Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

The hyper-stimulant drugs in his system ignited as Zarch completely speed-blitzed Silas.

WHOOOSH!

He moved faster than a human eye could properly track, crossing the fifty feet of packed dirt in a single explosive leap with the force so fast that it blew at the Announcer’s hair.

"SUCH POWER!"

He appeared directly in front of Silas like a teleporting nightmare.

"TAKE THIS!" Zarch roared, throwing a sweeping roundhouse kick directly forward, aiming straight for Silas’s ribs.

Silas, moving with sluggish pathetic lethargy, barely managed to raise his heavy forearms in time to block the incoming strike.

WHAM!

The impact sounded devastating.

"Gah!"

Silas let out a choked gasp, acting as if the air was violently knocked out of his lungs as he threw his body weight backward, perfectly selling the hit.

’That was a lot harder to do than I thought... Is my body that strong?’

He was sent flying completely sideways through the air, tumbling out of control.

CRASH!

Silas’s heavy body violently dug into the glowing blue wall of the Null-stone cage.

BZZZZZZZT!

"AHHHH!"

The anti-magic field reacted to the physical contact instantly, discharging a massive blinding arc of raw electricity directly into Silas’s uniform, violently electrocuting him.

Silas slumped forward off the bars, dropping to his hands and knees in the dirt.

Up in the stands, that was all the visual confirmation the people needed to begin voting.

The crowd went into a betting frenzy just like Silas wanted as they wildly tapped their holographic screens, abandoning Onii-chan.

"I’m putting every last credit on the Reaper! My entire life savings!" a scarred man yelled, frantically slamming his finger against his holographic betting tab.

"I fucking told you that stunt was complete bullshit," another spectator laughed smugly, leaning over the bleachers. "You don’t just punch a three-hundred-pound cyborg through solid rock... It was rigged!"

"Exactly! The kid’s a fraud," a third man chimed in, pointing down at Silas coughing in the dirt. "He just got incredibly lucky with a premium batch of combat stims, and now his body is completely crashing! Bet it all on Zarch, boys! We’re robbing the house tonight!"

Down in the dirt, Zarch on the other hand, was vibrating with chemical ecstasy.

"I can’t believe it...."

Was he this strong? Truly? If he was then he would win tonight and with the help of that man, his mother would be free.

He charged forward at Silas with his heavy boots kicking up massive chunks of mud.

"COME AT ME, ONII-CHAN!" Zarch screamed, his voice cracking horribly.

He reached Silas, throwing another massive brutal kick forward.

BAM!

The heavy boot collided directly with Silas’s supposedly unprotected stomach.

"Ugh!"

Silas hunched over violently, letting out a gagging sound behind his mask.

He actually spat out a massive glob of thick saliva onto the dirt, completely selling the internal organ damage.

’This guy’s technique is garbage...’ Silas thought to himself, completely bored out of his mind as he crouched in the mud.

Despite the incredible speed and raw chemical power behind Zarch’s strikes, the physical blows themselves felt like a toddler aggressively kicking a solid block of mythril.

Silas wasn’t using external mana but his regular bone density easily absorbed the shock without suffering a single micro-fracture.

The electrocution from the cage had stung a bit, like a nasty static shock from a doorknob, but it was nothing compared to a real lightning spell.

Silas forced his body to tremble as he raised a weak trembling fist and tried to punch forward, acting desperate.

’I just hope this acting is good... Once I’m done, I’ll kill this guy.’

Zarch smugly parried the slow punch.

"Too slow, you pathetic fraud!" Zarch taunted.

Zarch immediately landed a heavy chemical-fueled punch directly onto the side of Silas’s Oni mask.

BAM!

He followed it up with a relentless blindingly fast combination of hooks and jabs that battered Silas’s chest and shoulders.

BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

"HERE YOU GO!"

Zarch ended the flurry with a devastating spinning back-kick that struck Silas squarely in the chest plate.

THUD!

Silas was launched backward again.

This time, Silas bit the inside of his cheek hard enough to draw real blood.

As he flew backward, he let the blood pool in his mouth and spat it out, sending a visible horrifying spray of red blood flying from the bottom of his metal mask.

CRASH!

His broad back violently crashed directly into the towering wall of the Null-stone cage for a second time.

BZZZZZZZT!

He was electrocuted once again with the blue lightning arching across his shoulders.

"Ugh... Not again..."

Silas slumped down against the glowing bars, letting out a heavy convincing grunt of absolute pain as he let his arms hang limply at his sides.

Zarch threw his head back, throwing his arms wide open to the roaring crowd.

"HAHAHAHA!" Zarch began laughing, it was the sound of pure triumph. "I... FUCKING... WI—"

At that exact specific moment, the glowing blue holographic betting timer hovering over the center of the arena hit zero.

BEEP!

The timer completely finished.

Silas, still slumped against the electrified bars, caught the flashing red zero with the very corner of his eyes.

He watched as the blue betting tabs simultaneously disappeared from front of every single spectator in the stadium as the wagers were permanently locked and the house had finalized the odds.

’It’s about time...’ Silas thought, letting out a genuine annoyed sigh.

He stopped slouching.

’I’ll end this in one strike...’

He stood up completely straight. The sudden fluid shift in his posture was surprising given the beating he had just taken.

’The physical attacks of this man are quite strong,’ Silas critiqued internally, rubbing his gloved hand over his chest where Zarch had kicked him. ’But that was all there was to them... There’s no technique. It’s just raw stupid momentum.’

Zarch, completely oblivious to the sudden change in the demeanor, cut his victory laugh short.

He wanted to finish the execution.

"WHY YOU?! YOU WANT TO DIE, DON’T YOU?!"

He closed the remaining distance in a blur of hyper-stimulant speed, launching himself into the air.

He spun his body, unleashing a massive decapitating roundhouse kick aimed directly at the side of Silas’s silver demon face.

"No wait!"

High above, the Announcer saw the lethal strike coming.

He reached for his podium controls, desperately preparing to hit the buzzer and stop the match before Onii-chan’s head was kicked off his shoulders.

At that moment, the Announcer blinked.

He literally just blinked his eyes for a microscopic fraction of a second.

In the very next instant, before Zarch’s boot could even come within three feet of Silas’s mask...

KRA-THOOOOOOOOOM!

A terrifying and incomprehensibly powerful shockwave violently exploded outward from the exact spot where Silas was standing.

"Is that a spell?!"

No it wasn’t... It was simply a strike.

The shockwave ripped across the arena floor, blowing a massive circular crater into the packed dirt.

It hit the Null-stone cage and blasted violently upward, covering the audience in the lower stands too, physically making their expensive clothes blow wildly backward and knocking the drinks right out of their hands.

When the dust violently cleared, and the Announcer finally managed to open his wind-teared eyes, the entire colosseum froze in shock.

Silas was standing completely properly in the center of the crater.

He casually raised his black-gloved hands and stretched his broad shoulders, slowly cracking his thick neck from side to side with a series of loud pops.

The Announcer frantically looked around the arena. Where was the Reaper?

At the exact opposite, far side of the massive dirt field, nearly a hundred feet away from Silas, was Zarch.

The man seemed to be completely slumped backward against the towering Null-stone cage as the heavy blue electrical currents were continuously electrocuting him, frying his gear and sending thick plumes of black smoke into the air.

"...Huh?"

But there was no physical response from Zarch as he didn’t twitch nor did he scream.

Suddenly, Zarch’s upper torso simply slid sideways.

His body then fell over in two completely separate pieces.

He had been cleanly split entirely in two at the waist as the overwhelming force of Silas’s single invisible punch had launched Zarch across the arena with such terrifying velocity that the man’s spine had violently impacted one of the plentiful sharp broken iron support rods protruding from that far end of the damaged cage wall.

The rusted iron had acted like a guillotine.

The Announcer stared at the two halves of the Reaper smoking in the dirt with his jaw completely dropping.

’What... what in the actual fuck just happened?’ the Announcer thought, his brain completely failing to process the physics of the strike.

The match had literally ended in less than a single instant however Silas didn’t celebrate.

He just turned around, looking up at the Announcer’s floating platform.

"I failed to hold back properly," Silas told the Announcer with a sigh. "And as a direct result, this guy has died. The match is over... Can I go back to the locker room now?"

The Announcer blinked blankly with his mind short-circuiting. He just mutely nodded his head.

’I bet on Zarch too... was this his plan all along?’

The heavy steel hatch on Silas’s side of the arena immediately ground open.

Silas didn’t wait for permission. He turned and casually walked out of his own dark tunnel, leaving the bloodbath behind.

Simultaneously, from the hatch where Zarch had originally come out from, a massive team of Underworld cleaners in rubber suits were frantically rushing out with body bags and hoses to handle the two halves of the steaming corpse.

High up in the luxurious soundproofed VIP private room, Evelyn was standing perfectly still by the reinforced glass window.

She stared down at the bisected corpse of Zarch the Reaper.

"Huu..."

She was genuinely a bit shaken at exactly how easy and how utterly casual it had been for Silas to kill someone with his bare hands.

He didn’t even hesitate... He just deleted a human life and asked for permission to leave.

’Didn’t he feel any guilt for it at all?’ Evelyn wondered with a chill running down her spine.

She swallowed hard, looking at the massive crater Silas had left in the dirt.

And then, she logically corrected herself.

’We’re Lords...’ Evelyn thought.

Even though Evelyn herself possessed a deep trauma about killing people which was the exact reason she had spared that sniper in the alleyway earlier...

It didn’t mean that Silas shared her civilian sentiment.

Given the terrifying nature of the Umbral Basin he had been summoned to, and the horrors he had fought to secure his territory, it was certainly a matter of kill or be killed on a daily basis for him.

He was a Lord and he didn’t have the luxury of hesitation. So, she was not going to judge his brutal methods in a death-match.

’I should do the same... I’m a Lord too.’

Suddenly, a soft pinging echoed from the velvet sofa behind her.

Evelyn turned around.

The glowing blue holographic betting tab appeared floating in front of her datapad, finalizing the locked odds of the match.

Because Silas had so flawlessly acted like a dying poisoned addict for the entire three-minute betting window, the entire stadium had completely dumped their money onto Zarch.

The house odds on Onii-chan had skyrocketed to astronomical historic underdog proportions!

Evelyn stared at the screen.

[Winnings: 5, 500, 000 -> 60, 000, 000]

Evelyn’s eyes widened behind her Kitsune mask as her breathing stopped.

She lunged forward.

Her small leather-gloved hand slammed violently down onto the glass coffee table, rattling the crystal decanters.

"JACKPOT, BABY!" Evelyn yelled at the top of her lungs, throwing her arms into the air in a display of pure goblin greed.

Simultaneously, down in the arena, the Announcer finally managed to regain his voice.

"L-LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" the Announcer stammered into his microphone, his voice echoing over the silent crowd. "CONTESTANT ONII-CHAN HAS WON THE MATCH!"

The silence broke.

The entire crowd went feral... It was even more so than the last time.

They threw their chairs, smashed their empty bottles and screamed, crying, and cursing Onii-chan’s name into the dark ceiling.

They had all been completely scammed out of their life savings by a man pretending to cough and take a beating!

"FUCK YOU, ONII-CHAN!"

"I HOPE YOU GET CUCKED LOSER!"

"I HOPE YOU DIE TONIGHT!"

"I HOPE BOTH SIDES OF YOUR PILLOW WILL BE WARM TONIGHT!"

Everyone turned to the man who said that, did he have no shame? Why would he mention something that belonged in a LordTube video comment section in real life?

’What a weirdo...’

...

Silas let out a tired sigh.

It had taken quite a bit of time to navigate his way from the lower, blood-soaked locker rooms back up to the luxurious VIP levels without the polite maid there to guide him through the labyrinth of guarded corridors.

As he walked down the plush crimson-carpeted hallway, he could physically feel the murderous stares of the Syndicate guards and staff.

’I really don’t like those looks...’ Silas thought while keeping his hands near his pockets.

Every single person he was coming across in the hallways was giving him a weird hostile look.

The guards were practically gripping their rifles, glaring at his Oni mask with pure hatred.

’So what if I lied about being wounded or poisoned or whatever?’ Silas reasoned internally. ’It was for my own personal gain. Why the hell are they acting like they have the moral high ground? Every single person in this entire building is a criminal here for their own personal gain... Fucking Hypocrites.’