Looking at the crowd of undead spectators filling all the standing rows of the circular arena, John felt a surge of giddiness rush through his body.

This time, we are going all the way, he grinned, staring into the expressionless visage of the familiar man in the distance. Hmm, he looks like the one I met last time.

Pulling on his Feral Intuition, he smiled as the information about his upcoming opponent flooded into him.

[Echo of Territory Hierarch {C⋆⋆}]

Along with the name above his head, John found out that the weakest point of the Hierarch’s body was slightly to the left of where humans have the belly button and that he was vulnerable to Blessed and Nature affinities.

The man slowly stood up and waved his open hand in a welcoming gesture.

It feels like his movements are robotic and lacking any emotion.

[Attention!

You have entered the Hierarch’s Colosseum.

The rules are simple, use everything you have and fight your way through all fifteen waves. Only after you defeat the last combatant do you earn the right to face the Hierarch himself]

“Welcome, challengers, to my Colosseum. Within these walls, Fate awaits, hungry for your blood and thirsting for your glory. Brace yourselves, for here, only the strongest survive.”

After the short speech, the Hierarch sat down and the large gate below his throne started opening.

Giving his team one last look before charging into the first wave, John realized that he was the only one with an eager smile. The Aerilians’ faces ranged from determined, uncertain, all the way to worried. Even the madwoman Friala’el remained stuck to Ulian’al’s side, and her steely eyes were carefully scanning the Colosseum in cold efficiency.

“Come,” Dilah’ec softly whispered as she ran by him and continued sprinting toward the east, with Galan’il right behind her.

Trusting her, John abandoned his idea to dive into the fray and stuck to them.

“You see,” she continued in a hushed voice after they made it more than two hundred feet from the main group, “this is the first time the royals are actually in life-threatening danger. That’s why they are so apprehensive.”

“What about the time we Ulian’al attacked the Silver Enclave?” John wondered.

“No, everyone knew that killing the princes was off limits. Besides, no one but Duraq’er would be able to take Friala’el on their own, and they wouldn’t fight to the death anyway,” Galan’il explained. “Funnily enough, back then you were the greatest threat to his life. Let’s go?”

“One moment,” John forestalled and sent a mental poke toward the majestic presence resting in his right arm’s tattoo.

“Con-sume?” A warbled voice answered to him, sending him not only the voice, but also a distinct feeling of hunger in reply.

Oh yeah, have at them, girl.

A billowing gray fog rushed from his arm and formed into a twenty-five-foot long, lithe beast. At first glance, her dark-gray scales and a zigzagging pattern of white streaks running from the crown of her head to the tip of her tail made her look like a snake. However, she immediately dispelled that belief as she lifted the top half of her body up on short yet powerful legs and took in her surroundings. Sniffing twice, she snapped her snout toward the surviving zombies and charged forward like a tidal wave.

Luckily, John made sure to present her evolved form to his teammates beforehand, so the Aerilians sweeping up the last remnants of the first wave welcomed their new reinforcement with happy shouts.

Few minutes flew by as the first four waves came and went in rapid succession, and even the fifth, led by Gadris, was easily crushed under their relentless attack.

They grew noticeably stronger, John noted, after fighting side by side with the other front liners. Especially Duraq’er and Friala’el.

The fall of the Skeleton General signified the end of the first set of monsters and the beginning of their pre-planned strategy. Just as the first Rothounds charged through the gate, John watched Duraq’er slap one of the leading hounds with the side of his blade and roughly drag its unconscious form to the side, away from the fight.

“Got it,” he shouted after breaking its limbs and pinning it to the ground by the patchy hide of its neck.

With the creature secured, they dispatched the rest of the pack and piled them together. After that, Loras’ki, the Aerilian healer, pulled out a larger metallic bottle and sprinkled its contents over the pile and lifted his pointer finger up in a sign of success. Taking that as a cue, John commanded his Flameling to throw a fireball on its top.

The pile caught aflame like a kindling and rapidly turned into a pyre of wildly dancing golden flames.

“Damn, if not for the current circumstances, I’d say that it’s beautiful,” John sighed, remembering the pyres he loved watching as a kid during the festival called Burning of the Witches.

Alas, the remains proved a poor source of fuel and less than a minute later, the flames died out, leaving behind only a smudge of golden dust.

“Duraq’er, if you may,” Melis’ar gestured at his Knight-Protector, who promptly snapped the hound’s neck with his bare hands and dragged the motionless corpse back.

Continuing with the same strategy, they cleared the next three waves without problems and reached Karil and his faithful Denmother.

Okay, hopefully we don’t fuck this up, John hyped himself and jogged to Friala’el’s side.

The plan was for them to face the incoming mini-boss together.

It began like any of the previous waves, with a wild pack pouring out of the open gate. Those were, however, a concern for the rest of his team, because his target was somewhere behind them.

Wait for it, he chanted in his mind as he leaned back with his trusty javelin. Wait for it…

A mangy, black snout with a width of a small car passed through the darkness behind the gate and a heartbeat later, John let his weapon fly.

The eleven-pound projectile moved through the air like a bullet, yet the Denmother’s reflexes proved its match as the monster tilted its head and narrowly saved its left eye. At least, the tip slammed to the side of its head and carved a fist-sized groove from the edge of its maw to its left ear.

The beast yelped in pain and focused its pitch black eyes directly on him.

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“Got its attention,” John yelled out and began retreating, luring both the beast and its rider away from the main fight.

His weapon arrived a second later, and he briefly considered using a little nudge from his Fate to increase the odds of it hitting something vulnerable.

No, I’ll keep it for the Hierarch.

Twisting his body toward the enraged Denmother, he launched another javelin. Not wasting time to see if it hit, he continued running until he reached the western wall. A meaty thud and an enraged roar came a moment later, making it trivial to pick its precise location by its heavy steps.

The beast was gaining speed and eating away John’s lead, but it wasn’t fast enough to reach him before it was too late.

Almost there, John grinned, standing with his back to the wall and facing the incoming monstrosity. The thing was a bloated, pudgy Rothound the size of a mini-bus, and there was only madness and rage in its dark eyes.

His javelin returned to his hand, and John leaned back for the last throw.

Three hundred feet, he estimated as he watched its movements.

Two-fifty…

Two hundred!

Doing a subtle nod with his chin, he noticed Friala’el burst into a sprint of her own, running toward John from the side.

One-fifty…

One hundred!

Sending commands to all his minions at once, he waited for another heartbeat as the area between them got engulfed in a raging sandstorm.

And now! He let his javelin loose.

A lightning bolt and a bright-blue ball of flame struck from above at the same moment, briefly highlighting the silhouette of a wolfman sitting on the ridge behind its neck. John, though, couldn’t spare more time, because the dark form barreling through the sand was about to smash him into the wall. Luckily, his evolved body allowed inhuman feats of mobility, and he did three quick strides and executed a marvelous wall run to evacuate from the point of collision.

A second later, the half-blind beast dove out of the sand storm at full speed and slammed head-first into the wall. At that exact time, Friala’el fell from the sky like a meteor and smashed ax-first right between the dinner-plate-sized vertebrae of the Denmother’s upper back.

“Eat shit!” She yelled as bone and rotted meat exploded in all directions like a bomb. The lower part of the monster’s body fell limp, and the colossal creature lost balance and tipped over to its side.

Karil, the Master of Kennels, evaded the devastating blow in time and was about to tear into Friala’el’s side with his claws in retaliation. That proved to be a mistake when a golden stiletto struck from below, slicing open his inner thigh and burying up to the hilt into his groin.

Ouch, John winced in sympathy seeing the half man howl in agony and desperately try to hold the wiggling weapon still.

Karil’s life was mercifully struck down shortly after when Witherfang pounced on his back and bit his whole head off.

“Con-sume!” She warbled in glee and placed both her forelegs next to the headless corpse. After that, she opened her jaw wide and through some unknown ability drained life—or undead—energy right out of it, turning the remains into a dried, bony husk.

As usual, Duraq’er kept a single Rothound alive, letting Loras’ki first incinerate the normal hounds and then repeat the same with the Denmother. When the healer tried to drag the drained husk next to the large beast, Karil’s remains proved so brittle that the bones crumpled like twigs, and the healer deemed the body sufficiently disposed.

“Good job, both of you. You handled that very well,” Ulian’al came to praise them as the last remnants of Denmother burned away. “The second-hardest fight is behind us.”

The next waves contained Rotfiends and Deathfiends, but John wasn’t the only one who grew more powerful during the last week. The Aerilians showed their prowess as they worked in small groups and efficiently cut the hulking behemoths apart. Duraq’er, once again, handled the task of kiting a single Deathfiend in the far side of the Colosseum until Loras’ki burned the Rotfiends’ corpses away. The only difference was during the fourteenth wave, where they agreed to leave a single Rotfiend intact in case the encounter worked similarly to the Sector Overlord’s enrage.

“Are you ready?” Melis’ar broke the calm with a loud shout after the last corpse crumbled into golden dust.

A couple of nods and agreeable noises came as a reply, and he gestured at Duraq’er to finish the maimed Rotfiend off.

Okay, let’s see what happens now.

“A valiant show of might,” the Hierarch declared, standing up, “but it is time to end this,” he finished and lifted both hands toward the sky.

A pulse of sickly-green light exploded from the sky, and covered the only corpse in the Colosseum.

So far, so good.

It got dragged near the gate and reshaped into a human-like abomination.

The problem with it was, the process lacked the necessary building materials and ran out shortly after.

[Failed summoning of Rotting Behemoth {C}]

“That’s it?” Asked Sakhul’la after a small chuckle.

Melis’ar gave John an appreciative nod, and they moved in for the kill.

Previously, the thing flopped into his gray blood and melted off so he couldn’t get a good look at it, but now he realized that it reminded him of slimes from fantasy games.

The thing was a deflated ball of skin with a misshapen head on top, and it undulated as it slowly dragged its formless body toward them.

“Better keep a distance, we don’t know what it’s capable of,” warned Duraq’er, stopping fifty feet from it.

It turned out that it wasn’t capable of pretty much anything. Its mobility was abysmal, and it lacked any ranged attack options. However, its resilience seemed even greater than that of the fully-powered Behemoth due to its amorphous form.

At least Ulian’al’s red lighting and Dilah’ec’s concentrated beams are slowly turning the oily hide into charcoal, John nodded and threw another javelin.

The weapon impacted a blacked patch, but the surrounding skin rippled and absorbed most of the force, letting the tip sink barely an inch deep.

Still not enough.

It took them ten minutes of relentless bombardment to bring the encounter near its end, but before they delivered the finishing blows, they stopped. The failed behemoth was now a barely-moving pile of torn and charred flesh, letting them step away and initiate the next part of their strategy.

Sakhul’la walked to the edge of the Colosseum and started placing complex contraptions on the ground. They looked like a mash of copper wires with a cherry-sized yellow crystal in its middle, and as he placed one after another, the outer perimeter of the arena transformed into a minefield.

At first, John was a little reluctant to have live explosives everywhere around them, but Dilah’ec explained that those yellow crystals were enchanted with blessed affinity. That meant they would only trigger in proximity to undead creatures and even if one of them was caught in the blast, the explosion would cause light burns at most.

Next, John donated a trace amount of his gray blood to coat their weapons with the deadly substance. It was a heavily debated option, but eventually they decided that the risk of an unfortunate accident was lower than the possibility of inflicting incurable injuries on the main boss. Their only solace was that without being actively fed, the substance couldn’t survive outside John’s body for long—not unless someone made an entire lake out of it.

After that, everyone pulled the set of talismans from their storage devices and clipped them to their robes, guaranteeing quick access in case of emergency. Lastly, Loras’ki pulled out a golden orb shining with bright light, and activated a silver symbol on its top, making it open like a flower and release a pulse of energy that left a warm feeling in John’s chest.

“This is it,” Melis’ar sighed. “We did the best we could to prepare, and now it is time to see if it was enough.”

“We got this,” Hakar’li tried to cheer the rest up, but it was clear the mood was filled with apprehension.

“May we?” Ulian’al asked, and after getting a nod from Melis’ar, he sent another crimson lightning bolt into the behemoth.

Dilah’ec, John, and the others joined in and unleashed another barrage of abilities and surprisingly, the finishing blow ended up with Friala’el. She threw her massive ax from the air, and it finally penetrated the burnt hide and sunk into the body like a stone into a pond.

I wonder how she pulls her weapon out of that in time, John frowned, but then laughed out when he noticed a familiar mist flying from the corpse and into Friala’el’s outstretched palm.

Shortly after the behemoth died, the Territory Hierchar stood up from his throne, and without a word pulled out his crystalline saber and performed a simple vertical slash. The space before him split like an open wound, and he stepped into it with a single lazy step.

What is he…

A similar phenomenon repeated a couple of feet to his left and a moment later, the pale man in black robe jumped out, leading with a curved slash toward Duraq’er’s back.

“Fuck!” John cursed and triggered the Temporal Iteration.