The Starhold Arena was two things: it was a massive, complex system of simulated combat scenarios, allowing anyone with the money to pay for the entry fee to compete in a number of different types of combat scenarios; and a place.
A sprawling, titanic construction took up a large portion of the place near the center of the city. Inside, a circular seating arrangement could handle up to a little bit over a staggering half a million spectators.
Now, given that the fights in question weren’t real, there was the billion-dollar question:
What exactly were these spectators spectating?
Madame had generously offered Freddy a free premium seat in the upper area of the arena, where he could get one of the best views on offer. He respectfully declined, however. Instead, he wanted to pay not for one of the best, but the best of the best—the VIP area. Well, there was an even more exclusive VVIP area, because of course there was, but it required more than just money to get a place there.
And speaking of money—
The VIP section was a series of private lounges spanning around the whole arena, and it cost a horrifying 14 million dollars per hour.
Now, he recognized that his encounter with Madame had made him feel a bit… insecure. It had reminded him of what kind of person he used to be, and that had put him in the mood to overcompensate.
In a rather rash decision, he booked one of the lounges for 10 hours. At least he got a ten percent discount for the bulk purchase. Well, he was disgustingly rich, he reminded himself, so it wasn’t like he couldn’t afford to splurge a bit.
He just had to stop thinking about the fact he could buy about ten entire buildings in a regular city with the money he just spent for half a day of entertainment.
Easy come, easy go, I guess…
While he wasn’t sure whether it was worth that kind of money, the lounge was admittedly gorgeous and luxurious beyond belief. The food they served was incredible, the seats were enchanted, so they were unreasonably comfortable, and the view… Well, it was something else.
The entire wall and almost the entire floor was made of glass, allowing him to see the entire arena. The sight was anxiety inducing. Not once in his life had he felt so out of place, or like he was somewhere he really shouldn’t be. It would take him a while to get used to his status… if he even could get used to it.
As for what exactly he was here to watch—
“Welcome, everyone!” Madame appeared on a floating platform, right above the center of the arena. She was clad in an extravagant costume of black feathers flaring in every direction, with elaborate makeup and a massive black snake around her shoulders. On top of her being there physically, a large hologram of her appeared in the air above.
The crowds cheered, releasing deafening shouts.
“For our next featured match, we have an honour duel!”
The crowds cheered louder.
Freddy had become quite accustomed to his insanity sense, and had learned how to tune it out so it wasn’t a constant distraction. But in the arena, the madness was almost physical in its density. But the interesting part was that it wasn’t a scary sort of insanity.
It was the fun kind.
“Featuring one Pietro Lavizzi, son of Lord Lavizzi and three-star swordsman, and one Farrukh Khal, a renowned war hero with not one, two, but three fourth-rank medals! And the reason why they’re fighting?” She smirked coyly. “Oh, come on, it's two men; we all know why they’re here!” A puff of smoke went up, and an enraged young woman appeared beside Madame.
“Ugh!” She grabbed the mic. “Farruk, you son of a bitch! I told you, even if you win, I’m not going to leave him for you!”
“Now, now, darling…” Madame skillfully yoinked the microphone back. “Don’t you feel the passion?” She caressed the woman on the cheek. “That man has been around, and let me tell you what my girls have been saying about Farrukh.” She leaned in and whispered something into the girl’s ear. Scandalized, the woman turned beet red and took a step back. “M-Madame!”
Madame cackled as she swung an arm around her. “All natural, too!”
The crowds laughed.
Freddy for his part found the whole thing awfully awkward, but he wasn’t surprised. This was par for the course for Madame, really. She loved putting people on the spot like this. Well, awkward or not, he had to admit he was enjoying himself. Lounging in the absurdly luxurious VIP section, munching on strange pink popcorn, he kicked his feet up and chuckled. “This is fun.”
“My dear, you can be as stubborn as you like, but just you wait!” Madame grinned. “You aren’t the first to say that! And let me tell you—you wouldn’t be the first to change her mind! Now! Let’s see who between them loves you more! Let the fight begin!”
The platform floated up into a large floating building right above the center of the arena, and the lights dimmed, leaving all but the very center of the arena in darkness.
The fights that took place in the Starhold Arena were simulated. A number of fights took place at the same time, and while many of them were being streamed to BCs all around the city, and even out into the empire mainland, only one at a time could be shown in the arena—usually, that privilege was reserved for whatever was the most interesting.
And right now, that was a duel between two rivals in love.
Well, given what the girl had said, it was more of a fight between a boyfriend and a violent dickhead who was trying to take his girl by beating the shit out of him, but oh well. Still interesting.
A large spectacle of holographic artifacting lit up the arena with a series of white flashes and lasers shooting all over the place, and then, a moment later, the empty center changed.
The scene of a desert appeared, with flowing dunes and searing hot sand flowing along the gusts of wind. Two men stood not even fifty meters apart, weapons drawn, fury in their gazes.
The holographic projection of the fight was enlarged, which made them look like giants compared to the size of teeny spectators in the seats below. And other than just the hologram, there was a series of screens floating above, showing the fight from numerous different perspectives.
Rather than exchange any words, the two leaped, starting the fight.
A fight between two elite three-stars was something to behold. Pietro only used the wind affinity, and Farrukh relied on the metal affinity. Both of them had some form of manipulation talent, given the sheer complexity of the abilities in question.
Pietro was using a variant of the Floating Leaf movement technique. It was simple in theory, just using air to help move one’s body around, but depending on the execution, it could become a fearsome movement ability. The man was truly like a leaf in the wind, twirling around the incoming attacks in a chaotic pattern, and allowing him to capitalize on the tiniest of openings to get some swings and thrusts in.
Conversely, Farrukh was relying heavily on applying metal manipulation to his spear to drag himself around in sudden, jerky motions.
A big difference between using the blood affinity with Crimson Mercury and using the metal affinity was in how those respective affinities manipulated their targets. Freddy could accelerate blood metal, but not while still holding on to it.
The metal affinity was different. Hell, it was even possible to float on pieces of metal, but that was brutally expensive and inefficient. What Farrukh was doing was a less extreme, but still impressive application of the metal affinity. Rather than the chaos of Floating Leaf, he utilized precision, targeting Pietro’s weak spots and keeping him on the back foot throughout the whole fight.
They were incredibly fast, and even Freddy had to admit that he was struggling to fully keep up with their movements. But…
While the crowds cheered at the admittedly impressive applications of these complex fighting methods, Freddy couldn’t help but feel the fight was a bit… hollow? It was hard to say what exactly was throwing him off, but the more he observed them fight, the more obvious it became what the problem was. “Twisted Pendulum,” he muttered, then waited through the penalty portion.
Once time slowed down, he got a better look at the fight, and the problem became clear as day—these two weren’t used to fighting opponents on the same level as themselves.
They were fast and precise, but also tense and cautious, letting numerous openings slip by because they were too scared to take the risk of jumping at them. This made the fight feel constipated. They were so consumed by dodging around each other’s attacks that they could barely afford to focus on anything else.
Pietro was especially bad at this. He was clearly used to effortlessly avoiding the attacks of weaker monsters. Having to cope with an opponent he could just barely keep up with made it so that he spent the whole fight on the back foot, slowly being chipped away by scratches and bruises. After an agonizing five minutes of pussyfooting, Pietro failed to dodge a spear to the eye, and that was it.
The holographic projection dissolved, and Madame floated down again, together with a pale girl by her side. “And would you look at that!? Pietro falls! You know dear, if this was a real fight, he’d have just failed to keep you safe.”
“But it wasn’t a real fight! This is just bullying!”
“Now, now… I believe someone would like to have a word with you.” Madame shot her an evil grin. A moment later, a second platform floated up, carrying a triumphant Farrukh forward, right before Madame and the young woman.
The screams of women in the crowd were overwhelming.
Admittedly, once he removed his helmet, this Farrukh guy was quite the dashing fellow. He had long, flowing black hair, and deep silver eyes, all atop a classically masculine, chiseled face.
Another moment later, a fuming Pietro was also floated up. But he was placed into the metaphorical cuck chair, about twenty meters away from the scene of his girlfriend being wooed by the guy who just skewered his brains. He was pale, too, his entire body shaking as he looked on the verge of throwing up—the arena didn’t have any kind of pain-numbing involved, and those who died went through a pretty convincing experience of death.
As someone who had experienced that very thing in the Century of Solitude, Freddy recognized the man’s state, and he knew the terror coursing through his veins. Experiencing death was no joke.
“Leah…” Farrukh muttered as he took a knee. “Don’t you see? He is pathetic. I can actually keep you safe, should you need it.”
The girl, for her part, didn’t say anything. She instead just looked down.
“Oho!?” Madame pounced like a tiger. “What’s this!?”
Pietro somehow paled another shade, like he was about to die a second time.
Farruk got up and stepped forward, kissing Leah on the back of her hand. “Just one dinner. And you can send me on my way.”
An unbelievably awkward moment of silence went between the parties involved, and then finally, Leah spoke up. “Okay.”
Freddy burst into laughter, popcorn flying everywhere. “Holy fucking shit!” He grabbed a fistful and showed it into his mouth. “Jesus, poor Pietro.”
The crowd had a similar reaction, and Madame’s grin was brighter than the morning sun. She pushed the two of them onto the other platform, sending them up above into the floating building, and then went over to Pietro. “You poor thing… How do you feel?”
The man gritted his teeth. “Just let me go home, you witch.”
Madame, for her part, burst into laughter. “Oh, you’re a terrible loser! Off to the tour of shame, you go!” Distorted circus music started playing as he was promptly sent off to another platform that floated over close to the audience, who immediately started throwing food and booing at him.
Freddy sucked air through his teeth. “Man, this is so fucked up.” But he couldn’t lie to himself, this was entertaining.
The nature of the Starhold arena was extremely flexible, so all sorts of fights were organized. That being said, the bulk of featured fights fell into three categories: honor fights, performance fights, and ranked matches.
Honor fights were usually between two people who hated each other, but not enough to actually risk true death over it. Some were friendly exhibitions, but unless the people in question were very powerful or famous, those rarely landed a spotlight.
The second type were performance matches. Now these were something else.
Ridiculous costumes, over the top abilities, absurd settings—it was part improv acting, part dance, part fight. Freddy first thought these were fully scripted, but that wasn’t the case; the fights themselves were indeed real, and there was no predetermined winner.
But what made performance fights so interesting was that the fighters in question weren’t competing to see who was stronger, but rather, to see who could make a better show. Every performance fighter had a Thing. Sure, being really strong was a great Thing, but anyone who fought “seriously” using effective strategies was booed off the stage and called a tryhard.
Some of the most successful performance fighters were foils playing over-the-top villains who usually got killed in brutal ways.
And many were dressed in incredibly skimpy costumes. Not just women, either, men too. About a third of all fighters were barely wearing anything. It would probably be more if these brave souls didn’t have to suffer significantly more painful injuries than their counterparts.
While the arena did make a rule against people showing up to fights naked, they didn’t make any rules against people “ending up” naked as a result of fights. Needless to say, Freddy saw a fair number of titties that day.
And like a little kid, he usually blushed and turned his gaze away.
What caught his interest more than anything else, though, were the abilities. Lots of people used spirit abilities with dire costs, including one’s own life. Because why not? There were no consequences inside the arena.
A great example of this was this one dude who played the role of a righteous hero or whatever. Pretty popular fighter, at that; he showed up three times throughout Freddy’s time there, which was twice more than anyone else.
His whole thing was getting his shit kicked in, then getting really angry and using three costly spirit abilities—one that gave him immense regeneration at the cost of his life, one that set him back a star in turn for a huge strength boost, and a third that seemed to just exhaust him a bit physically in turn for a bit of extra ability power, but it created this dazzling light around him that made him look like a genuine hero of legend.
What stood out even more than spirit abilities, however, were the regular abilities.
It wasn’t a hard rule, but usually, the more efficient an ability was, the less flashy it became. Flashiness tended to be a byproduct of waste. Thus, most of the fighters had ridiculously wasteful and inefficient abilities. Flaming swords spewing fire everywhere, lightning arcing in random directions, earth attacks that moved tons of excess dirt around to no avail—it was a miracle these abilities could do damage at all.
It was then that Freddy realized something pretty dreadful. “I would totally fit into these matches, wouldn’t I?” Taking his mind off the horrible thought, he focused on watching the fights.
But somehow, despite all this, performance matches weren’t even close to the most ridiculous kind of fight the arena had to offer.
That place was solely reserved for ranked matches.
The first featured ranked match was between two people who were among the best fighters the Starhold Arena had to offer.
Freddy had naively expected to see a fight between two super elites, but that wasn’t what he ended up seeing. At all.
The match began with the two people inhaling some kind of spray, then chanting three spirit abilities incredibly quickly. They were both flung away from each other at immense speed, only to then, a moment later, fire two absurd attacks at each other.
A fireball so hot it glowed white and a light beam so bright it was blinding launched, with the light beam hitting the other guy almost instantly, vaporizing him, but not fast enough. The fireball hit the other guy, exploding with the might of a volcano and bathing the whole arena in fire.
The fight lasted three seconds.
The crowd cheered.
Freddy gaped. “What the actual fuck did I just watch?”
That wasn’t a fight. That was a competition to see who could abuse the lack of consequences harder. Needless to say, both fighters had used at least one suicide spirit ability, otherwise, there was no way two-stars could hit that hard. And yes, these people were freakin’ two-stars! It was unsurprising, though. They both had the Triple Block, and Freddy knew damn well what it took to overcome it.
In fact, pretty much everyone who fought in ranked and performance matches was a two-star.
Their abilities were hardly suited for actual fights where they walked out alive and in one piece.
And fighting inside the arena provided exactly zero latent aura.
Other than the most common three types of fight there were countless other fun things the arena had to show.
There were dispute matches—basically, two factions picked out a team of fighters and then had them fight to resolve a dispute without having to shed blood in reality. Freddy didn’t give a crap about these, but he was sure that anyone betting on—or investing in—the factions in question probably cared quite a bit.
There were also monster hunts, wave survival, fortress defense, mock dungeon raids and so on, but few of them got featured simply because they tended to last too long.
The day blurred by without a single memory lapse. It was a truly entertaining experience, and Freddy knew this wasn’t the last time he’d come here. Still, it felt like it was over in the blink of an eye. His ten hours passed, and he was escorted out. But he wasn’t heading out of the arena.
The reason he only booked 10 hours was because that was how long Madame’s shift would last. Now that it was over, it was time to continue their meeting.
He was brought into the floating building above, straight into her office. Thankfully, the trip there was as private as they got, so nobody would be yapping about him meeting Madame.
“So, darling… what did you think?”
Freddy snorted. “Pretty cruel thing you did to that Pietro guy, not gonna lie.”
She shrugged with a huge smile on her face. “Nobody forced him to fight. You heard the girl, she didn’t even want him to do that. But that’s a man’s ego for you.” Leaning in conspiratorially, she whispered. “Just between us, I think she had more than one reason to dump him.”
Freddy couldn’t help but nod in agreement as he snickered. “She did jump at that chance a little too quickly.” He took a seat on the chair opposite Madame. “So… I’m guessing you want me to fight in the arena.”
“While I do think you would make for quite a spectacle in the performance matches, that's not exactly why I brought you here. Tell me, what do you think about Starhold as a whole so far?”
Freddy shrugged. “I’m not sure. It's definitely a spectacular place to live, I’ll give it that much. It feels like everything is a competition. Egoism runs rampant, and the hierarchy of power is everything. Lots of putting others down to get yourself up.” He sighed. “I think I get what you’re aiming at. You want me to become someone first before you feature me and reveal my full story, don’t you?”
She smiled at him. “You have a massive advantage compared to many who live here.”
“And what’s that?”
“You’re a mystery.” She paused. “You’re not tied to anyone. And yet, you’re powerful. Those who seek to make a name for themselves here usually have to do so under the shadow of their family. You don’t. You have what it takes to stand on your own.” She leaned back. “Take your time, dear. Heal, and build yourself up. And then, only when everyone is wondering who you really are, we show them.”
Freddy remained silent for a long while. “I’ll think about it. I can’t lie—I’m tempted by the idea. But… I think I need some time to see what I really want, first.”
“I expected no less. Now, before I let you go, I have something to tel you. I have discovered a piece of information that concerns you. But…” She appeared torn. “I’m not sure if you actually want to hear it.”
Freddy raised an eyebrow. “What’s it about?”
“It’s about your parents.”