Chapter 308: Devil’s Pawn
The red aura around Kane guttered and flared in unstable waves.
[00:00:29]
He didn’t give the incomplete manifestation time to finish rerouting its green veins.
Kane drove forward on legs that screamed with every step, Mjoldr already rising for another full-powered cut.
Grathak, armless, half-blind, bark-plates cracked and leaking black fluid, met him with the only weapons left: densified bulk, antler ridges, and the divine-adjacent weight of the mutation.
A sweeping shoulder check caught Kane across the ruined left side and nearly folded him.
He staggered, planted, and answered by ramming the axe spike straight into the cluster of veins beneath the emperor’s sternum.
Green light detonated.
Grathak’s layered scream tore across the arena.
Kane wrenched the spike free and immediately brought the edge around in a horizontal arc aimed at the neck.
The mutated emperor twisted at the last instant.
Mjoldr carved a catastrophic trench through bark, densified muscle, and the side of the throat instead of taking the head cleanly.
Black fluid sprayed in a wide arc.
Grathak reeled, green-glowing eyes wide, the incomplete manifestation trying desperately to seal the new wound.
"You... cannot... hold that power..." the layered voice rasped.
"Your body is already dead. You just have not fallen yet."
Kane’s own voice came out raw and blood-choked under the roaring aura.
"Then I take you with me before I do."
[00:00:17]
He stepped in again.
Grathak tried to crush him against the cratered wall with mass.
Kane dropped under the charge, rolled through slick black fluid, and came up on the emperor’s blind side.
Mjoldr rose and fell in short, brutal overhead chops that opened new seams in the bark-plating across the back and shoulders.
Each impact sent fresh sprays of black and green across the stone.
The red aura around Kane flickered harder; the system’s warnings had become a continuous scream he no longer had the bandwidth to read.
Kessa’s voice cut through the crowd noise from the rails, raw and furious as she still fought the pure-blood swarm.
"Finish it!"
Griselda’s colder shout followed.
"Kane!"
Marisa’s voice, quieter but carrying, reached him from the northern rail.
"Kill him..."
[00:00:09]
Grathak turned, antler ridges lowering like spears, and lunged with the last coordinated force the mutation could muster.
Kane met the charge head-on.
He took a glancing ridge across the already-ruined shoulder; fresh blood sprayed, and used the close distance to drive Mjoldr upward in a final, two-handed rising cut aimed at the junction of neck and jaw.
The reinforced edge, singing with the last of the one-hundred-percent output, sheared cleanly through.
Bark, bone, densified muscle, and the remaining green-veined tissue parted.
Grathak’s mutated head separated from the shoulders in a single catastrophic motion and hit the stone with a dull sound.
The massive body swayed.
Silence.
For one stretched heartbeat, the only sounds were the drip of fluid onto stone and Kane’s own ragged breathing.
He stood over the headless corpse, red aura guttering down to dying embers, Mjoldr’s head resting against the floor because he no longer had the strength to hold it up. Blood sheeted from half a dozen wounds.
The left arm hung completely dead.
Ribs ground with every shallow pull of air.
He panted hard, vision swimming, and felt a single, exhausted fragment of victory cut through the pain.
He had done it.
The emperor of Berakamon was dead on the open floor under the eyes of every banner that mattered.
Kane’s good knee buckled.
He went down to one knee, still upright only by stubborn refusal, and let his head hang for a fraction of a second.
Then the headless body moved.
’Huh?’
Dark energy, thicker than the incomplete manifestation, crept upward from the stone and poured into the open stump of the neck.
The air temperature plummeted.
Every torch in the arena guttered.
The bright late-morning sky seemed to dim as if something vast had passed in front of the sun.
Two yellow eyes, vertical and burning, opened in the swirling dark above the shoulders where Grathak’s head had been.
The voice that spoke was not layered.
It was singular, amused, and ancient.
"Barbarian."
Kane’s head snapped up.
[Supreme Devil signature detected]
[Identity: Beelzebub]
[Manifestation level: Remote projection]
[Threat assessment: Beyond current Host parameters]
The yellow eyes regarded him with something like mild interest.
"We will come."
All the beasts were listening in horror to the sight.
"Grathak was merely... a pawn, useful for refining the residue and testing the densification limits of this little empire’s flesh. You do not have what it takes—"
Kane didn’t let the sentence finish.
The last dying ember of the red aura flared once more on suicidal will.
He forced his broken body upright, both hands locking around Mjoldr’s haft despite the shattered left arm’s protest, and brought the axe around in a final, horizontal killing arc with every remaining scrap of strength and system resonance he possessed.
The edge passed through the headless torso at the waist.
Bark-plating, densified muscle, green veins, and the dark energy pouring upward all parted under the cut.
The upper half of Grathak’s mutated body slid sideways and toppled.
The lower half collapsed.
The yellow eyes widened a fraction, almost surprised, before the dark projection scattered like smoke under a gale.
The wrong cold and the dimming of the sky both snapped away at once.
Mjoldr’s head hit the stone.
Kane followed it down, first to both knees, then catching himself with his good hand as the last of the Rage output vanished and every injury landed at full force.
He stayed conscious by the same refusal that had kept him standing through three Measures and a mutated emperor.
The stadium remained silent for another long breath.
Then the southern and river sections erupted, not in bloodlust, but in the calculating roar of packs that had just watched the center of Berakamon change under open sky.
Pure-blood voices rose in rage and disbelief.
Kessa finally broke free of the swarm pinning her and vaulted the rail, Griselda a half-beat behind.
Marisa was already moving down from the northern tier, eyes locked on the broken figure kneeling in the spreading pool of black fluid and ordinary blood.