Chapter 461 - Far Future – – And Now, Into the Fire... (1/2)

I rolled my eyes at her as the drums began to build up, and made a shooing motion. ”At least wait until the chaff are dead.”

She paused, probably astonished that I dared talk to her, but Rantha, Dauntless, her Intimidation attempt sailed right past me and scattered more drow, shocked that I dared even speak to her Exalted Murderqueenness. I looked so relaxed she might have been a doxy on the corner, dressed up for ten credits an hour business or something. Not that a million would buy an hour of her time...

”Intriguing,” she laughed, clearly planning on enjoying this. ”You think you will make the top hundred?”

I just looked at her. ”I've already killed two of your little brothers, and my girls one each. You think these twats are going to stop us?” I rolled my eyes. ”Just honor the newbs with death at your hand, and we'll be waltzing around soon enough.”

”Well.” She regarded me for a moment, and then ever so slowly, her eyes began to move to the remaining members of the thousand drow who had joined earlier. ”Shall we compete to see who can kill them the fastest?”

A fair number of the drow swallowed upon hearing that.

”Why, that sounds marvelous!” I shook my head, and the sixty-two insignia hanging in my air plopped to the ground in a ring around me. I stepped out of them and fixed my eyes upon the nearest plebe, who suddenly were all finding themselves being looked at by the Masters they way they had looked at the survivors. They had opted to stay, less than two hundred of them had chosen to bow out, and those who'd left were looking pretty smart at the moment.

Kill the weak first!

There was a final heartbeat, and the arena exploded in eye-blurs of violence.

Me and the girls could run faster than any of these drow, so we were on our first targets almost instantly. The Masters were picking targets and converging, and bouncing, spinning, twirling, cavorting drow were moving in every direction as blades, chains, and knives clashed in flickers of motion... except where we were fighting, of course, where they were crashing and getting forced back.

I didn't trust any of the drow not to be sneaky, so I still had full area awareness, but that's what multiple thoughtstreams are for.

I let someone else take care of the Necrochemysts, as I didn't want to slow down my killing streak. I was focused on one target at a time, and I didn't want to dance with them.

Improved Sunder meant that when I shattered their little ropes and chains and blades and whatnot, they didn't have any weapons, and I carried right on through to carve into them. Flurry meant I could get off a combination of blows in absolute blurs of speed, so strong and fast there was no way they could avoid me even dodging as fast as they could.

As the survivors had done, the lower gladiators didn't even spar with one another, backing off to face the masters, choosing a fight as soon as the person before them was dead, counting themselves lucky to maybe hopefully get an injured and more tired Master as an opponent, giving them a chance, however small.

Those people made great punching bags, since I and the girls weren't waiting for them to wait out the fights.

The one thing with a finesse style is a big reliance on multiple hits and crits. Naturally Madam Liloth was capable of mixing it up with even an experienced finesse fighter, since she surpassed them all, but they were also aware of the crit-dependency and so made that more difficult.

Also, they were all Tens with maxed out Soak and Health, and took a while to carve up the way you needed to.

When you are swinging for fifty-plus points a hit, however, that time is measured in Not Very Long At All Die Now.

My first opponent took ten seconds to get opened up vertically as she tried to jump away, her grav-mulcher didn't work (hey, none of the drow's grav-warpers were, boo hoo) and Chalice ripped her open.

My muscles were 6g muscles, I didn't need no stinking grav-manipulators. I was on one of the gawking watchers with one bound, covering fifty feet and letting them know that a Spirited Charge and Death from Above combo was coming at them... and I had no problem redirecting my momentum to follow them as they tried to move out of the way.

Bang, crit on the charge. I took off the champion's armored arm and head with one stroke, and was moving on to the next before his astonished head could finish its jettisoned tumble and hit the bloody sands in disbelief.

The watchers realized they were Liloth's main targets too, but she was already behind me and my two badges, and now she was getting serious.

I smiled to myself and continued my massacre.

The Masters were winning, but not all of them were that fast, and certainly not as fast as me and the girls. Before the first one of them was done, I had three kills, was working on my fourth, got a fifth, sixth, seventh...

And suddenly everyone left was fighting, and there was only to wait until a fight was over, and springing on the victor as rapidly as possible.

The girls and I could only sit there, waiting and daring anyone to come, which they most certainly would. They had also started a whole new set of insignia, just to drive the point home that not even the best had been able to do much to them.

There it was: a Master Warlock took down a duelist, his armor taking the final thrust as he slit the other drow's throat, reveling in the experience.

He barely got his sword up as I jumped right over two other fights and was on him, sweeping away as he nearly lost his sword, and I stomped on the dying drow to pursue him.