After returning to his bunk, Hector debated the direction for his body enhancement. Digestion, nerves, and flesh were all that remained – other than muscles, of course. Flesh was by far the lowest priority, so he didn’t truly consider it.

He instead chose nerves because he’d already gotten started on his brain the previous day from the honey pill Lord Andrew gave him. He raised his brain from eighty percent to peak level five. Then he turned his attentions to the spinal cord. When that was done, he gave up chasing the various branches of nerves. His senses were slowly improving, but he didn’t think he was good enough to effectively hunt down all the little nerves.

Instead, he dumped what remained of the elixirs’ energies into his digestive system, starting with his tongue. He only made it to the throat before he had to stop. It was good progress, but even so Hector felt disappointed. The thing was, a strong man carried about forty percent of his body mass in muscle. Even after he finished his digestive system and skin, he’d only be about halfway to his goal.

In truth it wasn’t so bad. No matter how rigorous one was with the cold forged method, it was impossible to not let some energy leak to tissues other than the ones targeted. His muscles had been getting low levels of enhancement ever since he advanced to the fifth level. They weren’t stuck at peak four while everything around them advanced to peak five – they were already slightly improved.

That unintentional overflow would only increase with the more tissues Hector completed. His bones, tendons, circulation, respiration, and a large part of his nerves could no longer accept energy. That was slightly less than half of his body mass already fully charged. The leaked excess energy would have to go elsewhere when he enhanced. That ‘somewhere else’ was increasingly synonymous with ‘muscle tissue’ as he crossed other boxes off the list.

The System didn’t analyze things the same way that a cultivator did, but Hector still wished he could get a peak at his survey results. He thought it would say something promising, like four point six. That sounded realistic. But maybe his muscles had absorbed more incidental energy than he expected and the body statistic would be a tenth or two tenths higher.

He lay awake much of that night, still haunted by the revelations about Khana and his fears for Darius. Dawn found him poorly rested, but with his brain and mind both enhanced to peak five, he felt like it didn’t matter so much. The little sleep he managed did wonders for his injuries. His face still hurt when he poked at it, but otherwise felt fine. His arms had received fresh bruises the previous day and were still tender, though.

The morning matches of that day were chosen by the lords. Hector found himself with an easy opponent. He won too easily, if there was such a thing. More accurately, afterwards he felt guilty. There had been two punches thrown. The other guy’s fist came at him. Hector knew his opponent had weak body enhancement. So he punched on the same path. Their fists collided in mid-air. Something snapped. Hector was fine, of course. The other guy… well, it would be hard for him to win any further matches with a broken hand.

Darius won his match. So did Walt. Sam lost his. Micah, of course, won.

Then Jasmine faced off with Evan. He tried to finish her fast as he always did with opponents. His strikes had a snap to them that made them more powerful than they appeared. Jasmine used the same tactic she did against everyone stronger than her – which was almost all her opponents. She engaged in a circling retreat and countered the moment she saw an opening. It worked more often than not, though at this point she was barely winning more than half her matches. Gender and size differences mattered less for Xian than for baseline humans, but they still mattered.

Growing frustrated, Evan made a mistake. He over-committed to a punch, turning his shoulders too much. Jasmine was slipping under it and coming at him from behind in the blink of an eye. That was her move, after all.

Except Evan hadn’t make a mistake. He’d set a trap.

Instead of trying to square up with her, the red-head spun the opposite direction with the point of his elbow leading. It connected with her cheekbone and Jasmine went down. Evan stood back to let her regain her feet. When, after a moment of hesitation, Jasmine started to stand, the man punched her back down. Then he stomped her ribs repeatedly until the match was called.

Jasmine limped back to the bench with her head hung low. Hector thought he could read her well enough to know that it wasn’t shame – she didn’t have much of that emotion. She was moving stiffly and favoring her one side. That didn’t bode well for her afternoon match and Jasmine knew it. She seemed defeated already.

That… that really bothered Hector. Not that Evan won on the clay. Not even so much the tricky way he’d gone about it. What dug at Hector was that he had broken her spirit like that. No doubt Jasmine would bounce back in a day. But stealing the fight out of her… it bothered him. A lot.

He was the third fight that morning. If they followed the usual pattern for afternoon matches, that meant he would be the third victor able to call out someone he had yet to face. The restriction on only calling out those who had lost a match was no longer in effect. They were halfway through the round robin and putting too many limitations in place on opponent choice wasn’t possible.

So he could call out Evan. The two people before him were unlikely to do so. Evan and Micah were the only two undefeated fighters at this point. They were generally not challenged by others. Losing early in the tournament meant that you had to fight later matches with injuries, so it made sense to delay the inevitable beat downs for as long as possible. For most people here, placing in the top five wasn’t realistic. They just had to maximize their wins to get as many resources as possible.

When the afternoon fights began, Hector ignored the first two matches to probe at his bruises. He couldn’t claim to be ‘good as new’ yet, but he wasn’t a mess anymore. Hopefully that wouldn’t change too much after this next match. Evan was without a doubt the better fighter between the two of them. Hector had superior body enhancement and a more muscular build. Hopefully that evened things out enough that he could eke out a win.

Hector called out Evan’s name loudly without looking back at the dugout, so he didn’t know how the man reacted. He heard hushed gasps of surprise from his peers, so the consensus seemed to be that his move was unanticipated. When Lord Andrew jumped up to his side of the ring, his face was red with anger.

“I had a sizable bet placed on your afternoon match, Hector. Why are you going after the second ranked fighter?”

Hector didn’t have the luxury of ignoring the question. He also couldn’t tell the truth. It was a good thing he didn’t hold honesty as one of the virtues he practiced. “I detected a flaw in his style, Lord Andrew. If I injure him badly enough today, he might lose his second place standing.”

Lord Andrew huffed, only partially mollified. “You had better be right about that or I will be quite upset with you, Hector. Win this match… and I will find a way to secret you a truly worthy resource as reward.”

Master Percival announced the start of their fight.

Evan stalked forward, a sleazy smile on his face. “Did I get under your skin when I roughed up your lady, Oldie? Seems silly to me. She’s only, like, twenty percent your lady by my count. Bet that tears you up inside, knowing how many other men are taking their turn with her.” The man laughed.

Hector didn’t run his mouth. He knew this would be a hard fight. He wasn’t here to trade barbs or even to to win, if he was being honest. He wanted to hurt Evan bad enough that the man struggled in his next fights. Karma didn’t seem to exist in the world other than to the degree that other people enforced it, so in this case Hector would be Evan’s karma.

“You don’t want to talk? That’s fine. My knuckles have plenty to say.”

He saw the punch coming. That was where common sense said to block. Hector knew enough about Evan to know there was a trap in there somewhere. The man always had some clever follow-up to the first attack. Where Evan had made his mistake was in not calculating the extreme degree of durability possessed by Hector’s head.

Hector tucked his chin, lowered his level through his hips, stiffened his spin, and shot forward like a human cannonball. The portion of his forehead just below the hairline collided with fist. He felt the sharp tearing pain of the blow followed by the heat of fresh blood being drawn. His stance was solid, though. Thousands of squat and dead lift repetitions over the course of his life ensured that much. A powerful base, spine locked in place by glutes and core and spinal muscles, made him into a human battering ram.

He stumbled a bit as his forward momentum carried him into Evan. The other boy danced back, shaking his hand out. A blustery smile came to his face. “Clever, Hector. Very clever. Now I’m gonna beat you like a sick dog.”

Despite the words, Hector noted that Evan was testing his digits. It didn’t look like he could fully open his hand. Blood dribbled down Hector’s face and he wiped it away. “You would be the type to beat a dog,” he said.

“Aw, boohoo. You like to cuddle with the cute animals?”

“I do.” Hector came forward then. He needed to thread the needle now, take advantage of Evan’s injury without over-exposing himself to counters. Intelligent aggression. He was the worse fighter between them and couldn’t forget that for a moment.

Evan kicked out as Hector came near and he felt the sting on his arms when he blocked. Another kick came and Hector backed away. Evan bared his teeth in a feral display that only a fool would term a smile. This was the new strategy, Hector grasped. Take it easy on the hands for a while and rely on kicks to soften Hector up.

What was the counter to that? Hector almost groaned when he arrived at an answer, but held the reaction back. He didn’t want to give Evan any clue to his next actions. He let the next kick land on his ribs and seized the offending leg to trap it. His breath caught at the pain, but he had the leg. Now he just needed to –

Evan punched him right in the center of the face, causing Hector’s nose to instantly bleed. Hector climbed his hands higher on Evan’s leg and then torso until they were clinched together. Evan landed several knees in a row, demonstrating his superior knowledge of the clinch position.

When Hector attempted a head-butt, Evan used his forearm on Hector’s clavicle to steal away the force. Hector in return rubbed his profusely bleeding forehead all over Evan’s face, smearing the man with his blood.

Evan’s cupped hand hit Hector in the ear hard enough that it felt like the world had ended.

The next thing Hector knew, he was on the ground beneath the other man, receiving a flurry of strikes to the face. His anger roared to life. Hector seized one of the hands. Evan continued laying into him with the other. That was alright with Hector. He was willing to trade off injuries.

Seizing the little finger in one hand and the middle finger in another, Hector wrenched on the digits until they tore out of position. Evan screamed. Hector let that hand go and snatched up the other one to repeat his action. This time he found himself holding a thumb and pointer finger. Those were soon dislocated as well.

Hector threw the man off of him and jumped on top. He rained down punches, throwing his whole body weight behind each one. Even in the midst of the agony from having multiple fingers wrecked, Evan managed to dodge most of the punches. Hector’s fists created craters in the hard-packed clay more often than not.

But some of those strikes weren’t dodged. Evan blocked most of those. Not all, though.

He could tell when Evan became dazed. The man stopped actively defending, letting Hector land strikes at will. He could also tell when Evan went unconscious. The blocking arms dropped limply to the sides. Instead of continuing the pummeling of the head, Hector took the limp hands and went about breaking more fingers.

Master Percival tackled Hector before he could break more than three additional digits.