Chapter 407: ARE YOU NOT INTERTAINED

Someone booed, and others soon joined in. Within a minute, thousands of spectators had apparently agreed that watching people successfully survive was a poor use of their afternoon. Kael looked toward the stands.

"Oh, fuck off."

The response was more booing. They wanted blood, another body crushed beneath the club or thrown against the outer wall. Three men moving around a hole while an ogre threw rocks did not meet their expectations. Nor the value of their coin.

The timer read [14:21], leaving them less than a quarter of an hour to endure. Darin finally noticed the audience "The fuck is going on. what they were complaining about?"

Kael kept his eyes on the ogre as he answered. "We’re not dying entertainingly enough."

Beside him, Roth gave a strained wheeze that might have become a laugh if breathing had been easier.

He looked toward the stands, then back at Kael, clearly waiting for him to admit he was joking.

Kael wished he had been. Before he could say so, a tremendous metallic grinding rose from beneath the arena, loud enough to make both the Climbers and the ogre stop moving. The platforms around the pit began to shift.

Stone slabs slid out from beneath its edges, advancing slowly at first before gathering speed. Kael watched the opening narrow and felt his expression flatten. "No."

The spectators erupted in cheers. Whatever controlled the arena had apparently decided to oblige them, and the safest part of the battlefield was disappearing beneath the advancing stone.

Kael looked toward the stands. "You petty fuckers."

The ogre watched the slabs move, then raised both heads toward the three Climbers waiting beyond them.

Both faces spread into smiles, and Kael sighed. "That is unfortunate."

The final section slid into place, leaving nothing between them. Darin immediately sprinted left while Roth went right, still holding his wounded side. The ogre hesitated as its right head followed Darin and its left turned after Roth.

One body remained caught between two competing decisions, and Kael watched the argument develop with growing interest. Then an idea occurred to him, the kind he would normally describe as stupid immediately before trying it.

Darin and Roth were moving away, both ogre heads were following them, and much of the audience had turned to watch the chase resume. For a brief moment, nobody seemed particularly interested in Kael.

He touched the center of his chest beneath the coat and activated Presence, expecting the familiar pressure against his reserves. Instead, his internal energy dropped so sharply that his eyes widened. "What the..."

The explanation came almost immediately. He was standing in the middle of a stadium, with thousands of people enjoying a clear view of him. Even with their attention divided, Presence was working against an entire audience.

Slipping past a few guards in a palace corridor had been cheap by comparison. His reserves continued falling, leaving him only seconds before maintaining the effect became impossible. Fortunately, seconds were all he needed.

The crowd’s attention slipped away from him, and neither ogre head reacted as Kael crossed the ground between them. He moved straight toward the creature, leaving its heart, knees, and throat for someone else to worry about. He had spent enough time fighting things larger than himself to appreciate the occasions when familiar anatomy remained useful.

Dropping low, Kael pulled back his right fist and planted his feet beneath him.

"No hard feelings." He drove the uppercut directly between the ogre’s legs.

There was no magical flash or explosive Rune combination, only the force of his strengthened body moving through a strike his master had beaten into him. His legs drove upward, his hips turned, and his shoulder carried the motion through to the ordinary fist guard. The blow landed with a dull, solid sound that seemed far too small for what followed.

For one second, the ogre went completely still. Both mouths opened without producing a sound, and Kael used the pause to throw himself forward and roll beneath the creature.

Presence gave out as he emerged on the other side. Behind him came a strangled squeak, a noise he would never have believed something that large could make. Then both heads found their voices at once.

The ogre dropped its club and collapsed onto its knees. Both enormous hands disappeared between its legs as it folded forward, screaming loudly enough to silence the stands. Kael came out of his roll several meters away and looked back at the creature curled over itself.

Two heads, two horns, and one shared problem. He winced sympathetically as another terrible sound escaped it.

"Yeah. Low blow I know..." He winced. And so did every male in the audience as they realized what happened. Beast, man, monster or demon, every man knows the pain of a blow to the nuts.

The silence soon broke into laughter. Thousands of people screamed, stamped their feet, and cheered, including plenty who had apparently missed the strike but could work out what had happened from the ogre’s posture. While a great deal had to explain to their female companions on the stands the solidarity of males in the world when it came to pain that cannot be described as simply as one would to an injury.

Kael barely listened. His attention had moved to the club lying beside the creature, its iron bands half buried in the dirt. It was enormous, far beyond anything a normal human could reasonably carry into battle, and its owner was currently occupied with something else.

Kael glanced toward Darin and Roth. Both had put a respectable distance between themselves and the ogre, and neither was close enough to interfere.

He reached for his wrists, feeling beneath the cuffs of his plain fist guards for the thick training rings secured there. Each was heavy enough that an ordinary person would struggle to lift it from the ground. Kael had worn them so consistently during his entire climb of the tower and during his training that he barely noticed their weight anymore, but that did not mean he needed to keep them on for this.

He unlatched the first ring and let it fall. It struck the red dirt with a heavy clunk and sank several inches, followed a moment later by the second. Kael rolled his wrists and rotated his shoulders, adjusting to the sudden absence of weight. His arms felt almost weightless, and a smile spread beneath his helmet.

"That feels better." Then he stepped toward the fallen club and wrapped both hands around its handle.

The nearest rows began quieting as Kael pulled. The club rose slowly, its head dragging a short furrow through the dirt before clearing the ground. Darin stopped running, and Roth stared. Even in Kael’s hands, the weapon looked absurd. Its head was nearly as large as his torso, while the handle had been shaped for fingers several times thicker than his own. He adjusted his grip, planted his feet, and lifted it higher.

The ogre finally looked up, both faces still twisted in agony. Its single eyes widened as Kael raised the club above his head. He smiled beneath the Spartan helmet, shifted his weight, and brought the weapon down.

The roar of the arena disappeared beneath the impact.