Azeric sat still, legs sprawled in the dirt, arms resting on his knees. His breath dragged slow from his lungs—not depleted, but close. He'd pushed his body for days, burning through every ounce he could spare. But not everything. He couldn't afford to collapse. Not tonight.
He flexed his fist. Fingers curled tight, slow. The tension remained in his muscles. The ache crawled through his limbs like fire under the skin. The numbers had moved—but barely.
Strength: 12
Agility: 8
Endurance: 4
Corruption: 8
His jaw tensed.
That last one hadn't budged. Corruption. The others crawled up like molasses, but that one held. No matter how much pain he poured into the dirt, no matter how many hours he bled under the sun.
He sighed through his nose, low and sharp.
There was only one way to make it jump again. He could feel it. That same pulse beneath the surface, like a rope tied around his spine, pulling toward the same answer.
Blood. Not training. Not repetition.
His eyes narrowed.
He had only one problem. Even if he was right about the blood, even if killing truly was the key—the moment he moved, someone would see it. He needed to vanish inside the noise first.
He rose to his feet, dusted the sand off his palms, and scanned the yard like a man choosing a weapon.
Jat.
He spotted him just past the edge of the barracks wall, half-hunched over in conversation with two others. He laughed at something, sharp and nasal. The others joined in, but their eyes flicked to the ground as they chuckled, as if embarrassed.
Probably mocking someone. Probably someone already dead.
Jat liked to twist the blade after it hit the gut.
Azeric's lips pulled into a dry smirk.
Better keep laughing while you still have your tongue.
He'd seen it before—gladiators talking too freely around him. Then dragged out the next morning. Beheaded by noon. Warden claimed it was for disobedience. Azeric knew better.
Jat was the reason.
The mole.
He moved like he belonged here, but Azeric knew the truth. He was a gladiator by name only. He had his own private cell, untouched by the filth of the others. Some said he was a bastard of a noble, slipped into the arena as punishment. Azeric knew that was just noise.
He had that cell because he was useful to the Warden.
Like me.
Azeric had studied him. Days of watching, tracking. Jat trained just enough to keep the act alive. Then he'd slither between conversations, talking with anyone stupid enough to think he was one of them.
And when meal time comes—bodies crowding for scraps, fists flying over ladle portions. In the blur of hunger and shouting, no one noticed who came or went.
That was when Jat moved. He'd slip away from the noise, vanish down the side corridor while the guards barked at the feeding frenzy. From there, he'd head to his cell, clean, robe already folded. Then, he'd creep toward the Warden's office—like a rat retracing a path no one dared follow.
Like clockwork.
Azeric watched the man now—same routine. Same wormy grin.
His hands clenched again.
Tonight, that grin would cost him.
He had only one problem.
Guards had watched him closely for years. He was property—rare, valuable, and dangerous. One shadowed his movements at all times, eyes sharp, hand always resting on the hilt. Two more marked his return to the cell like a ritual, counting each step like beads on a chain.
The Warden had always been paranoid about him. He never said it aloud, but everyone knew.
But predictability was its own weapon. Azeric learned early: show them what they wanted to see. Routine. Submission. Silence.
And Azeric had prepared for it.
Garel was one of the guards assigned to the gladiators' quarters—older, mean, and quick with the back of his hand. A man used to being ignored, but not tonight. Azeric caught him alone near the racks, half-drunk on pit wine and cradling a swollen wrist.
Dren, younger and sharper, patrolled the training yard. Brash, loud, always grinning with too many teeth. He mocked when he should've stayed silent—and Azeric noticed.
Azeric didn't speak right away. Just stood nearby, a shadow that didn't move. Then he leaned in, voice low, barely above a breath.
"Dren's been talking," he said. "Boasting. Said your wife likes a man in uniform. Said she cried your name while he was inside her. Even said the baby's his. Not yours."
He let the words hang like rot in the air. Garel didn't respond. His grip on the leather strap tightened until his knuckles went bone white.
Azeric stepped away without waiting for a reaction.
He didn't need one. The damage was done.
The next day, the rumor took shape—repeated by different mouths, passed like a plague. By the third night, the fire Azeric lit had devoured the hallway guard's restraint.
By the time the meat was ladled into bowls, the tension snapped. Shouts echoed through the pit. Garel wasn't even supposed to be near the latrines. He'd abandoned his post—eyes searching, jaw locked. When he found Dren, he didn't shout. He didn't hesitate. He slammed him into the stone wall, fists wild, blood flying. Screaming. Guards rushed in. The ones on food duty. The one on Azeric's tail. All pulled in to contain the chaos.
It was all timing. All by design.
The guard who always followed him got pulled to break it up. Azeric didn't wait to watch. He slipped out when they were busy counting chaos, not men.
The other guards on duty were pacing the yard. One scratched his jaw. Another barked at a gladiator too slow with the sandbag. Azeric barely looked at them. He scanned for one face.
He waited for the noise to die down, then carefully walked toward the hallway to the east. When he went to the Warden's office last time, he noticed a stretch where the light from the torches barely touched. That's where he stood now, a simple sharpened piece of wood in his hand.
He waited. And true to his routine, Jat came—draped in a robe, his face cloaked in shadow. But Azeric knew. That walk. The left foot heavier, dragging just enough to mark him.
He slowed his breathing, stayed still, eyes closed, listening. The sound was sharper here, like the shadows deepened it—every footfall magnified, every scrape a signal. His world narrowed to that rhythm, that drag-step cadence.
When the footsteps reached his side, Azeric moved.
His left hand clamped over Jat's mouth before a sound could escape. He pulled the man's body against his own, and in one precise motion, drove the sharpened wood into his neck.
The gurgle of dying breath filled the corridor. Wet, ragged. It clawed at the walls and echoed faintly down the dark stone. Jat's body twitched once—then stilled.
Azeric felt the man's weight sag into him, heavy and final. His fingers were slick with blood, the warmth still pulsing between his knuckles. The scent rose quick—metallic, thick, unmistakable.
Footsteps echoed faintly in the distance—too far to be a threat, but close enough to quicken his pulse. One wrong breath, one glint of torchlight the wrong way, and this would end with his head on a spike.
He lowered the body slowly, silently as the faint metallic ding rang again.
SYSTEM UPDATE: UNSANCTIONED TERMINATION DETECTED
ANALYZING MOTIVE…
He looked around before slipping back toward his cell before the blood could even finish pooling.
Back in his cell, he took the bloodied stick and fed it to the flame of a lamp, watching it blacken and crack as it burned away to ash. There was no hesitation and no pause to reflect. His movements were methodical and detached.
He checked the display, but there was no update.
He crouched by the basin, hands moving on their own. The blood clung stubborn to his skin, seeping into the cracks of his knuckles. He scrubbed until the water turned dark, then tipped it out the narrow cell drain. Refilled. Scrubbed again. Not a smear left.
Even when the stain faded, the heat of it lingered beneath the skin.
He set the empty bowl down, aligned it perfectly with the wall. Then sat. Still. Waiting. Watching the last ember of wood collapse inward into dust.
Then another faint metallic ding rang in his ears.
His gaze snapped toward the source. A glowing string of text unfurled in the corner of his vision, stark against the dark. Then came the voice—low, clipped, and toneless.
SYSTEM UPDATE: UNSANCTIONED TERMINATION DETECTED
MOTIVE ANALYZED.
HOST ACTED WITH INTENT. THREAT CLASSIFIED: INDIRECT. OBJECTIVE CONFIRMED: TACTICAL ADVANTAGE SOUGHT.
REWARD ASSIGNED:
+1 AGILITY
+3 CORRUPTION
TRAIT SEED UNLOCKED: [SILENT ELIMINATION]
PROGRESS: 1% – PRECISION PATH INITIATED
NEW PASSIVE DETECTED:
[SHADOW HAND] – MOVEMENT SUPPRESSION ACTIVE UNDER LOW VISIBILITY. +25% STEALTH EFFICACY WHEN UNOBSERVED AT NIGHT.
STATUS: DORMANT UNTIL HOSTILE CONTACT RESUMES.
NOTE: PSYCHOLOGICAL DETACHMENT FROM UNSANCTIONED KILL NOTED. MUTATION COMPATIBILITY INCREASING
He was right.
Killing was the key.
He looked again at the floating text. "Unsanctioned," he muttered, eyes narrowing. So the system recorded it—watched him. Monitored even the kills it didn't ask for.
He smirked. Let it watch, then.
His gaze flicked over the numbers. The corruption increase was less than when he fought Fritz, which had given him +4. But more than Roy—only +2.
Why?
He didn't know. Was it because of how clean the kill was? Because it served some hidden tactical layer? Or maybe the system measured something deeper.
His eyes moved to the new trait—Silent Elimination.
"Good," he muttered.
It aligned with what he did tonight. A clean death. No noise. No mess. Something that would help him kill more—stealthily, precisely.
He read further. Passive.
That word again.
If it was passive, then it meant... what? He read on the text. Getting the grasp of it.
He sat down more comfortably, shoulders loosening for the first time. So it worked without command? Not something he had to summon or speak aloud. Just there—woven into him now, like instinct.
Then another word blinked at the bottom.
Mutation.
His eyes narrowed again. Another word he was probably never taught but that was fine. He'd learn what it meant—probably after the next kill. The system liked blood, and blood seemed to be the answer to everything.
He lay down, and the floating text dissolved—as if the system itself knew he was finished.
Azeric grinned into the dark.
Somebody had been watching him.