The first thing Leonidas noticed when he entered the Arena was that the floor was not covered in sand, but instead consisted of white manastone in every direction, with elegant whorls and patterns in Haelfennyr inscribed across its extent. Massive runic matrices dotted the surface under his feet, and he could feel—even with his low level—the passive immensity of the magic humming below him.

The walls of the Arena’s interior were high, too; at least thirty feet tall, and marked by magitech veins that shone with azure power. His eyes glanced along the seats, and he saw that of the roughly ten thousand-person capacity, perhaps one quarter of the seats were filled—and more were slowly, but steadily filling. Several premier ‘boxes’ were on display as well, positioning at the the edge of the arena’s high walls where they had the best seating, and devoid of any protective glass or physical barriers.

Instead, he noticed the subtle blue sheen of magical shielding enclosing the entire arena from just below the top of the walls all the way toward the sky.

It was an elongated bubble, he realized belatedly, trapping the combatants within.

“Smart,” Leonidas admitted under his breath, and then turned to look for his opponents. The arena floor was perhaps three hundred feet in diameter, and formed a circle that abutted every single one of the walls. Along the extent of that white manastone, he quickly found the enemies he’d been appointed.

When he did, he almost missed a step.

Tarnys was not kidding. I was not expecting this.

A group of goblins ten strong were approaching him from the far side of the arena. Each one of the creatures couldn’t have been more than three feet tall, and wielded an eclectic mash-up of swords, daggers, spears, nets, and even clubs that looked ridiculous to Leonidas’ eyes.

“{LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I PRESENT OUR FIRST CONTENDER! A NEW ARRIVAL IN DAWNHAVEN, AND SPONSORED BY THE DUSK-LORD HERSELF! I GIVE YOU… ACHILLES!}”

Leonidas looked up in surprise at the sudden return to booming volume, and after a moment’s hesitation, raised his unencumbered left hand to wave at the sparse crowd. A smattering of applause, boos, and even laughter greeted him when he did, and Leonidas lowered his hand with a sigh.

“I guess they don’t think I’m worth much, yet.”

“{STANDING IN AS HIS FIRST CHALLENGE, WE HAVE TEN GOBLINS FROM THE TOOFYSTABBA TRIBE! THESE ONES IN PARTICULAR, IN FACT, WERE PARTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR WIPING OUT THE TERRAN SETTLEMENT TO THE NORTH! IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE WHETHER ACHILLES CAN AVENGE HIS FELLOW TERRANS—OR IF THE TOOFYSTABBAS WILL ADD ANOTHER TERRAN SKULL TO THEIR COLLECTION!}”

Leonidas’ eyes narrowed when the announcer said his piece, and he regarded the goblins in silence. The ten of them, while looking relatively weak, had apparently been part of a tribe that had murdered a settlement? That likely meant they’d wiped out a town that had been in the area pre-Incursion.

He felt his adrenaline spike at the thought, and the grip on his [Archon’s Psiblade] tightened until the leather creaked.

The goblins for their part were regarding him with beady black eyes, and snarling in a harsh and high-pitched cacophony of voices that he couldn’t make heads or tails of. They seemed to be agitated by his proximity, but were—remarkably—obeying the rules of the Arena, as far as Tarnys had explained them. He couldn’t fight until the Arena Master said he could, officially. It would be seen as quite the faux pas if he ignored that rule.

“{I HEAR THE TOOFYSTABBAS EAT THEIR VICTIMS, TOO, AND CREATE WEAPONS FROM THEIR TEETH! ONE MUST WONDER, THEN, IF THE DECORATIONS UPON THEIR WEAPONS ARE TAKEN FROM THE SLAIN TERRANS! HOW MORBID, IF SO! WILL THEY ADD ANOTHER SET OF TEETH TO THEIR COLLECTION TODAY? I, FOR ONE, AM EAGER TO…}”

The announcer’s voice faded from his awareness. Leonidas reached within himself, and let himself focus on the breathing exercises Miranda had taught him. In through the nose, out through the mouth, and ground the spirit. His mind settled into a razor focus, and he once more felt at the laughably compact mana channels within his body. On Elatra, he had been able to channel enough magic to shatter castles.

On Terra, he’d struggle to break a chair.

Thankfully, if the System didn’t object, he knew a way to steadily correct that.

Leonidas’ focus went to his still-forming Core, and he stimulated the energy there. Sweat broke out across his body immediately, but he ignored it, and instead focused on stoking the nascent power within his center and harnessing the riotous energy of his [Cataclysm Core].

Unlike the Radiance Core he’d had on Elatra, there was nothing harmonious or peaceful with his new one. The [Cataclysm Core]’s energy was very much like the forces of nature he had been compared to, and it felt like he was trying to wrestle with a hurricane, earthquake, wildfire, and tornado all at once. His Psi spiked within his mind, and he forced his Willpower into action with Intent.

A funnel of Psi formed within his Core, and before he could double-guess himself, he forced the energy of the Cataclysm through his mana channels.

His body spasmed, and Leonidas dropped to all fours immediately. His sword clattered to the stone, and he braced himself on shaking limbs upon the manastone below him. The [Cataclysm Core]’s energy was like a blade where it sliced through his mana channels, and Leonidas felt himself shaking with the effort not to scream.

Cold sweat covered his body under his armor, and adorned his face, and it was all he could do to stay aware of the pack of Goblins—all of whom were now cackling eagerly. They saw a weak human, defenseless and ripe for the killing, and were eager to add his teeth, perhaps, to their trophy case.

Leonidas barely noticed them, other than to make sure they didn’t ambush him.

“There are wolves, Leonidas, and there are sheepdogs.” Miranda had said with solemn intensity. “Remember which one you are, and show no mercy to the wolves.”

Leonidas reached over toward his sword while the energy of the Core scoured his mana channels, and felt each agonizing tear as they were brutally widened. Nanometer by nanometer, the energy of his Core forced his mana channels to widen, and forced his physiology to accelerate its development. The pain, he realized, was very likely System-wrought as much as a consequence of the process.

After all, he doubted his own body would react this strongly to his own Core.

The Arena Master was still monologuing and building ‘hype’ when Leonidas reached out and took his sword in hand. He was still talking, too, when Leonidas slowly pushed himself to his feet with a ragged breath, and stoked the furnace that was his [Cataclysm Core] once more.

“You can take the soldier out of the war, Leonidas, but you can’t take the war out of the soldier. Remember that.”

“I hear you, Miranda,” Leonidas said while focusing his gaze on the cackling goblins.

I am the sheepdog…

The Arena Master’s words were met with cheers and boos while he continued. He was still monologuing, but it didn’t matter.If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

…and the wolves are before me.

Leonidas exploded forward with every iota of speed his [Chivalric Charge] allowed.

The first goblin in his path only had time to shriek half a syllable in alarm when he rose, and then Leonidas was closing on it like an obsidian blur. His blade arced upward into a two-handed forward thrust, and Leonidas punched through the same shrieking goblin with enough force that the creature exploded in an eruption of gore.

Blood, viscera, and a half-destroyed corpse rained down across the area when Leonidas blew through the Goblin like it was a three-foot tall fantasy pinata.

The rest of the goblins stood frozen, either in shock or terror, he didn’t care.

He had no intention of giving them time to recover.

The moment that he arrested his momentum, while mentally noting that he’d lost almost a third of his stamina; Leonidas turned to the nearest goblin and snatched it up by the head. The creature flailed in his grip, but before it could do more than raise its club, he turned his gaze to its fellows and bodily smashed it head-first into the manastone below him.

The impact vibrated up his arm through the armor hard enough to rattle his teeth, but Leonidas ignored it. The energy of Cataclysm raging through his forcibly expanding channels drowned out all else in its symphony of power and pain, and his honed meditative focus let him push aside the pain as a secondary concern.

All he cared about was meeting the eyes of the staring Goblins, and letting them understand the cold inevitability of their fate. They had thought themselves the hunters while slaughtering the defenseless, and taking their grotesque trophies.

He would teach them what it meant to be the hunted.

The creature under his left hand mewled pathetically, and viscous dark red blood spread from where its skull had been crushed against the impervious stone. The crowd was screaming things he couldn’t understand, the Arena Master was yelling something, and the goblins were coming out of their shock-induced silence to begin shrieking in rage.

Leonidas ignored the distractions.

His hand moved down to the throat of the creature he’d slammed, and he picked up its limp body. Leonidas turned to his left when he did, and used all of his strength to hurl the goblin toward one of the already-moving clumps of its fellows.

Screams of alarm followed the action, and Leonidas immediately diverted to the other group of four. His mind reflexively attempted to use Lumenkill Swordforce, and then he remembered half a second later that he had no access to the power. The normal curse of frustration was absent in his state of heightened focus, and instead he simply pictured his [Psikinetic Blade] skill.

The Skill implied the creation of a weapon, but Psi was a power of Intent.

The idea of limiting himself to what was expected seemed… foolish. Complacency like that would have gotten him killed during the war on Elatra, and there was no place for it in the post-Incursion world he’d transmigrated back to. Creativity would be the greatest weapon in his arsenal. Tarnys had told him that Intent meant everything with magic, and he saw no reason for that not to apply to Psi.

It was for precisely that reason he’d invested in Willpower, after all.

Leonidas drew his Psi from within his Core and focused it onto the thirsty receiver of his [Archon’s Psiblade]. Instead of feeding it into the jewels directly, though, he shaped it with [Psikinetic Blade] and then layered the Skill over the edge of his bonded weapon. When it formed, he—without entirely understanding it himself—anchored the Skill to the amethyst in the crossguard of his sword, and felt the Skill snap into place.

There was no other way to explain it. The makeshift swordforce manifested, and it clicked into position as if both the skill and the Psiblade together had been designed for exactly that sort of interaction. Given what the item descriptions had said about the Archons, that very well might have been true.

His Psi reserves dropped by 15 points, and he instinctively knew that his new creation would only last for thirty seconds.

I’ll have to make do.

The first Goblin that intercepted him when he advanced a moment later did so with gusto. It wielded a pair of short daggers, and made a vicious swipe at him with both that it seemed to believe would be enough to puncture his more vulnerable chainmail.

Leonidas responded by tapping into his remembered skills from the Seven Sword Arts, and executed the Third Art by muscle memory: Parting the Waterfall.

The goblin’s daggers were smoothly swept aside and away by the psiforce-distorted edge of his sword, and Leonidas smoothly reversed his right hand on the hilt of his sword, and twisted his body off of his right foot to wrench the sword back toward the goblin following the deflection.

The [Archon’s Psiblade] punched through the right side of the goblin’s skull, eviscerated both its eyes with its extended swordforce inside the creature’s head, and slammed into the manastone with a screech of sparks while carrying the goblin’s half-bisected skull and gray brain matter with it.

Leonidas stepped forward, and tore the sword out of the back of the dead goblins’ head at the same time.

The remnants of its skull burst with the pressure of his swordforce, and before the corpse hit the ground he was already launching himself at the next two of the three remaining goblins.

He had enough time to correct his sword grip, and then he was among them.

The first of the two goblins, thrusting a spear at him furiously from his left, was partially sidestepped. A small ripple of scarlet energy ignited along Leonidas’ left fist from the Cataclysm mana raging through his channels, and he slapped aside the spear enough for it to scream harmlessly against the side of his armored ribs in a shower of sparks.

The moment it did, he trapped the wooden half between his arm and body.

The right side goblin of the pair, wielding a scimitar that looked like a greatsword for the creature, slashed at Leonidas overhead with both arms. Instead of attempting anything fancy or uselessly elaborate, he simply used his once-again-normal sword grip to parry the blade as it descended and—while ignoring the ripple of shock along his arm from the surprisingly strong impact—slammed his armored fight foot into the much smaller creature’s naked sternum.

A wet and meaty crunch of bone and cartilage sounded from the impact, and the goblin staggered backward and vomited blood. Leonidas immediately dismissed it from his concern and pivoted to face the spear-wielder, who was still trying to free its weapon, and sliced open its head with his psiforce-enhanced blade.

The creature fell backward with a shrieking scream of agony while feeling at where its large left ear, eye, and part of his face had been sliced away—and Leonidas let the spear go loose enough for him to grab it like a javelin in his left hand when it dropped.

The last goblin of the quartet realized its mistake too late, and Leonidas took it through the eye with its compatriot’s spear before it could lift its net to do anything about it. The goblin he’d kicked managed to try to come at him again at that point, and Leonidas caught its swinging sword in his left hand with a grunt of effort. He looked down at the creature, locked his eyes on its own, and firmly crushed its bony wrists in his hand.

The goblin screamed in pain, and Leonidas dropped its wrists in favor of grabbing its throat.

He turned when he did, to the remaining six goblins—one of which was insensate after being slammed into the stone, and another of which was spasming on the ground from the shock of having part of its head sliced off—and held the screaming goblin up for them to see. The group hesitated momentarily when he did, and Leonidas used every iota of his strength to toss the small creature a foot or two into the air.

When he did, he executed the Fifth Sword Art: Phases of the Moon.

Leonidas’ stamina dropped while his [Archon’s Psiblade] hummed through the air.

The goblin hit the ground in three pieces with a wet squelch of viscera, and flood of dark, viscous blood. The bitter taste of it was on Leonidas’ tongue, from the amount of gore he’d so far unleashed, and he spat some of it out onto the moonstone under his feet.

Four dead, two incapacitated, and four left.

His [Psikinetic Blade]’s unorthodox incarnation would wear off in ten seconds.

Leonidas sighed at the realization.

I’m definitely sloppier than I was. He lamented mentally.

It was a good thing he had plenty more practice coming up.