Chapter : 853
Gias, the hero, the champion, the living legend, could only stare, his handsome face now a pale, ashen mask of pure, abject terror. The greatsword, which had felt so powerful and so true in his hands just moments before, now felt like a child’s wooden toy.
The Jahl took a single, slow, deliberate step forward. The ground beneath its obsidian foot cracked, a network of fissures spreading out across the arena floor.
The true face of the Demon had been revealed. And the entire kingdom, in a single, unified moment of silent, screaming horror, finally understood the true, beautiful, and utterly hopeless meaning of the Jahl Challenge. It was not a contest. It was a sacrifice. And the god of the arena had finally grown bored of the offerings.
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The silence in the arena was a living, breathing entity, a monstrous thing woven from the collective terror of seventy thousand souls. The festive, cheerful atmosphere of the day was a distant, mocking memory. The sun itself seemed to have grown colder, its brilliant, golden light a pale, sickly yellow against the new, oppressive darkness that radiated from the Demon’s transformed state.
Gias was frozen, a magnificent, golden statue of a hero, his mind completely, utterly, and catastrophically unable to process the new reality. He had come here prepared to fight a dragon. He had not come prepared to fight a mountain that had decided to get up and walk. The gulf in their power was no longer a measurable distance; it was a conceptual, philosophical, and absolute chasm. He was a candle, and he was facing a supernova.
The Jahl, in its new, terrifyingly potent form, seemed to savor the moment. It did not attack. It simply stood there, a thirty-foot-tall monument of obsidian and blood-red fire, and it watched him. Its formless, fiery face seemed to be locked in an expression of profound, intellectual curiosity, the look of a scientist observing a particularly interesting insect just before he pulls its wings off.
<Such a bright, little flame,> the Demon’s voice whispered again in their minds, the sound now laced with a dry, academic amusement. <Your life force. It burns with such… conviction. Such beautiful, pointless hope. I wonder what sound it will make when I snuff it out.>
The psychological torment was a far more effective weapon than any physical attack. It was a slow, deliberate, and exquisitely cruel dismantling of a hero’s soul. The Demon was not just going to kill him; it was going to make him understand the absolute, cosmic futility of his own existence first.
Gias’s heroic resolve, which had been forged in a hundred battles and celebrated in a thousand songs, finally, irrevocably, shattered. A low, keening whimper, a sound of pure, animal terror, escaped his lips. His hands, which had held his greatsword with such unwavering strength, began to tremble. The golden, solar aura around him, the very manifestation of his courage and his power, flickered violently and then died completely, leaving him in his simple, mundane steel armor, a small, insignificant man facing a god of death.
He did the only thing a sane man could do. He turned and ran.
It was not a strategic retreat. It was a panicked, scrambling, and utterly undignified flight. He threw his greatsword aside, the magnificent blade clattering uselessly on the sand, and he ran for his life, his handsome face now a contorted mask of pure, slobbering terror.
The crowd did not jeer. They did not mock his cowardice. They understood. They were all him in that moment, their own hearts screaming for him to run faster, to escape the impossible, walking nightmare.
The Jahl watched him run, its fiery head tilted in a gesture of almost comical amusement. It let him get halfway across the arena, a desperate, scrambling figure whose only thought was survival. It let the hope of escape, the frantic, beautiful lie of a possible future, take root in his heart.
And then, with a movement so fast it was almost a casual afterthought, it moved. It did not flow like fire anymore. It simply… appeared. One moment it was at the center of the arena, and the next, its massive, obsidian form was standing directly in Gias’s path, a silent, unmovable wall of death.
Gias screamed, a high, thin, and utterly broken sound. He tried to stop, to turn, but his momentum carried him forward. He crashed, pathetically, into the Demon’s leg, the impact barely registering on the colossal creature.
<The dance is not over yet, little mortal,> the Demon’s voice whispered, the sound now dripping with a bored, condescending disappointment. <I have not yet given you leave to go.>
Chapter : 854
It raised its arm, a great, slow, and ponderous movement. The hand, which had been a claw of molten rock, was now a fist of solid, gleaming obsidian, the size of a small boulder. It descended, not with speed, but with the slow, inexorable, and crushing weight of destiny itself.
Gias, on his knees, could only look up, his face a mess of tears and terror, and watch his own death coming for him.
The Demon did not strike to kill. That would have been a mercy. It swatted him. The blow was a casual, almost lazy backhand, the kind of gesture one might use to brush away a persistent fly.
The impact was a sickening, wet crunch that echoed through the silent, horrified arena. Gias’s magnificent, polished steel armor crumpled like paper. He was not just thrown; he was launched, a broken, rag-doll projectile, tumbling end over end through the air. He flew a hundred feet, his body limp and boneless, before crashing into the far wall of the arena with a final, brutal thud. He slid down the stone wall, leaving a long, wet, crimson smear in his wake, and collapsed in a silent, unmoving heap on the sand.
The hero was broken. The champion was defeated. The beautiful, glorious hope of the kingdom had been snuffed out with a single, contemptuous, and utterly humiliating blow.
The Jahl stood over its handiwork for a long moment, as if admiring its own casual, brutal artistry. It then turned its formless, fiery gaze from the broken form of the warrior and swept it across the seventy thousand silent, terrified spectators. It was a look of pure, unadulterated dominance, a silent declaration that this was its kingdom, its playground, and they were all just toys.
Finally, its gaze settled on the Royal Box, on the small, still, and veiled figure of the Princess Amina.
<Are there any more dancers? > the Demon’s voice whispered, a final, mocking challenge to the entire world. <This one… has broken so easily. I am… bored.>
And then, with a slow, ponderous, and utterly triumphant grace, it turned and flowed back towards its dark, cavernous gate, leaving behind a broken champion, a shattered hope, and a silence that was filled with the terrible, undeniable, and absolute truth of its own monstrous, unbeatable power.
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The silence that followed the Jahl’s departure was a new and terrible kind of quiet. It was not the stunned, awestruck silence that had followed Gias’s initial, heroic stand. It was a dead, hollow, and profoundly empty silence, the quiet of a graveyard, the quiet of a world that has just been given a stark, brutal, and undeniable lesson in the true meaning of power. Hope, which had soared so high on Gias’s golden wings, had been swatted from the sky and lay broken on the sand.
For a long, agonizing minute, no one moved. The seventy thousand spectators in the stands were a frozen sea of pale, horrified faces. They had witnessed a god toy with a hero, and the spectacle had left them feeling small, fragile, and deeply, fundamentally insignificant. The Royal Guards, men trained for every conceivable form of chaos and violence, stood like statues, their own courage and discipline a pathetic, useless thing in the face of the cosmic, elemental power they had just witnessed.
In the Royal Box, the veiled Princess Amina remained perfectly still. She had not gasped. She had not flinched. She had observed the entire, brutal, and humiliating defeat of the kingdom’s great champion with the cold, dispassionate focus of a scholar watching a predictable, if messy, chemical reaction. Her hands rested calmly in her lap. She had not batted an eye. To her, this was not a tragedy; it was a data point. A very clear, very useful, and very interesting data point.
She watched as a team of Royal Medics, their faces grim and set, finally rushed into the arena. They moved with a practiced, somber efficiency, men who were accustomed to cleaning up after the Demon’s bloody work.
They reached the place where Gias lay, a crumpled heap at the base of the arena wall. The shining, golden hero was gone. In his place was a mess of twisted, shattered steel and blood-soaked sand. His magnificent, sun-bleached hair was matted with grime and his own crimson blood. His handsome face was a swollen, unrecognizable ruin.
But as the medics approached, a low groan of pure, unadulterated agony escaped his lips. He moved. His one, unbroken arm pushed against the sand, and with a feat of will that was almost as impressive as his earlier, heroic stand, he managed to push himself into a sitting position. He was alive. He was broken, battered, and comprehensively humiliated. But he was alive.