Chapter 108: Duel to the Debt

“HOW DARE YOU!” Neverre shouted at the top of her lung as she used a magical silk handkerchief to wipe off her front.

Perry could tell it was magical by the faint opalescent shimmer and the way the lotion faded from the cloth in a matter of seconds.

The girl was basically cleaning herself off with the handkerchief version of a Lamborghini.

Well, I’m in deep shit. Perry hadn’t quite realized how angry he’d been at being dragged onto the dance-floor and acted recklessly. Stability did not immediately make one a zen monk, it simply kept one’s natural mental balance. And he naturally got angry when people tried to roofie him.

And now he was in the middle of a rapidly emptying dance floor with an extremely rich girl shrieking at him at the top of her lungs. Perry had to wonder if her voice was magically enhanced, or if it was naturally honed shrieking.

“I’m sorry,” Perry said with a sardonic grin. “I usually don’t go off that quickly. Maybe it was the perfume.”

Well, maybe I’m still a little angry.

“You-You crude, ignorant son of a Dull peasant! My father won’t stand for this slight! You’ve signed your death warrant!”

Perry’s attention faded away as the girl began describing how important her father was at length. He glanced over to see if Nat was still waiting for him. He caught a quick flash of the shy girl making her escape.

Damn.

It was a punch in the gut to think he might’ve ruined the night for Natalie because he acted without thinking.

That thought refocused him on the woman yelling in his face. She was about five or six years his senior, her ethnicity was indicative of one of the old country’s satellite states. Her father was most likely in the capital when the world ended.

A diplomat for a country that no longer existed?

Perry searched his memory and came up with Vondrus Demetre, a diplomat to Manita who’d hitched a ride to Earth along with the rest of the court as they fled the planet.

He’d done quite well for himself as a business tycoon, being one of the first people to break with tradition and take advantage of his magic to make a profit, much to the chagrin of the royal family, (I.E. Gramma.)

Hmm… Perry pursed his lips, superimposing the man’s face on the screaming one in front of him.

Yep, I think I’m in the right ballpark. Oldest grand-daughter or youngest daughter.

Perry nodded to himself.

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening to any of that.” Perry said with a shrug.

Neverre’s expression soured further.

“DADDY!!”

An older gentleman emerged from the crowd, dark hair with a streak of grey. Not old enough to be Vondrus Demetre, so he must be the son, which meant Neverre was most likely the oldest grand-daughter.

What was his name again? Perry thought

Andre Demetre. A bunch of vaguely remembered news highlights of Andre kicking some serious ass in the nineties and early two thousands flickered across Perry’s memory, along with a lot of duels won by the old man. More than one of his opponents ended up in a bodybag.

Ah, I see what the setup is, now.

Andre arrived beside them.

“What’s all this, then?” the salt-and-pepper haired man demanded, arriving beside his daughter.

“Daddy, this man has assaulted me and impugned my honor! He accused me of using Kloth bloom and sprayed –“

Perry stopped listening, thumbed his chin and sized up her dad. The man had been a hellion back in his day. The best solution to this problem was to sucker-punch him with a bottle of capsaicin to the eyes while he was still talking to his daughter, kick him in the face a couple times while he was down, then have them both thrown out.

People generally don’t expect you to go from zero to one hundred like that.

Unfortunately Perry wasn’t currently a psycho, so that option was off the table. Besides, it marked him as the sole aggressor and opened the avenue for the grandfather to lean on his family, financially.

Irritating.

“You have to correct this-“

Neverre’s words died in her mouth as Perry stepped forward and idly poked her dad in the stomach.

Body fat percentage is lower than I’d like. Dude keeps himself in shape. Perry poked Andre’s arm and shoulder to check the man’s musculature.

“Is this true?” the imposing man asked him, gently holding Perry at arm’s length to prevent any more poking.

“Sure,” Perry said with a shrug “I really don’t think anything I say here will have much of an effect. You’ve obviously been training for this opportunity for some time. Let’s just do this thing.”

The dark-skinned man gave Perry a subtle smirk and nod before raising his voice.

“Apologize and admit the fault of your boorish behavior towards my daughter!”

“Nah,” Perry said with a shrug, shaking his head.

“In refusing to apologize, you have insulted her honor, and by extension, you have insulted mine. Young man, I challenge you to a duel!”

“Are you sure you wanna do that?” Perry asked into the hushed silence that had taken over the ball.

“Either we settle this like men, or paint yourself a coward in front of all, your word worth no more than a grain of sand.” The aged duelist said, motioning to the onlookers.

Perry’s word was pretty important at the moment. He’d just claimed he’d lead them to take back Manita. If someone kicked his reputation in the nuts right now, that rallying cry would lose all its potency.

The situation called for Perry to double down.

“Your daughter is a manipulative schemer and a dance-rapist. I accept your duel.” Perry imagined he heard Heather chuckle at the ‘dance-rapist’ comment.

Now, a typical Manitian duel went like this: the challenged party (in this case, Perry) Got to choose one of three details. The place, the weapon, or the time.

The challenger would pick one of the remaining two details, the Perry would pick the final detail, and bam, duel arranged.

Cheeky picks like ‘a hundred years hence’ were not allowed.

“Here,” Perry said, picking the venue. Generally the opening move was for the challenged party to pick a weapon they were most familiar with, giving them an advantage over the other party.

Perry however, was deeply averse to allowing Andre choose the location. If he gave up the weapon as a sacrifice, he could lock in the time and place, which would at least allow him to survive the fight and get it over with before they started serving dinner.

Perry absolutely didn’t wanna fight out in the middle of the ocean or on the Demetre private island with nobody watching for fair play, or on hand to re-start his heart if necessary.

“The power of kings,” Andre responded with a smile, reading Perry’s intentions. ‘The power of kings’ translated to ‘Magic’ with a few minor caveats.

Not surprising.

“Now.” Perry replied.

Andre’s eyebrows rose.

“I got other stuff to do today,” Perry said with a shrug.

Ruuuumble…

The ballroom shook as a chair emerged from the decorative floor, rising up six feet in the air, looking something like a gilded lifeguard tower.

Gramma stepped out of the audience, climbed up into the chair and looked over the two of them with a sour expression. Perry could detect a glint of mischief in her eyes, though.

Reminder to self: Exact revenge for this setup. No Christmas card for grandma.

“As the highest ranking Manitian officer present, I will act as the arbiter.” Grandma said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Go ahead Andre, you may pummel my grandson at your leisure.”

The older man glanced back down at Perry. “Good choice. Are you ready?”

Perry shrugged. “Ready as I’ll ever b-“

Andre Demetre’s arm whipped out and a torrent of pythons shot out of his palm, rippling with muscle beneath oversized scales seemingly made of bone.

Perry dropped to his fingertips underneath the pythons and lunged forward, trying to create as much distance between himself and the automaton’s teeth as possible.

Perry felt the change in the air pressure behind him and wrenched his lunge to the left, allowing the spell to whiff past him as it doubled back to hit him from behind.

“You’re quick!” Andre said, his eyes glittering like a kid in a candy store.

Perry raised his head to see that only a few of the pythons were actually following him. the rest were spreading around the dance floor, dominating the area and pre-emptively cutting of anywhere he might try to run.

There was only one direction that was clear: Andre needed line of sight, and so there were no magical constructs between the two of them.

It was probably a trap.

But at least charging in would get this farce over with quickly.

Sliding Stats

Stability 17 -> 13

Body 6 -> 10

Perry put on a burst of speed, leaping straight through the tangle of magical constructs like he’d been shot out of a cannon.

The old duelist’s eyes widened a moment before Perry ran into an invisible wall between the two of them face-first, hard enough to break normal bones.

HP: 6

I definitely need some kind of software upgrade for the System so that HP doesn’t absorb superfluous damage that Body could otherwise soak up.

“Come now, young man, this is your debut as a mage, you’re not going to just dance around, are you?” Andre asked as Perry slipped out of the way of the pythons following him.

Did Grandma stage this to show off my ‘talents’?

“I have a confession,” Perry said, scrambling around Andre as the Pythons gradually shut off all his escape routes.

“Oh?”

“I only have the Light spell. I don’t get more until next month.” Perry said, dodging another attack with supernatural speed.

“Seems like you’re using magic right now,” Andre said, nodding at him as Perry ran circles around the man’s attacks.

“It’s a whole thing. I’m not gonna get into it,” Perry said. “I’m actually wondering how much it would cost for you to throw the match?”

“Hmm…you asking me that is equivalent to asking the price of my daughter’s honor, isn’t it?”

“Well, you’re obviously going easy on me for some reason,” Perry said. “I mean, easily dodged python constructs? Really? Why not just set up a Michela’s Hindrance and overlap it with a Brethor’s Dominion? You know as well as I do there would be nothing I could do to counter that.”

“I never get the chance to use the bone-snakes against other mages. It’s all about reality warping and wrestling over each other’s Fate. It’s mostly just staring at each other until someone passes out. Boring to do and boring to watch.”

“So glad I could entertain you,” Perry muttered, rolling his eyes as he whipped himself aside, climbing through dense forests of spikey bone.

“Come on then, young man, unleash your spell, so we can bring this to a close.”

“I don’t know If I’m feeling it,” Perry said before a thought occurred to him. “Hey, you come from an old, rich family, right?”

“The richest and oldest, apart from yours,” Andre said.

Perry crooked his finger, then led the fight over to a particularly dense piece of real-estate on the dance floor where the solidified pythons were so thick that none of the spectators could see.

“Does your family happen to own a spirit forge?” Perry asked, leaning against one of the bone pythons and holding up his hands to indicate a pause.

Andre shrugged and sat down on one of his own pythons, pulling out a hand-wrapped cigarette and lighting it with a snap of his fingers.

“We do, but Spirit smiths are exceedingly rare. The last one we had died fighting to keep the portal open, four decades ago.”

“Can I buy it?” Perry asked.

“Found yourself a Spirit Smith? Or just playing around with things you don’t understand with delusions of grandeur?” Andre asked, eyes narrowing as he inspected Perry.

“Who knows?” Perry said with a shrug.

“It’s that raven-haired girl isn’t it?”

“Makes you say that?” Perry asked.

“She’s got smudges of you and that redhead all over her soul, and they seem to be encapsulating nicely rather than being absorbed. Makes her a good candidate.”

“Smudges?”

“Think of it as a soul-hickey.”

“Oh,” Perry scratched his head in embarrassment. “Can everybody here see that?”

“Only about half a dozen people.” Andre shrugged, taking a deep hit of his cigarette. “And believe me, we see weirder shit on a daily basis, so we don’t care.”

“That’s cool. So how about we up the stakes of the duel? I’m unenthusiastic about your daughter’s honor, one way or the other.”

“I couldn’t tell.” Andre said with a sarcastic chuckle.

“How about this: I win, I get the Spirit Forge.” Perry said.

Andre cocked a brow. “You realize those things are priceless, right?”

“How much do you want if I lose?” Perry asked, ready for some hundreds of millions. At his current level, he could pay it off in less than a year, so the stakes weren’t intolerable.

“Something of equal value, eh?” the salt-and-pepper haired duelist asked, glancing up at Perry slyly. “If I win, the Demetre family will become the patrons of the raven-haired girl and teach her how to harness her natural talent.”

You dick! The intention here was to separate Nat from Perry for extended periods of time and realign her loyalties.

Perry squinted. “I would much prefer astronomical amounts of money being on the line,” he said, his heart beginning to jackhammer in his ears.

Andre chuckled, puffing on his cigarette. “I know.”

Perry thought about it. Either way, Nat gets to work with a Spirit Forge, and there’s plenty I can do to mitigate the Demetre’s influence.

“Alright, deal. I of course, can’t speak for Natalie, but I won’t stop you from making the offer.”

Andre reached out and took Perry’s hand.

Perry yanked him forward and sucker-punched him in the face.

The strike bounced off a shield, and Andre reached forward with a clawed hand.

Perry felt something seize inside him for a moment, making it difficult to breathe for an instant while the party outside their little arena of woven bone-snakes ceased to exist.

The sensation vanished almost as quickly as it had come and Perry delivered a front kick to the aging duelist’s thigh, intending to hamper his mobility, still holding onto the old man’s hand with a vice-grip.

“What did your family do to you?” Andre demanded. “Your Fate is like a tree made of burnished steel…and yet, it lives and grows. Are you even human?”

“Trade secret.” Perry said, delivering another low kick to the same spot, only a small percentage of his force getting through the old man’s defenses.

“Well, now I’m excited. This is the first time I’ve had to win with the flashy physical spells since I was a boy.” Andre said, holding out his free hand and unleashing a beam of solid fire.

HP:4

The bolt of energy bounced off Perry’s chest and scattered up towards the ceiling, carving a massive rent out of the bone cage they’d been fighting in.

“Speaking of flashy,” Perry said, punching towards Andre’s face and unleashing the Light spell.

Attunement 25 -> 33

Perry used every slot he had in the spell, concentrating its surface area and duration as much as he could.

Light

(0/5)

POW!

There was a physical sound, like a breaker being flipped, and a blinding white light shot out from the dense cage of bone pythons, forcing spectators to avert their eyes.

“God’s bones!” Andre shouted, backing away and covering his eyes.

As Perry had suspected, the old man’s shield didn’t stop light.

Perry pulled a can of chlorine trifluoride out of the ether and pocketed it while the old man was blind, delivering another kick to his opponent’s thigh.

If he could get light past the shield, maybe he could get heat past it, too.

Perry finally let go of the old man’s hand and shoved him backwards with a front kick.

The two separated and Andre immediately fell to one knee, his leg giving out. The old man stared at his own leg like he’d been betrayed.

Perry lunged forward and attempted to end the fight with a vicious knee to his opponent’s face.

The old man vanished as Perry’s knee went through an illusion.

A fist came out of nowhere and caught Perry in the side of the head, sending him tumbling painfully into the briar of twisted bone.

HP: 3

“I’ve been doing this for a long time, kid.” Andre said, gliding through the air, his swollen leg hovering above the ground.

Perry clicked his tongue and scrambled to his feet, prying off a shard of bone from the cage around them to use as a makeshift weapon.

“I gotta say, I haven’t had this much fun in a duel since I was your age.” Andre said with a grin.

“Just feels like work to me,” Perry muttered, running his fingernail along the edge of the shard, causing it to lengthen and narrow into something akin to a dagger.

“Come on, young man, where’s your sense of adventure? Your need to prove yourself?”

“Meh,” Perry shrugged and held the makeshift dagger in front of himself in a defensive stance. Coincidentally, the stance put the can of chlorine trifluoride in his pocket right next to his off-hand, his half-turned body hiding it from Andre. “I already know I’m awesome.”

“Such confidence,” Andre said, a sword made of condensed flames appearing in his hand as he took a similar stance…albeit, not actually touching the ground.

Andre flashed toward Perry. Perry tried to lunge forward as well to put himself in the best range to use his shorter blade, but the old man reversed directions in an instant, keeping Perry at a range where he couldn’t hope to land a hit while the old man was able to lay into him.

A couple seconds of breathlessly warding off the flaming blade told Perry everything he needed to know about his opponent.

Perry was stronger and faster, but every move the old man made was carefully calculated to put Perry at a disadvantage.

One strike would create an opening for the next, and the next, forcing Perry to grit his teeth and move far faster than his opponent just to get his blade back in position. Otherwise he would eventually get stabbed.

The guy was controlling his every move.

Other attacks would force Perry to trip over a piece of the dueling area, while still more would make him bonk his head against bones protruding from the ceiling.

Finally Perry stumbled over a python construct on a bad step and went down.

As if he’d been saving all his speed for that one move, Andre whipped his blade out and knocked the sharpened bone out of Perry’s hand in the middle of his fall.

The old man stepped forward and put his blade of raw energy under Perry’s chin.

“I believe this means I am the victor?” Andre asked.

Perry glanced down at the glowing blade, then back up at the aged duelist.

“You ever watch Rob Roy?” Perry asked.

“Wha-“

Perry seized the blade with his right hand, overwhelming the older man’s grip with his supernatural strength.

HP: 2

HP: 1

While Perry’s HP was tanking, he pulled out the bottle of insanely dangerous chemical – before being modified by Perry’s perk – and smashed it against the edge of the energy blade.

***Natalie***

“Is that place supposed to be smoking?” mom asked, causing Nat to crane her neck to look.

Indeed, a huge plume of smoke was rising above the palace.

Nat’s heart leapt into her throat at the thought that something terrible might’ve happened while she was away,

Nat broke into a sprint, hustling past the bouncer and elbowing her way past the people streaming in and out of the palace, until she arrived at the dance floor.

Perry was sitting at a well-appointed table across from an older gentleman, his eyebrows and most of his hair burned away. His tuxedo didn’t have a scratch on it, though. The older gentleman’s clothes were partially burned away, and half of his face was hairless, shiny and bright pink, like it had just healed from a burn.

The two of them were chuckling and chatting as they split a roast chicken.

The dance floor had been annihilated, with only a few carbonized protrusions of something that looked like burned bone jutting out of the floor.

The floor itself was magically healing, slowly returning to a non-carbonized form as the thick smoke hovering near the ceiling seemed to guide itself out into the night air.

In a matter of minutes, there would be no signs anything had happened at all.

“Perry, are you okay!?”

“Hey, Natalie.” Perry said, motioning for her to come sit down. “This is Andre Demetre. Andre Demetre, Natalie Smith. Natalie is a close friend of mine, and Andre is one of my family’s strongest political rivals.”

“Good to meet you,” Andre said, shaking her hand with his own burn-covered one.

“I tried to get you a spirit forge, but Gramma called it a draw, so we’re deciding how to split the difference. How do you feel about having an exclusive pass to use Mr. Demetre’s spirit forge on the weekends?”

“That sounds…nice? Where’s Heather?”

“She’s exchanging fashion tips with some of the other ladies,” Perry said, pointing off into the distance with a chicken leg, where Heather’s bright hair popped out above a gaggle of fancifully dressed ladies. “You wanna join us? They’re serving dinner. Real meat.”

Natalie scanned the hall and spotted servants hauling tables and chairs out onto the floor, covering them with a tantalizing spread in a matter of seconds.

Nat briefly considered her mother standing outside in the cold night air, then shrugged.

“Sure. I worked up an appetite,” she said, using Perry’s lap as an improvised high-chair and stealing his chicken.