Chapter 362: Battle Royale [III / Bonus - ]
Silas didn’t react as he just stared at the heaving giant with his blue eyes looking unimpressed.
"What’s wrong underneath that ugly demon mask?" the brute sneered, taking an aggressive step forward, pointing his finger again. "Did your mother not teach you how to properly throw a punch? Oh, wait, I know exactly your type of slum-rat. She was probably just a cheap gutter-trash whore who—"
Silas’s left eye twitched violently behind the dark metal of his mask.
It wasn’t a twitch of emotional devastation.
When Silas had suddenly woken up in this brutal world, he didn’t possess any actual living parents.
He had no lingering memories of a mother or a father raising him in this life so the insult itself had zero emotional weight attached to it.
It meant nothing to him.
’But still...’
It was the pathetic desperation of the tactic that offended him.
It was a disgusting insult to the pure art of combat... When a warrior couldn’t win with his fists, he shouldn’t resort to crying about mothers in the mud.
’Look at me talking like I’m a real warrior or something, I’d do the same if the situation arose.’
Not that it would, after all, he was strong and this guy was weak... That was the difference between them.
With only disappointment shining coldly in his glowing blue eyes, Silas decided to finally end this boring theatrical farce.
Silas dashed backward, retreating five quick, fluid steps across the dirt to create a wide gap of distance.
The Mantis, thinking he finally had his opponent on the run, took the bait completely.
’Hah... I knew it, now I just need to take a good shot at him and break his bones.’
His steroid-addled brain completely failed to process the blatant trap being laid out right in front of him.
WHOOSH!
Blinded by his own overwhelming arrogance and the blinding rush of adrenaline pumping through his thick mutated veins, he saw Silas’s fluid retreat not as a maneuver, but as an act of pure cowardly desperation.
"HAHA! WHERE ARE YOU RUNNING TO?!"
His massive combat boots tore massive chunks of mud and packed earth out of the ground with every single thunderous stride as he moved with the terrifying unstoppable momentum of a runaway siege engine and his bloodshot eyes fixated on the silver demon mask retreating before him.
’Y-you... I hate you...’
He dropped his guard, winding his cybernetic arm back and committing fully, one hundred percent of his massive body weight and internal mana into a full-power lunging punch designed to end the fight.
’I’ll end you... in one go...!’
It was a display of overkill.
The heavy industrial-grade hydraulic pistons built directly into his shoulder and elbow joints shrieked with a high-pitched metallic whine as they pressurized.
PSSSSH! PSSSSSH!
’So those snipers don’t see this?’ Silas thought as the thick purple veins bulging across Mantis’s tattooed neck throbbed violently as he forced every single ounce of his internal restricted mana into his right fist.
He wasn’t just trying to knock Silas out...
Mantis was trying to punch a hole straight through the man’s chest cavity and splatter his organs across the Null-stone cage!
However...
It was a terrible mistake.
’Got you.’
Through the flawless precognitive lens of his light blue Rip-Current Perception, Silas watched the entire clumsy sequence unfold in agonizing slow motion.
He saw the giant’s center of gravity shift dangerously far forward and he saw the massive gaping void in the brute’s defensive posture, leaving his entire centerline completely exposed to counter-attack.
The Boss’s son had sacrificed every single principle of martial balance for a single pride-fueled strike.
The exact second the giant lunged, Silas stopped retreating.
The sudden physics-defying halt in his backward momentum made Mantis’s eyes widen as he planted his boot into the dirt, anchoring his stance with the immovable density of a mountain.
WHOOSH!
The packed earth beneath his heel instantly compressed into solid stone beneath the weight of his frame.
He didn’t say a single word to Mantis as he executed a flawless sidestep, slipping perfectly inside the giant’s wide telegraphed guard.
’All I have to do now... is to hit him...’
The massive cybernetic fist whipped past Silas’s head, tearing through the empty air with a deafening sound.
WHOOSH!
The displaced wind pressure violently snapped the collar of Silas’s dark uniform, but the lethal metal didn’t even graze his skin.
Silas reared his right hand backward, twisting his hips to generate maximum torque.
"N-no, it’s not supposed to—"
Silas channeled the raw oceanic depths of his Mythic Gold Core then he drew the pure physical strength up from his anchored heel, spiraling it through his calves, his thighs, and his core, transferring the terrifying load flawlessly into his shoulder.
"B–ugh!"
He unleashed a devastating uppercut.
His fist bypassed the giant’s thick muscled chest completely, crashing cleanly and brutally upward into the bottom of the green Mantis mask.
He struck the exact perfect weak point of the man’s jawline.
KRA-BOOOM!
The explosion echoed through the entire colossal cavern.
The sound that followed was not that of flesh striking flesh.
It was the terrifying concussive boom of an artillery shell detonating in a closed space as a visible shockwave ripped outward from the exact point of impact, violently blasting a perfect ring of dust and dirt thirty feet into the air.
The green ultra-dense alloy of the Mantis mask instantly, violently shattered into a thousand spinning pieces of shrapnel as the reinforced bone of the giant’s jaw disintegrated into a fine powder.
The terrifying upward force of Silas’s strength didn’t just knock the giant backward. It defied gravity too!
The transfer was so overwhelmingly powerful that the Boss’s son didn’t even have the chance to stumble or fall.
His massive combat-booted feet were violently ripped entirely out of the dirt.
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The three-hundred-pound cybernetically enhanced man was violently launched straight up into the air like a ballistic missile.
He blasted upward at a terrifying velocity, leaving a thick spiraling trail of dust in his wake.
His massive body blurred into a dark ascending streak, rocketing upward through the harsh glare of the stadium spotlights.
He bypassed the fifty-foot mark in a fraction of a second with his limp unconscious limbs flailing wildly against the intense air resistance.
"Ah!"
High above the arena, the neon-suited Announcer shrieked in terror.
He had been leaning over his podium, screaming into his microphone to hype up the brawl below, completely oblivious to the anti-aircraft strike that had just been unleashed.
He looked down just in time to see three hundred pounds of bleeding, pulverized meat rocketing directly toward his face.
"Nooo!"
He had to violently jerk the controls of his floating anti-gravity platform, swerving wildly out of the way to prevent a catastrophic mid-air collision as the unconscious giant rocketed past him.
The wind pressure generated by the giant’s ascending mass violently ripped the microphone directly out of the Announcer’s hand and tore the lapels off his ridiculous neon-purple suit and the floating platform spun wildly, sparking with magical feedback as the Announcer clung desperately to the guardrail, screaming for his life.
The Mantis continued his terrifying ascent until he met the thick reinforced rock ceiling of the cavern.
BAM!
He smashed directly into the stalactites with a sickening bone-shattering crunch and the impact physically shook the underground cavern.
Massive chunks of jagged stone broke off the ceiling, raining down in a dangerous shower over the packed crowd below.
For one horrifying second, the momentum of Silas’s uppercut literally pinned the three-hundred-pound giant flush against the solid rock roof which was a hundred and fifty feet in the air.
"Ugh!"
He coughed out a massive visible spray of hot blood that rained down over the crowd in a horrific, crimson mist, before gravity finally reclaimed him as he peeled off the shattered rock face.
And then the son of the Boss fell back down toward the arena floor like a broken meteor.
The descent was terrifying.
The wind howled around his limp form as terminal velocity took over, dragging the pulverized bleeding mass of the Boss’s son back down toward the bloody dirt of the cage.
Silas however wasn’t finished.
"Don’t think you’re escaping that easy... I still have something for you."
He hadn’t even looked up to watch the man hit the ceiling as he already knew exactly where the body was going.
Silas had already pivoted his body with his glowing light blue eyes tracking the falling trajectory with flawless precision.
He shifted his weight, digging his left boot firmly into the cratered dirt as he raised his right leg, coiling his muscled thigh and hip like a massive spring.
WHOOSH!
The exact second the falling giant descended into striking range, Silas unleashed a devastating horizontal roundhouse kick.
The heavy leather of his combat boot whipped through the air, creating a shockwave with a sharp sound as his heavy boot caught the Mantis guy squarely in the side of the face.
He kicked him directly across the horizontal axis of the arena!
The secondary impact sounded like a bomb detonating.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The concussive shockwave from the kick blew a second massive ring of dust outward, forcing the nearest brawlers to shield their eyes.
The giant’s plummeting vertical trajectory was violently altered into a horizontal one as he was blasted laterally across the massive dirt arena, flying over the heads of the shocked brawlers like a skipped stone.
He sailed through the air for a staggering eighty feet.
Entire gangs of brawling street thugs and cybernetic assassins completely stopped fighting, their jaws dropping as they watched a three-hundred-pound giant fly cleanly over their heads in a shower of blood and sparking wires.
He slammed directly into the towering glowing Null-stone wall of the cage.
The massive collision sounded like a speeding train plowing directly into a solid brick wall.
BOOOOOOM! BZZZZZT!
The impact physically warped the magical bars, creating a massive crater in the stone perimeter.
The thick glowing blue Null-stone shrieked under the kinetic trauma, violently discharging arcs of raw lightning that scorched the surrounding dirt black.
The entire fifty-foot cage visibly shuddered from the force of the blow.
The Boss’s son slumped to the dirt, completely unresponsive with his mask shattered and his cybernetics sparking uselessly.
His right arm was bent at a horrifying unnatural angle and his chest didn’t rise.
He was a crumpled pulverized heap of broken metal and shattered bone, utterly decimated in front of his father’s entire empire.
The entire colossal arena... all two hundred surviving fighters, the thousands of screaming spectators, and the elite VIP Managers sitting safely in the luxury boxes above went completely, absolutely, breathlessly silent.
The booming Taiko drums ceased their thumping.
The violent chaotic brawl in the mud completely stopped as dozens of shivs and metal fists were slowly lowered to the sides of terrified men.
Even the ruthless Syndicate snipers perched on the dark catwalks froze with their fingers lingering on their triggers, unsure of how to process the slaughter they had just witnessed.
The undisputed favorite, the Boss’s own blood, a genetically enhanced monster pumped full of black-market combat steroids, had just been swatted like an annoying insect in less than thirty seconds.
The neon-suited Announcer, recovering from his near-death experience, gripped the railing of his floating platform with white-knuckled trembling hands.
"Haah... Haah... I need...."
He slowly looked down from his spinning platform and he stared down at the terrifying man in the dark uniform.
Silas was simply standing in the center of the ring, slowly lowering his leg and his silver demon mask gleaming under the stadium lights, completely unfazed by the violence he had just wrought.
The Announcer swallowed hard.
His job was to hype the crowd so he reached down with a shaking hand and picked up a secondary backup microphone from the floor of his platform as he brought the device to his lips.
And then, the Announcer’s hysterical shrieking voice echoed through the massive speakers, declaring the victor’s utterly ridiculous moniker.
"AND THAT’S ONII-CHANNNNNN!!!"
The crowd was first struck with a wave of deep apprehension.
"Huh?"
"What kind of name is that?"
They heard the name.
Their brains struggled to connect the cutesy degenerate anime term with the terrifying broad-shouldered man in the silver demon mask who had just defied the laws of physics.
But nobody laughed. Not a single person in the massive stadium dared to chuckle at the name...
Instead, a low rumbling murmur swept through the tiered seating.
The apprehension rapidly dissolved into something much more dangerous and volatile.
It turned into pure financial rage!
"My credits!" a man screamed from the lower bleachers, gripping his hair in despair.
"No! No, no, no! He was the favorite to win!" another spectator roared, throwing his half-empty beer directly at the reinforced glass of the cage.
They began cursing wildly.
The crowd realized they had just lost their entire life savings... Because the tournament was famously rigged in favor of the Black-Ash family, almost ninety percent of the stadium had dumped their entire betting pools directly onto the Mantis’s head to survive the Battle Royale.
The roaring curses quickly turned away from the bleeding giant and shifted directly toward Silas.
"Fuck you, Onii-chan!"
"I’ll kill you! You cost me everything!"