Tom found himself in the familiar room. Three doors were facing him, and, while he hadn’t been actively counting, he knew this was his eleventh fight. He lowered his head slightly; while he didn’t want to be dramatic, he knew had been humiliated in every single fight. He hated it, but there was nothing that he could do to change things. The raw ability gap between them, not to mention their superior attributes… It was unsurmountable. The degree that he was outclassed was horrifying.


    He wondered if this coming duel was going to be any different from those that had preceded it; whether this was the one fight out of twenty where he had a chance. There was only one way to tell, and the disk, now that he had thought about it, was suddenly nestled against his chest. He pulled it out ready to use.


    In his mind, he captured the image he needed. If he was going to win in the upcoming fight without any permanent injuries, then the consecutive flips would all land, with the one he had inscribed pointing up.


    It was a simple, but very precise image. The positive required a chain of improbable events, which was the perfect use of fate. He spent ten fate, which was all he had left from his expenditure on the Briana problem, and then he flipped it for the first time.


    A one came up.


    Maybe, he thought to himself. Maybe this was going to be the pivotal duel.


    The thought was premature, Tom knew that, but who knew? Perhaps, he was finally going to come up against an enemy he could beat. Maybe a nice squishy slow opponent that relied purely on mind magic.


    Tom threw the disk up. It clattered on the floor, flipped, wobbled, and then settled. It was a one once more, but Tom didn’t get excited. Two in a row was something that would happen a quarter of the time. It was hardly remarkable.


    He flipped it again and again and again.


    After five ones in a row, his excitement started to grow. Logically, he understood that what he was seeing was not even that extreme an event. Five consecutive ones had a three percent probability of occurring just by random chance. It was why he needed his streak to be far longer.


    He flipped again.


    Now he was talking. The chances of these flips happening were less than two percent, which was their estimate of how frequently he should be able to win. But that wasn’t enough to put his life on the line. He needed more to take that sort of risk.


    Another flip. It was positive again. This was it, but he wasn’t going to stop; he required eight, maybe even nine, to battle without a GOD’s shield. He hadn’t made his mind up, but he decided that, if he got two more successes, he was going to fight without a GOD’s shield.


    The coin came to rest for the seventh time.


    It was a zero.


    He kicked the wood in frustration, then hurried over to collect the disk once more. It had flipped over and now showed a one, but that was meaningless. In the image he had created, it didn’t matter how many ones he got. A single zero meant a hard stop.


    It was still annoying. He had hoped that he was finally going to win a fight. The excitement disappeared from him, and he trudged through the full GOD’s shield door.


    You are fighting a representative of INNECTIS. It has two recorded kills.


    Tom registered those words, and reorganised his thoughts immediately. The disk’s results made sense. Showing a zero was appropriate, because he had no chance in the coming battle. If he was making eight throws, whether that zero came on the seventh throw or the first changed nothing. All that mattered was that it had gotten a warning out like it had done. Not because it had managed multiple kills, but all of INNECTIS’ species had a focus on invention and innovation. They would rely on constructs and not mind spells. His primary strength was neutered.


    He appeared in an arena that looked like someone significantly more powerful than him had just fought a duel there. Just to the side of where he had been placed, there was a three-metre-deep crater, the sides shining like recently melted rock. In fact, the same thing was repeated across the football field  sized pinnacle of rock that was their assigned area to fight in. It was one of those battlefields where, if you fell off the edge, you died unless you had a GOD’s shield. Then there were scars and holes dotting the surface. There were spots, where instead of heat, acid had eaten through the ground. To his right, the destruction was far worse. A scar went through the landscape and stretched almost to the horizon, and there were signs of spells that had melted kilometres-wide holes.


    They were standing at the edge of a mighty battlefield.


    Feeling grim, he tore his eyes away from the magical terrain he had been brought to in order to assess what he was fighting. It was a large shaggy creature with two arms. Momentarily, he thought he might be facing a rare biped, but then he reconsidered. It was sitting down, and its thick fur made it difficult to observe its true form. It could have four legs and multiple tails, and he wouldn’t be able to tell.


    What he was certain of was that it had two defined arms, and they were currently making a triangular shape in front of itself. The body language translation function didn’t extend to the duels, but having interacted with dozens of natives and having seen the different way emotions were expressed, he was at least eighty percent sure that it was a peaceful gesture, not an aggressive one.


    There was a big shaggy face with visible small eyes, nostrils and a place covered by fur which probably hid a mouth. It was like a yeti, and of a similar size to that creature of a legend. Even with it sitting, crouched, or whatever it was doing, its head was above his own. Standing, it could be eight feet tall, or potentially even more. It was physically massive, just like most of the opponents he faced.


    It was watching him with casual confidence, and, given it had two kills to its name, Tom didn’t blame it. It fought without a GOD’s shield, so it was powerful. Tom knew that  he did not look like much of a threat, and it was possible INNECTIS teams had already recorded his powers, just like DEUS’s group did.


    The duel counted down, and then the fight was on.


    He immediately used an imprecise, non-system assessment technique to establish that the native’s attributes were four times higher than his own, and that it had a full fate pool. Tom sprinted at it, knowing it was useless.The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Time slowed immediately as it focused on him. There was a distortion of spatial energy near one of its hands, and a magic drone materialised.


    It was the size of a crow, but disk-like. It also appeared to be made up of a handful of serrated circular blades laid flat together. They spun with the promise of mangled flesh and death. Without pause, it accelerated toward him immediately.


    Apparent time slowed even more, as the drone’s targeting locked on him. Its course veered sideways, and his brain raced.


    It was fast, far faster than anything he had faced so far. With his trait boosting only his perception and thinking speed, he had no way of dealing with it. A seven and maybe eight times advantage was too much for him to even think about matching.  Without his trait, it would have been travelling too fast for him to follow. It would have been a blur. With his trait, he could watch, but was incapable of reacting to it. Before his body could respond to the commands he sent, those ordering it to turn, the drone had orbited around him in a big circle, presumably to strike at his blind spot.


    For milliseconds of real time but far longer in a relative sense, Tom didn’t know what it was doing. It was behind him, and he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head, while the sound it generated gave nothing away. Then, like a vengeful bullet, it burst through the perimeter of his Spark-sensing area, and, while Tom knew it was useless, he unleashed a ten-mana Spark to hopefully counter it.


    Time sped up abruptly and the body of the drone shot by him, just missing his shoulders. A moment later, it struck the ground fifteen metres away from him, then exploded in a blast that was noticeably smaller than the damage that had been done to their arena pre-battle. It still left deep gashes in the rock, which was more than he himself could have accomplished with anything other than a full-powered Power Strike.


    Tom stared at the wreckage in shock. He had destroyed it? A tiny bit of electricity had fried it. It didn’t necessarily mean anything. Victory was probably beyond him, but hope flared up in him anyway. That a direct strike would have killed him was irrelevant - it hadn’t, and, if that was the extent of its tricks, then he could close to melee range and then destroy it with his spear abilities.


    Unfortunately, the yeti didn’t look like something that had just lost its fight.


    “Oh, that’s unfortunate.” It said clinically.


    Two more spatial distortions appeared, and each spat out a drone. Unlike the first one, they hovered instead of attacking immediately. Time still slowed down dramatically, and that told him that, if anything, they were faster than the first one.


    He had stopped running when the second set of drones appeared. There were only ten metres separating them, slightly less than half of the original distance, but with the threat of instant obliteration he didn’t try to close. Given the acceleration of those drones, he was going to be dead in moments if he attempted something like that. If they came straight at him with pace, there would be nothing that he would be able to do to avoid them. Even electricity wouldn’t have helped, as they would just have continued along their original flight path.


    “Was that lightning?”


    Tom nodded. This was a representative of INNECTIS. It was not an enemy.


    “And, I guess, if I used them like a missile, you would die.” It said thoughtfully.


    He decided it was probably not in his interest to answer that question.


    “Hm, is winning worth the cost of a drone?” it asked rhetorically.


    “It will take more than one drone to kill me. I have excellent healing.” And Danger Sense, he thought, but chose not to say it.


    “No. You might believe that, but it’s wrong.” It pointed at the broken drone. “That was my first attempt. These two are both faster, and have a much larger internal energy core to explode. If I use them as a missile, you’ll be reduced to a paste. Will you surrender?”


    There was no point in even considering the offer. With his experience of numerous close battles, dying under a GOD’s shield felt almost relaxing. “No. I’ll fight to the end.”


    “Hm… I didn’t think you would. Instead, would you be willing to accept my surrender?”


    Tom nodded, scarcely able to believe that it was talking so casually.


    “Well, then. I guess, it was a good fight, and thank you for showing me my drone’s weakness. I will protect them from lightning. In your opinion, is there anything else I should also do?”


    Tom hesitated. He didn’t want to help a competitor, but this was hardly rocket science. “You only need to guard fast response elements. No point protecting against earth, water, plant, or any of the slow ones.”


    “Air and arcane, then. I think fire is too slow as well.”


    Tom considered that, and remembered what Corrine could do. “In the current child bucket, I would agree with that, but in later buckets, fire will be able to destroy these as their control improves.”


    “When that happens, I’ll be far stronger,” it said with confidence in its voice. “Now, good luck in your future fights.”


    The offer of surrender came through, and then he was back in the common area with a single shiny coin to his name.


    He immediately assessed his surroundings to see if anything had gone wrong.


    Corrine was next to him, and she was safe. So was Baptiste. Throm filled the room, as usual. This time, there were no signs of damage. Vturalta has never been visible, and there was no one else he individually cared for.


    They had all got through safely. He relaxed.


    As he did so, his eyes searched for any disasters. Thankfully, there were none.


    He sighed in relief.


    “I got a win,” Corrine said brightly.


    “Me too.” He replied in a flat tone.


    She looked at him suspiciously. “Are you serious?”


    “Yes, I am. I won.”


    “What? That’s great. Yay!” she grabbed him lifted him up and swung him around in celebration. “Fucking oath. I knew you could do it. Wait.” She stopped spinning him but didn’t let him down. There was a concerned look on her face. “Why are you looking so despondent?”


    “It was not a real victory. They effectively conceded the match when they didn’t have to,” Tom explained. He tried futilely to pry her fingers open to make her release him. “They surrendered when they could have won, and it was only for one point.”


    She was not letting him go.


    “Oh,” some of the enthusiasm left her. “You went with a GOD’s shield?”


    “Yes. I only got a streak of seven ones, and I needed nine. So…” He stopped talking, as there was nothing else for him to say.


    “Oh… well, good job being so disciplined. Smile, Tom. You’re one of us now. You won!”


    Tom shrugged. Yes, he had a coin. But it felt unearned, him having it was cheap, and it was not like only one coin by itself could let him buy anything useful. As far as he was concerned, nothing had changed.


    “Stop it. There’s no point moping. On a serious note, your meeting is today, isn’t it?”


    Tom nodded.


    “You’re in a mood.”


    “Yeah, I am. I’m going to...” He waved his hand, and then he was back under the covers of his bed in his room. It was about time to get up.


    Six hours later, Tom paced up and down the hallway as he watched Dimitri’s office door. He knew this was routine. It was a scheduled meeting, so he shouldn’t be feeling so conflicted, but he was. With his years of experience, the chief caretaker of the orphanage would certainly have tracked all the reincarnator chatter back to him and Kang. He would recognise the crude strategy they were employing, and so he would ask questions.


    Tom wasn’t looking forward to it.


    If he was pressed for an answer, Tom wondered what he should do.


    Should he lie or tell the truth? If he confessed, could he trust the older man not to act against Briana?


    Once more, he glanced at the closed door with a frown on his face.


    Could he skip it? Would that be the best outcome?


    The door opened, and Joseph came out. Eloise’s nemesis, the older bully, did not look particularly happy, and Tom suspected he had received another tongue-lashing. He rushed past without a word.


    Tom knew that the protocol demanded that he go through the open door, but he hesitated, and, even through it was a pipe dream he imagined fleeing, escaping this moment so he didn’t have to answer the question he didn’t want to. Perhaps, tomorrow or later would be a better time to do this, especially if Dimitri was already in a bad mood.


    Raising the mistakes he and Kang had made was not going to go well.


    Then Dimitri was at the door, and it was too late. The man looked troubled:


    “Tom, are you coming? We’re waiting.”