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[Colosseum of Mortals Recovery Potion (Unique)] – a potion from the Colosseum of Mortals. This potion will restore a small amount of health to stabilize the condition of anyone who consumes it while boosting the natural recovery rate of all resources for a day (24 hours). This effect only works out of combat. You can only consume one recovery potion a day.

It was a potion that was clearly made just for this Challenge Dungeon, and with it, he would maybe be able to fight the next day. Hopefully.

After drinking the potion, Jake sat down on a bench and stared into thin air for a while. He hurt all over, had a visible imprint of a palm on his chest, and he felt like shit. Jake had “won” the fight, sure, but it sure as hell didn’t feel like a victory.

If it had been a fight to the death, Jake would likely have lost his first life. Maybe he would have been able to drag out the time for a tie, but as he was currently, he didn’t see any path to victory. Not with the tools he had entered the arena with.

Magic wouldn’t have been an option, either. It was too slow to cast and use. Everything would be telegraphed, and the monk would have easily blocked it.

Despite being called it all the time, Jake was not a martial artist. He was no unarmed fighter. Every single hit from the monk left Jake reeling even when he blocked as the soul-affecting part of his strikes still went through. Meanwhile, Jake did far less damage even with his arcane energy, as, quite frankly, punches and kicks were not a good way to deliver arcane destruction. His entire fighting style was also created with the assumption that his counterattacks would be deadly stabs from katars and not just a damn punch.

This meant Jake had to dodge rather than block nearly all the time. That was his fighting style, but a dodge took way more energy and effort than blocking something. Usually, dodging would then at least allow you to take advantage of an opening as you didn’t use an arm or a leg to block and could strike with it, but what did that help if the attack you could land barely did anything?

No… he would need weapons if he wanted to stand a chance.

Gritting his teeth, Jake just sat there, partly to let the potion do some of its work and partly because he didn’t feel like getting up.

“Hey, Veteran Gladiator,” he heard as he looked up and saw the Battlemaster had walked over. “You look like shit, but I guess you won anyway. Congratulations on that and keeping your streak going. Now, you strike me as rather preoccupied, so I’ll leave you be. Get healed up, yeah? And keep up the good work; I doubt you will meet another monster like that any time soon.”

Jake slowly nodded. “Thanks, I guess…”

The Battlemaster gave him a tap on his shoulder, making Jake wince a bit in pain. He had rolled a lot of punches off his shoulder, and it was still sore as hell, with it feeling like half the muscles within were ravaged. Didn’t help that he had overstrained them with arcane energy, either.

The Battlemaster walked away as Jake stayed sitting, leaning back against the wall as leaning forward sure as hell wasn’t an option with the current state of his ribs.

With a sigh, and to try and distract himself, he decided to check the damn system message he had gotten after the Battlemaster came and talked to him. It didn’t really make him feel better.

Congratulations! You have reached the Veteran Gladiator rank, truly cementing yourself as a regular of the Colosseum of Mortals. As your notoriety and fame grow, so does the strength of your opponents, and you have begun to catch the eye of some of the more powerful entities involved with the Colosseum of Mortals.

As a Veteran Gladiator, you are still limited to one fight a week against another Veteran Gladiator.

All crafters will now have better equipment and items available.

In addition to gladiatorial battles, you can fight against non-Veteran Gladiator opponents in Show Matches once a day. These Show Matches are against a variety of foes and have far looser rules and regulations than regular arena fights. The possible opponents one can face in Show Matches are decided daily. Winning Show Matches reward Colosseum Points based on the opponents fought. Show Matches and battles against other Veteran Gladiators cannot be scheduled on the same day.

The difficulty of all Show Match options has been increased.

For reaching the Veteran Gladiator rank without losing a single time or losing any lives, you are rewarded an extra 5000 Colosseum Points.

For defeating the Benevolent Monk, you are rewarded an extra 10000 Colosseum Points.

Continue to fight, and claim your glory as you prove yourself the strongest mortal! Become the Champion! Or, perhaps, something above even that?

The message was just much of the same stuff he had been told after getting promoted to Gladiator, with some wording changes here and there. The only new things were the mention of Show Match options having their difficulty increased and the final part with the very obvious hint there was something above the rank of Champion.

Looking at the 5000 points for reaching Veteran Gladiator without losing, and especially the 10000 points from ”defeating” the Benevolent Monk, left him with a sour taste in his mouth.

Jake realized it was his own mistake. The Colosseum of Mortals had just been way too easy for too long. He had fought every single day for more than ten weeks and had yet to face a single battle that made him feel actually threatened. One where he didn’t always know, in the back of his mind, that he had another card to pull out and win if he so desired.

One could argue the difficulty spike had been too sudden, but Jake could only blame his own hubris.

He wouldn’t say that the monk offering the honor rules had been lucky, though. It was clearly by design, either made like this by the Wyrmgod or the system directly. For the first major difficulty spike like this to be against someone literally called a Benevolent Monk? Someone who didn’t want to kill his opponents and even offered rules that would make most people far too weak to challenge him lose instantly? Yeah, definitely not a coincidence.

This fight was a warning of those to come. A reminder there were other monsters out there who possessed power defying the limitations of stats. People who were able to control concepts beyond what any F-grade should ever be able to.

Jake had to admit that he had never really understood what concepts were, and based on what Villy had said, with the Path he was walking, he likely never truly would.

Still, Jake tried to at least get a basic understanding. Based on the Primordial, concepts came in two forms. The “logical” and the “nomological.” It was a bit more complicated, but Jake did like to simplify things.

Logical concepts could be understood through intense study. They could be endlessly practiced and understood, like a researcher delving into a particular subject. With how deep the pit of knowledge went on nearly every topic after the system appeared, to truly try and comprehend something was a lifetime goal, even for gods. It was like there was always more to learn, even if you felt like you had seen anything. As if there was always one deeper layer one could dive into, one more level of understanding.

Nomological concepts were nearly the opposite. These were concepts that could not be explained logically by the person who used them. Nomological concepts were often of the more mysterious kind, and some concepts simply had no truly logical aspect to them. One could try to do a logical analysis of how everything related to a nomological concept worked and its effects, but one could never truly find a satisfying answer. The point of nomological concepts often was that there was no true answer.

A great example of a purely nomological concept was the entire Avarious and Horizon-chasing concept. The one that made him deal more damage to people higher level than himself didn’t have any logical groundwork; there was no theory of how it worked; it simply was. Even if someone made a skill like that, they would have no way to properly explain how it worked. They could say how they did it, the effects of the ability itself, but that didn’t in any way make it replicable.

Even if this distinction seemed rather strict, most top-tier concepts were a mix of the logical and nomological, though some did lean far more in one direction than the other. This did result in two people being able to learn the exact same concept, with one taking a logical and the other a nomological approach, but reaching very similar results.

Jake was a person who leaned very much in the direction of the nomological. He never truly “understood” how concepts worked… but in some way, he still kind of did. He understood how they felt to use, the experience of having a certain kind of energy running through his body. He could experience them. In the same vein, when he saw a concept used, he could understand what it did and, from there, attempt to replicate it, not through arduous research but pure trial and error.

Of course, the final aspect of all these concepts even working was the system that often helped put all the pieces together.

The monk Jake had thought was also someone Jake was certain walked a Path of purely nomological concepts. Just being a monk, Jake already connected him to the Dao Sect – or at least a similar place – and the Dao thing sure as hell wasn’t an institution rooted in logic. Instead, it was about meditating for endless years, thinking about something until suddenly you received enlightenment.

On the note of enlightenment, there were a few theories as to how or why they appeared. Based on what Villy had said, it was a mix of receiving a genuine epiphany of understanding and the system then coming in to assist by filling in the gaps, even with things not necessarily related to skills. It wasn’t just understanding the fundamental truths of the universe, but instead getting an idea that the system then approved and helped make a reality.

Ah, but there was one kind of “true” enlightenment. People who had those were called Transcendents. Where their epiphany went beyond the confines of the system, and rather than help, all it could do was try and accommodate their Path.

Anyway… concepts. An easy way to view concepts was as amplifiers of sorts. If the Sword Saint “understood” better how sharp his blade was, he could thus make it sharper. This meant that should he clash with an opponent who lacked understanding, the old man would come out on top every time as his blade would simply be sharper.

Mind you, this was only truly the case when talking about fights without skills. If both of them had the same stats and used the exact same skill, things would be near entirely equalized, even if one party understood the concept far more thoroughly. That is because concepts were baked into skills, and if the concept you infused into a skill improved enough… that’s what skill upgrades were for. Sure, there could still be variance even within the same skill if one person was closer to upgrading it than the other, but if both had, as an example, just selected the skill during a skill selection and both only used the skill with the basic instinctual knowledge provided, they would be roughly equal.

This didn’t mean high rarity skills could entirely replace conceptual understanding. A lot of fighting did not directly involve skills, and using skills all the time was a great way to run yourself out of mana or stamina. Usually, you also wanted your skills to be better than what a regular attack only infused with conceptual understanding did. Finally, upgrading skills required understanding them.

What did this ultimately mean? Well… Jake running around with a high conceptual understanding of his arcane affinity meant that every single kick or punch he threw was the same as an ancient or even legendary skill for a G-grade.

The monk was the same, except more extreme. He was like a G or F-grade walking around with at least a powerful mythical skill and the mental training of someone far above a normal C-grade. Jake had a hard time trying to understand if the man was just someone created by the system and the Wyrmgod or if he was an image of a real person. Perhaps a mix of both. But if he was indeed a real person who had that kind of power as a G-grade… no, that wouldn’t be possible. Jake was positive about that. He would have gotten levels or something, right?

It was far more likely that should he be an image of a real person, he was just a C-grade who had been turned level 0, the same as Jake.

Yeah… that had to be it.

Jake tried to comfort himself a bit with the thought, but it didn’t really help much. Fact still was Jake had his ass handed to him, and not just because his opponent was monstrously powerful, but because he had been a reckless and overly-confident moron.

The system even fucking warned me, he scolded himself, shaking his head. He just hadn’t taken it seriously, as all prior warnings hadn’t really led to things actually getting hard.

No… there was no reason to dwell on his own fuck-up. Better to act on it.

A good twenty minutes had passed by now since Jake had fought his battle, and through his sphere, he saw Polly and Owen walking over with hurried steps. Still sitting on the bench, leaning back against the wall behind him, he turned his head and looked toward them.

“Are you okay? It looked rough out there… and you definitely don’t look that good either,” Owen said curtly with some genuine worry as he rushed over.

“I don’t think okay is the right word to use in this case,” Jake shook his head. “Not going to sugarcoat it, I look like shit outwardly, but it’s way fucking worse on the inside.”

“That monk… did not belong at Veteran Gladiator rank,” Owen sighed as he tried to comfort Jake. “In fact, I don’t think he belongs in any of the different Gladiator ranks. He is one of those monstrous people you just hope not to meet as they climb the rank ladder. Same as you.”

“Yeah, I know… I knew before the fight,” Jake admitted. “I fucked up by not preparing properly this time around, even if I had a warning.”

Polly, seeing Jake being down, shifted the topic. “Any… anyway, are you okay otherwise? Have you consumed a recovery potion yet? If not, the medical staff sells them…”

“I have,” Jake smiled. “Thanks for the concern, I should be back in top form within a few days, and hopefully, I will be fit to fight again tomorrow. Though I will ask. Polly… can you figure out if my next opponent is also an anomaly?”

“I already did, and as long as you get your first Veteran Gladiator fight done within the next two weeks, there are no outliers, just regulars,” Polly said instantly.

Jake was about to say something but just sighed. “Thanks again.”

Moving forward, he wanted to at least check if he would face a similar situation. He didn’t know if the system would only warn him the first time he faced an anomaly or if it just sometimes happened randomly, and you had to figure it out yourself. Either way, Jake wanted to know and be ready. In more ways than one.

Checking his Colosseum Points, Jake had gained a lot.

Current objective: Be promoted from Veteran Gladiator to Master Gladiator

Current rank: Veteran Gladiator (0/10)

Colosseum Points: 35340

Lives remaining: 10

And he knew what to do with them too.

“Owen, Polly,” Jake said to the two of them. “You two wanna go shopping tomorrow morning when they open? If I am feeling in shape for it, that is.”

“You’re finally going to get some proper equipment?” Owen asked with interest.

“More than just a pair of boots, at least,” Jake smiled in response. “But that is for tomorrow… for now, I just need to relax.”

The one good thing about Jake’s recklessness was that he had fought first thing in the morning. It wasn’t even noon yet, and he had the entire day ahead of him. It was an entire day to do whatever he wanted, and he knew exactly what to do with this time too:

Be at home laying in his bed.

Because right now, just breathing fucking hurt.