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”If he is just faking being a non-shitty person to convince me to train and become the Grand Champion, what is that even worth? Also, how did you even know that would work? Even if I some-fucking-how manage to become the Grand Champion at some point in the future, how will that allow him to fulfill his goal?” Owen questioned.

”I have been thinking, and I asked myself… why did your father spend his time recovering training you, and teaching you how to use your family’s affinity?” Polly chimed in. ”Maybe it was because he wasn’t sure if he would ever recover and wanted you to pick up where he left off even back then.”

”I… am not sure that makes any of this better,” Owen sighed.

”Think of it like this,” Jake said, trying to be positive. ”A dad who wants you to train to be the Grand Champion while faking being a good dad is better than a dead dad. Because at least the first option has the possibility to turn into something non-shitty, while the latter can never turn non-dead. Also, finally, is it really that bad to train to become the Grand Champion? Even if you fail, you will get a lot stronger in the process, and I have the feeling that as long as you get stronger than him, he will let off you.”

”I guess you’re right,” Owen said, still sighing. ”Now, how confident are you in facing this Archmage?”

Jake was happy with the change of subject as he considered the question for a while. ”Well… hopefully it will be a good fight. I did catch a glimpse of him in the stands, and he did have a respectable aura, but I also know that he is supposedly a slippery bastard with lots of resources at his disposal, so I probably don’t want it to be a drawn-out affair.”

”Yeah…” Polly muttered. ”He is really old and has a lot of artifacts he has created throughout the years, especially the many Sealing Orbs he carries around. They are super dangerous, so remember to watch out for those, alright?”

They had already had this conversation before, as Jake had learned plenty from Polly about her so-called Master. She knew far more than any information broker could relay, as she had been his assistant for a while, and even if he hadn’t taught her much about combat, he had taught her plenty of general magic mumbo jumbo, and due to his innate need to brag, had gladly shown off a whole legion of valuable items he had either purchased or created himself.

Jake cared about what he had made himself, as those were what he could bring into the arena. The most dangerous items were the Sealing Orbs, which were small crystal balls where he had trapped intense mana within of a specific affinity. Then, through a bunch of rituals and more magic stuff, elementals would appear, already sealed within. These elementals could then be absorbed by the Archmage, giving him a far greater affinity to a particular school of magic for a period of time while also burning their mana instead of his own… so yeah, that was his gimmick.

Only two days after Jake had beaten his first opponent as a Champion, he issued his second challenge to the Archmage. Jake had almost expected another instant duel to happen, but…

”You wanted a fast fight, right?” the Battlemaster asked.

”Yeah?” Jake asked with hope.

”Well, the Archmage doesn’t. The match is scheduled to take place in twenty-nine days and twenty-two hours,” the Battlemaster said with a deadpan expression.

”That fucking sucks,” Jake grumbled. ”Can I just change opponent or fight someone else in between?”

”Nope, the rules are rules,” the Battlemaster shrugged. ”And based on what I know about that old crook, he would have scheduled for the last minute no matter when you chose to issue the challenge, so you may as well have the waiting period now. Either way, you should go prepare, yeah?”

Jake just nodded. ”Yeah, I guess I should.”

So, Jake spent the next month training and making preparations for the Necromancer and Lord of the Hunt. Okay, he did also do a little bit to prepare for the Archmage, but honestly, he had already done all the preparations he needed. No, the only true preparation he did was to prepare a special little surprise.

Owen also stayed with Jake throughout this time, and what’s more, he even had his father actively give advice. The man formerly known as the Lightning Monarch gladly shared all he could about other Champions he had either fought with or researched before. In the end, he ended up handing everything he had to Polly before he headed home to Owen’s mother and siblings.

His father insisted Owen should stay with Jake, especially after Jake acted like he was helping Owen train.

Pretty quickly, an entire month passed, and Jake once more found himself entering the arena, this time to face off against the Archmage. This month was the longest period he had gone since arriving in the Challenge Dungeon without a fight, so he was feeling a bit jittery.

After a final ”good luck” from Owen and a hopeful look from Polly, Jake walked into the tunnel leading to the arena.

The announcer once more introduced the two fighters in a very general fashion, once more not giving any real information about either of them. This pretty much confirmed to Jake that this lack of information-sharing was intentional and just not coincidental.

When the gates lowered, the two combatants once more walked toward the center of the arena, however, with more distance than he had with prior opponents. Both of them knew this would be a ranged fight, so there was no need to go in melee from the get-go. Jake also knew that his opponent preferred to have some time to wind up his magic, which Jake was a-okay with.

The first of them to speak ended up being the old Archmage.

”Ho ho ho, so you are the little human my dear Pollaystrasirial has been following around these days, huh?” the Archmage chuckled as he stroked his beard. “I do hope the little girl has learned enough from you to make it worth the punishment she is due once she returns for embarrassing me in the arena with her pathetic performance.”

Jake didn’t say anything as he pulled out his bow. The only thing he mentally noted was that he had totally forgotten Polly’s full name.

“How uncivilized… would you not at least wish to utter some words before your potential demise?” the Archmage smiled, confident in himself.

“Surrender now, or you’ll die,” Jake simply said in a casual tone. “No second chances.”

”Uncivilized was perhaps too flattering of a word; you are simply delusional and rude,” the Archmage said, disappointed. ”Too bad; I had hoped you would have been willing to accompany me back to my mage tower once I had beaten you so I could study your peculiar magic. Alas, it appears you wish to die too badly for that to happen in any reasonable fashion.”

With those words, the Archmage took out his staff.

Immediately, Jake jumped back as he reached inside his Ring of Deft Hands. Within, it had four slots. Two were used by katars, one for when he needed to store the bow, but the final one was something special he had prepared just for the old Archmage.

Out came a giant arrow more than one and a half meters long with a complex design. Jake had spent three full days crafting it, and now was the time to show the Archmage just how stupid he had been to give Jake that long of a preparation period.

Nocking it, Jake’s body exploded in arcane energy as he began to charge a skillless Arcane Powershot.

On the other side of the arena, the Archmage didn’t sit still as he floated back and took out three orbs at once.

”Spirits of the North, Winds of the East, become one as a blizzard is born!” he yelled as he smashed two gems together.

Two powerful streams of energy were released and began merging as what looked like a small localized blizzard appeared around the Archmage, obscuring his form. This blizzard gathered itself quickly, clearly having some level of autonomous control. Even if it wasn’t a fully born elemental, it was close, and Jake felt like he was facing two beings rather than one.

”Soil of the Deep, embrace my form and grant me strength!”the Archmage yelled before he crushed the other orb in his hand, as brown energy began to emanate from his body.

Right as the Archmage’s preparations were complete, Jake made his move.

With a deep exhale and an explosion of arcane energy, he loosed the arrow. The icy winds were parted in an instant as the Archmage reacted by smashing his staff into the ground, making a wall of sand shoot up before instantly turning it solid.

The massive arrow flying straight for the wall exploded the very next moment, sending two dozen arrows flying around the stone barrier, attacking the Archmage from all sides like they were heat-seeking missiles. With a yell, the man erected a barrier all around himself as every single arrow hit at once, exploding upon impact.

A massive explosion, far beyond what any level 0 should be capable of causing, rocked the arena and sent sand flying everywhere. The icy wind elemental had completely scattered in an attempt to protect its master. And from the looks of it, it had succeeded. From the center of this explosion, a weak, haggard voice began to sound out.

”I sur-”

No more sound came out as an arrow hit him in the side of the throat, drowning the word. Through his sphere, Jake saw the mage feebly reach for it right as a second arrow flew in and struck him in the eye, penetrating into his skull and ending the fight for good.

The crowd and announcer were both silent as Jake put away his bow and fell onto his ass. Blood was dripping from his eyes and ears, and his right shoulder was nearly entirely blue, with several visible blood vessels ruptured within, giving birth to plenty of internal bleeding. Shooting those two follow-up arrows definitely hadn’t helped.

As the dust cleared, the body of the Archmage was revealed. His lower body was covered in an earthy shell as he had tried to cover his entire body with stone. Sadly for him, his upper body did not have time to be affected, and whatever emergency barriers he had put up and the protection from his elemental had been far from enough, resulting in his entire body dripping with blood. Most of it was from wounds caused by all the explosions, but a good portion of the blood also came from the hole in his neck.

After a few more seconds of silence, the cheers began, along with the announcer excitedly declaring his victory. Jake just stayed sitting for a bit as he looked at the mage’s body before sighing. ”I did tell you to surrender when you had the chance.”

Jake got up after a bit of struggle and walked out of the arena, once more raising a fist to the cheers of the crowd. They were eerily cheery despite the corpse with an arrow in his throat and eye lying there in the center of the arena, but by now, Jake was honestly used to it.

Right as he got outside of the tunnel leading into the arena, he went straight to the Battlemaster to report his win and get a pat on the back that hurt like hell. A few minutes later, Owen and Polly arrived to escort him back to his little townhouse so he could rest.

In this fight, Jake had once more gone in with a plan. Polly had repeatedly said how the Archmage was never in a rush when fighting but gladly took his time to use his spells to buff himself up. Jake had taken advantage of that by creating an attack far more powerful than any other he was capable of.

The quasi-Protean Arrow had been made up of a faint layer of arcane energy on the surface, with weak destructive energy right beneath. In this weak destructive energy, Jake had put twenty-four stable arrows that he had painstakingly created, and during the creation process, he tried to push in as much Willpower energy as he could to make sure they would curve upon exploding the weak destructive energy. Ultimately, he still had to control all the arrows when the big arrow exploded, hence the bleeding from nearly every orifice.

It had worked out as he wanted, and Jake was more excited than ever to get out of the Colosseum and upgrade some skills. He had gained a lot of inspiration, and he was more sure than ever that the true purpose of this entire Challenge Dungeon was to help people upgrade skills and train concepts… which often led to upgrading skills.

Walking back to his small townhouse, Jake checked his status.

Bonus objective gained: Defeat the other Champion to become the Grand Champion.

Current rank: Champion (2/7)

Colosseum Points: 1,882,910 (2,882,910).

Lives remaining: 10

Jake hadn’t been entirely sure before, but now he was. Each win as a Champion rewarded 500,000 Colosseum Points… which made all the points he got in lower ranks feel so damn meaningless, especially considering how ”easy” his first two Champions fights had been. As the Battlemaster had said, he didn\'t actually have these points yet, but would only get them after all the Champion fights were done, but at least it told him how many he would get.

He did know that the Lighting Monarch and Archmage were the easiest. Not just because he had seen and felt the auras of all the other Champions but because that just made sense from a design perspective. These two both had Challenge Dungeon natives related to them and storylines associated with them.

No, he was sure that the next five had to be the truly challenging ones. At least strong or not dumb enough to let Jake charge his quasi-Arcane Powershot together with his quasi-Protean Arrow, right? Not that he wasn’t going to prepare some anyway.

Jake even went to the shops to see if he could buy a better spatial storage, but sadly found that none of the ones on offer would allow him to store his arcane constructs. At least not any of the non-legendary items, and Jake really didn’t want to spend nearly a million Colosseum Points on a ring. Not before he lost a few of his ten lives, at least.

By now, he was beginning to wonder if he would even lose any lives at all during the Colosseum of Mortals…

Well, that was entirely dependent on his opponents, right? And if anyone could grant him death, it had to be the Necromancer who literally dealt with it.