"You start in the next round then. Goodbye." The guards and their entourage simply left, leaving Dersk in a state of bewilderment. The next round was in less than an Earth hour! Normally, inductees were given at least a full day to adjust!
"Dersk, what did he say? What's happening?" Jack asked, concerned. He hadn't spent much time with his stoic cellmate, but it was a very different side of Dersk he had just seen.
"Jack, you're being sent into the arena. Very very soon. There's a lot you have to know to have a chance to stay alive, so I can't answer your questions. Just shut up and listen."
Dersk had a tone to brooked no question. He was dead serious and Jack realized the situation was dire. He paid attention like his life depended on it, because it did!
"You'll be heading out into the jungle round. Most everyone else will have been through at least 2 or 3 rounds and have faced various things by now. It'll be a massive free-for-all in a highly biological environment you'll know little about.
There are some key strengths your competition will have. Genetic enhancements, cyborg enhancements and psionic powers. Most psions won't have attuned themselves to a human brain yet, so might be able to do okay. It's also somewhat dangerous to learn when danger comes from all sides.
If you come up against a cyborg, you'll be able to guess what a cyborg enhancement does based on the body part that was replaced or modified. This is the cheapest and most common enhancement you'll see. Generally they'll be some form of laser weapons, ion shielding or sensory aid. Infrared and night vision are most common.
Genetic enhancements are the worst. People will have strange and fantastical abilities, powered by dimensional energy. Something absorbed between dimensions, there's too much to explain about it. Just know these things can be ludicrously unfair and impossible to tell if you haven't studied the gladiator roster. You'll probably have JUST been added to the roster, so everyone can guess you won't know them.
There's a few people you absolutely must stay far far away from the second you see them, though you should probably just run from everyone.
Ferul Saxta Hent is a pyrokinetic. He generally destroys a quarter of the arena by the end of the round with his massive fires he can conjure.
Harvin Loquoma controls high concentrations of energy, like plasma blasts. He can deflect them, just walk through shielding, most cyborg enhancements can't do anything to him!
Karr is a psionic with considerable gifts. She might not be able to control you, but she can probably disrupt your ability to move and control other gladiators to attack you.
To have any chance of fighting off the others you'll need to find a supply chest. In it will be weapons of various sorts, supplies and tools. It'll probably lean towards weapons this round since its a short one.
Now, the jungle round is just a survival challenge. It's timed, and when it's finished, you'll return to your cell. You need to just try to stay alive! Don't get complacent though, there's enough incentive for others to hunt you down and kill you still. They'll get points for every gladiator they kill, more if the gladiator has survived in the Arena a lot. They use these points to either upgrade themselves or buy improvements for their race.
This is not a very lethal round, but the odds are really stacked against you! The total duration is 50 hours or so. Shit, what else do I need to tell you?"
From then on, Dersk went into as much as he could about the different plants and wildlife he knew about in the jungle. He was barely past the major plants and a few of the insects before another loud and long buzz sounded through the speakers.
The screen by the door lit up, displaying a picture of Jack and a bunch of messages he couldn't understand. His head was swimming in details that he was trying to remember, so he didn't bother trying to understand the screen text. The door unlocked, and Dersk let him know he needed to stand outside and receive his bracer.
Jack was confused, but as he was standing outside his cell, a drone dropped an oversized digital watch into his hands and flew away to continue its job. He put on the bracer, and suddenly a light appeared from the watch, forming a small floating hologram. Very simply, it was an arrow showing the way he was supposed to go.
Walking through this labyrinth of prison corridors, he arrived at a closed door, where he was told to stay. It was very eerie to him. He was supposed to go into a jungle with hundreds of other gladiators, but there was no one around. Jack was nervous, but he told himself to stay calm. He had to survive this!!
Jack's attention turned to his bracer as it started beeping at him. It sounded like a countdown, but by the time he realized what it was, the door in front of him opened. In front of him was a corridor to a miniaturized warp gate. As he walked towards the warp gate he got a better sense of its size. It was about 4 metres tall and 4 metres wide, and glowed with an luminescent aqua colour. He had been unconscious when they had transported him here, so this was his first time seeing the technology. He was in awe of it. It was one of the most incredible things he had ever seen. The rippling surface of the warp gate was like a pool of water that obeyed its own laws of gravity.
Jack heard another set of beeping, and flashing red lights from his bracer! He figured he'd better move or there would be consequences he didn't want to find out about. He jumped in.
Expecting some sort of surreal experience or at least some sort of strange sensation, he was surprised to realize he was already through the warp gate. Behind him, there was the sound of a seal being put in place as the portal closed promptly after he had made it through.
Jack looked around, and very quickly realized he was definitely not prepared for this. He was on a white sand beach that stretched for miles and miles, and in front of him was a thick and expansive jungle. The thing Dersk had seemingly forgotten to mention was that it was gigantic! Everything towered over him, daunting and insurmountable. He realized this was why Dersk was so focused on telling him about the insects that he'd face instead of actual predators. He would be barely a morsel if the size of this jungle was any indication.
While he was looking around, he saw other gladiators, and realized they were coming toward him from the distance. They were far away, but Jack couldn't let them get close. There were too many unknowns, and they might have cybernetic implants that helped track him. If it was the infrared vision, only the heat of the jungle might help hide him, so he ran in. There was no point to sitting around to die anyway, even if there was danger. "No guts, no glory." Jack mumbled to himself.
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Poga frowned as he saw a new creature in the distance. His cybernetic eye had enhanced his vision, and he had been able to see it in clear detail. A new kind of humanoid. One with hair on the top of its head. Weird and ugly.
It was clearly not a cyborg, and if it was new, it wouldn't have had the chance to get any genetic enhancements. The only question was if it had natural genetic powers, which was nigh impossible. Overall, it was highly likely to be easy points...
Poga ran into the jungle rather than move across the beach. Going blindly toward the humanoid would expose him, and he had to consider that he was being hunted as well. And also... though it might be easy to kill it, many others would think the same. That idea was very appealing to him... He could hunt the hunters, and get even better rewards... After all, the saying went: "There's always a bigger Pokcha!"