The final arena was minimalist and brutal: a circular steel platform, thirty feet in diameter, elevated ten feet above the concrete floor of the warehouse. There were no walls, no shields, and no room for escape. The rule was simple: Last one standing wins the Life Pod.
Five contenders remained.
Gabriel stood centered on the platform, his electric blue eyes performing a real-time risk assessment on the remaining players. Every one of them had demonstrated the intelligence to break the Mind Test and the spatial awareness to ace the Maze Runner. They were the absolute North American elite.
Their body language, however, still hinted at their physical specialization:
"The Wall": A massive wrestler, easily three hundred pounds, focused entirely on a low center of gravity. Archetype: STR/CON Tank.
"Viper": A female fighter with hyper-fluid movements, constantly shifting her weight. Archetype: DEX/AGI Speedster.
"Iron Fist": A traditionalist, standing rigidly, waiting for the initiative. Archetype: Balanced STR/DEX.
"Phantom": Lean, moving only in short, explosive bursts, with his weight constantly off-center. Archetype: Evasion/Unpredictability.
Gabriel Knightwing: The analyst. Archetype: INT/WIS Executor.
The announcer's voice was electric: "Two rounds of mental and spatial testing have brought us to the final showdown! Who will claim the first North American Access Token to Eternium? Ready... BEGIN!"
The fight erupted instantly. The Wall charged the nearest target, which was Viper. However, Viper and Phantom immediately executed a coordinated attack, recognizing Gabriel as the systemic threat. Phantom moved in a wide arc, creating a diversion, while Viper, blistering fast, targeted Gabriel's exposed side. Iron Fist, seeing the opening, moved to intercept Phantom, creating a chaotic four-way skirmish near the center.
Gabriel was forced into a triple engagement.
Threat Matrix Update: Three active threats. Primary vector: Viper (Immediate Strike). Secondary vector: Phantom (Ambush setup). Tertiary vector: Iron Fist (Engaging Phantom, but in position to pivot).
Gabriel met the assault head-on. Viper initiated with a deceptive jab sequence, and Iron Fist, realizing Phantom was too evasive, suddenly pivoted his charge toward Gabriel's other flank.
System Compromised. Engaging both flanks simultaneously is inefficient. Must eliminate the most predictable vector.
Gabriel executed a perfect Jeet Kune Do parry to deflect Viper's first blow, but instead of focusing on her, he drove his body past her, using her momentum as a screen. He closed the gap on Iron Fist, who was still setting his stance for a powerful blow. Gabriel drove a heel of his palm directly under Iron Fist's chin in a concussive upward blow, sacrificing the use of his guard against Viper to eliminate the slower, but more dangerous, balanced threat.
Iron Fist stumbled back, spitting blood, his guard instantly broken. Gabriel didn't follow with a flashy kick. He simply delivered a decisive side-kick to Iron Fist's exposed knee, shattering the foundational stance that was his core strength. Iron Fist buckled, pain flashing in his eyes, and collapsed sideways off the platform.
[Elimination: Iron Fist.]
The exchange took four agonizing seconds. Gabriel's side ached from the hit he absorbed from Viper, a testament to his calculated risk.
Now it was the Double Threat: Viper and Phantom, the two speedsters, surrounded him.
Phantom was a ghost, constantly dancing at the edge of Gabriel's peripheral vision, while Viper launched probing, high-speed strikes.
The greatest threat is the unknown variable. Phantom's evasion is his only strength. Eliminate evasion.
Gabriel didn't try to track Phantom. He focused entirely on Viper, anticipating her commitment to an angle. Viper launched a blurring combination of five strikes targeting his head and body. Gabriel let the first two low kicks land, absorbing the blows with tensed muscle (CON Check), and used the resulting momentum change to duck under the high punch that followed.
He was inside her guard, a hair's breadth away. He had the advantage, but Phantom chose that moment to strike from Gabriel's rear-left, aiming a precise back-fist at the exposed temple.
Gabriel's WIS kicked in. He had predicted Phantom would strike when he saw a committed target. Gabriel used his momentum from ducking Viper to twist hard, catching Phantom's wrist and instantly converting the force of Phantom's own attack into a massive rotational throw. Phantom, specialized in evasion, had no structural strength for grappling and was flung out into empty air.
[Elimination: Phantom.]
Viper was momentarily shocked by the brutal redirection of her partner. Gabriel exploited the millisecond of hesitation, using a simple vertical hip thrust to knock Viper off-balance, followed by a short, explosive vertical elbow strike straight into her exposed floating ribs. Viper gasped, folding over in mid-air, and slid off the platform, temporarily unable to breathe.
[Elimination: Viper.]
Gabriel was now visibly breathing hard, nursing his aching ribs and a throbbing head from the concentration required to manage the three simultaneous threats. He was bleeding from a minor cut Phantom had landed. He faced the final opponent: The Wall.
The Tank lumbered toward the center, seeing his chance against the exhausted analyst. He stopped, planting his feet wide.
"You're fast, man," The Wall grunted, flexing his shoulders. "But you're still light. You just ran out of gas."
This was the final problem: pure, unthinking force against calculated physics. The Wall relied on STR and CON Gabriel simply did not possess in his base form. An engagement would be a war of attrition Gabriel couldn't win.
The Wall roared and closed in, his sheer mass making his slow, powerful strikes difficult to evade entirely. Gabriel met the assault, no longer attempting to dodge, but focusing entirely on disruption. He didn't punch; he pecked, driving short, stiff pokes and hammer-fists into The Wall's eyes, throat, and temple—the central nervous system control points.
The Tank, ignoring the localized, surface pain, managed to track Gabriel. In a flash of brute, uncontrolled power, The Wall caught Gabriel's wrist on a block, hauled him in, and slammed his massive shoulder into Gabriel's chest.
The impact was bone-jarring. Gabriel felt the crushing force, the sudden, crippling throb in his liver—the exact spot David had tagged him, now compounded by Viper's earlier kicks.
Error. System Compromised. Physical limits reached.
A red haze briefly threatened to consume his vision. He wasn't just fighting an opponent; he was fighting physical failure. He had traded too many calculated hits.
The Wall saw the flicker of weakness in Gabriel's electric blue eyes. "Got you! This is real, Analyst!" He pulled Gabriel tighter, setting up for a devastating knee strike.
But the pain, the failure, and the searing, intolerable thought of losing—failing the final efficiency test—triggered the only response that mattered: survival chemistry.
A cold, physiological dump of adrenaline hit his system. The crushing pain in his liver momentarily dulled, replaced by an electric surge that felt like liquid metal flooding his veins. His auditory senses flattened, but his visual field narrowed to extreme focus. His processing didn't speed up; his goal acquisition simply became single-minded: terminate the threat now.
He didn't need a system boost. He needed efficiency.
Leveraging the very principle of the Tank's attack, Gabriel used his opponent's powerful grip as an anchor. His analysis—driven by pure, primal focus—was complete. He delivered a focused stomp to The Wall's instep, forcing the reflexive spasm.
As The Wall momentarily loosened his grip, Gabriel exploded upward and forward. He used the most structurally efficient weapon available: the headbutt.
He drove his hard forehead, powered by his entire 225-pound coiled body and the sudden clarity of the adrenaline surge, straight into the soft bridge of The Wall's nose.
The sound was a sickening, wet crack. The Tank's body went instantly limp, the sensory overload shutting down his system. Gabriel shoved the dead weight away, and The Wall toppled over the edge of the platform like a felled redwood.
[Elimination: The Wall.]
Gabriel stood alone, swaying slightly. His entire body throbbed, the adrenaline beginning to crash, leaving him hollowed out but standing.
[ROUND THREE COMPLETE. VICTOR: GABRIEL KNIGHTWING.]
[NORTH AMERICAN ACCESS TOKEN ACQUIRED.]
A woman in a Centurian Entertainment uniform—the same one who had processed him after the Mind Test—hurried onto the platform, stopping a respectful distance away. She was holding a headset and a clipboard.
"Mr. Knightwing," she said, her voice professional and crisp. "Congratulations. The Access Token is verified. We need you to come with me immediately for the system synchronization phase."
Gabriel slowly rose, his movements stiff and deliberate, ignoring the residual pain. He had proven his efficiency was superior, even when his body failed him. He had earned his right to the game, and he had learned a critical lesson: Failure initiates opportunity. He simply nodded, his electric blue eyes fixed on the new, unknown element in his threat matrix: the Centurian employee and the promise of the game.
"Lead the way," he said. He was ready to analyze the next, largest threat matrix.