Chapter 11—|The Meat Grinder.
Chapter 11 —| The Meat Grinder.
The bloody letters suspended in the center of the arena shone in a sinister manner. The word ’Massacre’ floated in the air like a sign.
In the yellow marble stands, thousands of spectators held their breath for a fraction of a second, before bursting into brutal screams of excitement. For high society, this was just another piece of entertainment.
On the platform, the Academy Director raised his arms to the sky, his smile widening to his ears.
"The rules of the Butcher’s Arena are very simple. There is no time limit. There are no official teams. And above all... the Academy only has 20 available spots this year for the new promotion of Elites. Do the math, my dear candidates.
You are 50, thirty of you must feed the floor of this arena before the city gates open!" the Director said.
As soon as the words were spoken, panic shot through the group. Twenty spots for fifty survivors.
Instantly, the gaze of the surviving nobles changed. Their eyes, once filled with terror before the monsters of the labyrinth, turned with a vicious hatred toward the few commoners who had survived, including Lyra and Kaelen. For these arrogant nobles, the solution was very simple: eliminate the worthless "trash" to secure their places without risking facing the S-rank monsters.
"Group up!" shouted a young high-ranking noble, drawing a rapier adorned with jewels. "Let’s first eliminate the vermin defiling this arena. They have no business being here!"
A dozen nobles immediately formed a block, channeling their mana and pointing their weapons toward Kaelen and Lyra.
Lyra took a step back, gripping her bow, her eyes betraying the depth of her anger.
"They are allying with each other... those cowards. Kaelen, what do we do?" Lyra asked.
Kaelen did not answer right away; he kept his hands deep in his pockets. His gaze was not fixed on the nobles rushing before them, but on the floating throne way up above, where the King might be watching. He could not use his divine magic under penalty of raising suspicions.
It was at that precise moment that a familiar sound resonated again:
"Gling!"
[Secret Quest Triggered: The Harvest of Shadows.]
[Details: The residual mana and vital essence of the eliminated candidates will disperse into the arena. Absorb them using your passive divine flux.]
[Note: Camouflage the absorption at less than 2% so the sovereign detects no anomalies.]
An invisible smirk formed on Kaelen’s face. "Perfect. The King has prepared a banquet for his guests, but I am the one who will feed."
Before the first wave of nobles could reach their position, the ground beneath their feet shook violently. The arena’s mechanism activated. In a rumble of thunder, immense stone pillars rose from the ground, dividing the platform into several moving blocks. At the same time, magical circular saws, burning with a purple flame, shot out from the walls and began to sweep the area at an insane speed.
"Watch out!" Lyra screamed.
Thanks to his ’Evil Eye’, Kaelen saw the trajectories of death draw themselves in red in his vision two seconds before they appeared. Without an ounce of panic, he grabbed Lyra by the shoulder and pulled her a meter to the left.
A fraction of a second later, a magical circular saw clean sliced the arm of the noble with the rapier who was trying to attack them. Blood squirted onto the marble.
"Ahhh! My arm!" the noble screamed.
Kaelen, feigning the panic of a simple lucky commoner, brutally pushed the wounded noble forward to dodge another sword strike coming from a second assaillant. The mutilated noble collapsed, finished off by the arena’s traps or by the surrounding chaos.
As the first noble’s life faded, Kaelen discreetly activated his passive divine flux at 1.5%. A faint black smoke, invisible to the crowd and to the king, escaped from the corpse and sank directly into Kaelen’s shoes.
"Gling!"
[Mana Essence absorbed: +50 points of raw energy.]
[The King’s suspicion gauge remains stable at 5%.]
Meanwhile, at the other end of the arena, total chaos took over. The red-eyed boy burst into a demented laugh.
Surrounded by his black and unstable aura, he didn’t even try to avoid the traps. He threw himself into the middle of the nobles, ripping away lives with his bare hands, transforming his zone into a literal slaughterhouse.
Tsubaki, meanwhile, remained a shadow of efficiency, his silver blade shining every time a trap or an overconfident candidate approached him, leaving perfect bodies behind his path.
Kaelen continued his macabre dance. Using his ’Shadowstep’ limited to the minimum, he moved within the blind spots of the combatants, dodging collective assaults while guiding Lyra. Every time a candidate fell near him, the system validated a new harvest. His power increased in secret, second by second, in the middle of this human meat grinder.
But just as he had finished absorbing the strength of a fifth victim, an intense cold sensation ran down the back of his neck.
Kaelen stopped dead in his tracks.
Through the smoke of explosions and the blood covering the marble, a silhouette had just blocked his escape path. Tsubaki-iwanome stood there, motionless, his right hand resting on the pommel of his silver sword. His bright eyes were locked onto Kaelen.
Tsubaki had not seen the system interface, but his absolute fighter instinct had felt a faint anomaly, a faint distortion of the air every time Kaelen passed near a corpse.
"You hide well for a simple rat of the people," Tsubaki said in a low voice that cut through the noise of the surrounding chaos. "But your game ends here."
High up, far above the carnage, the King leaned forward on his floating throne, cruel amusement dancing in his eyes. He raised a single finger adorned with rings. Instantly the ancient mechanisms of the arena immediately rumbled, responding at least to the whim of the Sovereign.
The pieces surrounding Kaelen and Tsubaki went violently. Huge spikes of black iron shot through the marble, as the waves of purple flame began to sweep across their specific sector.
"You’re hiding your true commoner strength," Tsubaki hissed, with a voice cutting through the heat of the surrounding flames.
His silver sword blurred as he chained together a combo of three strikes, each assault heavier than the last. "But let’s see how long you can dance."
Kaelen didn’t answer. He mused with a wry smile that this chaotic interference was actually a blessing. Using his ’Evil Eye’, he drew the red lines of death drawn in his vision two seconds before they manifested.
Clang! Clang!
Kaelen parried the first two blows with her recovery iron dagger, leaving her muscles to tremble slightly.
He intentionally winced to feign exhaustion, giving the impression that he was reaching his absolute physical limit. In the middle of the third blow, instead of parrying, kaelen purposely pivoted on his talent to the right, letting Tsubaki’s blade slide harmlessly just above his shoulder.
The momentum carried him right over the fresh corpse of a high-ranking noble who had just been crushed by a falling pillar.
As Kaelen’s boot carelessly brushed against the fallen elite body, he quietly unleashed his passive divine flow at exactly 1.8%. A whisper of black mist completely invisible to the delirious crowd and to the ruler who was watching attentively, escaped from the corpse to be absorbed directly into the shadow of kaelen.
"Cling!"
[ Mana Essence Absorbed: +50 Raw Energy.]
[ The King’s suspicion gauge remains stable at 6%.]
"Impossible," Tsubaki whispered between his teeth. His eyes widened slightly when he noticed kaelen sliding effortlessly through a safe area, right between two iron spikes popping up. As if he knew exactly where the ground was going to break. "Do you read the trajectories of the arena?"
"Just luck," Kaelen sneered softly, dodging another horizontal saber blow that will slice clean through the top of an iron spike behind him.
Behind them, Lyra gasped, pulling the string of her wind-soaked Bow to its absolute limit. "Kaelen, move!" She exclaimed, releasing a quick volley of three explosive arrows aimed at Tsubaki’s blind spot to force him to back off.
Tsubaki spat out, his silver blade swirling like a shield to deflect Lyra’s arrows directly into the gushing flames.
Taking advantage of this brief cover, Kaelen moved like a ghost in the midst of the chaos. Every step he took to escape Tsubaki’s ruthless pursuit brought him closer to another fallen candidate. He would turn this deadly duel into his own personal banquet, reaping power second by second, right under the King’s nose.
Suddenly, a huge crimson magic circle lit up directly beneath Kaelen and Tsubaki’s feet, a manual activation coming from the divine throne above.
’The King is getting impatient,’ kaelen mentally whispered, staring at the massive magical overload.
Before Tsubaki could leap forward again, a colossal column of purple fire sprang up between them, shattering the yellow marble floor into a million burning shards. The pure kinetic shockwave of the explosion violently tore through the area, throwing the two fighters back in opposite directions.
Kaelen slid onto the stone, landing right in front of Lyra, her hands slipping back into her pockets as he feigned to catch his breath.
Through the wall of smoke and roaring flame, Tsubaki stood still, slowly sheathing his silver blade.
His piercing gaze locked kaelen’s silhouette through the mist, etching the commoner’s face deep into her memory.
He knew that this fight was not over, it was only a prelude...