The skull-masked leader straightened, rolling his shoulders as if loosening stiff joints.

For a moment, he simply stared at them — Avin with his dual swords blazing gold and crimson, and the blue-haired God-folk standing beside him, water coiling around his arms like living serpents.

Then he moved.

Not a sprint.

A charge — explosive, predatory, closing the distance between them in a blur.

His hands plunged into the sand as he ran.

The earth responded.

The ground rippled, stone and compacted sand flowing upward like liquid metal. It wrapped around his arms, solidifying, shaping, transforming. When his hands emerged, they gripped two massive longswords — each blade forged from the arena floor itself, edges gleaming like polished obsidian.

He didn't slow.

Didn't hesitate.

The twin blades swept forward in a crossing arc, aimed to cleave both fighters in half.

Avin's grip tightened on his swords.

He poured mana into them — not gently, not carefully, but in a flood.

Golden light erupted from the left blade, runes igniting in rapid succession, each symbol burning brighter than the last. The air around it shimmered with heat.

Crimson lightning exploded from the right blade, arcs of red energy crackling outward, scorching the sand beneath his feet into glass.

His muscles coiled.

His stance dropped.

He didn't retreat.

He stood his ground.

Beside him, the blue-haired God-folk shifted into a fluid stance — one leg forward, knees bent, arms spread wide.

The air changed.

The temperature dropped.

Moisture condensed from nothing, pulling from the atmosphere itself. Droplets materialized in the air like reverse rain, floating upward instead of down. They gathered around the God-folk in swirling clouds, each droplet glowing faintly with internal light.

The water moved.

It surged forward, converging into massive spheres — each one the size of a human torso, spinning, compressing, solidifying. The spheres morphed mid-air, edges sharpening, curves flattening, until they became daggers. Dozens of them. All made of crystallized water, gleaming like sapphire glass.

The God-folk's hands snapped forward.

Two daggers flew into his grip.

The moment his fingers closed around them, chains erupted from their hilts — not metal, but water, flowing and solid simultaneously. The chains wrapped around his forearms, spiraling up to his elbows, binding the weapons to him.

He swung once.

Just once.

The daggers carved through the air, and the chains followed, whipping outward in elegant arcs. The moisture in the atmosphere doubled. The air became thick, heavy, almost drowning. Tiny droplets began to fall like mist, each one catching the violet light of the corrupted sky.

The droplets didn't fall randomly.

They orbited.

Circling the God-folk in slow, deliberate spirals, creating a field of water that hummed with latent power.

Avin glanced sideways at him.

Their eyes met.

"Name?" Avin asked, voice steady despite the approaching death.

The God-folk's lips curved into something between a smile and a grimace.

His blue eyes gleamed with defiance.

"Triton Thalassos."

The name hung in the air like a declaration.

Like a promise.

Avin nodded once.

They both turned to face the skull-masked leader.

Their stances shifted — synchronized without words, without planning. Just instinct. Just necessity.

Avin's swords crossed in front of him, one high, one low, golden and crimson light intertwining.

Triton's water daggers spun in his hands, chains rippling, droplets swirling faster and faster around him until he stood at the center of a miniature storm.

The skull-masked leader was ten meters away.

Then five.

Then three.

His stone swords rose, ready to split them both from skull to sternum.

The skull-masked leader closed the distance in a blink.

His stone swords rose high — both blades angled downward, ready to split them open from skull to sternum in one devastating cleave.

Triton moved like water itself.

His body flowed sideways, feet gliding across the sand as if the ground had turned to ice. The massive blades crashed down where he'd been standing a heartbeat before, throwing up explosions of sand and pulverized stone.

Avin didn't dodge.

He raised both swords in a cross-block — golden and crimson light flaring as the stone blades met them. The impact was cataclysmic. The sound alone cracked the air like thunder. Shockwaves rippled outward, flattening sand into concentric circles.

Avin's boots sank into the earth.

His knees buckled.

The ground beneath him spiderwebbed with fractures as the downward pressure intensified. His arms trembled. Sweat poured down his face. The stone swords pressed closer, inches from his head, the weight threatening to crush him entirely.

Triton attacked.

He came from the side, both water daggers raised, chains whipping behind him like striking serpents. His blades aimed for the skull man's exposed ribs — a killing blow.

The skull man's head snapped toward him.

Faster than thought.

He pivoted — using Avin's swords as leverage — and yanked his blades free. The sudden release sent Avin sprawling backward into the sand. The skull man's stone sword came up in a brutal horizontal slash aimed at Triton's throat.

Triton threw himself backward, the blade missing by inches. Wind from its passage scattered droplets from his water field, sending them flying like shrapnel.

The pressure on Avin vanished.

He rolled to his feet, both swords blazing brighter. His eyes locked onto the skull man's back.

He swung.

Not at the body — at the air.

Golden light erupted from his left blade in a massive arc. Crimson lightning followed from the right in a perpendicular strike. The two energies crossed mid-flight, forming a colossal X of raw power that screamed through the air toward the skull man.

The skull man's head tilted slightly.

He jumped.

Not up.

Sideways.

His body twisted horizontally in mid-air, spinning parallel to the ground like a corkscrew. The X-shaped energy strike passed directly beneath him, the golden and crimson lights illuminating his rotating form before crashing into the centipede's chitinous body behind him.

The explosion was blinding.

Chitin cracked. The monster shrieked — a sound that rattled teeth and sent tremors through the ground.

The skull man landed in a crouch.

Smooth.

Controlled.

Like he'd simply stepped off a stair.

Triton was already moving.

His right leg drove into the ground, sinking ankle-deep into the sand. His entire body coiled, every muscle tightening like a spring. The water orbiting him surged inward, condensing into a single point at the tip of his dagger.

He swung.

Fast.

Viciously fast.

The water chain extended, stretching impossibly long, the dagger at its end spinning like a drill. But the water didn't stay liquid. It compressed, solidified, became a whip of pure pressurized force. The air around it turned white — moisture condensing so rapidly it formed a visible trail, a streak of pale mist cutting through the violet atmosphere.

The whip screamed toward the skull man's chest.

He slammed his hand into the ground.

Stone exploded upward.

A pillar — thick as a tree trunk, rough and jagged — erupted between him and the incoming strike. The water whip collided with it at full force.

The sound was like an avalanche.

The pillar shattered.

Chunks of stone exploded outward in a deadly spray, each piece spinning with enough force to kill. The water whip tore through the debris, still coming, but slowed, weakened.

The skull man darted sideways, letting the remnants of the strike whistle past his shoulder.

His attention locked on Triton.

Avin saw his chance.

His crimson eyes flared.

The world split into two layers — the present, and the future overlaid on top of it like a transparent film.

In the future image, he saw himself charging forward. Saw the skull man's head begin to turn. Saw himself get caught, blocked, countered.

So he adjusted.

Instead of charging straight, Avin angled left, then feinted right. His boots dug into the sand, and he launched — not forward, but upward, using a broken pillar as a springboard.

He soared.

The skull man's head began to turn.

Avin saw the transparent silhouette of the movement — saw the exact moment the skull man would lock eyes on him.

He shifted mid-air, twisting his body, angling his trajectory slightly to the side.

When the skull man's head snapped around, Avin wasn't there.

Just empty air.

Confusion flickered across the visible portion of the skull man's face.

Then Avin dropped from above.

Both swords raised high.

Golden light and crimson lightning spiraling together into a single, devastating point.

The blades plunged down toward the skull man's neck.

The skull man's hands flew up — too late to dodge, only to block. His palms met the blades just below their edges.

The golden sword bit deep.

Steel — or bone, or whatever his hands were made of — resisted for a fraction of a second. Then it gave. The blade carved through, severing muscle, cutting past tendon. Blood — black and thick as tar — sprayed outward.

The crimson blade followed a heartbeat later, electricity arcing across the wound, cauterizing even as it cut.

Both of the skull man's hands fell away from his wrists.

They hit the sand with wet thuds.

But the blades didn't stop.

They continued downward, momentum and power driving them toward the exposed neck.

Then Triton arrived from the opposite side.

His water daggers gleamed like captured starlight. The chains wrapped around his arms pulled taut as he swung with every ounce of strength he had. His blades aimed for the other side of the skull man's neck — a perfect mirror to Avin's strike.

The skull man tried to move.

Couldn't.

Trapped between two killing blows.

Both blades met flesh.

Avin's swords carved through from the right. Triton's daggers sliced through from the left. Bone cracked. More black blood sprayed in pressurized jets. The skull man's head tilted backward, the skull mask splitting down the middle.

The neck severed.

Completely.

The head separated from the body, the golden stitches finally breaking, scattering like broken thread.

The head tumbled through the air.

Hit the sand.

Rolled twice.

Stopped.

The body swayed.

Avin and Triton both stepped back, chests heaving, weapons still raised.

The body didn't fall.

Instead, it began to crack.

Not bleeding.

Not collapsing.

Cracking.

Like dried clay left in the sun.

Fissures spread across the torso, down the legs, along the severed stumps of the arms. Gray light leaked from the cracks — not blood, not energy, just... light.

Then the body crumbled.

It broke apart into chunks, then dust, then something finer than dust. Ash. The pieces didn't fall — they lifted, caught by a wind that hadn't been there a second before.

The wind carried the ash upward in a spiral, scattering it across the arena.

Within seconds, nothing remained.

Not the body.

Not the head.

Not even a stain on the sand.

Avin and Triton stared at the empty space where their enemy had stood.

"What—" Triton began.

Then the other cloaked figures started crumbling too.

All six of them.

The Shadow Weaver collapsed mid-gesture, his body dissolving into black smoke. The Blood Thorn woman shattered like glass, her crystallized blood evaporating. The Flesh Render's extra limbs withered and fell away before the whole mass turned to dust.

One by one, they vanished.

The Arsenal cultist.

The screaming woman.

Even Robert — standing on the centipede's back — looked down at his own hands as they began to flake apart.

His expression twisted into something between rage and disbelief.

Then he was gone.

The fighters — Henry, the Prince, the Swordsman, Theo, even the collapsed Heavy Knight and unconscious Princess — all stared in stunned silence as their enemies simply ceased to exist.

The wind carried the ash away.

The violet barrier flickered but remained.

And then a voice filled the arena.

Not shouted.

Not amplified by magic.

Just... there.

Everywhere at once, as if the air itself had learned to speak.

"Nice meeting you all."

The voice was calm. Pleasant. Almost apologetic.

"But we have more important business to attend to."

The ground trembled.

Not like before — not a violent quake.

This was rhythmic. Purposeful. Like a heartbeat.

Thump.

Thump.

Thump.

Cracks appeared in the sand.

Then the earth split open.

Hands emerged first — dozens of them, hundreds, clawing upward from beneath the arena floor. Then heads. Torsos. Entire bodies dragging themselves out of the earth like the damned crawling from graves.

But these weren't the patchwork creatures from before.

These were different.

Larger.

More complete.

Some had armor fused to their flesh. Others had weapons growing directly from their bones. A few had multiple heads, or too many limbs, or bodies stitched together from incompatible parts.

They poured out of the ground like a flood.

From the stands.

From the arena floor.

From beneath the centipede itself.

Hundreds of them.

Maybe thousands.

Avin spun in a slow circle, taking in the nightmare unfolding around them.

His swords still blazed in his hands, but they felt suddenly insignificant.

"What the hell is happening?" he whispered.

Triton's water field collapsed, droplets falling like rain.

He had no answer.

Only the sound of monsters rising.

And rising.

And rising.

To be continued...

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