Chapter 38—The Breaking of the Crown.
Chapter 38—The Breaking of the Crown.
Julian Vance couldn’t breathe.
He pulled against his S-Rank broadsword with every ounce of physical strength his body possessed, the thick veins in his forearms bulging against his white mithril armor until his blood vessels threatened to burst.
Yet the massive, lightning-infused steel blade remained utterly immovable—held fast between Kaelen’s thumb and index finger like a cheap wooden twig stuck in dried cement.
The blue lightning dancing along the edge of the blade didn’t just fade; it was systematically dismantled.
The second the roaring electrical mana touched the invisible boundary of Kaelen’s ten-meter [Spatial Domain], the high-frequency magical structure, unrevealed atom by atom, vanished into microscopic black vacuum tears that hummed with a low, menacing hiss.
"Impossible..." Julian rasped, heavy drops of sweat pouring down his pale, terrified face.
"The anti-spatial pillars... they sealed all spatial mana within fifty meters! You shouldn’t be able to channel a second single portal! You shouldn’t even be able to move!"
"You built your pillars based on standard spatial theory," Kaelen said softly, his calm, double-layered voice cutting through the deafening silence that had blanketed eighty thousand spectators.
"You assumed spatial magic was merely a tool used to jump from point A to point B. You never realized that high-density Void is space itself. You cannot lock a room using the very air inside it."
Kaelen’s fingers twitched with a microscopic pulse of dark energy.
CRACK!
A violent, localized sonic shockwave erupted from the exact point of contact. The pristine white mithril broadsword—an ancient heirloom weapon forged by grandmaster smiths and passed down through three generations of the High House of Vance—shattered into a dozen jagged, glowing metal fragments that rained down onto the white sand.
Julian screamed in sheer horror as the kinetic backlash blew him off his feet. He crashed heavily into the sand pit ten paces away, his white silk cape tearing away and his golden family crest tumbling into the dirt.
Up in the central VIP balcony, Marquis Vance slammed his armored fists against the polished marble railing, his face turning an apocalyptic shade of crimson.
"STAND UP, JULIAN! DRAW YOUR SECONDARY BLADE AND FLAY THAT COMMONER ALIVE! DO NOT EMBARRASS OUR BLOODLINE!"
Down in the ring, Julian scrambled backward on his hands and knees, his eyes wide with wild, unadulterated fear. He reached frantically for the jewel-encrusted dagger at his hip, his trembling, slick fingers barely managing to unsheathe the glowing red steel.
"STAY BACK!" Julian shrieked, waving the dagger wildly in midair as Kaelen took a slow, deliberate step forward.
"I am a high noble of the kingdom! My bloodline rules the military grid! Touch me, and my father will hang your entire family from the city gates!"
Kaelen didn’t answer. He didn’t even draw a blade.
He simply crossed the physical distance between them in a fraction of a microsecond. He didn’t use a spatial portal or a flashy teleportation array; he relied entirely on his newly refined physical stats following his Mid-Stage Ascension, his body blurring into a dark, razor-thin streak across the white arena sand.
THWACK!
Before Julian could even raise his dagger to strike, Kaelen’s left boot snapped forward in a brutal, bone-crushing front kick straight to Julian’s chest plate.
The white mithril armor caved inward with a sickening metallic crunch. The massive kinetic impact lifted the noble heir clean off his feet, launching him thirty feet through the air like a discarded toy before he crashed headfirst into one of the black iron anti-spatial pillars lining the ring.
BOOM!
The heavy iron pillar shook violently, deep spiderweb cracks spreading across its runic surface as Julian slumped to the ground, spitting a mouthful of dark, clotted blood and gasping for air as three of his ribs fractured instantly.
The entire colosseum was dead silent. Commoners and nobles alike sat in frozen disbelief, their jaws hanging open as they watched the undisputed prodigy of the noble faction get dismantled like a fragile glass doll.
"Is this the strength of the High House of Vance?" Kaelen’s voice echoed like a dark funeral bell across the arena.
He walked calmly toward the slumped noble, his hands casually tucked into the pockets of his dark coat. "Is this the bloodline superiority your father preaches from his velvet throne?"
Julian coughed up another splatter of crimson onto his chest, his arrogance completely shattered, replaced by a desperate, pathetic instinct to survive. He reached into his leather belt pouch with a shaking, blood-stained hand and pulled out a jagged, crimson glass crystal—an illegal A-rank combat stimulant provided by his father for ultimate emergencies.
"Die... die... DIE!" Julian choked out, driving the sharp crimson crystal directly into his neck.
SHRRRR!
A wave of unstable, corrupted red mana exploded from Julian’s body in a scalding heatwave. His eyes turned completely pitch-black, his muscles swelling grotesquely beneath his ruined armor as the forbidden drug forced his mana core into a suicidal, volatile overdrive. The surrounding air scorched, turning the fine arena sand into hot, bubbling sheets of glass.
[WARNING: TARGET HAS ENTERED CORRUPTED OVERDRIVE]
[TARGET LEVEL TEMPORARILY BOOSTED TO 27—UNSTABLE A-RANK STATS]
"I WILL TEAR YOU APART!" Julian roared, his voice sounding like a feral beast as he lunged at Kaelen, his bare hands transformed into sharp, deadly claws of roaring blood-fire!
The noble crowd gasped in terror, sensing the sudden, dangerous shift in power. Marquis Vance smirked maliciously from his balcony, confident that the raw, violent weight of an A-Rank berserker would shred Kaelen’s flesh to bone.
Kaelen didn’t even flinch.
As the roaring red berserker reached within three feet of his frame, Kaelen snapped his right hand out of his coat, his fingers locked into a singular, predatory claw formation that hummed with cosmic static.
[SKILL: VOID ANNIHILATION—GRAVITY GRASP]
SHOOOOOM!
A localized, spherical vacuum tear opened directly inside Julian’s chest cavity.
The terrifying momentum of Julian’s A-Rank lunge froze instantly mid-air.
The massive crimson mana radiating from his body was violently sucked inward, pulled directly into the gravitational singularity Kaelen had created between his palms.
Julian gasped, his black eyes bulging as the dark Void energy stripped away his berserker aura, crushing the corrupted blood fire until it collapsed into a tiny, harmless spark of static electricity.
"Your strength is borrowed," Kaelen whispered, stepping directly into Julian’s guard before the noble could drop.
"Your magic is sloppy. And your lineage is nothing more than a fragile mantle built on the backs of the weak."
Kaelen grabbed Julian by the collar of his ruined white armor, lifting the swollen, gasping noble high above his head with a single arm.
The entire arena held its breath, eighty thousand people frozen in terror.
Kaelen turned his galaxy-bright eyes toward the central VIP balcony, locking his gaze directly onto Marquis Vance, whose face had drained of every drop of color.
"Look closely, Marquis," Kaelen called out, his double-layered, cosmic voice booming across the grand colosseum. "This is the future of your noble era."
Kaelen slammed Julian face-first into the stone ring floor with terrifying, earth-shattering force.
CRACK-BOOM!
The marble floor of Arena Alpha shattered into thousands of jagged rocks, a massive three-foot crater opening beneath the impact point. Julian Vance let out one final, pathetic gurgle before his body went completely limp, his system indicators flashing red as he dropped into a state of deep, irreversible critical trauma.
[TARGETNEUTRALIZED: JULIAN VANCE]
[VICTORY DECLARED: KAELEN]
For three long seconds, no one moved. No one spoke. The silence was absolute, suffocating, and utterly terror-inducing.
Then, Kaelen stood up straight, brushing a speck of white dust off his dark sleeve. He looked down at the unconscious noble heir lying broken at his feet, then looked up at the sky.
Above the colosseum, the orange afternoon sun was suddenly swallowed by a thick, ominous bank of blood-red clouds.
WAAAAAIL!
A secondary, far louder emergency horn sounded from the southern city walls—not the academy alarm, but the Royal Military Warning Siren.
The sky above the capital turned a sickening, bruised crimson as three massive, crimson light pillars shot into the heavens from the southern district—the signal that the city’s outer defensive wards had been completely severed from the inside.
The Red-Eyed Player’s prophecy had begun.
"LIES TREASON" Marquis Vance roared from his balcony, drawing his golden ceremonial sword and pointing it directly down at Kaelen.
"HE IS AN ACCOMPLICE OF THE BLOOD CULT! GUARDS, EXECUTORS, KILL HIM NOW. PURGE ALL COMMONER CANDIDATES."
Over fifty black-armored noble enforcers leaped from the VIP balconies, drawing high-grade anti-magic blades as they descended toward the ring like a swarm of ravenous, black-feathered crows.
Spectators began screaming in pure panic, trampling each other as they scrambled for the exit gates.
At the same time, from the player tunnel, Tsubaki and Lyra emerged onto the arena floor.
Lyra held a newly retrieved secondary steel blade, while Tsubaki carried a heavy leather duffel containing their vital supplies, both of them moving instantly to form a tight defensive triangle around Kaelen.
Kaelen slowly pulled the cold silver serpent coin from his coat pocket, his dark eyes glowing with an unyielding, terrifying light as the sky bled red above them.
"The tournament is over," Kaelen said, his voice quiet yet chillingly clear amidst the rising panic of eighty thousand screaming spectators. "Now, the real war begins."