Guinevere found herself in massive throne room. Mordred sat on a throne with Exar’kun curled around the back of it. The dragon opened one eye to look at her than closed it again. Mordred removed his helmet. He’d gotten a haircut recently and shaved although that just made the long scars over the left side of his face more visible.

  “Welcome to the Event,” Mordred said a smile spreading over his face. “I wasn’t sure if you would come.”

  “This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” Guinevere said. “I can’t recall ever hearing any other time a non-champion was given the chance to enter into one of the Events.”

  “You can thank Arthur for that,” he said.

  “Arthur?” Guinevere asked, her body stiffening as she heard his name. “Of course, he’s here, but how is he responsible for this?”

  “This Event is meant to be a PVP battle,” Mordred said.

  “PVP?” Guinevere asked.

  “Player versus player,” Mordred explained another one his earth terms. “There are two sides on either side of a massive battlefield, we needed to kill eachother, move flags from one side of the battlefield to the other and hold objectives to earn points to win. Some people wanted to kill me, Arthur among them, he told them that if anyone fought alongside me Camelot would consider them enemies after this.”

  “He does have the authority to make that kind of decision,” Guinevere admitted.

  “Well, no one sided with me, smart decision on their part.” Mordred said. “The System didn’t like them questioning the team composition it built so it gave me the option to strike out on my own as a third faction with a limited number of vassals I could summon.”

  “So how many people are on our side?” Guinevere asked.

  “It’s just us,” Exar’kun said his voice a deep rumbling growl. “He blew all his points summoning you and me since we’re both higher ranks that him.”

  “There’s another problem,” Guinevere said. “I can’t be seen helping you… there are complications back home.”

  “I can do something about that,” Mordred said reaching into his storage pouch and removing a half dozen ingots and several pelts another other miscellaneous materials. The objects rotated around her as he used his crafting ability to forge her armor in the span of a few minutes.

  Runes began to glow along her armor as gem infused ink was directed into marks all along the edges of the plates infusing the dark black metal with red glyphs and sigils. Guinevere ran her hands down the armor, it was as tight fitting to her curves as the last set he had made her but she had come to appreciate it for its elegance as well as how well it moved with her. As her fingers ran along it she picked up a helmet that Mordred offered her reading its description.

  She set the helm over her head her hair spilling back behind her. Her snow-white locks began to turn crimson as if she had dipped them in fresh blood.

  Guinevere thought for a second before going with her mother’s name.

  “Inara the Dark Valkyrie,” she told the system.

  Holding up her hands she examine the bracers and gauntlets she now wore. They were different than the last he had made for her. Her old set had been smooth and rounded these were jagged at the ends of them ended in sharp claws.

  “I figured people might be able to guess your identity even with an alias if you kept using the same abilities everyone knows you have,” Mordred said.

  “How is this possible?” Guinevere asked in wonder. “Your changing how an ability works, enchantments shouldn’t be able to do that.”

  “Why not?” Mordred asked. “The more I study magic the more they have in common with abilities. I think abilities might be just super advanced spells that are physically and spiritually engrained into us to make them easy to use and reduce their mana and stamina cost.”

  “That comes close to heresy,” Guinevere said.

  “Don’t care,” Mordred said. “I was told to win a competition, not be a priest.”

  “Is Kelesa really that hands off?” Guinevere asked.

  “I’ve spoken to her only three times,” Mordred said. “As long as I keep gaining power, she seems to be pretty happy and doesn’t care what I do.”

  “She’s never given you any advice?” Guinevere asked.

  “She advised me against you,” he said with a shrug. “But she chose me because she wanted things done differently so she can stuff it, doing my own thing means doing my own thing.”

  “You really aren’t afraid of being smited are you?” Guinevere asked.

  “If she’s going to smite me for a lack of respect than she would have done so the moment we met,” he said. “Don’t pick up a scorpion and expect it not to sting you.”

  Guinevere ran her fingers over the waist of her breastplate feeling the soft fur that lined its edges as she read its description.

  “What is a divine smith?” Guinevere asked. “I’ve never seen that on an item before?”

  “It’s a title I almost died to get,” I said. “It increases the rarity of everything I create by one grade and increases its hardness by two.”

  Strapping on her helmet, Guinevere spun around. “How do I look?”

  “Like a vision,” Mordred said smiling and she felt her heart flutter for a second before she clamped down on the feeling.

  “What now?” she asked returning to business.

  “We still have about four hours before the Event starts for real,” Mordred said. “I need to rank up some of my abilities, almost everyone here is a higher rank than me.”

  “Why have you been delaying ranking up?” Guinevere asked. “I would have figured you’d already be Hero rank by now.”

  “I have… reasons,” Mordred said cagily. “You’ll find out soon.”

  “I thought we were passed keeping secrets from each other,” Guinevere said.

  “Think of it as less a secret and more a surprise,” he said. “This should only take a few minutes.”

  --

  “You’re not going to use any pain killers?” Guinevere asked me.

  I opened one eye and looked at her.

  “Right, you have some ability to ignore pain,” she said.

  “Title,” I corrected her. “System, raise Blood Renewal to rank twenty.”

  The strain of my Spirit attribute being so high would be reduced if I raised all my spiritual attributes to Hero Rank. It would bring me dangerously close to crossing the gap into Hero rank, but I planned on keeping five points from getting to fifty in my Endurance and Toughness. The likelihood of me picking enough abilities to push those stats was so small it wasn’t even a real risk.

  I skipped past the first three notifications until I came to one, I hadn’t seen in over a year.

  I could feel something twist and change as I momentarily lost control of my body as something inside me changed. The change wasn’t bad as I felt the strain from my too high Spirit attribute fade as my other mana attributes finally all raised to Hero rank.

  I wondered if someone would harvest my body to turn into weapons someday like I had to the beasts I had slain. Would they make me into some armor or weapon or just let my corpse rot on the battlefield? Pushing aside that morbid thought I skipped passed the next notification to the upgrade section I had been waiting for.

  With the option to make a choice to upgrade my abilities again I surveyed my options. I wasn’t a healer no matter what abilities the system gave me so increasing the range or healing wasn’t something I was interested in. A damage shield sounded interesting; if someone was so hurt, they needed me to heal them, than chances, were they were in the middle of a fight. I picked the second option and read over the list of changes.

  The damage shield wasn’t much but there was potential for it grow as I increased the rank of the ability. I moved on skipping past the next few notifications to get to the upgrade.

  After a quick look at the options, I picked the first. I didn’t know what those buffs did, and I was more concerned about keeping allies from dying than I was in giving them buffs.

  The damage shields and healing were increasing every five ranks hopefully when it was maxed out I would be able to give out some serious healing. I skipped the next four notifications to get to the upgrade notification.

  I wasn’t here to buff people and giving people a life steal ability right after they’d just been healed seemed redundant. I went with the first option since that seemed more in line and my personal experiences with poison told me that resisting it was a very important thing.

  While this sort of ability wasn’t really my style, I intended this one to be a generalist healing thing. I could shoot if off in the middle of a battle to get my allies back up than go right back to fighting. Skipping past the next few notifications I got to the good one.

  The first choice was another bust but the second one was tempting but again I wasn’t here to provide buffs. I picked the third option restoring mana and stamina would let my allies sort out whatever trouble they were in on their own with their own abilities.

  The max rank ability was a combination of damage and healing, it was only a moderate amount but a damage over time effect didn’t need to be overwhelming like my attacks. That was this ability taken care of, on to the next!

  “Raise Dark Guardian to rank fifteen,” I told the system.

  This would put my toughness close to being fifty, but I would just raise Brutal Spite to only rank ten. I skipped the first four notifications until I got to the one for additional effects.

  This choice was a bit more difficult. I dismissed the second one, I wasn’t going to waste an effect on a single damage effect, especially on a defensive ability. The third one was more interesting but I ultimately dismissed it as well, I was too busy dealing damage to play tank. I took the first since it looked like a passive effect that would benefit my allies without requiring any work from me.

  Unfortunately, this ability revolved around me getting the shit beaten out of me to the point of death. Did that happen on a regular basis? Yes. Was it something I did intentionally? No, well not exactly; I recklessly endangered myself, but I wasn’t a masochist, probably. Moving on from that thought I dismissed the notification and the next four as well.

  As much as I hated the rhyme the third option was the most suited to this ability. It revolved around me getting hit and this effect sounded like it would be more of the same. I already had other ways of restoring their stamina with my healing ability and I still wasn’t here to provide buffs.

  While I wasn’t going to change anything about my fighting style my tendency to end a fight with my flesh hanging off my bones meant my allies would be in peak health through the whole fight. Skipping past the next four notifications I got to the next upgrade options.

  No matter how much the system tried to goad me into it I wasn’t going to take a buff. The second option was a major break from the other options I’d seen before it was focused on reducing the damage, I would take rather than my allies. The third would benefit my allies but they were already receiving less damage thanks to me, the smart thing to do was to make sure I stayed in the fight so I could continue to provide passive healing and damage reduction.

  Selecting the second option I looked over the changes.

  This ability would let Guinevere and Exar’kun power through my enemies and help me to resist some of the elemental attacks the other champions were sure to have. With that done I moved onto my next ability that I felt would have a lot of synergy with this one.

  “Raise Brutal Spite to rank ten,” I told the system.

  The first option was kind of weak and the second one was useless thanks to my Wrathful Meditation title. Luckly the third was fairly interesting, it was a revenge effect the more a target would damage me the more damage I could do in return to them. A perfect choice for me.

  A damage multiplier but it required me to take a significant amount of damage in order to activate and barely lasted for a few heartbeats but there was potential there. I dismissed the next four notifications eager to get to the next changes.

  The first one would just increase my mana regeneration rate which was huge, my mana pool was huge but it would take minutes to fill once emptied this would let me actually keep it topped off during a fight and make me a spell cannon. The other effects weren’t bad but despite the simple sounding nature of that first effect it was by the far the most powerful option here. More mana meant more of every other ability I had not just one more nifty augmentation to a single ability.

  That was that I couldn’t put more points into this attribute and risk going over the limit for the Dragon Tourney by ascending into Hero Rank.

  “Pull up my current status,” I said.

  A horn blew through the air as I closed my notification screen and a new pop up appeared.

  Rolling my shoulders, I stood from my throne.

  “Time to introduce myself to the rest of my peers,” I said. “When I’m done this place is going to be like a COD lobby.”

  “Is that a good thing?” Guinevere asked me.

  A vicious smile spread over my face. “No, no, it is not.”