hanging branch. "Up the highest tree you can find, now."

"They can climb trees," Ted pointed out, but his eyes were already on the trees around them.

"I'm very much aware," Aiden said, then leapt high.

[You have used skill Leap]

He grabbed onto the body of the tree he'd leapt towards and held on. Friction proved to be his ally, and he did not immediately start sliding down.

The salamanders passed beneath the tree. But one did not ignore him. It threw itself straight into the tree, shaking it violently. Aiden's grip waned but he held on tight.

He turned his head as another Salamander slammed into the tree from another angle. A glance showed him Valdan climbing frantically up a tree. Ted was already perched at the top of his own tree, resting casually on top of a gorilla-like summoned creature.

In the past month, Ted had gained an array of summoned creatures and had learned to switch them out quickly and almost randomly. Aiden had once watched him win a fight by switching between six summoned creatures of different kinds and specifications. The only downside to his summoned creatures was that their levels were all lower than his by at least ten levels.

"TED!" Aiden bellowed, drawing Ted's attention along with that of a few Salamanders on the ground.

"WHAT?" Ted shouted back amidst the sounds of Salamanders crashing into the trees while a few began the terrifying task of climbing.

Aiden ignored the climbing Salamanders and pointed downward. "I need something with a poison mist ability down there now!"

Ted cocked a brow. "Really?"

"I'm not repeating myself."

Ted frowned for a moment before holding down his hand to the gorilla carrying him. Aiden's brows furrowed at the action, wondering what was going on. He got his answer when the gorilla raised a clawed finger and slashed Ted's palm.

Ted winced and smacked the summoned creature on the head. "Are you trying to cut my hand in two?" he snapped at it.

"Sorry," he added to Aiden. "It doesn't know its own strength."

Aiden gave him an incredulous look. "That is definitely not where my worry is?"

"Oh, this?" Ted held up his still bleeding hand. "I need to use my blood if I'm summoning anything five levels stronger than me and above."

Aiden didn't know that. Looking back at things he knew, he couldn't remember Ted having a skill like that. Was it new to the timeline? Or had he simply never known about it? There had been a lot of things he hadn't known about Ted in his former life.

Holding his hand over the edge as the Salamanders continued to climb up the trees, Ted allowed a few drops of his blood to fall to the ground.

Aiden waited patiently until they hit the ground. When they did, they immediately caught the Salamanders attention. All their heads snapped in the direction of the drops of blood. Then, a red glow emanated from the ground, as if from a light orb. It was strong and deep, increasing the smell of Ted's blood until it overwhelmed Aiden's nose in place of the smell of the forest.

A giant centipede erupted from the ground, roaring with enough force to shake the air. It erupted as high as fifteen feet before falling back to the ground. Without hesitation, the Salamanders turned on it. They rushed it like starving animals lunging at a piece of meat.

Aiden watched as the centipede fought for its life, biting and clawing as more than eight Salamanders bit and clawed right back.

"Do we go down now?" Valdan asked, eyes fixed on the chaos on the ground.

"It's got a very strong venom, and its poison is nothing to joke about," Ted called back to him. "We should be fine."

Valdan pointed, seated on a very high branch that towered over Aiden's location. "Well, your creature seems to be losing."

Ted nodded casually. "It's a kamikaze kind of thing. The poison is in its blood."

They watched as every bite from the Salamander caused a red mist to erupt from the injury inflicted upon the centipede. The Salamanders were unarguably winning, but Aiden could now see the cost of their victory.

Even as the centipede was dying, the Salamanders were getting slower, their attack getting weaker. At one point, one of the Salamanders missed its bite and just staggered to the side as if tripping over something. The centipede was lying helpless on the floor now, bleeding out from too many injuries. Red mist continued to spill from it.

Less than five minutes later, the Salamanders abandoned the corpse and began trudging away, moving sluggishly.

"Do we go down?" Valdan asked.

"We'll wait for the poison to clear out," Aiden said, watching the red mist.

"And the Salamanders?" Ted asked.

"There's no point in going after them," Aiden replied, shaking his head. "They are weak now. It defeats the purpose of the fight."

"You wanted us to fight monsters that are in the level sixties and seventies without killing them," Ted said casually. "Isn't that kind of harsh?"

"And dangerous," Valdan added.

Aiden looked up at him. "I'm more interested in why you felt the need to climb so high."

"Says the person that's holding on to their tree like a scared koala," Ted chuckled.

Aiden was still grabbing on to the side of his tree where the skill [Leap] had deposited him. He should've climbed up to settle on a branch, if not for any other reason than it made him look better.

"So we aren't chasing the Salamanders?" Valdan asked for reconfirmation.

"We are not," Aiden clarified.

Ted climbed down from his gorilla and settled carefully on a branch. He looked around them to the sea of trees.

"I think the Salamanders have gone far." He looked up at the gorilla and nodded in a random direction. "Go check on them."

Without hesitation, the gorilla leapt to the next tree then the next. Each time it landed on a tree, it looked down at the ground before leaping to the next one.

"How long will the mist last?" Aiden asked Ted, keeping his eyes on the mist.

"Creature's dead, so maybe three more minutes."

Aiden nodded, climbing a little higher until he found a branch that could hold up his weight. When he found one, he settled on it.

"Well, that didn't go as planned," Valdan pointed out. "I actually didn't expect to be chased down by eight powerful Salamanders."

Ted chuckled in good nature. "What were the chances that my brother overestimated himself?"

Valdan seemed to think about it before shaking his head. "The chances are very low. Aiden doesn't strike me as someone that overestimates himself."

"I don't," Aiden muttered.

He was a planner, and a systematic one at that. He didn't know too much about Salamanders, but he was more than certain that what had happened was not a result of overestimating himself.

There has to be a variable I wasn't aware of.

Five minutes later, all three of them had made their way down from their respective trees. Their breathing had returned to normal but Aiden's stamina was still begging for mercy. It was recovering but doing so quite slowly.

Valdan picked out a stamina potion from his pocket and drank it. With enchanted pants, his pockets were as safe as those of a soldier's belt, maybe even safer.

With a satisfied sigh, he returned the empty vial into his pocket. "That was not how I thought this day would go."

Aiden agreed, drinking a stamina potion from a vial of his own. His mind was still bogged down by what could've possibly gone wrong.

Ted tossed an empty vial for a mana potion over his shoulder as Aiden slipped his empty vial back into his pocket. Valdan and Aiden looked at him.

"What?" Ted asked, looking at them. "My familiars did more of the running. I've still got more than fifty percent left in stamina. Mana's where I need help."

That was not why they were looking at him, and he knew it. But rather than point it out, Aiden walked past his brother and picked up his discarded vial. He slipped it into the same pocket as his own.

Getting up, he looked around.

"So, what are we doing next?" Valdan asked. "I take it we aren't going after the Salamanders again."

Aiden shook his head. You only risked an encounter with the strong if you were confident in surviving the encounter. With what had just happened, he was not confident in surviving the encounter with the Salamanders. He certainly wasn't strong enough to run away for another three hours straight.

Still, he needed to know what had happened. What were the chances that this was something more than just a group of Salamanders just hanging around in a forest on the outskirts of a village?

Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

"You've got that look on your face."

Aiden paused, looking back at his brother. "What look?"

"The look you get when you think there's vodka in Tasha's bottle of water instead of water."

Aiden's brows furrowed at that and it took him a moment to remember that his ex girlfriend had actually liked drinking. So much so that she tended to hide alcohol in her bottle of water.

"Who's Tasha?" Valdan asked.

"An old love interest," Aiden said simply, hoping Valdan would not pursue the subject. To Ted, he added: "In my defense, she liked her alcohol."

Ted sighed. "Fair point. So what do you think is not as it seems right now?"

"Salamanders," Aiden answered.

"What about them?"

"They are not known to hold grudges, for one. And they don't go out of their way to chase down a prey for three hours. They aren't wolves."

"Your point being that they like the way we smell?"

"His point being that something must've made them do it," Valdan said. "The question is if it's something environmental or man-made."

Aiden hadn't even considered the possibility of it being environmental since the human side of Nastild didn't have a steady activity of mana based illnesses or infections or anything of the like. But that didn't mean that they didn't have any at all.

"More likely man-made," Aiden said. "At least I hope so."

"What happens if it's environmental?" Ted asked.

"We'll have to report it," Valdan answered. "That way, we prevent it from spreading beyond the forest. Hopefully, it can be handled."

"Which usually ends with the extermination of the Salamanders," Aiden said. "I guess this entire thing was a bust. Now we have to move on." He frowned. "And we just got here."

"Why don't we just deal with the Salamanders ourselves?" Ted asked. "We find them and kill them, then I get to level forty-nine and start having to deal with this threshold thi—"

He paused, frowned, then turned just in time for Aiden to push him out of the way.

Something blitzed through the air, fast and quick. With Ted stumbling out of the way, Aiden took the blow. The size of the attack assured him that it wasn't a projectile—it was a person.

"You fools!" a voice bellowed as two meaty hands shoved Aiden in the chest.

The force of it was enough to send him staggering by a few steps. Aiden's brain counted the steps as he tried to regain his composure. By the fourth step, the back of his foot hit something on the floor. Rather than try to right himself, he allowed his body fall back. He landed on his back and stared up at the leaves above.

"What kind of fools send a nest of Salamanders into a rampage?" the same voice snapped.

Aiden raised his head to look up at the owner of the voice and found a man in his thirties staring daggers at him. He had deep black eyes and a clean shaved head. There was a ring on his left eyebrow.

Seeing the look on Valdan and Ted's face, Aiden pushed himself to his feet very quickly. He rushed to stand ahead of the group, drawing the attention of the angry man to him and only him.

"And you are?" he asked calmly as he dusted the back of his coat.

"A proper mercenary," the man answered. "Leader of the group in charge of actually putting down those monsters you just allowed to run amok."

Aiden nodded in understanding. "Now that you're done explaining yourself, how about you answer the question I asked. And. You. Are?"

The man took a threatening step forward. Valdan and Ted took threatening steps forward as well. The man's eyes moved to them, slowly taking them in.

"Ganging up on me?" he asked, amused.

Aiden cocked a brow at him. "What gives you that impression?" he asked.

"Three on one is what we call ganging up on someone."

"You're the one that came rushing in," Ted pointed out.

The man turned and took a step in his direction. "You don't get to—"

"Careful," Aiden said in a low voice, moving to stand in front of the man, placing himself between him and Ted. "You're talking to me right now, proper mercenary. Not him."

The mercenary sized him up with his eyes. "You think you can take me?"

"I think," Aiden said slowly, intentionally, "that if we survive this 'gang up,' no one will hold us responsible for whatever happens to you and your… three teammates hiding in the trees. There are three of them, right? Or did I miss one?"

A slow smirk stretched across the man's lips. "You missed two."

Aiden wanted to sigh. As much as he would've liked to deny it, in truth, it was only a matter of time before they ran into assholes in the mercenary business. He still recognized the man from yesterday. He had been among the group the innkeeper had pointed out.

Green eyes, bushy beards that swallowed his entire lower face like some kind of reverse mane. In Aiden's experience, when mercenaries or adventurers grew out their facial hair this much, it was because they wanted to look more masculine, more daunting. Visually, it worked.

Aiden heard a very subtle movement and looked to the side. He found Valdan's hand moving to the pommel of his sword. That wasn't very surprising. In volatile situations, always be prepared for the worst.

"Alright," Aiden said finally. "We seem to have bitten off more than we can chew." He gestured around to the absence of any Salamanders while trying to pick out the remaining two mercenaries. "Obviously. So, we are just going to get out of your hair since you know exactly what you're doing."

"Really?" the man chuckled darkly. "After making a mess and spoiling our entire plans for the day you think I'm just going to let you walk?"

Aiden spotted the fourth mercenary. The person was hiding in the trees with a crossbow trained on him. The gathering of leaves and tree branches made it difficult to tell their gender.

Blinking very slowly, Aiden catalogued their position and returned his attention to the man in front of him. A fight was beginning to seem inevitable. The question, however, was whether this was an emotional fight or a premeditated one.

Mercenaries, after all, were not necessarily known for their loyalty to anything beyond money.

Fight or flight? He wondered, taking Ted's presence into account.

In the past month, he'd seen just how Ted fought with his summoned monsters. If there was one thing he knew, it was that when Ted summoned his monsters, death was usually the first outcome to expect. Death and destruction.

Aiden was already a lost cause. Killing came easily to him, or too easily, as Valdan had once pointed out, though he hadn't killed another person in a month… Well, there was that lone bandit who had been keeping tabs on them for a few days two weeks ago. But Aiden didn't think that counted.

The man had been carrying a pouch of a very toxic poison that would've killed three of them if used in any way.

Regardless, the point was that the last thing he needed was Ted starting to kill people. It would start his brother down a path that Aiden feared would lead in the exact direction he didn't want it to.

"How about we do this?" the mercenary said, leaning into Aiden.

He was taller than Aiden by an inch or two, so bending his head so obviously was unnecessary but intentional—an action designed to make him look superior, to make Aiden look small.

Aiden held back a sigh. "What do you have in mind?"

"How about you leave your fancy coat behind and your babysitter over there leaves all the weapons he's got on him and you can just run on back to whatever manor you young lords came from."

Aiden couldn't help but cock a brow at that. The man thought he was a young lord and was still doing this? Did he think he could be gone by morning and avoid the vengeance of whatever House he thought he was from?

"What happens if I do this instead?" Aiden looked around, and his next words were projected far and wide for any present to hear. "I CHALLENGE YOU TO MUDSROG."

To his satisfaction he watched the man's eyes grow wide in shock. The man staggered back, frowning, clearly annoyed even in his surprise.

"No!" he said flatly, moving his hand in a sharp cutting motion. "You don't get to—"

"Careful, proper mercenary," Aiden warned. "If even one of your men with me in their sights, respects the very few laws upheld by the mercenaries, you could get yourself in trouble."

Movement to the side caught Aiden's attention but he did not look in its direction. Valdan and Ted already had his back so his focus on the man did not need to be interrupted. The sound, however, told him that there was in fact a member of this man's mercenary team that upheld the laws of the mercenary.

Also, the person that had just stepped out was the last person Aiden hadn't been able to pick out.

"Get back, Snarl!" the proper mercenary snapped.

"Can't do, boss," Snarl answered. He had a soft voice, the kind you would expect from a bard. "He called a Mudsrog."

The proper mercenary gestured deprecatingly at Aiden. "His balls have barely dropped. The kid doesn't know what a Mudsrog is. And," he shot Aiden a baleful look, "even if he does, he's too young to call one."

"Everybody out!" Snarl bellowed. "Kid's called a Mudsrog. You all know the rules."

The mercenary in front of Aiden scowled so deeply that his frown showed from beneath his beards.

"You're going to get me to kill the kid, Snarl," he warned.

Snarl shrugged as if it didn't matter to him as sounds slowly emerged from different parts of the forest. Everyone was coming out of hiding now. Protected by the presence of mercenaries with respect for the few laws of the mercenaries that existed on Nastild, Aiden didn't mind taking in the newcomers.

There was a single woman in the group, but more importantly, he was pleased to realize that he had only missed one of them, which was Snarl.

"Why would a kid so handsome call a Mudsrog," the woman asked with a touch of pity. She wore light armor and had a crossbow strapped to one hip. On the other hip was a falchion.

Aiden guessed she was some type of [Archer], at least a ranged class of some sort. Aiden picked an average looking man with a spear in one hand. The spear was at least six feet.His face was set in a serious expression, wearing a lightweight vest as well.

The third man had the simplest weapon: a club. It was a massive piece of something brown—an exact replica of clubs drawn with cavemen in cartoons Aiden had watched as a child. He held it in a hand attached to a very large forearm.

Only a fool would assume the man's class was anything other than a strength-based.

When Aiden saw the fourth man holding a staff, his heart dropped a little, worried that this group somehow had a member with the [Mage] class. Mercenary work was risky work and the [Mage] class was highly sought after, so it was rare to see a mercenary with the [Mage] class.

Aiden's mind calmed down when he saw how the man was holding his staff. He held it like a melee weapon instead of a ranged weapon even though it looked like something a [Mage] would use. Aiden assumed the staff had some functionality besides being a blunt force weapon. Perhaps it was enchanted.

"A Mudsrog by a child," the last man said in amusement. His sleek, black hair held up in a ponytail gave him a genteel look. "That's a first."

With a chiseled jaw and two small dimples that peeked out when he talked, he had the features anyone would call handsome.

"What are we going to do, Bek?" the man asked.

Bek glared at him. "We're going to do nothing!" he hissed. "Because a child doesn't get to call a Mudsrog."

"The child is affiliated to a mercenary, Bek," Snarl said with an air of exasperation that implied arguments with Bek over common knowledge was a norm. "The kid can call a Mudsrog even without the [Mercenary] title."

Ted moved up to Aiden. In a quiet voice, he asked, "What's a Mudsrog?"

…

This was insane. Bek could not believe what he was hearing. His team was in support of a child calling a fucking Mudsrog. What was wrong with them?

By the very nature of a Mudsrog, it wasn't common sense for a child to call it. Invented in a time when there was nothing but chaos, from what Bek could remember, the Mudsrog was a mercenary-styled duel designed to solve small and simple issues arising between mercenary groups.

Whether it was an imitation of the pompous duels of the nobles or the reverse, no one knew. What Bek knew was that death during a Mudsrog was not unheard of, even if it was not the aim of it. Mercenaries rarely had any honor, so some took the opportunity to strike up an issue and kill the opponent.

In truth, it was a bloody affair.

As for the rules, they were more on the side of barbaric. There were no active skills allowed during a Mudsrog, so those with passive skills had an advantage. Witnesses were necessary. You could not have a Mudsrog without witnesses. It was an activity designed to settle differences between mercenary teams not individual mercenaries.

"A child," Bek insisted, "does not get to call a Mudsrog."

"And what if he appeals it?" Draken with his chiseled jaw and noble-like beauty asked.

What the fuck was the pretty boy on about? How would a child appeal it? They were mercenaries. They didn't have some fancy guild like the adventurers. It would be insane to…

Bek frowned as the way the child could appeal it dawned on him. As a mercenary, if you were challenged to a Mudsrog, the only way to refuse it was to relinquish whatever right or privilege you had over the issue. In this case, it would be to abandon the Salamander hunt.

Bek couldn't do that since he needed the money. Gambling debts didn't pay themselves. And if you thought you could get the money back through gambling, you needed capital to do that. But that was how people dug deeper holes, believing they could gamble their way out of gambling debts. Bek had never seen a person actually accomplish such a feat.

"You guys are serious," he muttered at last. "You want me to have a Mudsrog with a child."

"It's not necessarily with a child," Esral said, with a hand on her hip. "It's a Mudsrog, Bek, don't act like you don't know how it works. It's a challenge between the groups. We pick our representative—you, obviously—and they pick their representative."

She looked at the boy in the expensive coat and the boy nodded in agreement.

Bek frowned at the boy. "Is any member of your team above level fifty? You have to declare it if they—"

The boy shook his head slowly, calmly. "We don't have to declare shit, Becky. You know that. We know that."

Bek frowned. The boy knew his Mudsrog.

In the group, the only person that worried Bek was the man behind them. He looked to be in his thirties, which meant that he could actually be level fifty. And if he was there to babysit, that increased the chances of him being above level fifty. Nobles did not send their children out into the wild without a powerful babysitter.

As for the kids, he was certain that none of them was near level fifty. At their age, he would put them—at best—in the level thirties. That was around twenty levels below his level fifty-five.

He eyed the grown man. In his silence, the man gave the illusion of a spectator.

Bek closed his eyes and gambled with his decision. He was a mercenary, risk was a constant part of his life.

"Then I get to pick whose possessions I get to claim in my victory," he said.

At the edge of his vision he saw Snarl shake his head in disappointment. One of the rules of Mudsrog was the right of conquest. The winner got to pick a member of the opposing team and claim the items they had on them. If the person they chose had a storage space on them, the victor got to pick one item from the storage space as well as all the items directly on the defeated.

The young lord looked back at their babysitter.

"Are you okay with that?" he asked.

The babysitter shrugged, nonchalant. "Do what you must."

Bek nodded, hiding his smile, which wasn't hard since his beard was already doing more than half the job. The entire reason he'd come after them when they'd sent the Salamanders amok had nothing to do with the Salamander and everything to do with the green coat the young lord was wearing.

Bek recognized a living material when he saw one. The cost of acquiring a living material was already on the high side. Getting someone capable of sewing something useful out of it was insane.

He had already been planning on letting them go if they handed the coat over. With it, he would be safer which would make him take on more contracts, or he could sell it and pay off his debts in one go.

"Snarl," he said. "Draw the circle. Two strides in radius."

Snarl stepped up to them and held his hand out. Delek, came up and handed him his staff. The enchanted staff was a useful weapon, a bit expensive, too. Bek had tried to convince Delek to sell it a few times and had failed.

"Alright, big guy," Bek said, sizing up their babysitter. "Let's get this done quickly. I've got a nest of Salamanders to find."

When Snarl put the end of the staff to the ground, the young lord stopped him with a raised hand.

"Make it three feet," he said, taking off his coat. "By the rules, as the aggrieved I get to pick the diameter. Standard is two strides, but I'd rather have three."

He handed his coat over to his brother and rounded his shoulders in warm up.

Bek frowned at the boy's continued knowledge of the rules. "Then I'm guessing you also know that there are no active skills involved. The use of an active skill leads to an automatic forf…What the hell's wrong with your arm?"

"Don't worry about it," the boy said, dismissing his question. "If any of us uses an active skill, our position is forfeit and we must pay additional compensation for the disrespect of using a skill. I know the rules, Becky."

"My name is Bek, you spoiled brat!" Bek snapped, however, his eye was still on the boy's arm. From hand to halfway up his forearm, the boy's skin was a deep black. When it ended, it finished off in streaks of black veins that looked as if they were trying to reach for his elbow.

It was… disconcerting.

The boy stepped up to him, allowing Snarl to draw a circle around them. Bek wasn't sure what was happening. The boy looked too confident. His brother looked a little worried, but their babysitter looked as if he couldn't be bothered.

Were they looking down on him?

Bek put his hands together and cracked his knuckles. This would be his first time schooling a pompous young lord, and he was going to enjoy it.

Just make sure you don't hurt him too much, he reminded himself. The last thing he needed was some lord somewhere sending someone after him because his child came home whining about being beaten to a pulp.

"To first blood?" Snarl asked the young lord once he finished drawing the circle.

They stood at the center of a circle that was a deep groove in the ground. Snarl had been sure to make sure the circle was visible even in the grassy floor.

The young lord shook his head. "Until one party is unable to fight back."

Snarl frowned. "Are you sure?"

"You could just make it until someone yields," Draken suggested with soft eyes. "It's safer that way."

"Your friend wasn't being safe when he tried to run into my companion earlier," the young lord said simply. "Safe only exists here because a Mudsrog requires some level of it."

Bek gave him an incredulous yet amused look. So this was what it was about. A young wanting to punish him for almost shoving his brother. It was hilarious. But it made sense. It didn't change the fact that it was stupid; it just gave logic to the stupidity. This was the reason the young lord hadn't chosen the babysitter.

It also made the babysitter's indifference make more sense. He probably knew the reason the young lord had chosen to fight himself. This level of self-righteous hubris was probably common for the young lord. The babysitter was probably fed up with it at this point.

"Weapon of choice?" Bek asked.

The challenger had to choose a weapon that both parties could use and was readily available. If the weapon was not readily available, then it was their duty to present it.

The young lord shrugged. "Unarmed. Any other stipulations?"

Bek shook his head. His unarmed combat mastery percentage was in the sixties so he was always confident in it.

"Alright then." Bek stepped all the way back to the edge of the circle with hands held up in an offensive stance. "Snarl, call it."

The young lord was staring at the air in front of him, most likely reading his interface.

"No active skills, boy," Bek reminded him.

"Noted," the boy said, returning his attention to him. Then he stood straight and placed one arm behind him. "Snarl, be nice enough to call it."

Bek frowned. Then Snarl's voice filled the air.

"FIGHT!"

Bek darted forward, allowing the strength of his calves propel him towards the young lord. He cocked his hand back in a low blow, aiming to strike the boy in the liver. The force of the blow would send him doubling over, then he would put the boy down with a blow to the—

Suddenly the world shook terribly. Bek's vision blurred as pain erupted in his head. A loud sound boomed through the entire forest, bringing silence in its wake. Pain flared in his face and he staggered back, confused.

Did he… Bek tried to focus as his vision cleared slowly. Did he just… he shook his head, dispelling the pain and refusing to complete the thought, because he refused to believe what his entire brain had told him had just happened.

As if in mockery, his interface appeared in front of him.

[You have been struck a powerful blow!]

[You are stunned.]

Bek staggered again, did his best to keep his body from hunching over. Disbelief left him as he finally came to terms with the humiliation of what had just happened.

The boy had stunned him with a slap.

Bek paled slightly as he came to terms with it.

What have I gotten myself into?

"Get up, Becky," the young lord said as if telling him he'd dropped something. "We are just beginning."

Bek's mind went to the knife in the sheath strapped horizontally at the waistband at his back.

When he looked up, he found the young lord looking down at him as if he was inconsequential.

The young lord just stood there as Bek came to terms with his current situation, towering over him, an arm behind his back and the other held out at his side…

Palm open.

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