Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

Silas stroked his beardless chin beneath the metal mask, genuinely considering the deceitful strategy.

"That’s not a bad idea," Silas agreed as he fully endorsed the scam. "I can slow my heart rate down to mimic extreme fatigue and cough up some fake bloo—"

BZZZZZT!

The Announcer’s magically amplified voice suddenly rang out from the massive speakers embedded in the walls of their private suite, interrupting their scheming.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" the Announcer declared to the stadium. "THE TIMETABLES HAVE BEEN DECIDED AND THE BRACKETS ARE LOCKED!"

A large glowing blue hologram suddenly materialized in the center of their private room, projecting directly from a projector in the ceiling.

It displayed the official tournament bracket.

"In exactly twenty minutes, the first match on the list will officially begin in the dirt!" the Announcer hyped.

Silas looked at the glowing hologram.

At the very top of the bracket, his absurd moniker was listed in bold glowing letters.

[MATCH 1: ONII-CHAN vs. ZARCH THE REAPER]

Silas and Evelyn both stared at the bracket, and then slowly looked across the coffee table at each other.

"Well," Evelyn muttered, taking a slow drag of her cigarette. "You are up against the edgelord with the video game name."

’That’s what I said...’

"He was incredibly skinny," Silas noted, recalling the cloaked figure from the lineup. "He didn’t possess any heavy cybernetics or visible mutations. How did he survive the meat-grinder?"

"Chemical enhancement I think," Evelyn deduced instantly with her experience recognizing the archetype. "He is probably going to spike his own bloodstream with a massive overdose of illegal combat steroids right before the match, right?"

Silas nodded slowly, leaning back in his chair.

"Undoubtedly," Silas agreed. "There was nothing in the receptionist’s official rules that explicitly said performance-enhancing drugs were prohibited. Only external mana and weapons... He is going to juice himself into a frenzy but I have an idea on how we can use this to our advantage."

"Oh?"

Meanwhile, on the exact opposite side of the VIP level, in a much smaller and significantly dirtier private viewing room...

Zarch sat heavily on a metal folding chair.

He had thrown his dark edgy cloak onto the floor to reveal his full body.

"Ugh... Where is he?"

Scratch! Scratch!

He was a pale violently trembling young man with sunken eyes and twitching fingers.

He stared down at his own glowing datapad, looking at the official bracket list with an expression of pure terror trembling on his sweaty face.

"I’m finished..."

He was matched against the monster... He had to fight the demon who had punched the Boss’s son through the ceiling. Unless those things came, it was over.

The heavy metal door of the room suddenly barged open.

Zarch’s Manager, a sleazy desperate-looking man in a cheap suit, rushed into the room.

He was carrying a heavy black duffel bag.

"Here, I’ve arrived Zarch!"

He unzipped the bag and dumped the contents directly onto the metal table in front of Zarch.

Dozens of sleek large medical syringes spilled across the table.

They were filled with a thick bubbling pitch-black liquid and Zarch knew what it was... it was Black-Ash hyper-stimulant.

It was one of the most illegal and volatile combat drug on the black market.

It forced the human heart to beat at four hundred beats per minute, granting terrifying strength at the cost of literally shredding the user’s internal organs.

This was what he would need when faced with a terrifying monster like Onii-chan.

"I brought as many injections as I could find from the medical bay," his Manager panted, looking terrified.

He hesitated with his hand hovering over the deadly black liquid. "Zarch... are you sure about this? A double dose of this shit will stop your heart after the match."

Zarch didn’t hesitate.

He aggressively snagged the heavy black bag and the syringes right out of his Manager’s trembling hands.

"I am sure..." Zarch whispered, his voice cracking with terrified desperation. "I need to win..."

If he won the tournament then he could save her... He could save his mother!

He grabbed the largest and thickest black syringe from the pile however he didn’t bother finding a vein in his arm.

’Let’s take it straight to the neck!’

He raised the needle and brutally injected the thick steel directly into the side of his own neck.

He slammed the plunger down, forcing the bubbling black liquid straight into his jugular vein.

PSSH!

Instantly, Zarch’s sunken eyes widened to impossible terrifying proportions.

The dark sickly veins on his pale neck instantly bulged, turning a glowing toxic purple.

His sunken cheeks flushed violently red as his heart rate exploded into a faster rhythm as white foam began to gather at the corners of his mouth.

"Not en... ough."

He grabbed a second syringe then a third.

He stabbed more and more of the black liquid into his arms, his chest, his legs with his body completely rejecting human limitations as the dark magic shredded his nervous system.

"I NEED TO BEAT ONII-CHAN!" Zarch yelled, his voice warping into a demonic roar of pure insanity.

...

The heavy booming Taiko drums echoed aggressively through the massive cavern, signaling the beginning of the actual tournament bracket.

High above the freshly cleaned, blood-stained dirt of the Null-stone cage, the neon-suited Announcer hovered on his anti-gravity platform.

He tapped his magically amplified microphone with the harsh feedback cutting through the restless murmurs of the thousands of spectators packed into the stadium seating.

"LADIES AND DEGENERATES!" the Announcer shrieked, throwing his arms wide open to embrace the violent atmosphere. "THE PRELIMINARIES ARE OVER! THE MEAT HAS BEEN TRIMMED! WELCOME TO THE ROUND OF SIX!"

The crowd erupted into a deafening feral roar.

They stomped their boots against the reinforced metal bleachers as the pressure of their stomps vibrated the thick glass of the VIP viewing boxes suspended high above.

"For our very first bracket match of the night, we have a clash of undisputed Underworld titans!" the Announcer hyped up the two fighters, spinning his platform rapidly in the air. "In the red corner... the shadow of death himself! ZARCH THE REAPER!"

The heavy reinforced steel hatch on the far side of the arena groaned loudly as the thick iron chains clanked as the gate was hauled upward.

Out of the dark concrete tunnel stepped Zarch.

The crowd offered a lukewarm mildly confused cheer.

Zarch hadn’t exactly been a terrifying highlight of the massive Battle Royale.

In fact, most of the people who had survived the first hour had completely ignored him while he hid in the shadows near the perimeter.

But as he stepped fully into the harsh blinding white stadium spotlights, the crowd’s collective breath caught in their throats.

He didn’t look like a scrawny cloaked coward anymore...

He looked terrifyingly buff!

The hyper-stimulant combat drugs had completely rewritten his biological structure.

His previously thin arms were now bulging with thick overlapping slabs of dense muscle as the dark sickly veins crisscrossing his pale neck and chest pulsed with a glowing toxic purple light.

’I... wi... will...’

Furthermore, there was a literal visible aura of pitch-black darkness radiating off his skin.

It was a vile mixture of evaporating sweat and the illegal chemical exhaust of the Black-Ash drugs actively shredding his internal organs.

He looked like a cornered, rabid beast, making him appear surprisingly formidable.

Though, despite the sudden, terrifying physical upgrade, everyone in the stadium was still going to bet their entire life savings on Onii-Chan.

The Lord had punched a cyborg through a rock ceiling... Drugs while powerful on their own couldn’t beat gravity.

The Announcer cheered Zarch on, feeding the spectacle.

"Look at the mass on the Reaper!" the Announcer commented into the microphone while hovering lower. "He looks quite strong tonight, folks! He looks ready for a slaughter!"

The Announcer then dramatically pivoted his platform toward the opposite side of the massive dirt ring.

"AND IN THE BLUE CORNER!" the Announcer screamed, his voice reaching a fever pitch. "THE DEMON OF THE DIRT! THE FAVORITE TO WIN IT ALL! ONII-CHAN!"

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

The crowd went wild, waiting for the terrifying young man in the dark uniform to step out and unleash hell.

But... nothing happened.

The dark tunnel remained completely empty.

The Announcer called upon Onii-Chan from his hatch a second time, raising his hand dramatically.

Only to be met with deafening silence.

The crowd’s cheering slowly died down, replaced by confused, restless murmurs.

Thousands of heads craned forward, trying to peer into the pitch-black depths of the open tunnel.

Suddenly, a young maid in a black-and-white uniform sprinted frantically out of a side-access door near the lower stands.

She waved her arms wildly, calling the Announcer down to the side of the reinforced glass barrier.

The Announcer frowned, hovering his platform down to meet her. He leaned over the railing, pulling the microphone away from his mouth.

"What is the delay?" the Announcer hissed impatiently.

The maid looked up with her face pale.

She reported the situation in a hushed whisper, but the magically amplified microphone still faintly picked up her words, echoing them softly across the quiet stadium.

"Contestant Onii-chan seemed to have digested something terrible," the maid reported, sounding genuinely concerned. "He is hunched over in the locker room. He became very, very sick just a few moments ago..."

The Announcer’s eyes widened.

Both of them, and everyone in the criminal Underworld who possessed a functional brain, knew exactly what that specific phrasing meant.

He hadn’t eaten bad fish.

He had obviously taken a massive handful of untested, black-market performance-enhancing pills to boost his strength, and his body was aggressively rejecting the toxic mixture.

"Is he forfeiting?" the Announcer asked sharply. "Is he still coming out to the dirt?"

"He is," the maid confirmed while nodding rapidly. "He is walking to the hatch now."

The Announcer straightened up, instantly floating his platform back up into the center of the arena.

He brought the microphone back to his lips with his voice taking on a tone of dramatic manufactured concern.

"Ladies and gentlemen, it seems we have a slight unexpected delay!" the Announcer announced to the massive crowd. "Contestant Onii-chan seemed to have some severe issues with something he digested in the locker rooms! He is currently extremely sick, but the Demon refuses to yield! He is coming to the pit!"

Up in the tiered luxury boxes, a lot of the wealthy Managers and corporate sponsors gave each other knowing looks.

’Ah.’ the collective crowd realized.

It was quite clear to them now... It made perfect logical sense!

Onii-chan had obviously been using high-tier performance-enhancing pills during the Battle Royale.

That was the only logical reason a human could have possibly possessed the raw physical strength to punch a three-hundred-pound cyborg into the ceiling.

There was nothing in the official rules of the Null-stone cage that said a fighter couldn’t chemically augment their own bloodstream.

It was a perfectly legal strategy in Shogitown.

But still... to suffer a total crash right before the brackets? How many illegal pills did the idiot have to take to get that violently sick?!

Down in the dirt, Zarch the Reaper heard the announcement.

His chemically dilated pupils twitched.

He rolled his heavy mutated shoulders as he was feeling vastly more confident now.

"Huu..."

The monster wasn’t a god, he was simply just another junkie who had pushed his dosage too far.

Zarch took a low unstable attacking stance, digging his boots into the mud.

"Come then... I’ll make it quick..."

The Announcer raised his hand, officially giving the crowd a massive glowing blue holographic timer that appeared above the center of the cage.

"THREE MINUTES TO PLACE YOUR WAGERS!"

However, the entire field fell completely silent as heavy, dragging footsteps echoed from the dark tunnel.

Someone finally walked out from the opposite hatch.

It was Onii-chan.

But he truly did look incredibly sick.

Silas stepped out into the harsh stadium lights.

His broad shoulders were completely slumped forward, utterly ruining his intimidating posture.

He was dragging his feet through the dirt, staggering a bit to the left as if his inner ear equilibrium was completely destroyed.

He kept his head tilted downward and he clutched his stomach with one black-gloved hand, letting out a weak pathetic-sounding cough that vibrated hollowly through his Oni mask.

The stadium stared at him in disappointment.

Even the signature piercing light-blue glow of his eyes was gone.

Behind the narrow slits of his metal mask, there was nothing but dull, empty darkness.

Nobody could see anything resembling the Apex Predator from an hour ago.

As the heavy iron hatches slammed and locked closed behind him, the stadium’s silence shattered.

"BOOOOOOOOO!"

Thousands of spectators began viciously booing him, throwing their empty beer cups and crumpled betting slips against the Null-stone glass.

They felt cheated... They thought they were going to see a monster but instead, they were looking at a dying addict!

The Announcer hovered closer, genuinely unsure if the match should proceed.

"Are you alright to fight, Contestant?" the Announcer asked.

Silas stood in the dirt. He didn’t answer him as he just let out another weak rattling cough with his knees buckling slightly.

"Very well! The betting window is open!" the Announcer declared, slamming his hand on his podium.

The personal holographic betting panels instantly appeared in front of every single spectator and Manager in the stadium.

"BEGIN THE MATCH!"

Just as the Announcer screamed, Zarch didn’t waste a single millisecond.

FWISH!