Archmund’s third match was against Gelias Greenroot, the last of the three noble entrants to this tournament meant for the peasants of Granavale County.

  He had a small break, and he used it to review his overall plan to make sure no other nobles would be getting their hands on his Gemgear.

  Here’s how it’d had gone so far:

  Beatrice Blackwood had lost to him in the first round, and been lost to Mary in the second. Thus, eliminated.

  Rory Redmont had beat Gelias Greenroot in the first round, and lost to Archmund himself in the second. He’d be up against Mary next, where hopefully he would either lose or throw the match.

  Gelias Greenroot had lost to Rory in the first round, beaten his peasant opponent surprisingly closely in the second round, and was up against Archmund in the next.

  He’d have to check in on Mary. Given Beatrice’s speed, it was surprising that Mary had won so handily. He wondered what Rory was planning to throw the match or to toy with Mary for a bit. Beatrice wasn’t particularly strong, but Rory was the real deal.

  But he had his own match to deal with first.

  “Archmund Granavale,” said Gelias Greenroot, clasping his hand in a firm handshake at the center of their dueling field. He was a slender, slim boy who wore a pair of rounded spectacles and… he had pointed ears and greenish-black hair. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  “It’s nice to meet you too,” Archmund said.

  Gelias had pointed ears.

  He was an elf.

  There were elves in this world.

  “That last match was rather vicious of you,” Gelias said. “I don’t suppose you’ll go easy on me.”

  “Sorry,” said Archmund. “If I beat you here, you’re out.”

  “I assumed that was your plan,” Gelias said. “I can’t imagine why, though. Are you sizing us up? Are you considering our suitability for a Dungeon strike force?”

  He hadn’t been. It wasn’t a bad idea, except he’d cleared out the easy parts of Dungeon, and Raehel and Mary reported that it hadn’t fully regenerated yet.

  “I know you cleared out the First Tier,” Gelias said, “but the Second and Third Tier? Perhaps you’d be better off purging the rot from the root.”

  Now that was an angle he hadn’t thought of.

  There was a real opportunity cost to turning the Dungeon into a stream of revenue.

  There was a concept called Discounted Cash Flow in the financial literature of his past life. Essentially, money had a “time value”. Almost anyone would prefer to have a hundred dollars today rather than be promised a hundred dollars in ten years. Therefore, a promise to be given a hundred dollars in ten years was worth less than a hundred dollars now.

  He could think of the Dungeon in two ways.

  He’d been thinking of it as a potential constant but inconsistent stream of revenue. A Poisson distribution — Monsters would come out at inconsistent but somewhat statistically predictable intervals, and drop their Gems, which would be worth some amount. But they would be inconsistent and the conversion rates to raw wealth would be unknown as a future variable and there would be both consistent danger/risk and a need to pay people to keep the worst at bay.

  If he went in and cleared it out in one strong push, it would be worth some amount of money once converted with the Omnio markets, and he could rest assured that it wouldn’t be an ongoing drain on resources and distortion of the local economy. Additionally, he could invest the wealth he gained from that Dungeon liquidation elsewhere, potentially returning far more than simply sitting on the Dungeon and waiting for it to return wealth.

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  In other words, the sooner he conquered the Dungeon, the sooner he would profit.

  That was, of course, if it was reasonable to view the Dungeon as a revenue-generating asset and not a metaphysical hellgate liability.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said to Gelias, coming back to the present.

  “Alas,” Gelias said. “You leave me in suspense.”

  They walked to opposite ends of the arena.

  The air grew tense, though it was filled with wood clacking against wood from all the other matches.

  And then their referee blew his horn.

  Archmund held his wooden sparring sword up in wary guard.

  Gelias sighed. “I’m really no good with a blade, you know?”

  He swung the blade, testing the air.

  A very slight distortion of the winds.

  “Rory beat me without even trying. I’m surprised you got him at all.”

  Instinctively, Archmund shifted from left to right, dodging the possible arcs of Gelias’s swings. He had no clue as to Gelias’s strengths. Rory and Beatrice had played their hands early, but even if they thought Gelias was weak, that didn’t mean he was powerless.

  Archmund approached, shuffling forward carefully. Gelias let him, only twirling his sword in practice swings.

  Archmund had a growing sense that something was wrong. There was something he hadn’t considered, an outside-context problem. He’d assumed this world followed the laws of physics with a few exceptions, such as the presence of magic.

  Elves shattered that assumption. It wasn’t that lanky humanoids with pointy ears couldn’t exist within the laws of physics as he knew them, but for them to exist, the history of the world was just different.

  And, if elves existed, he had no idea what they could do. When he’d banned Gems from this contest, he’d assumed they were the only way to achieve superhuman strength and agility. But what if elves already had those natural, inborn talents, as innate to their heritage as Rory Redmont’s height was to his?

  There was no point of hesitating further. He swung his blade.

  Gelias blocked it, and Archmund knew he was right to fear.

  He could feel the soul electric hum of magic vibrating through the wood beneath his blade, almost identical to how Gems felt when charged to Enchantment release. But there was no Gem here, only the dead wood of the sparring sword.

  He swung again. Again, Gelias blocked masterfully, like a teacher would a student’s probing strikes.

  Now Gelias struck, an obvious feint — but one that a lesser fighter would’ve fallen for. Archmund dodged in one direction, blocked in the other, and avoided the blow. The hum of magic shook the air, emanating off of Gelias’s blade.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Archmund said.

  “I shouldn’t what?” Gelias said. He seemed genuinely puzzled. “Shouldn’t try to beat you?”

  He’d banned the use of Gems, but he hadn’t banned the use of magic, in part because he wasn’t sure whether passively being strengthened by Gems counted as magic. But he hadn’t accounted for people who could naturally use magic without Gems.

  “You’re not trying particularly hard.”

  “Yes, I am.”

  Archmund had begun to realize that he was starting to develop a weak sense for magic or “numen” — what Raehel called “the Sight” — but it was blatantly obvious that Gelias was emanating magical power in wild abandon. Which was odd. How could someone so close to him in age have such a deep magical reservoir that he could just waste it in radiation?

  And yet why was that not translating into an instantaneousness total victory?

  He needed to consider the full implications of this — beings able to Attune their magic to non-Gem objects, and what that would mean for the soul-circuit. Perhaps it was an inborn elven ability. Gelias didn’t even seen to realize he was doing it.

  Archmund struck again, his blade following one of the standard forms Weaponsmaster Garth had taught him. Gelias met him with a standard block, straight out of a training manual.

  Archmund sighed.

  Gelias stepped back and frowned. “Surely you aren’t seriously frustrated?”

  He was even starting to talk like a teacher.

  Archmund had a wild guess what was going on.

  Elves could temporarily Attune wood, which was dead plants.

  Elves would adopt the characteristics of that wood.

  The wooden sparring sword was meant for learning how to fight and not the real terrors of combat.

  Gelias was dueling to spar, not dueling to win.

  Therefore, the best way for Archmund to win…

  Was to do the exact same thing he’d done against Rory Redmont.

  Go all out. Go wild, without caring about form or swordsmanship. Just fight like a wild beast.

  It just felt so hackish to do the same thing twice in a row.

  But if it was stupid and it worked, it wasn’t stupid.

  The real concern was that if he did that, he’d gain a reputation.

  “The heir of House Granavale beat two of his noble opponents by abandoning the way of the sword. He gave in to his wild, bestial instincts. He fought like an uncivilized animal and only by doing that could he win.”

  He could feel the cold gaze of Princess Angelina Grace Prima Marca Omnio upon him, judging him unworthy. “I knew I asked you to come,” she’d say, in a few years when they went off to the Imperial Academy, “but you have utterly and totally disgraced me. Don’t talk to me, you filthy beast.”

  He was catastrophizing. She probably wouldn’t say that, but she absolutely could. It was in her nature, as the crown princess of Omnio. She had judged him useful so far, and she could turn and judge him a larger burden than boon.

  His sparring sword felt heavy.

  “Well?” Gelias taunted. “Surely you aren’t giving up already. After all that vigor and bravado?”

  His bravado had been shaken.

  And yet he recognized the taunt for what it was.

  A teacher’s taunt.

  A training taunt.

  This match was didactic. This taunt was friendly. This opponent was meant to be conquered.

  How could he do so without giving himself to the berserker rage?