Chapter 120: Fall
High within the luxury boxes of the Serante Amphitheater, across the colossal, shimmering magical projection wall dominating the stadium, the vanguard of the Duoris warband led by Carlyle once again effortlessly liquidated a wandering pack of Icefield Trolls infesting the drainage channels, securely anchoring their position at the absolute summit of the leaderboard.
Sir Maxwell, most specifically, whose mountain-sized frame rose to a towering physical height of nearly three meters, broadcasted an exceptionally terrifying, world-shattering suppressive force across the sand. In the chaotic skirmish that had just closed, his iron-clad chassis had executed a head-on collision to slam straight into a colossal Mountain Demon alpha who stood over three times his own massive height. Yet, deploying a raw, un-natural physical strength that completely defied the common laws of mortal muscle, he sent the giant flying backward through the spray, before launching his heavy mass into the air to utterly shatter the beast's skull with a single, thunderous downward plunge of his weapon.
Monitoring this savage, brutal, yet jaw-dropping display of absolute martial dominance, the hundreds of thousands of fanatical spectators packing the stone tiers erupted into a synchronized, deafening roar of pure adrenaline. A bald, weathered citizen anchoring the front row, whose frame had logged over fifty winters across the capital, leaped frantically onto the back of his stone seat in a frenzy of excitement, ripping his grease-stained shirt from his shoulders to wave it through the air while screaming Maxwell's name at the high sky.
His eyes had initial begun tracking the grand gladiatorial tournaments of Leyndell exactly seven winters past—the monumental season when Maxwell's legendary moniker, the Dragon Spear, had initial resounded with absolute authority throughout the arena guilds of the realm. It was concurrently across that historic watch that countless common Golden citizens who fanatically admired the traits of raw bravery and martial strength began to look upon that specific fighter, whose heavy aura and massive physique scored as equally extraordinary, as their ultimate civilizational idol.
The old man had originally simulated the dark equation that the exact watch Maxwell signed his exclusive contract to operate as a private Night Fighter for the peerage, his steel would be permanently cut off from public gladiatorial combat. Yet, entirely beyond his premier expectations, his sight had been granted the rare, historic privilege to witness the heroic, devastating figure of the Dragon Spear clear the grates a secondary time at the zenith of the Battle Festival after seven winters of isolation.
At that identical cross of data, hundreds of enthusiastic, blood-stirring voices echoed his cries across the colosseum, their vocal chords straining as if the act of chanting his title would manually imbue their own vessels with the courage and un-yielding will of the champions down in the dark—thus truly inheriting the ancient, heroic martial tradition that had been continuously passed down through the bloodlines of the Golden Dynasty since the dawn of the Unification campaigns.
"Too weak... your lineages score as entirely too weak to contest my shield!" Maxwell roared into the dark, his massive chest completely bathed beneath the scorching, fire-tinged blood of the slaughtered Mountain Demons as he let out a deep, muffled laugh that rumbled like thunder through the vaulted masonry.
As if executing a direct, synchronized response to his arrogance, thousands of passionate viewers outside the master projection screen unleashed a secondary wave of thunderous cheers, looking exactly like a modern army witnessing a legendary hero's greatest achievement firsthand.
"Observe the margin! Identify the shadow passing the quadrant!" a puzzled, high-friction voice suddenly cut through the raucous noise of the arena crowd.
The civilian masses instinctively shifted their eyes to track the signal, identifying a dark, smoky trail violently flashing across the absolute corner of the scrying projection screen. The Duoris warband, operating directly on-site within the damp junction, decoded the arrival of the variable with a velocity that out-paced the reactions of the monitors above. Carlyle and his two veteran shield-guards stared with wide, un-comprehending astonishment at the rapidly approaching silhouette, before that initial bewilderment mutated into a deep, bone-chilling terror within a single tick of the clock.
That bleeding entity defined Sir Lagrun—one of the absolute few master-assassins drawing breath across the Golden Dynasty who had successfully finalized the forbidden, high-velocity shadow combat techniques born across the Land of the Reeds, and the single most trusted, long-serving personal bodyguard protecting Duke Duolis's life readouts. And across this current watch... the shadow was frantically running to preserve his own life.
"The executioner... the monster has cleared the perimeter—" Sir Lagrun managed to forcefully squeeze the desperate warning out from a throat that had been almost torn to ribbons, his voice a hoarse, rattling gasp. The exact watch his boots reached Carlyle's station, his balance failed entirely, his knees buckling beneath his weight as his frame stumbled forward, only for the young heir to frantically catch his torso before his armor struck the flagstones.
"Sir!" Carlyle's pupils violently dilated at the graphic scene unfolding within his embrace, his fingers instantly staining red against the leather. "What specific horror has broken your guard?"
Across the absolute entirety of his fifteen winters, Uncle Lagrun had permanently operated as nothing less than his father's literal shadow—silent, sturdy, un-bending, and thoroughly reliable across every theater of campaign. His steel had personally witnessed and neutralized no fewer than five independent, high-fatality assassination plots targeting the Duke's office. Even those highly skilled, elite killers who had successfully overcome numerous imperial obstacles to reach within five paces of his father's chair had all been ruthlessly, effortlessly liquidated by Lagrun's short-swords within the span of a single breath.
The secret combat arts originating from the distant Land of the Reeds did not simply comprise the basic disciplines of common stealth and common assassination; they defined a high-lethality martial art that approached the absolute, un-capped zenith of close-quarters melee combat!
Yet, the Lagrun currently resting within his arms looked exactly like a fine porcelain doll on the absolute precipice of a total structural shattering. His shoulders and thigh guards were completely covered in thousands of small, razor-sharp incisions, and his strong, muscular back had been violently slashed open by two massive, parallel grooves carved from some kind of gargantuan longsword, the steel having cleanly peeled back the flesh to un-veil the raw ivory of his spine and ribs to the cold air. Even the single most fatal laceration mapping his throat housed a deep, weeping crimson mark, which would have mathematically severed his primary artery if the iron had penetrated half a finger deeper into his neck masonry!
"Rolo executed this destruction?" Carlyle asked, his voice shaking with a profound, incredulous disbelief. "By what alchemical calculus could a surface physician command a strength of this density?"
"Let the line clear... our vanguard must execute an immediate flight from these coordinates," Lagrun whispered weakly, his consciousness already spinning into a state of acute dizziness from the catastrophic volume of blood loss, his trembling fingers grasping Carlyle's silk-lined pauldrons. "We must retreat our boots straight back into the protective perimeter of the Secret Vault sector initial, and then—"
Before the terminal syllable of his retreat protocol could clear his teeth, a sharp, violent whistling sound of displaced air tearing apart the darkness resonated from the forward tunnel line. Fichel, who was maintaining a hyper-vigilant defensive watch beside their flank, aggressively drew his greatsword to execute a rapid deflection strike.
SPARK-BOOM—!
A brilliant explosion of orange sparks violently detonated in mid-air, and a massive, grotesque black iron cleaver spun backward through the smoke along a circular path, its heavy handle caught firmly within the leather glove of a dark shadow that followed closely behind the steel's trajectory.
"One... two... three... four, hehehe. The absolute totality of the duke's private stable has gathered within a single junction. Not bad... exceptionally optimized for the harvest!"
A hunched, heavily muscled silhouette stepped slowly out from the thick curtain of the subterranean gloom. Even through the distorted, terrifying contours of a brass mask entirely ringed by a crown of jagged Omen horns, Carlyle could clearly, viscerally register the palpable, suffocating wave of pure, sub-human malice radiating from behind the visor plates—it did not define the standard gaze of a human warrior facing a rival combatant across the sand, but registered explicitly as the cold, transactional look of a butcher monitoring his livestock before the drop of the axe.
"Master Rolo," Carlyle spoke, straining every nerve to manually suppress the frantic, terrifying pounding of his heart against his ribs. Even though his private files archived hundreds of pages of detailed intelligence tracking Rolo's historical career across the capital, his intellect still found it an impossible task to connect the highly respected, scholarly Chief Perfumer of his memories with the inhuman, blood-stained monster dominating the floorboards fronting his vanguard.
"In strict consideration of the favors your sire wove into my forge, your young bloodlines are conformed under zero administrative obligations to perish on this night," Rolo chuckled, the sound emerging hoarse and rattling like stones turning in an iron pot.
"But your shield... and your shield—" he continued, the tip of his horn-covered cleaver casually tracing a line through the air to point directly toward the stations of Fichel and the wounded Lagrun, his tone as relaxed and indifferent as if his mouth were instructing a house servant on what specific meats to prepare for his evening dinner, "alongside that oversized piece of cattle hiding upon that stone roof beam over yonder... the three of you will systematically hit absolute zero across your life readouts before this watch closes."
"Suck a blade through your throat, you old freak!" a furious, volcanic roar exploded from the high masonry rafters.
Sir Maxwell shot forward from his elevated platform like a catapult projectile launched by a siege engine, his massive Black Steel Spear—a weapon forged as thick as a standard human warrior's arm—bending into a terrifying, highly explosive arc under the sheer kinetic speed of his descent, before slamming his steel straight toward Rolo's shoulder line with a physical force engineered to split mountains and shatter solid rock!
CRASH-LANG—!!!
The heavy Omen cleaver and the high-density steel spear collided head-on, unleashing a thunderous, concussive explosion of displaced air that rolled across the water plane like a wave!
This monumental, overhead jumping strike only forced Rolo's hunched chassis to lean forward by a microscopic fraction against the flags. However, Maxwell's offensive loop had by no means arrested its momentum. He suddenly, violently twisted his thick, pillar-like back muscles, displaying a preternatural, fluid flexibility that scored as completely inconsistent with the gargantuan mass of his physical body. A short, explosive punch surged directly toward Rolo's abdomen from the lower blind spot, the sheer impact sending the mutated perfumer flying backward through the air straight toward Fichel's tracking quadrant!
Having executed tactical deployments parallel to Maxwell's shield for numerous seasons, Fichel naturally decoded the parameters of the combo within a microsecond. He bent his knees low to the stone, gathering the full measure of his internal physical output, before unleashing a powerful, earth-shattering upward slash with his greatsword. Rolo's body absorbed the full weight of the iron in mid-air, thick torrents of dark crimson spraying across the masonry as his chassis flew backward with a violent whoosh, crashing heavily into a thick limestone retaining wall. In an instant, the ancient masonry crumbled into dust, a massive cloud of gray earth and pulverized rock billowing up to bury his location.
Maxwell possessed absolute zero intention to grant his opponent a single watch of runway to restore his breath. He stomped his massive boot hard against the floorboards, thrusting his black steel spear straight toward Rolo's coordinates inside the center of the smoke screen, determined to pierce completely through his heart with a solitary, high-velocity thrust!
However, the precise watch his silhouette disappeared into the dense dust and ash, a brilliant, toxic blue mist suddenly materialized directly before his eyes.
THUMP—!!!
A deep, extraordinarily powerful, and completely un-natural heartbeat suddenly resonated inside his ears, the sound so immense it caused the entire surface world to fall into a dead, absolute silence within a microsecond. Maxwell's internal processing centers registered a sudden shockwave of biological panic as his transplanted dragon heart explicitly skipped a single beat inside his chest cavity.
The high-purity steel spear tip that had been driving through the smoke was suddenly, violently gripped by a strange, iron-like force that defied his muscles, followed closely by an echoing respiration sound that sounded exactly like a great leviathan sucking in a vast torrent of sea water. The exact cross of the watch Rolo exhaled the breath, the sheer pneumatic pressure generated by his lungs blew every solitary drop of dust and smoke completely out of the junction within a microsecond!
"You..." Maxwell lifted his eyes to audit the unfamiliar, terrifying silhouette fronting his weapon, an indescribable wave of pure structural absurdity and freezing instinctive dread instantaneously filling every corner of his massive frame. "What specific class of demon has your flesh mutated to inhabit?"
"I?"
Rolo lowered his bulging, bloodshot crimson eyes to monitor the parameters of his own terrifyingly muscular, expanded body. The lightweight silk and leather armor of his Perfumer robes had been completely, systematically torn to shreds by the growth of his muscles, and sharp, ridged Omen horns had aggressively erupted through the skin to coat his shoulders, his back, his ribs, and his lower legs in a dense layer of bone armor. A surging, volatile current of the Defiled Aromatic coursed furiously through his arterial lines, causing his entire biological vessel to burn within a dark golden, incandescent divine flame of the Crucible.
"My name defines Rolo—" the monster spoke, his physical stature and muscle density now scoring as completely identical to the parameters of a fully matured Omen champion, a mocking, jagged sneer baring his gums to the dark. "The supreme Omen Hunter, Rolo."
30+ chapters are available now and daily updates! @/Authorzero