New Game Minus: The Complete LitRPG Fantasy Trilogy

by Sarah Lin

  "Well, Manascas has long hosted a great tournament in the Red Sands Arena."

  "Right, that was it! Everybody talked about it before, and they made it sound totally fractured, but the arena was closed down because of all the lich shit."

  Secretary Skeleton looked at him uncertainly. "My lord? Surely you don't me-"

  "Come on, don't be a retard. Let's go do this."

  Twirling his new weapon around his hands, Raigar headed toward the desert city. Should be a good time.

  Chapter 11

  The next day, Bloodwraith decided he had gotten his fill of contentment. Spending time relaxing with allies was well and good, but now he wanted to acquire raw power. Fortunately, Danniah was eagerly putting on her armor before he was even fully awake.

  "I'm really looking forward to all the tournament events! Even if I don't win, it will be nice to fight without having our lives on the line, you know?"

  "No, I don't." Meara sat up sluggishly and stared at Danniah. "You are far too chipper."

  "Are you going to come with us, Meara? I know you have trade goods and potions to sell and other things to do, but it might be fun, right?"

  "I figured I'd come the first day, just to see how it works. Besides, something might go wrong."

  Bloodwraith nodded in agreement as he pulled on his armor. "Exactly. Even if the stakes are supposed to be non-lethal, there are bound to be accidents. I doubt the Red Sands Arena would spend money on a huge number of healers, for example, so there could potentially be issues there."

  "Oh, bah." Danniah hit him on the shoulder with her new helm before she pulled it back and looked at it. "I'm still not used to this thing. It's obviously better, but... well, I'll get used to it eventually!" She still placed her old helm on her head, however.

  They made it to the Arena in good time, before their first event had started. Though Bloodwraith wanted to meditate while they waited, Danniah convinced them to watch one of the earlier events. It was a knife-throwing contest that included some rather impressive distances and tricks, but having no experience with such weapons, he had difficulty getting interested and just spent the time summoning boxes for the contestants and evaluating their numbers.

  Finally it was time for his first event: the contest of strength. Bloodwraith headed down to the small sub-arena along with several other muscle-bound types. He saw one contestant who looked rather slim... but his fingers glittered with eight rings, most likely all Might enchantments.

  When the bell rang, Bloodwraith bent down, grasping the first of his stones, and hefted it. He'd been worried, since they hadn't let him test any of the stones, but he managed to lift it with only a little straining. But as Bloodwraith began making his way across the arena, he realized that wasn't sufficient.

  There were others who were lifting and carrying the stones more swiftly than him. Even if he strained, there was no way he was going to be able to match the pace of the fastest. Though disappointed that even his best statistic wasn't superlative, Bloodwraith wasn't surprised, given what he'd seen from Manascas. He focused on pacing himself to finish before the sands in the hourglass ran out.

  It was some small comfort that there were other contestants who could barely budge the stones, and others dropped out in exhaustion as the contest wore on. Bloodwraith finished moving all his stones with a third of the hourglass remaining, which wasn't enough to place in the top three but enough to receive a small reward that would cover the cost of entering.

  As he headed back, he noted that the box had increased his Might percentage by a full 24%. Though that number would likely decline over time, perhaps he should repeat this challenge if it appeased the box gods' sense of hard work.

  "Good job, Raigar!" Danniah clapped him on the back so cheerfully he didn't even mind her use of his false name. "We were rooting for you! Cheer for me in my event, okay?"

  Though Bloodwraith nodded, he didn't really take it seriously. What was the point of cheering, after all? It had no bearing on the outcome of the event, proving an entirely pointless waste of energy. So as Danniah headed out onto the sands and picked up her end of the rope, he sat and watched with his arms folded.

  The two sides each gripped the rope tightly and... mostly grunted in place. Though he quickly grew bored, he continued to watch because it was Danniah's event. Near the end of their rope alongside a full dwarf, she dug in her heels and did her best to resist the opposing side's tugging.

  As the contest stretched on she looked up toward them. Meara put her hands around her mouth and yelled something encouraging, while Bloodwraith just nodded. He saw an odd smile on Danniah's face, then she threw herself fully into the event.

  Eventually Danniah's side won, earning a very mild profit. But better than nothing, and as Danniah returned she had a huge grin on her face.

  She got a break before her next event and so they watched some of the combat challenges. Though there were many amateurs, Bloodwraith was more concerned with the stronger combatants. There were several above Level 10 who were so skilled they could waste energy on fancy movements and otherwise play to the crowd. Those events actually had somewhat of an audience, leading him to wonder if there were other ways to monetize the tournaments beyond the winnings.

  But soon enough, Danniah headed out again. The defensive event was performed one candidate at a time, standing in the center of a small arena while spells on the sides lobbed small packets at them. Apparently the rule was that they needed to keep their feet on the ground at all times, restricting their ability to dodge and forcing them to block until they made three errors.

  Several candidates failed quickly, the packets striking their clothes and exploding in red-colored dust that stained their armor and proved their mistake. They also seemed to be launched at considerable speed, actually knocking one candidate to the ground, which was instant failure.

  Yet after several failures, the next contender finished the onslaught absolutely perfectly. She wielded only two bucklers and didn't wear heavy armor, but more than that, she seemed to move before the packets had even been launched. Did she have some sort of magical ability to anticipate them? Though he wasn't sure how that could be possible, he preferred that to the alternative: that the course of obstacles remained the same from tenday to tenday. Surely they wouldn't be so simplistic.

  Danniah went after and performed excellently, staying low and pivoting to deflect each of the packets. At one point two came at the same time and she successfully exploded both prematurely with a burst of mana from her shield. She needed to perform the same technique a second time before she was done, and one packet stained her leg red, but she'd made it through with only one mark on her.

  There were two contenders who got through perfectly, putting Danniah in third place. She returned bearing a shiny new gold piece and a smile on her face.

  "More of them would have gotten me if I hadn't done so much training with my mana! I'm really glad you motivated me to work on it!"

  He nodded. "You've done well."

  "Those other two were amazing, though!"

  "I think they might have been cheating."

  Meara shook her head. "I don't think that was it. Each contestant got a similar but roughly equivalent set of attacks. Perhaps they're just familiar with the combinations."

  "Oh, I hadn't thought of that." Danniah plopped down onto the bench beside them heavily. "Wait, I'm going to need to get up again soon, aren't I? Isn't your event next, Bloodwraith?"

  It was, though not immediately. They watched more of the fights and Bloodwraith started to notice a strange trend. Some of the contestants had reasonably high Levels, but somewhat low stats for their Level if equipment wasn't counted. He counted the numbers directly and compared to Danniah, just to be sure, but he was correct. Many had one extremely high stat with all the others mediocre.

  What could lead to such a scenario? If it was simply monomaniacal focus on a single discipline, that was of no use to him. Yet the system declared them to be Level 10 or above
, and that usually implied experience, which meant death. Could they have some way to gather raw power unrelated to the usual methods?

  He didn't discover any kind of answer before it was time for his second event. They had to move to another of the small arenas, though this one was larger than average. Not only that, it was set up with a variety of stone pillars on the ground and strange jugs both resting on some of them and hanging in the air. The targets, presumably.

  "There you are." The old man from the day before - Kantan? - nodded to him when he entered. "We're just about to start. Get out of your armor, then get up there and show us what you can do."

  Bloodwraith disliked removing so much defensive equipment, but those were the terms of the contest. As he stripped down and removed all his enchantments, he gestured with his head toward the strange course. "Those jugs are the targets?"

  "That's right. Don't touch em with your body or throw anything at em. Otherwise, anything that breaks them counts."

  Though he still didn't entirely understand, Bloodwraith nodded as he pulled himself up onto one of the stone pillars. "If the winner is the one who destroys the most, what are the limitations?"

  "Us." Kantan jumped up onto one of the other pillars in a single leap. "No fancy rules, no setting up again. One round, everyone keeps track of their own score. Winner is the last one standing. Extra bonus if you hit the most jugs, but your score doesn't count if you fell."

  "Simple enough." Yet as he said it, Bloodwraith realized that he was facing a more difficult challenge than he expected. He had expected a display of skill on his own, not to compete at the same time as all the rest. Other thuggish warriors were jumping or climbing up onto the pillars as well... Level 9, Level 12, Level 11, Level 14... he had his work cut out for him.

  If the goal was to be the last one standing, did hitting the targets really matter? As he looked to the other contestants, he realized that it did. None of the men here were competing for gold, this was about honor. They might not bother keeping score, and he wondered if some of them could even count, but they'd remember how everyone did.

  In that case, what he needed to do was not win, but make an impression. Winning might not be possible at all, given that the logical strategy would be for them to all team up on him at the beginning. Or would that violate barbarian "honor"? It didn't matter in the end, because he knew what his strategy would be regardless.

  He could cast Fist of Rage exactly eight times before he ran out of mana. His goal was to extract as much of an impact as possible from those castings.

  "May the best man win!" The leader hit his chest with a fist and that was all the warning they received.

  Bloodwraith moved faster than the others, both hands flying up and a burst of force flying from each. He'd chosen his targets well and two of the central jugs shattered. Though he'd braced himself for an attack from all sides, they didn't use their numbers against him. In fact, they seemed more focused on each other, two of the men ignoring the jugs entirely and striking at one another.

  Given time, Bloodwraith released another two bursts, destroying his next two targets. This was too easy. There were six competitors and twenty jugs, so hitting four already put him above average. Or were they counting on knocking him off and invalidating his total?

  It seemed like that was the plan, because one of the younger barbarians leapt toward him with a roar. Before he arrived, he threw out a hand and Bloodwraith felt his own skill's force from the other side.

  His instincts betrayed him. Instead of dodging, as would have been smart, he retaliated. Though his own burst successfully struck the other man's feet, he had no armor to cushion the blow: the burst struck him in the chest and knocked him off the pillar.

  Reaching desperately, Bloodwraith barely managed to grab the edge. As his arm jerked painfully, he saw that his opponent had also managed to catch himself and now struggled to climb back up.

  Bloodwraith didn't wait. While still hanging by one arm, he raised the other and released another burst of force, knocking his opponent to the sands below. The young man cursed as he hit the ground and pushed himself up furiously, but then gave Bloodwraith a grudging nod before stomping away.

  Now that he was clear, Bloodwraith climbed back on top of his pillar. He discovered that several of the others had thrown their opponents to the ground and were now smashing jugs, but many remained, so his total should remain the highest.

  Unfortunately, the leader was standing and watching him. Kantan waited for Bloodwraith to get back to his feet before he attacked.

  Practically as soon as he rose, Bloodwraith ducked again, letting the force fly over his head. He lifted his hand to retaliate, but hesitated. Since he'd already wasted two casts on the young barbarian, he was behind his plan. Even as he fought, he needed to keep in mind his overall score.

  So instead of attacking, Bloodwraith jumped sideways to evade the next attack. He landed on another pillar with a jug hanging between him and his opponent. Bloodwraith's burst of force tore through it, sending the shards of the broken jug flying toward Kantan, still carried on the burst. After that, he could destroy another jug, then physically fight the-

  The leader raised a hand and somehow the force simply dissipated. It hadn't been a counter-spell or mana dismissal, what had that been? Not only was the burst simply gone, the shards of the jug bounced off his muscles harmlessly.

  "Hvah!" The leader gave a loud shout that might have seemed ridiculous if he hadn't simultaneously thrust out a fist that burned with mana.

  From it emerged a wave of force that utterly dwarfed any Fist of Rage that Bloodwraith had ever cast. He tried to dodge, but it still struck him, force slamming almost his entire body. It drove him not just off the pillar, but away from the entire cluster of pillars toward the wall of the arena.

  Stunned as Bloodwraith was, he wasn't about to let it end like that. While flying back he reached out one more time, using his last mana to smash one more jug. Six. It would have to do.

  A moment later he slammed into the wall of the arena painfully and tumbled down into the sands. He was more stunned than injured and came up spitting out sand. By the time he did so, one more barbarian was knocked off his pillar and Kantan smashed the last jug. The losers began to laugh and congratulate one another, not seeming to care who had won or lost.

  But the leader watched him, then closed the distance in a single powerful leap. "You know it doesn't matter what your score is. You fall, you lose."

  "I know. But I kept anyone else from winning, didn't I?" Obviously Kantan could have won if he'd gone all-out at the beginning, but this was a game, not a battle. After a moment, the barbarian leader gave a low chuckle.

  "You're not bad. I thought there was something wrong about you at first, but you're one of us."

  That should have insulted him, but Bloodwraith found that he could accept it. The old man might fight like a brute, but he was no fool, and he held real power. "What was that technique you used? I've never seen the like."

  "No technique, boy. Just the same skill you use, empowered with greater strength. You can learn how to do the same thing."

  "Huh. You trying to recruit me or something?"

  "Not like that." Kantan extended a hand and Bloodwraith eventually took it. When the other man gripped his hand like he was trying to crush it, Bloodwraith squeezed back. "I'm the oldest member in our local Savages Guild. You want to come by, you have an invitation from me."

  Bloodwraith couldn't help raising an eyebrow. "Savages Guild?"

  "They're gonna call us that anyway, might as well make it our own." Kantan shrugged and moved away. "Come by if you want, or don't. We're not much for ceremony."

  Though the idea of such a thing would once have disgusted him, Bloodwraith instead found himself making a mental note to visit this Savages Guild. He knew a great deal about creating empowered versions of spells, but had never imagined it could be done with barbarian skills. Most likely the boxes would prevent him from doing it himself due to i
nsufficient Intellect or some other contrived reason, but with a teacher he might be able to manage it.

  Yet just as he was feeling satisfied, he saw Danniah rushing toward him. "Raigar, we've gotta go! They're saying we'll forfeit if we don't get to our match in time!"

  "What?" Bloodwraith looked to his pile of equipment, but Meara was already standing nearby and shook her head.

  "Go, I'll bring your things."

  With that, Danniah grabbed his hand and tugged him out of their small arena toward a different one. Bloodwraith wondered if his current match had gone too long, or if they were simply scheduled too closely together. Actually, now that he thought back to the previous day, he found himself harboring suspicions about this Baratak.

  They arrived in a small room with a fighting circle inscribed on it. Baratak looked completely unruffled, though his partner was wearing nothing but a loincloth and wrestling oil, so at least they were also unprepared. Yet he was sure that he saw a flicker of dissatisfaction on Baratak's face when they entered.

  "Finally." An official seated nearby shook his head. "Much longer and I'd have disqualified you."

  "There should have been time." Bloodwraith glowered at Baratak, but the other man raised his hands defensively.

  "We barely arrived on time as well. Shall we call this one a draw?"

  "No. We fight."

  Yet as the official gestured toward the circle, Bloodwraith realized that he'd be given no time to get his equipment from Meara, much less put it on. On top of that, he'd just exhausted all of his mana fighting in the last event, in addition to a significant percentage of his stamina. Danniah was still a bit worn from her defensive match as well. They were in no shape for this fight.

  There was a slight smirk on Baratak's face and Bloodwraith knew that it was intentional. In that case, he couldn't let this pass.

  "Wait a minute." He turned toward the official, looming over the smaller man. "I've just finished an event and I don't have my equipment."