Chapter : 855
The medics, seeing that he was conscious, moved to support him. Two of them carefully helped him to his feet, their movements a study in profound, sorrowful respect. This was not just a defeated challenger; this was their fallen champion, a man who had embodied the very best of their warrior ideals, and who had been so utterly, contemptuously broken.
With the medics’ help, Gias staggered from the arena. He did not look at the crowd. He did not look at the Royal Box. His gaze was fixed on the dark, empty maw of the tunnel from which the Demon had departed, his eyes filled with a mixture of pure, undiluted terror and a profound, soul-deep respect for the power that had so completely and so effortlessly undone him.
As he was led away down the challenger's tunnel toward the infirmary, a low, mournful murmur rippled through the crowd. It was not a cheer. It was not a jeer. It was a sound of collective, profound, and deeply personal grief. They had all believed in him. They had all invested a small piece of their own hope in his shining, golden armor. And they had all just watched that hope be systematically, brutally, and utterly extinguished.
The festive, celebratory atmosphere of the day was gone, replaced by a grim, somber mood. The food vendors’ fires seemed to burn a little lower. The merchants’ cheerful hawking died in their throats. The crowd began to slowly, quietly, make its way towards the exits, not with the boisterous energy of a satisfied audience, but with the quiet, shuffling gait of mourners leaving a funeral.
The Jahl Challenge was, for all intents and purposes, over for the day. The Demon had made its statement. And the message was clear, brutal, and undeniable: Hope was a fool’s game. Courage was a prelude to a painful, and very public, humiliation. And the monster in the heart of their kingdom was not a prisoner; it was a king, and it was merely tolerating their existence.
Back in the subterranean waiting cells, the remaining four challengers had watched the entire, horrific spectacle through a small, iron-barred window that looked out onto the arena. They had seen Gias’s glorious, hopeful dance. And they had seen his swift, brutal, and humiliating defeat.
The hulking northern barbarian, the man whose face had been a mask of arrogant, confident bloodlust, was now as pale as a sheet, a fine sheen of cold sweat on his brow. The two desert assassins, who had been so cool and so professional, were now whispering to each other in their own harsh, guttural language, their eyes wide with a new, healthy respect for a foe that was clearly beyond their ability to kill.
And in the darkest corner of the cell, a silent, motionless figure in simple black armor had watched the entire fight, his posture never changing, his silence absolute. He had seen the true, terrifying, and magnificent power of his opponent.
And he was not afraid.
He was a surgeon who had just been given a perfect, detailed, and live-action demonstration of the disease he was about to operate on. He had seen the Demon’s tactics, its power-scaling, its psychological warfare. He had seen its strengths. And more importantly, he had seen its weaknesses. He saw the arrogance, the theatrical cruelty, the profound, almost childish need to dominate and to toy with its prey. It was a creature of immense power, yes. But it was also a creature of immense, and deeply exploitable, pride.
The other challengers saw an unbeatable god.
Lloyd saw a flawed, predictable, and beautifully vulnerable machine.
The defeat of Gias was not a warning to him. It was a confirmation. A confirmation that his own, carefully scripted, theatrical plan of battle was not just a good idea; it was the *only* idea that could possibly work. To meet this creature’s power with power was suicide. But to meet its pride with a perfectly crafted piece of psychological theater… that was a path to victory.
A herald’s voice, now stripped of its earlier, festive energy, echoed down the tunnel. “The Jahl Challenge is concluded for the day. The remaining challengers will present themselves at dawn tomorrow.”
The three other warriors let out a collective, shuddering sigh of relief. They had been granted a reprieve, a single night to contemplate the fiery death that they had just been shown was their almost certain fate.
Chapter : 856
Lloyd, however, felt a flicker of annoyance. His own perfect, meticulous timetable had been disrupted. He had been ready. He had been prepared. And now, he had to wait. But the Major General was a master of patience. He gave a quiet, internal sigh of resignation. Very well. One more night. One more night to refine his plan, to steel his resolve.
***
The sun began its slow, merciful descent, painting the sky in hues of bruised purple and blood orange. The oppressive heat of the day finally began to break, but the chill that had settled over the city of Zakaria had nothing to do with the temperature. It was a cold, deep, and existential dread, the mood of a people who had been given a stark and brutal reminder of their own fragility.
The taverns that night were not the usual, raucous dens of drunken celebration that typically followed the first day of the Challenge. They were quiet, somber places, filled with men drinking in a grim, introspective silence. The talk was not of heroes and glory, but of the terrifying, absolute power of the monster that lived in their midst. The defeat of Gias had not just been a loss; it had been a psychological blow to the entire kingdom, a public and humiliating castration of their collective martial pride.
In the challenger’s infirmary, a small, grim, and heavily guarded ward tucked away in the catacombs beneath the arena, the subject of that collective trauma was being tended to. Gias, the golden champion, was a ruin. His body was a shattered landscape of splintered bones, torn muscles, and deep, horrific burns. The finest Royal Medics worked on him in shifts, their faces grim and weary, as they set his bones, stitched his wounds, and poured a fortune’s worth of healing potions into him.
They had saved his life. But they could not heal his pride.
His handsome face, now a swollen, discolored mask of pain, was turned towards the stone ceiling. His eyes, which had once shone with such brilliant, infectious confidence, were now dull, empty, and haunted. He had not spoken a single word since being led from the arena, but he was conscious. He was awake. And he was replaying every single, agonizing moment of his own, public, and very brutal humiliation.
The physical wounds would heal. But the other wound, the one that had been inflicted on his warrior’s soul, was a different matter entirely. The Jahl had not just defeated him; it had unmade him. It had shown him the vast, cosmic, and utterly indifferent gulf between his own, considerable power and the true, absolute power of a being that was close to a god. It had taken his courage, his pride, his very identity as a warrior, and it had crushed them into a fine, gray dust. The man who had entered the arena as Gias the Valorous was gone. In his place was just a broken man, waiting for the dawn.
In the Royal Box, long after the crowds had departed and the arena had fallen into a deep, echoing silence, the Princess Amina remained. She stood at the railing, a slender, solitary figure in the twilight, her veil a small, dark flag of sorrow against the pale stone. She stared down at the empty, blood-stained sand, her mind replaying the day’s horrific events with a cold, analytical clarity.
She was not a woman given to sentiment. She had seen death before. She understood the brutal calculus of power. But the defeat of Gias had been different. It had not been a simple, honorable death in combat. It had been a lesson. A cruel, theatrical, and exquisitely delivered lesson from the Demon. And she, a student of logic and reason, was trying to understand its meaning.
She had seen the Jahl’s initial, almost lazy, display of power. And she had seen the sudden, terrifying escalation, the transformation from a simple, powerful beast into a being of intelligent, strategic, and utterly malevolent might. The shift had been too sudden, too deliberate. It was a performance.
And that was the thought that chilled her to the bone. The Demon was not just a mindless engine of rage. It was an intelligence. A vast, ancient, and deeply bored intelligence. And it was playing a game. A game whose rules only it understood.
Her gaze drifted to the now-empty challenger’s gate. She thought of the men who had been defeated, and of the few who remained. And she thought of the strange, silent, and unassuming healer, the man named Zayn. The man her spies had confirmed had registered for the challenge, though he had not yet made his public appearance. A man whose entire existence was a profound, and deeply interesting, contradiction.