[RAGE MODE: ACTIVE]
The world exploded into hyperclarity. Synthetic adrenaline flooded her system, nanobots hardening muscle and bone. Every nerve ending sang with artificial precision. Time didn't slow, she just moved faster than thought could process.
Her first punch cracked the App shielding on Rauk's shoulder. The crowd noise shifted, surprise rippling through the Gallery.
She saw his temple, his exposed knee, Virgil highlighted them like targets, golden overlays marking optimal strike points. She ignored them. Wanted to hit his face, wipe away that permanent grin.
Her enhanced fists hammered his defensive Apps. Spectacular impacts that made him grunt, made him step back. His shoulder shielding flickered and failed. His rib protection showed stress fractures.
But he was weathering the storm. He'd positioned his remaining Apps to absorb the heaviest impacts, his experience telling him exactly how to guard. Trading shielding durability for positioning.
Virgil insisted.
She wasn't listening. Just hitting. Pouring fury into his defenses, accomplishing nothing.
Rage Mode timer in her HUD: 45 seconds remaining.
Frustrated by the wasted energy, she deactivated early. Needed to save the second charge. Her muscles screamed as enhancement faded. Reflexes turned to mud. The adrenaline crash hit like a wall, weakness flooding her limbs, vision swimming.
Rauk stood there, breathing hard. Apps damaged, some completely burned out. But standing. Still grinning.
"Enhanced fighters," he said, running his finger along a failed shoulder shield. The App sparked, died. "Always the same. Hard and stupid." He tapped the intact shielding on his ribs twice. "Expensive, but worth it."
The crowd's momentary surprise evaporated. He was still in control.
And Beatrix could barely stand. The Rage Mode crash left her trembling, exposed, completely vulnerable. She had maybe ninety seconds before her body recovered enough to function.
Ninety seconds for Rauk to end this.
"Now," Rauk said, "it's my turn."
The beating that followed was methodical. Professional. Rauk had absorbed her best shot and survived. Now he would break her slowly, piece by piece.
The Rage Mode crash hit like drowning. Beatrix's enhanced reflexes turned to mud, her arms heavy, legs trembling. Rauk stalked toward her, grinning.
Her HUD exploded with warnings.
[CRITICAL INTRUSION DETECTED]
[FIREWALL STRESS: 67%]
[ANALYZING THREAT VECTOR...]
Virgil's voice carried urgency she'd never heard before.
"Virgil…" She couldn't finish. Rauk's fist slammed into her cracked ribs.
The pain was normal. Manageable. But for half a second, it had spiked, white-hot agony that made her vision blur.
Virgil reported.
Kivi's voice, tight: "You are being hit with a thousand attacks. Rauk’s team is hacking you!"
Virgil's voice cut through the fog.
She followed his guidance, but part of her mind was stuck on that half-second of full pain. If it had lasted longer...
She stepped, saw the gap, drove her elbow where Virgil indicated. Weak strike, she had no power left, but it landed.
Rauk grunted. His eyes blinked. The hit didn’t hurt him. But he knew it shouldn’t have landed at all.
Virgil observed.
The next exchange was different. Duck the cross. Counter the hook. Step inside his reach.
Her trembling legs failed the timing on the last movement, took another hit to the shoulder. The rhythm was there.
Rauk paused, studying her with his one good eye. "Not bad," he said, almost conversational. "Not random anymore. You're learning."
She said nothing. Just breathed. Listened. Let Virgil's overlays guide her stumbling defense.
The Gallery noise faded. Rauk's taunts became background static. There was only the fight, the data, the perfect clarity of violence reduced to mathematics.
But she was still losing. Just losing slower.
Her body was recovering from the crash, strength returning to her limbs, vision clearing. Maybe thirty seconds before she could move properly again.
Time to execute the plan.
Virgil displayed a path through the terrain.
Beatrix looked at the path. Across Ring 2's prayer circle, through the active vent zone, to the third pillar. Then northwest to the crack.
She looked up. The cylinder's ceiling was two hundred meters overhead, lost in mist and scattered lighting. Gravity glitches floated near the edges of her vision, shimmering pools where gravity reduced or shifted.
"Virgil," she said quietly. "The ceiling. Can I reach it?"
"And landing near the third pillar?"
The hungry sand vent began its cycle, ripples spreading across the prayer circle as electromagnetic pull activated. Most fighters would avoid it, circle around, waste time.
But the gravity glitch was forming right on the vent's edge.
"Do it," she whispered.
She ran toward the active vent, legs still weak but functional. The sand flowed like liquid beneath her boots, pulling toward the center point. She ran across the edge, felt the drag trying to pull her down, enhanced strength barely enough to maintain balance.
The gravity glitch shimmered into existence directly ahead. Mist spiraled counterclockwise, exactly as Charon had taught her to see. She could feel the pressure change, the subtle wrongness in the air.
Behind her, Rauk pulled up short at the vent's edge. Not afraid, smart. Waited for it to exhaust.
Beatrix hit the low-G zone at full sprint and jumped.
The crowd gasped.
She launched upward like a missile, gray sand and debris falling away beneath her. The Gallery platforms blurred past, spectators' shocked faces as she rose faster than should be possible. Fifty meters, a hundred, a hundred fifty. The ceiling rushed toward her.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Her boots touched the cylinder's inner curve. For one perfect moment, she stood on the "sky," looking down at the entire Kill Zone spread below like a map. The pillars. The debris fields. The tiny figure of Rauk staring up at her, his expression shifting from confidence to something else.
Calculation.
The low-G field was already fading. She had maybe three seconds before gravity reasserted itself.
Virgil marked a glowing arc in her vision.
"Not yet," she said. "Need to save it."
She kicked off the ceiling, hard. Fell toward the Kill Zone in a controlled plummet, mist rushing past, the Gallery's shocked roar growing louder as she dropped. Wind tore at her hair. Her stomach lurched as gravity took hold.
The third pillar rose to meet her. She hit the sand forty meters from it, rolled with the impact, came up running despite the screaming pain in her legs.
Virgil highlighted the subtle depression in the sand.
Rauk was already moving, closing the distance. He'd circled the vent, lost maybe ten seconds. Enough.
Beatrix reached the crack and stopped. Turned to face him. Let herself sway, like the ceiling jump and landing had taken everything she had left.
Which wasn't far from the truth.
"Tricks don't win fights." Rauk called out, stalking toward her and hitting hard in her shoulder.
Virgil suggested.
She didn't have to fake much. Beatrix rolled in the sand, and dropped to one knee, head down, arms hanging loose. Blood, sweat and pain dripped from her nose onto the sand. Every breath was sawblades in her chest.
The crowd smelled blood. "STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!" they chanted. The Gallery platforms shook with the rhythm.
Rauk closed in, that grin back on his face. "That's it. Stay down where you belong."
She positioned herself exactly on the crack. The settling depression Charon had pointed out. The structural weakness that Limbo's decay had created and Acheron's groundskeepers had never bothered to fix.
Rauk needed to commit. Needed to think she was finished.
She let her right leg twitch, like it was about to give out completely. Small detail. But Rauk's eye caught it.
"The Mercy Stomp!" he bellowed to the crowd, raising his arms.
They screamed their approval. Betting odds on the Sky-Wall collapsed to 200:1 against her. Even the believers had given up.
Rauk raised his boot. The gravitational shimmer built around his leg, exactly as Rain had described. Two seconds of setup, golden energy coalescing, amplifying the impact that would crush her skull into the sand.
Virgil warned.
Beatrix watched the shimmer intensify. Watched Rauk's expression shift from showman to executioner. Watched the crowd lean forward in their seats, cameras swarming for the perfect angle of her death.
Then, quieter, meant only for her: "Nothing personal, scav. But I've got a reputation to maintain."
He committed fully. All his weight, all his gravitational enhancement, crushing blow meant to end her in one spectacular finish.
[RAGE MODE: ACTIVE]
Beatrix rolled left as the crack split beneath her. Rauk's boot slammed into the weakened substrate with devastating force, the gravitational enhancement making it worse, driving deeper than it should.
The floor gave way.
White stone fractured in a spiderweb pattern. Sand cascaded into sudden darkness. Rauk plunged knee-deep into the pit, his balance completely destroyed. Exposed cables, gravity generator housings, sharp edges, all the infrastructure beneath Limbo's skin revealed in the crater.
For one perfect moment, the undefeated champion was helpless.
Beatrix was already moving. Enhanced speed carried her back toward him in a blur. The world reduced to crystal clarity, his temple exposed, his defensive Apps burned out, his body trapped in broken substrate.
Her fist found his temple with force enough to crack concrete.
Rauk's eye rolled back. He toppled sideways into the pit, unconscious before he hit the cables.
The arena fell silent.
Beatrix stood at the crater's edge, left arm hanging useless, ribs screaming with each breath. Blood ran from her mouth and nose. Right leg trembled from the ceiling jump impact.
But she was standing. She was alive.
And everybody was watching her now.
The silence shattered. The crowd exploded, half in outrage, half in disbelief, none indifferent. The Gallery platforms erupted in chaos. Acheron sections screaming fury. Other clans calculating. General admission losing their minds.
On the Sky-Wall, her odds shifted so fast the numbers became a blur. 20:1, 10:1, 5:1, even. The betting algorithms couldn't keep up.
Cameras swarmed the crater. Drones diving for angles, broadcasting her bloodied face to viewers across the system. The feeds would replay this moment forever, the scavenger standing over the fallen champion, refusing to fall.
A gravity glitch activated nearby, mist spiraling. In the distance, the hungry sand vent exhaled, spraying debris. Limbo continued its chaos, indifferent to human drama.
The Gallery fell silent as all eyes turned toward Blake's throne box.
Gorgyra Blake rose slowly. His scarred face showed nothing. Not surprise, not anger, not approval. Just cold calculation.
His hand raised. Thumb position unclear for three eternal seconds.
Then: thumb up. Closed fist.
"Mercy," the announcer's amplified voice boomed across the Kill Zone.
But the look Blake gave Beatrix was the look of a man who'd just had something valuable broken by a stray dog. She'd embarrassed Acheron's chosen future, made their Arbiter look weak, proven his judgment wrong on broadcast.
He would remember this.
Medical drones descended toward the crater, white shells marked with Acheron circuit patterns. Priests rushed from the tunnels to attend their fallen champion.
Beatrix turned and walked toward her entrance tunnel. Each step was agony. Her Rage Mode timer ran out mid-stride, muscles seizing, nearly dropping her. She stayed upright through pure stubbornness.
The crowd's noise followed her. Some booing, some cheering, most just stunned. Then, from the cheap seats high on the far wall, a new chant started:
"SCAV FIST! SCAV FIST!"
It spread through general admission like fire. The nickname she didn't ask for, born in the moment of her impossible victory.
Rain's voice in her comm, barely controlled: "You did it. Holy shit, B, you actually did it."
Kivi’s comm was a mess of joy screams and sobbing.
Beatrix reached the tunnel entrance. Turned back one last time.
Rauk was being lifted from the crater by medical team, his unconscious body strapped to a hovering gurney. The floor crack was already being marked for repair by Acheron groundskeepers in their white robes. The Sanctification Pillars stood unmoved, witnessing everything.
She'd walked this ground with Charon. Fought on it alone. And won.
[TARGET NEUTRALIZED: +2000 NXP | THE GRIND FIGHT BONUS]
[NEURAL SYNCHRONIZATION COMPLETED]
[UPGRADING TO NEW VERSION 4.0]
She disappeared into the tunnel as the crowd's roar crescendoed behind her.
Twenty meters into the tunnel and her legs gave out. She caught herself against the wall, slid down to sitting. Cold stone against her back. Darkness after the blazing lights.
The Rage Mode crash hit like a freight train. Every nerve ending screamed. Her enhanced muscles spasmed, threatened to tear themselves apart. Bones felt like glass wrapped in fire.
This was the terror. Not the fight, the aftermath.
Virgil reported, clinical and detached.
"Shut up," she gasped.
"I said shut up."
She sat in the dark tunnel, listening to her body destroy itself from the inside. Blood dripped from her nose onto the floor. Her hands wouldn't stop shaking. Vision swam with each heartbeat.
She'd won. She'd fucking won.
And this was the cost.
The crowd noise was muffled here, distant thunder she couldn't quite escape. Were they still chanting her name? Or had they moved on already, forgotten, hungry for the next spectacle?
Footsteps echoed from deeper in the tunnel. Medical team.
She tried to stand. Couldn't. Legs completely gone. Tried again, managed to get one knee under her before everything buckled.
"Don't move." A woman's voice, professional and sharp. White uniform marked with Acheron's circuit patterns, carrying a trauma kit that looked more like a weapons case.
The medic knelt beside her, scanner already out and mapping damage. Her expression was carefully neutral, Beatrix couldn't tell if she was impressed or disappointed.
"Three cracked ribs minimum. Possible hairline fracture in the radius. Tibial microfractures. Internal bruising throughout the torso." The medic pulled a series of injection guns from her kit. "You activated enhanced protocols twice in eight minutes. That's clinically insane."
"Had to live."
"Well. You did." The first injection was cold spreading through her system, numbing the worst of the fire. "Barely."
The second injection made her vision clear slightly. Beatrix watched the woman work with efficient brutality, bio-foam for internal bleeding, bonding agents for the fractures, cellular stabilizers to stop the worst of the degradation.
"I'm taking you to Medical 7. High-priority regeneration bay." The medic loaded her kit. "Someone paid for the premium package."
"Who?"
"Anonymous transfer. Came through during your fight." The medic called for a hover-gurney. "Whoever it was, they knew you'd need it."
The gurney arrived, silent and white. The medic helped Beatrix onto it, every movement fresh agony despite the drugs. As they started moving through the tunnel, Beatrix caught her reflection in the gurney's polished surface.
Blood-streaked face. Bruises already forming. Eyes that had seen too much in too little time.
But alive. Still alive.
Medical 7 wasn't a room, it was a cathedral of healing technology. The regeneration bay dominated the center, a cylindrical chamber of transparent polymer filled with pale blue fluid. Around it, diagnostic stations, surgical arms, banks of monitors showing every biological system in real-time.
This was what money bought in a universe where regeneration and nanites were available. As long as you were alive when you arrived, they could put you back together.
A screen on the wall chimed. Wire transfer notification.
[CREDITS TRANSFERRED: +25,000]
Prize money from Round of 128. Real money. Dante's money.
The medic interfaced with the bay's control system. "Full immersion regeneration. Three-day cycle. You'll be functional for Round of 64." She looked at Beatrix. "This tech isn't cheap. Your anonymous benefactor dropped serious credits."
Bodhi. It had to be. Watching from the cheap seats, seeing her victory, knowing what she'd need. Paying for it without a word, without contact, the same stubborn silence that had defined the last three years.
"Standard protocol: sedation during regeneration. You won't feel the tissue reconstruction." The medic prepared another injection. "When you wake up, the worst will be over. But you'll be sore for weeks. That's the price of surviving what shouldn't be survived."
Beatrix nodded. The bay opened with a hiss of pressurized air.
"One more thing," the medic said quietly. "You fought well. Most fighters your age would've taken the Stomp head-on, tried to tough it out. You were smarter." Something like respect flickered in her expression. "Don't waste it on stupid decisions later."
Then the sedation hit, and the world faded to blue.