“Are you kidding me, Amy?!” Zack, the player beyond Zuon, was shouting through the house at his younger sister, drawing the attention of their parents, who were staring, confused, at a connection error message flashing on their living room television.

“Mom, Dad, Amy shut off our internet! She kicked me out of the match!” Zuon shouted hysterically as he stomped through the house.

His father stood up after exchanging a shocked look with his wife. “Amy, is this true?”

“He’s being a bad guy! They’re bullying everyone!” Amy replied defensively while stomping to meet him. Zuon felt vindicated in his accusation and responded by motioning to her with his hands and looking at his parents with wide eyes.

“You know how important this tournament is to your brother. How could you do such a thing?”

Amy crossed her arms in defiance. “I don’t care! You saw what he and his friends were doing, didn’t you? They’re ruining the game for so many people.”

“That’s not what I saw. Your brother is just playing the game. If the game developers didn’t want to be played like that, they’d do something about it. It’s not up to you to decide how your brother plays.” Zack’s father scolded Amy.

Her mother shook her head in disappointment .“Sweetie, you can’t do stuff like this. Sabotaging your brother is a big no-no.”

“You’re grounded, miss. You’re not leaving your room until this tournament is over, and you’re not to use your sim-box again until we say so.”

“Fine. I don’t care. Side with him, you guys are evil like he is.” Amy stomped away to her room. Both parents shook their heads in disbelief.

“If we lose that match because of Amy…” Zuon muttered anxiously as he began to pace around the room nervously.

His father patted him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m sure your friends will understand. I'll reconnect the line.”

“No, no way. You don’t get it…” Zuon replied before making his way back towards his sim-box.

Seraxus stopped at the center of the arena, eying Aegis as he stood over the disintegrating body of Zuon.

Seraxus had an impressed look on his face. “Didn’t think a cleric player would ever be able to catch Zuon. Yo, you ain't as bad as we thought.” He motioned to his live-streaming icon. “Still, you ain't good enough to be on this stage.” He started pacing around as his eyes wandered to the top of his peripheral vision.

Aegis did the same and determined what Seraxus was looking at in his interface—the match timer, counting up to 9 minutes and nearing 10.

Seraxus relaxed his weapons and continued pacing calmly, making it evident to Aegis that he was not planning on attacking until the healing penalty set in fully at the 10-minute mark.

Aegis weighed his options. One-on-one, even with his claws of jealousy, the damage output that Aegis had was drastically lower than what Seraxus could pull off. Exchanging blows outright, without any healing, he knew that Seraxus would come out on top. The only answer Aegis had left was Virabhadra, but he would need to take more damage than Seraxus could deal to him before he died to Seraxus’ damage output.

With this in mind, he began clawing himself and smiting himself, healing the damage back up while the healing was still enabled for the next minute.

Seraxus watched him do this, but didn’t change his demeanor in any way. He continued pacing around the center of the arena as if Aegis was doing something completely obvious and expected. Instead, he used the time that Aegis was beating himself up to talk with his viewers.

“So, get this. These guys studied all my moves from Feng and those traitors at VGN, but it ain't gonna do this Harbinger of Light any good. ‘Cause even with his leather armor, he can’t keep up with a Warmaster. We all know this. How many clerics and tank class players have we fought before?” Seraxus asked rhetorically, and his chat responded with all sorts of numbers.

“Exactly. This guy, on the other hand… how many Warmasters ya’ll think he’s fought?” Seraxus asked as Aegis listened between the sounds of his smites exploding on himself. “Ahah, ya, definitely less than 5. Guy still thinks he can stop charge strikes,” Seraxus shook his head. “He’s lucky he got all those easy opponents up ‘til now. Let’s see… he got the C team of the vindicators in the final prelim match, which his mommy dearest handled. Then he got a pass from Mikael, a gimmick match-up from Skar, and a team of PvE carebears with Synopse.” Seraxus paused to sigh and shake his head to himself, walking closer to Aegis to make sure he’d be heard.

“I gotta be honest, I don’t even think he’d be in the finals if he got matched up with some of the other real PvP players in this tournament. He’s been gettin’ lucky, carried by his mithral weapons and his mom,” Seraxus taunted. “Lil bro, you really think you gonna match my skills in PvP just cause you got that fancy shield? 'Cause you studied some video on me?” Seraxus addressed Aegis directly for the first time, rather than his audience.

Aegis didn’t reply. Instead, glaring back through the bursts of light coming from the smites and self-healing that he was doing.

“You ain't bad, but let’s be real, man. You started playin’ this game, like what, a couple months ago? And this is your first game. PvP ain't like PvE, where you can study the game and win. Honestly, you just bein’ here feels kinda disrespectful to the entire PvP community. I gotta beat you for all of their sakes, not just mine,” Seraxus pointed his black sword of hatred at him and grinned, but still got no response from Aegis.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“Lemme tell you how this fight is gonna go,” Seraxus lowered his weapon and slouched his shoulders, hovering his other weapons behind him. He looked as if he was relaxing, no longer taking Aegis seriously.

“You’re gonna keep doin’ that until the timer hits 10 and you can’t heal yourself anymore. You got enough damage to maybe one-shot me through my armor, maybe not. I ain’t gonna risk finding out, so I’ll try to avoid it while whittling your tanky ass down through all the blocks and parries. Your wings might fade before you get that Virabhadra set up, but we both know you’re gonna pull some trick to grapple me or somethin', ‘cause you’re one of those scheming types. Once you get me, you're gonna try to hit me with that Shiva spell, and it won't work, and I’ll kill you. ‘Cause you can’t beat me one-on-one. You’re some weird tank-healer hybrid class, yet you failed at tanking me, and you failed at healing your allies through my damage, so, basically, you’re useless,” Seraxus said with confidence. “Anything I got wrong there?”

Aegis continued to remain silent.

“Didn’t think so. Alright, let’s get this over with. You got another shot in the next round, you only need to beat me once, right?” Seraxus laughed as the timer hit 9:58. “All this tough talk actin’ like you’re gonna show up and save the day, but in the end you’re still just a noob with daddy issues.” Seraxus finished, and the timer hit 10:00.

The arena announcer’s voice didn’t even get to finish her declaration that healing was now disabled for the rest of the match before Seraxus kicked off the floor of the arena with a charge strike towards Aegis.

Aegis timed his last moments of self-inflicted damage and healing to end with him at full health, and he raised his shield in anticipation of the first strike, but used it as a fake-out and instead lunged forward to meet Seraxus’ charge strike with the black sword of hatred held forward.

The light and darkness flashed brightly through the stadium.

Aegis was landing hits on Seraxus while defensively preventing any clean attacks through his defenses at first, but the damage being dealt was still heavily in favor of Seraxus. Aegis didn’t mind at first, as he was only trying to survive long enough to wait out the cooldown on Virabhadra, but slowly, Seraxus was starting to wise up to Aegis’ movements.

Seraxus was studying and learning how Aegis played. Even his unique uses of his shield straps with his feet, and the flaps of his wings were being played through.

He began to land attacks on Aegis, taking unmitigated damage from his weapons and forcing Aegis further on the defensive to ensure that the black sword made none of the unmitigated strikes.

Worse, though, was just how completely unrelenting Seraxus was. His character was built specifically to fight like this, whereas Aegis was constructed to be unkillable due to his healing. The words ‘battlemaster meta’ rang through his mind multiple times as he fought against and failed to defend against Seraxus. He found himself filling up with the same frustrations that led Rakkan to reroll from his original class of Sage.

It was with a great sense of relief that Aegis managed to last until his Virabhadra cooldown became available, but once it had, Seraxus started playing more cautiously.

Seraxus had no exact timer for Aegis’ cooldowns. From his hundreds of thousands of fights against NPCs and players, he had a strong game sense for timings of nearly all skills and abilities in the game, so that he almost knew instinctively that the skill was off its cooldown.

Aegis used a sudden set of odd, unpredictable movements he had planned and held in reserve after watching the Feng match and studying the VGN analyst footage. He was able to slip through Seraxus’ weapons and grab his shoulder to keep him in place, much to Seraxus’ surprise.

“Virabhadra,” Aegis mumbled nervously, seeing the look on Seraxus’ face after he’d been grappled. Seraxus showed no fear and quickly swapped the sword in his hand for his axe using his switch skill.

“Spell eater,” Seraxus replied coldly, and the blue magical mouths formed all over the axe, eating up the dome of light that erupted from Aegis and canceling the spell. Once the dome was gone, Seraxus switched the axe back to the sword of hatred and took a swing at Aegis’ abdomen, forcing Aegis to release his grip and jump backwards. As he did, the wings from the Avatar of Eirene's skill faded away, leaving Aegis further defenseless.

“And there we have it. You ain't got nothin’ left in the tank, and you should be about dead,” Seraxus said with an uninterested look on his face. He, completely unthreatened by Aegis now, looked up to the dark clouds above the stadium and saw the reapers soaring high above, some being killed by Kenji and Serenity. “You're gonna have to do better than this, lil bro.” He shook his head in disappointment.

Aegis looked up as well and saw the reapers. He could hear explosions and battle sounds from the surrounding cityscape. Buildings collapsing, people screaming, and spells being cast were the most dominant. Hae-won and Serenity went silent to look down and see Aegis standing before Seraxus without his wings, his shield still glowing bright in the shape of Eirene’s star, but both players seemed calm and cool, staring each other down.

“Harbinger of lights ain’t shit. We are still the best. We are still the baddest. We ain’t need no VGN. We, the kings of this Shatte-”

“Divine Aid,” Aegis cast, his words interrupting Seraxus as he turned to look at Aegis in confusion. It was a spell Seraxus was not familiar with, as it had never been used before or discovered by any other advanced class player.

Aegis was fully aware of the penalties for trying to use the skill, but he felt he had no other option—everything Seraxus had said about their one vs one matchup was true. Alone, Aegis did not have the skills or abilities to defeat a battlemaster-class player in an arena duel.

His Hail Mary attempt was made. He called on the divine intervention of Eirene to aid him in some way, shape, or form, and a bright, glowing light began to emit from Aegis’ skin. His body began to light up and surge with warm light for an instant, causing Seraxus to immediately take a defensive stance and pull his weapons towards himself.

But a second later, the light dissipated and vanished.

Spell Failed. Unable to cast Divine Aid under these circumstances[?]

Skills, spells, and abilities with cooldowns longer than 24 hours cannot be used inside gladiator tournaments.

Aegis’ heart sank as he read the message and the following explanation. He hadn’t gotten information like this before through all of his research, but he also hadn’t heard much about skills with such long cooldowns before being used in gladiator matches. With no precedence, the information just wasn’t available for him to study.

“Huh?” Seraxus looked around, confused, as he was still on edge, preparing for some attack to be used, and instead saw Aegis closing out the error message. “Hah, wait. Skill didn’t work? Performance issues?” Seraxus continued condescendingly.

No response from Aegis; he looked at his viewership count, then at Seraxus’ viewers, then finally at Serenity and Hae-won, who were looking at him desperately from the raised platform in the audience. He had no words, no plans, nothing. He clenched his fists in frustration as Seraxus cautiously approached him with his sword of hatred out, but Aegis didn’t give him the chance to finish the match.

With his measly 10% health remaining,

Combatant Aegis has forfeited.

This was followed by loud, mocking laughter from Seraxus.

“That’s it? That’s the guy that's supposed to stop me?” He shouted up to Hae-won and Serenity.