Taming Destiny - a Tamer Class isekai/portal survival fantasy.

I dodge a blow from the cudgel of my opponent, back-pedalling swiftly. Bastet leaps in from the side, a feint which allows her to avoid the cudgel’s backswing. Her distraction offers me an opportunity to stab at the samuran with my spear.

The benefits from Spearmanship and Blunt Weaponry are coming in handy already – the ability to spot vulnerable areas has me aiming for a spot in his shoulder joint; the increased effect of Strength and Dexterity has me succeed in both hitting close enough to deal some damage, and actually piercing the lizard-man’s tough scales.

He’s light on his feet, and I don’t manage to completely avoid his next blow. Glowing slightly red, the cudgel slams into my shoulder, though it’s mostly deflected by the chitinous plates which cover it.

I let out a grunt of pain. Fortunately, I don’t think it’s more than bruises. To an onlooker, the trade of blows would be fairly equal but I know better. I back off and let Bastet occupy the Warrior.

He tries to attack her, but she’s too agile for him to hit. I see the moment when he remembers that she’s not the true target anyway, not that it does him much good: she’s not going to let him get close to me now.

While she works her magic, I work on my own. Focussing on the venom that was on the tip of my spear and is now in my opponent’s body, I feed in magic to make it multiply. It’s not easy at a distance – when I fought the danaris I had to actually be in physical contact with it to succeed in this same tactic.

Now is a different story, though. A combination of the lizard-man being an easier opponent than the danaris and the breakthrough in controlling magic from a distance during the burning of the forest of death means that I’m able to do something which previously was impossible.

The venom multiplies more and more. By standing still, I’m able to keep my mind in Light Meditation. Actually, almost Medium Meditation – it’s on the cusp but not quite into the next level. In practice, it means I’m almost regenerating as much mana as I’m losing per second in my work with the venom.

The samuran’s Willpower would have once posed me a problem, but not now. He doesn’t have the capacity to fight internally that the danaris had which might have offered him a way out from his otherwise inevitable defeat. His system is vulnerable to the venom now ravaging it, and even our onlookers should be able to tell that.

The Warrior finds himself slowing, tiring, and gets desperate. His attacks start getting sloppy even as he engages his enhancing ability several times in quick succession. He’s determined to get past Bastet before his stamina runs out completely. I wonder if he’s recognised the venom yet. It’s the same one we once used on lizogs, a component of the one used on Kalanthia.

Bastet isn’t willing to let him get close to me: she’s been charged with my protection and she takes that very seriously. Her full focus is on dodging in a way which doesn’t leave the lizardman any opening to get at me. My heart is in my mouth as I see those enhanced blows aimed at her, but she manages to dodge every single one, sometimes only by a whisker.

Within a few more minutes, the lizard-man slumps down to the ground, unable to continue.

I look up at the onlookers and raise an eyebrow.

“Winner: Markus,” Wood-shaper announces, a hint of begrudging respect in her voice. The herbalist hurries over to check the fallen samuran, Bastet letting her pass after I send her a quick thought. She looks up at me with a bit of an accusing look in her eyes.

“Hadaran venom?” she asks.

“Yes,” I respond, walking over. Hadaran is apparently what my Inspect calls what I had previously been naming ‘black blobs’. Before we came down into the valley, River’s group took one down and brought it back. After how I’d killed the danaris, he’d wondered whether I might find the venom useful. After tests proved that I could use it as easily as any other venom generated by a living creature, I added it to my arsenal.

While the venom originally taken from that mimic creature in the vine-strangler forest is powerful, it is rather fatal. The hadaran venom is excellent for incapacitating when I don’t actually want to kill my opponent, or not immediately.

“I think I have an antidote in my hut,” I hear the herbalist muttering to herself as I get closer.

“No need,” I tell her, crouching down and laying my hand on the prone Warrior. Feeding magic into him, I pull all the venom to the surface of the skin then use my knife to make a small cut. The yellowish venom pours out of his body and I collect it in a container I pull from my Inventory – waste not, want not, after all.

With the venom gone, I work on the actual damage done from the fight. It takes a fair bit of effort since he’s not Bound to me, but from the amazement with which my healing has been met from every samuran I’ve used it on, I figure that it’s worth doing. Besides, with his low Willpower in comparison to mine, it’s not even as difficult as trying to heal Lathani had been when I tried to heal her spine.

The damage from Bastet is mostly superficial – she wasn’t really trying to hurt him, just distract him. As for the venom, that affects the body in ways that I haven’t yet been able to understand, so he’ll have to recover on his own. Without the venom still in his system, that will happen quickly.

In fact, it’s quick enough that by the time I push myself to my feet, he is able to move slowly into a sitting position. He eyes me with more than a little awe in his eyes.

“Thank you for healing me,” he says, looking like he’s about to say something more. Then his eyes dart to the herbalist and he shuts his mouth with a click. “You are the victor,” he acknowledges, tilting his chin up. I nod and stick my hand out.

“Good fight,” I tell him.

He eyes my hand then grasps it and lets me pull him to his feet. With another quick chin tilt, he moves off to join the rest of his brothers.

I’m left with the herbalist who eyes me a little strangely even as she paints the sigil on the back of my armour which shows that I was the victor of the fight. It joins the other two which are already there.

“Controller of the life-devourer, poisoner, healer, binder….what are you?” she asks with an unreadable tone to her spikes when she’s finished and has returned to face my front.

“Human,” I reply with an enigmatic smile. The herbalist just gives me a frustrated look.

“Fine, keep your secrets. Your next match will be shortly,” she snaps her teeth at me, then strides off to join those watching a fight where blood is already coating the ground.

I take the opportunity to wander around too, watching those who will be my opponents soon. Four fights down; six, technically nine, to go.

None of my opponents so far have been particularly difficult. I’d suspect the Pathwalkers of strategic sacrifice to allow the stronger Warriors to gauge my fighting abilities except that this is just the way they apparently do it: each Warrior challenges the one directly above them in the ranking, or is challenged by the one directly below them. Since I wasn’t part of the ranking last time for obvious reasons, I have to work my way up from the bottom.

That doesn’t matter except for the sake of order, though: every Warrior fights every other one meaning that everyone has at least fifteen fights. They then work out the rankings by overall number of fights won. What happens if there’s a tie for the top spot, I don’t know.

I suppose it’s strategic that I have been put in the Warrior tournament at all. Technically, as a magic-user, I should be in the Pathwalker tournament, meaning that I would be sitting this one out, then only fighting the other Pathwalkers. Only the top Pathwalker fights the top Warrior at the very end; the loser fights the other opposite group, moving downwards until a rank is established.

I’m being disadvantaged by having to fight far more battles than anyone else has to. Still, I’m not actually annoyed by it too much. I’m going to have to Bind all of these beings anyway; if I’ve already defeated them in a physical battle, I’ll have a better chance of winning the soul battle too.

With so many fights that need to occur, there are twelve fights happening at any one time, the Pathwalkers and higher ranking Warriors – those who aren’t fighting – acting as referees. I just hope that Wind-whisperer doesn’t monitor any of my fights since I doubt she’ll be fair about it. The last two times have been Wood-shaper, with Grower watching my first fight. I suspect that Joy won’t be allowed to referee my fights either, which is fair enough.

The first fight didn’t start too well – I’d forgotten to tell Aingeal what we were doing and it almost went and immolated my opponent. Since Bastet hadn’t actually attacked in any sort of way, I was able to argue that Aingeal was my Bound in that situation.

Still, it almost devolved into a proper fight since they were accusing me of having brought three of my Bound with me instead of the two we’d agreed. The fact that the first fight was over in about five seconds because the other opponent was so seriously burned that he couldn’t continue seemed to disturb them more than a bit too.

After a fair bit of talking – and probably because Wind-whisperer was occupied elsewhere at that time – we managed to straighten it out. I apologised for unintentionally bringing an extra Bound with me – which was true since I’ve got so used to the little ball of fire bobbing over my shoulder that I didn’t think to leave it behind.

As it turned out, Aingeal refused to leave me at all, but it did agree to not intervene unless I was close to death, the argument a little complex since it was done purely through projected emotions. Since its existence seems tied to mine, I can understand that.

The samurans had to accept the compromise since they didn’t want Aingeal acting in the fights and I made it clear that the ball of fire wouldn’t be going anywhere. My healing of the seriously burned samuran also helped to soothe their tempers a little.

I was a little worried at the start of the second fight, but Aingeal stuck to the agreement and stayed bobbing serenely over my shoulder. After seeing that he wasn’t about to get immolated, my second opponent took heart and actually attacked me properly.

That fight didn’t last very long either – seeing how tentative about fire he was, I used a flash of flame in his face to distract him. That gave Bastet the opportunity to knock into him. With my spear causing him to trip, he quickly landed heavily on the floor. With that, my spearpoint to his throat, and Bastet snarling at him menacingly, the fight was clearly over.

After that it was Iandee who immediately surrendered, giving both of us a little break until the next fight.

In fact, only my fourth opponent has managed to activate any ability at all so far, and it didn’t do him much good.

A call comes out for me and I head towards my next fight. Spotting who it is, I decide to make a quick change in my line-up.

Catch, you join me on this one. Bastet, just watch for now, please, but I may need to switch you out at a moment’s notice. If you can keep a careful watch on where he is, that would be good too. With any luck that will be enough to nullify the ability of my next opponent.

My two Bound rearrange themselves and Catch strides forwards with me. I pull a large shield made out of chitin out of my Inventory and hand it to him. He fixes it on his arm and readjusts his grip on his own cudgel. Made out of pale reinforced bone with a large flint head and flint studs set into it, bone grown around them to hold them in place, it’s a far more intimidating sight than the one my previous opponent holds.

I’m already ready so we step into the ring that’s been drawn on the ground. Forcing an opponent outside the ring actually isn’t a win condition – it’s just supposed to demarcate where we’re supposed to be fighting. There’s nothing saying that we can’t go outside the ring temporarily, which is one thing I’m concerned about with this new samuran.

After all, I know from personal experience just how annoying stealth can be. When paired with projectile weaponry, this fight has become one that I definitely need to take seriously.