Chapter 39—The Red Sky Purge.
Chapter 39—The Red Sky Purge.
The blood-red rain began to fall the exact second the glass and stone vaulting of the arena ceiling shattered into a million failing shards.
It was not water. It was a thick, copper-smelling drizzle heavily infused with raw, corrupted blood-mana—the unmistakable signature of Malakor’s ancient cult.
It rained down relentlessly from the bruised crimson clouds that had completely swallowed the afternoon sun, casting a sickly, apocalyptic glare over the entirety of the Capital’s central district.
Panic erupted across the grand colosseum in an instantaneous wave of human terror.
Eighty thousand spectators shrieked in desperation, knocking over heavy velvet chairs, crushing iron railings, and trembling one another with the heavy exit gates.
But as the first waves of terrified nobles and commoners reached the arched exits, they found the iron bars dropped and locked from the outside by black-armored enforcers wearing the crest of the High House of Vance.
" NO ONE LEAVES! BY ORDER OF MARQUIS VANCE, THIS ENTIRE COMPLEX IS UNDER TOTAL CONTAINMENT!" a booming, magical voice echoed from the public announcers above.
"PURGE ALL COMMONER CANDIDATES! LEAVE NO ACCOMPLICES ALIVE TO TESTIFY!"
Over fifty black-armored nickel executors dropped from the upper VIP balconies directly into the wild send of Arena Alpha.
Their enchanted anti-magic greatsword hummed with a sickly purple aura designed to neutralize standard human mana circuits.
They didn’t just target Kaelen; they moved like a disciplined, ruthless slaughter squad, sweeping across the contestant tunnels to execute every non-noble student who had performed wee during the tournament rounds.
" BACK TO BACK! FROM A TRIANGLE!" Lyra screamed over the deafening din of the roaring crowd, shouting guards, and clashing steel.
Despite her bruised ribs and fractured mana pathways from her earlier fight inside vault B-4, she stepped up to Kaelen’s left flank without a single hesitation.
Her newly retrieved secondary steel blade flashed with a brilliant, stubborn silver light.
Beside her, Tsubaki stood on Kaelen’s right, his dark katana unsheathed, his pitch-black eyes cold, motionless, and dangerously focused amidst the rising bloodbath.
"They call this a purge?" Tsubaki growled, his voice dropping into an icy register as his dark blade whistled softly through the humid air, assuming a low, lethal combat stance.
" Let them bleed out their noble blood first."
Three black-armored executors lunged forward simultaneously from the front line, their heavy greatswords driving downward in a synchronized, triple sec execution arc aimed directly at Tsubaki’s head and shoulders.
CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!
Tsubaki didn’t retreat a single inch. He shifted his back foot by a fraction of an inch, his blade striking the flat sides of their heavy swords with blinding, godly precision.
He deflected all three massive strikes into the damp sand before executing a swift, spinning crescent counter-strike.
SWISH!
A crescent wave of pitch-black sword intent sheared clean through the thin leather joints of their neck armor. Three armored heads tumbled into the red-stained sand before the corpses even hit the marble floor.
"Right flank cleared! Keep pushing!" Lyra shouted, her secondary blade thrusting forward in a blinding beam of silver light that pierced the visor of a fourth executor.
Her holy mana detonated inside his helmet with a sickening, wet crunch, dropping him instantly onto his knees.
Yet for every enforcer they struck down, five more swarmed into the ring from the upper balconies, their purple anti-magic blades glistening under the crimson rain, their eyes devoid of mercy.
"Out of the way," Kaelen’s voice echoed—not loud, but carrying a heavy, cosmic vibration that made the surrounding stone floor violently tremble.
Kaelen took a single, deliberate step forward. His hands snapped out from his dark coat as his galaxy-specked violet eyes flared with terrifying, unyielding light.
[SKILL: VOID ANNIHILATION—DOMAIN CRUSH]
SHOOOOOOOM!
His ten-meter [spatial domain] expanded violently outward, blanketing the entire central section of the dueling ring.
The twenty executors rushing toward them with raised blades suddenly froze mid-stride.
The atmospheric pressure around their bodies skyrocketed tenfold as localized spatial tears snapped open like microscopic, invisible jaws across their heavy black armor plates.
CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH!
Steel plates folded like soaked paper. The high-grade anti-magic armor meant to suppress commoner spells was crushed inward under the absolute weight of spatial compression, snapping bones, collapsing ribs, and tearing muscle in a brutal, simultaneous execution.
Twenty armored bodies collapsed onto the blood-soaked sand, lifeless and utterly broken within two seconds.
Up on the central VIP balcony, Marquis Vance’s face twisted into something demonic and hysterical as he watched his elite personal guard get slaughtered like helpless livestock.
"USELESS INSECTS! ALL OF YOU!" the Marquis bellowed, his voice amplified across the entire colosseum by a crimson artifact resting on his chest.
"If the executors cannot kill him, I will erase this entire ring myself! No commoner trash will live to humiliate my bloodline!"
The Marquis didn’t wait for his generals to advise him or pull him back.
He drew a long, jewel-encrusted golden staff from his back—the Orb of Dominion, an S-Rank relic handed down by the royal founders of the kingdom. He slammed the butt of the staff violently against the marble balcony floor, channeling every drop of his high-tier noble mana into the artifact.
BOOOOOOM!
A blinding, hundred-meter-wide array of golden runic circles unfolded in the crimson sky directly above Arena Alpha.
The atmospheric pressure dropped to absolute zero as a colossal, golden spear of compressed, apocalyptic destructive mana coalesced in the clouds, pointed straight at the center of the ring where Kaelen, Lyra, and Tsubaki stood.
[WARNING: S-RANK DESTRUCTIVE MAGIC DETECTED—ORB OF DOMINION]
[ESTIMATED IMPACT RADIUS: 200 METERS]
[SURVIVAL RATE WITHIN RADIUS: 0.01%]
"He’s going to vaporize the entire colosseum floor!" Lyra gasped, her blood running cold as she looked up at the terrifying, sun-like golden spear hanging overhead.
"He isn’t concerned about the thousands of citizens trapped in the stands! He’s completely lost his mind!"
"He wants to eliminate every single witness so he can rewrite the history of today," Kaelen said coldly.
His mind raced at lightspeed, analyzing the tactical environment and calculating every variable.
His physical body was intact, but deep inside his chest, his newly expanded meridians were humming at dangerous, unstable thresholds.
The massive amount of Void mana he had channeled to absorb Malakor’s core and crush Julian in the previous round was pushing his internal core into a temporary [Void Overload].
[WARNING: VOID CORE OVERLOAD AT 89%]
[CRITICAL RISK OF PERMANENT MERIDIAN COLLAPSE IF S-RANK SPELL IS CONFRONTED HEAD-ON]
I cannot block an S-Rank orbital strike while my core is overloaded, Kaelen calculated instantly, his teeth grinding as violet sparks leaked from his lips. We need to exit this physical plane right now.
Kaelen reached into his dark coat and pulled out the cold, heavy silver serpent coin given to him by the Red-Eyed Player in Vault B-4.
With a single, violent motion, Kaelen crushed the silver coin in his palm, flooding its internal runes with a concentrated burst of high-density Void mana.
CRACK!
The coin shattered into glowing silver dust that floated in the air like burning stars.
Instantly, the white sand beneath their feet buckled and dissolved into nothingness.
A towering, dark crimson vortex snapped open directly behind them, tearing through the ancient bedrock of the arena and revealing a pitch-black, swirling abyss that led deep into the uncharted catacombs of the Undercity.
"INTO THE PORTAL! NOW!" Kaelen barked, grabbing Lyra by her shoulder and shoving her toward the swirling vortex.
Tsubaki didn’t hesitate, leaping backward into the rift while keeping his katana drawn to protect their flank from stray executor arrows raining down from above.
"YOU WILL NOT ESCAPE MY JUSTICE!" Marquis Vance screamed from his balcony, thrusting his golden staff downward with all his remaining mana!
SHOOOOOOOOOM!
The giant golden spear fell from the sky like a dying star, burning the very oxygen into plasma as it descended upon the arena ring to obliterate everything in its path!
Kaelen stood alone at the mouth of the collapsing portal.
His galaxy-bright eyes stared straight up at the falling apocalyptic spear without a trace of fear or regret.
With his left hand, he unleashed one final, massive wave of Void energy, bending the physical space directly above the rift to create a temporary kinetic buffer.
BOOM-CRASH!
The golden spear struck Kaelen’s spatial buffer just ten feet above his head.
The resulting energy explosion obliterated the entire marble arena floor, throwing a blinding shockwave of white-hot plasma, shattered stone, and liquid fire across the entire colosseum.
As the blinding blast wave consumed his vision and melted the surrounding pillars into slag, Kaelen fell backward into the swirling crimson vortex.
Through the roaring fire, spatial collapse, and fading light of the upper world, a single figure stood waiting on a stone ledge on the other side of the dark void portal—the Red-Eyed Player.
His blank white mask was illuminated by the crimson glow of the abyss as he reached out a pale, gaunt hand while the spatial tear began to snap shut behind them.
[ALERT: SPATIAL COLLAPSE IN PROGRESS]
[CRITICAL SYSTEM OVERLOAD DETECTED—VOID CORE AT 94%]
[DESTINATION: UNDERCITY ZONE ZERO—UNKNOWN TERRITORY]
Kaelen’s vision flickered black as the portal closed completely, severing them from the upper world and burying the Capital under a shroud of fire, panic, and blood.