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Avan cast a sideways glance to the right, and looked at his smug and broadly grinning fighter, with whom he was to fight today's match. This was the same man who had so ruthlessly led others in the fight against the Chocs, only to remain in the background and let them fight for him, and the same man even Nick had warned him about.

Seems to be a two-front war for me today... I can't turn my back on him.

But if he dares to stab me in the back, I'll feed him to our opponents without batting an eye.

Smirking slightly, Avan took one last look at his fellow fighter and then looked forward again, where the spectators were once again exploding with cheers and the ground was vibrating once more.

This was the fourth fight of the day and it was already early afternoon. Lea and two of the board players had already been in a fight, but fortunately they had come through well, except for a few bruises and superficial wounds.

The announcer outside stirred up the crowd again, promising all sorts of bloodshed in the next fight, while speaking something about a family member of the royal house, the youngest prince, who would be watching today.

Today's fights were a little different than they all expected at first, according to Lea's accounts. The spectators had the chance to buy rotten fruits and vegetables from vendors at the entrance to the stands and could throw them at either the fighters or the monsters, which added another annoying and distracting factor to the fight.

Every fight today was fought in two teams, and there were different monsters of different difficulty levels to fight. For example, Lea had to fight with one of the other slaves against an alpha dire wolf, which had the size of a two-meter tall person could easily see in the eyes. The wolf had had such a dense fur that normal sword strokes could not penetrate it, and she had to work together with her fellow fighter on stab wounds, which was only the more difficult, because after each stab again immediately the claws and the fangs of the wolf had to dodge.

The two other inmates had told of a huge crocodile, while the other had described something like a gnoll.

The yelling from outside grew louder, and after another announcement, the gate slowly went up and was pulled upward by the hidden construction inside the ceiling until it hooked in and opened the passage to the arena interior.

Avan strode out onto the sand with the joyfully grinning fellow combatant, while the guards in the tunnel remained behind them.

In front, in the center of the arena, twenty meters away, were two wooden weapon stands with one spear and two forearm-length daggers on the other. Just as Avan was able to turn to his fellow fighter for a brief discussion about the weapons, he sprinted forward, leaving behind a teeth-grinding silver-haired man.

It was so clear, you asshole! He thought resignedly, fully aware of how naive he had been to have even tried with communication.

Without wanting to lag behind, he also sprinted off to the middle, so as not to lose any unnecessary time until their opponents would appear.

He grabbed the two daggers and received a brief angry look from the other man, who had grabbed the spear and was about to turn to the daggers as well.

Huh, you were going to grab both weapons, huh? What kind of scum are you? As if you could have fought alone... Avan glanced at the other dagger as he took a few steps back to the left to put some safety distance between himself and the incalculable risk of a danger of a man.

The announcer, meanwhile, had laughingly commented on ada's duo and the competition for the weapons, and some of the spectators laughed out loud while three rotten tomatoes had already landed near the gun racks.

"And noooooow! Let's give a warm welcome to our other guests of this fight! Captured from the elven forests to the east and shipped here especially for this occasion: A DRAGON LIZARD!" The man shouted loudly into his megaphone, and the spectators suddenly whispered quietly to each other, only to erupt loudly into roars and euphoria a second later. A dragon lizard, according to Avan's knowledge, was on average a two meter tall and seven meter long komodo lizard with small stubby wings on its back, and depending on the element of the animal, could spit it out in one breath.

At the mention of their opponent, his fellow fighter visibly blanched and gulped as he turned to Avan and seemed to ponder something in his head.

Avan himself, meanwhile, had cautiously and slowly taken more steps backward, while deliberately not lifting his legs and rather sliding back to gain distance from the center and the opponents at the other end of the arena, where the portcullis was being raised.

Unlike his last fight, this monster came shooting out immediately and slithered snake-like across the sand, directly toward the man with the spear. Throwing all heed or planning to the wind, Avan's fellow fighter first stumbled backward, then turned to run directly at Avan. Bastard! Avan grinned with a slight sneer and could not help but feel the negative feelings towards this man. Well, let's see who will be the bait here.

Avan himself took up a fighting stance, which he had learned to some extent from his practice rounds with Rielta, and let the other fighter run past him like the pitiful scaredy-cat he was.

During the seconds that had passed, the Dragon Lizard had moved to the center of the arena and now hissed with a tongue almost a meter long in the direction of his two meatballs on two legs. The stubby wings on its back flapped with anticipation, and Avan was sure, looking at the spittle running down from the lizard's mouth, that it had been deliberately left unfed for a few days to ensure a more intense fight.

The dragon lizard was a beast and one of the larger varieties. It measured easily over seven meters from snout to tail end and reached Avan's chest height, while it was protected by masses of small green scales overlapping like a scale armor and even the underside was affected, leaving only the eyes, mouth and nose as weak points.

With this observation, Avan let out his bated breath and slowly moved sideways, step by step, always keeping an eye on the lizard in front of him and keeping the treacherous fighter behind him at bay.

The dragon lizard itself hissed its tongue in the air, switching its hungry but no less intelligent gaze back and forth between Avan and the person behind him to his right.

Avan had made a rough plan, and when the monster finally decided to charge its prey, it came running right at Avan, which he had already expected as he stood in front.

He backed up with inconspicuous steps as the distance between himself and the lizard quickly shrank, and just before the monster's tongue, slightly split at the front, could have touched him, Avan jumped back and dove around to the right, much to the other man's brief surprise. Avan slightly scraped his left shoulder against the other fighter's back, knocking him briefly off balance as he took several large steps further away.

The lizard, meanwhile, had taken up the chase and was now facing a surprised spearman who was still trying to figure out what to do besides anchoring his spear lightly in the ground and hastily pointing the weapon at the charging lizard.

Avan himself took the opportunity to sprint around to the right as the dragon lizard slithered into the spear with force, and the fellow fighter hastily backed away as the entire weight of the great monster landed on the spearhead and spear shaft.

A brief burst and roar later, the cheap spear broke under the weight in a small explosion of wood splinters, and the lizard itself shrieked angrily as the iron tip managed to penetrate diagonally between the scales on its jaw, dripping greenish blood down its side.

The now weaponless fighter turned around in panic and ran towards the arena walls, while the now raging lizard ran after him, visibly hissing angrily that this creature on two legs had dared to hurt him and had made him bleed.

Avan, meanwhile, grinned with satisfaction at having turned the tables on the creature and used the distraction to his best advantage to get into what he hoped would be the creature's blind spot and sneak up behind it at an angle. Unlike the Chocs, he didn't plan for this beast to bend its neck so far backwards, and somehow tried to get to the eyes by sneaking up on it or getting to it over its back.

Avan quietly ran up to the lizard from the right and was about to decide whether it would be wise to jump on its back or land a lucky shot directly into one of its eyes, when a cry snapped him out of his frantic thoughts.

The other man had run away and was skirting the outside wall of the arena for a short distance when he tripped over his feet because he had been hit by some rotten pieces of fruit that the spiteful spectators were throwing at the coward.

The outcry came promptly after, as he landed on the sand, arms waving in front, and quickly tried to get back up and stumble on in a panic. Unfortunately, the lizard had already caught up with his sheer body size and came so close sideways that its tongue darted forward and pulled the fleeing slave's feet out from under him once again.

There, where the tongue touched the legs, it sizzled and fizzled, as a corrosive liquid ate its way through the man's linen pants and not a second later attacked the skin underneath, causing him to cry out.

Oh, okay. Great. So this dragon lizard is an acid spitter. What fun! Avan muttered at the sight of the rising clouds of acid as the liquid ate into the other's legs, and he was about to be eaten.

Even if he is an abysmal asshole... No one should die like that...

With these thoughts, Avan sprinted once more and ran along the left flank of the monster to land with a diving leap onto the side of the lizard's head, frantically searching for the left eye while the monster's tongue wrapped itself around the screaming slave on the ground and it smelled more and more like burnt pig.

There! shouted Avan inwardly with a triumph, and sank his left dagger with a satisfied feeling and a slurping sound in the lizard's left eye, while dangling his right hand from the ruff. The eye burst under the sudden pressure of the internal arteries and the penetrating foreign object like a melon on the cobblestones.

The dragon lizard jerked its head upwards and cried out in deafening pain, throwing the now unconscious and nauseously injured slave through the air in the direction of the arena interior, flapping its head wildly.

"ROAR!" Sounded the furious deep and hateful cry with clear pain.

The monster threw itself sideways to the side and the entire massive body of the lizard slithered ninety degrees to the right, so that Avan had to jump backwards and was now a few meters in front of the angry head of the beast.

The right eye, as seen by Avan, was bleeding profusely with a green liquid, while the knife was still inside, and the other eye was staring with full malice at the biped who had dared to injure the lizard like that.

The dragon lizard suddenly lunged forward and opened its mouth wide enough to swallow a person with one bite, revealing a row of sharp teeth.

With barely time to think, Avan threw himself to the right into the sand and quickly rolled back to his feet, just barely escaping the monster's maw. He blinked once, and suddenly something crashed into his right side and he found himself a meter above the ground in a wide flight over the sandy floor of the arena until he hit the ground with a crash and rolled over several times.

Immediately after the lizard snapped shut, its massive body was shaped to let the three-meter-long tail whip into Avan's side like a whiplash.

With a groan and holding his right side with clenched teeth, Avan heaved himself to his feet and stared with trembling knees in the direction of the monster, which came running towards him again without interruption.

Sweat ran down his forehead, eyebrows and neck as he looked at the lizard bulldozer racing toward him not ten meters away.

Arghhh ! Avan hissed, sure that he had broken a few of his right ribs, while he was just glad to have softened some of the blow by rolling sideways.

His shoulders throbbed painfully, his arms and hands were slightly scraped, and blood was running down some parts of both his legs because the sand had rubbed off many layers of skin.

With concentration, he started the healing process and stopped the bleeding while holding his last dagger horizontally in front of him with his left hand and his right hand still supporting his right side.

Let's give it a try...

In a split second, with the lizard only five meters away, Avan sent a blast of celestial mana into the iron dagger on his left, increasing the density, hardness, and sharpness of his weapon as much as he could. Just as he had practiced and observed in secret with the smallest stones in the cell. With his blood-covered knees slightly crouching, he prepared himself for the next collision.

This time he knew what might be coming, so he took another leap to the right and immediately braced himself for the onrushing tail.

With more mana in his legs to strengthen muscles, tendons and bones, Avan leapt into the air as the back of the lizard almost reached him.

The spectators gasped in shock as the silver-haired slave in the arena suddenly leapt two meters into the air, tightening his legs as he let his dagger fly downward.

Disbelief murmured from the audience a second time as the man landed with a roll on the other side of the lizard and its tail, while a deep and green bleeding gash stretched across the surface of the lizard's tail.

Avan, who had deliberately blocked out any external noise, did not notice much of this, but was rather surprised and pleased by the sharpness of his mana-enhanced dagger, which seemed to shimmer golden yellow in the sun.

Without stopping again to become a target, Avan hurriedly sprinted around the lizard, which was just turning around and looking for the two-legged creature.

And so a few minutes passed in the battle arena, during which Avan ran, sprinted, performed acrobatic jumps, and repeatedly inflicted small bleeding wounds on the beast, until, with another yelp and a few blisters on his part, he finally reached the second eye to slice it open with a clean blow.

Panting heavily and resting both hands on his knees, Avan watched the dragon lizard, breathing heavily, as it screamed shrilly and tossed its head back and forth while little trickles of blood continued to drip from each of the small wounds inflicted.

The monster had also become increasingly powerless by the minute, showing signs of weakness as the wounds became more numerous and it had less strength and breath to maneuver its massive body across the ground at the same speed as before.

A few more cautious minutes, during which Avan rarely came closer to the panicked, flailing, angry creature, he managed to make a deep cut in the muzzle, right in the nose.

More blood oozed from this wound than from all the others combined, and only thanks to the hysterical nature and blindness of the monster, Avan had managed to throw himself forward with a leap at the right moment to do a backward roll out of the beast's reach right after the dagger swing.

And so, after more than half an hour of a battle of endurance between the two combatants, the lizard let out a final exhausted gasp and collapsed on the sand.

As if his hearing returned abruptly, Avan visibly flinched as a deafening explosion of excitement and cheers met him, while here and there even a few flowers made their way to his feet.

Following an intuition, and because it had been so long since he had last looked at something from nature, he picked up one of the delicate flowers, stem and all, and smelled at it with his eyes closed, which brought an enthusiastic shriek from one of the ladies in the stands, who had most likely thrown the flower.

Two healers rushed to look at the injuries of the two fighters, while two other orderlies rushed out with a stretcher to take the badly injured man to the infirmary.

The healer who examined Avan was briefly surprised by the few bruises and partially healed wounds, but only mumbled something quietly to himself and then took his leave.

Avan himself was brought back to the cellar vault by two guards, where he told half of his interested fellow inmates about the fight, and feasted on the dry fruit that his healer had pressed into his hands shortly before he hurried off mumbling.

And so ended another day of fighting for Avan.

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In the office that overlooked the fighting area, a thoughtful looking Arena Master Maxim stood playing with a small pointed elongated object in his right hand.

"Celestial steel... That one day I would hold this in my hands?" He muttered, still aghast and unbelieving, as he looked down at the gleaming gilded dagger in his hand, which seemed to be in perfect condition, despite all the wounds it had inflicted on the dragon lizard.

"Incredible..."

 

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