John arrived back in the familiar confines of the giant tree. The air was still and peaceful, a welcome change from the tension of the 30th floor. Max, who had been tending to the various plants and creatures within the tree, turned her attention to John, her eyes widening slightly as she took in the sight of the enormous snake coiled near the base of the tree. It shifted slightly, its obsidian scales rustling against the wooden floor, but it made no aggressive moves, its golden eyes fixed on John with a curious intensity. “Max,” John said, his voice carrying through the spacious interior, “could you see to this snake’s injuries? He’s… a guest. I’ll need to give him a name eventually, but I think I’ll wait until he can speak for himself.” He gave Max a reassuring smile. “Also,” John continued, turning his attention back to practical matters, “please let Seraphine know I’d like to speak with her in a day or two. I should be able to offer her some assistance soon, and we need to confirm we’re still on the same page regarding our agreement.”
“Jinn,” John said, his voice resonating with newfound confidence, “I’m ready to ascend to the 40th floor.” A silent flash, and he was gone, leaving only the faint, electric scent of ozone lingering in the air. Max approached the massive snake, its curious golden eyes following her every move. She offered a reassuring smile, her expression warm and inviting. “Well then,” she murmured softly, gently extending a hand towards its injured jaw, “let’s get you fixed up.”
John arrived in a vast colosseum, the air thick with the stench of stale blood and the roar of a restless crowd. He couldn't see them clearly yet, but he could hear the shuffling of countless feet, the clatter of bone on bone. He remained calm, focused, his senses heightened. Then, with a deafening groan of rusted metal, the gates surrounding the arena began to open. They were massive, iron portcullises, their surfaces caked in a dark, viscous substance—a macabre mix of rust and dried blood, the two indistinguishable after countless battles. What did it matter, in the end? Then, the first of them stepped into view, emerging from the shadows of one of the open gates. It was a minotaur, but unlike any John had faced before. This one was undead, its flesh rotting and decaying, its eyes glowing with an eerie green light. And behind it, a horde—dozens, perhaps even hundreds—of similar creatures pressed forward, their guttural moans echoing through the colosseum. The worst part? Six more gates were slowly grinding open, promising even more horrors to come.
Hundreds of them surged towards John, a tide of rotting flesh and rusted metal. He simply smiled, a chillingly calm expression on his face. “Max,” he said, his voice cutting through the roar of the crowd, “play ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’” Then, a deep, resonant toll echoed through the colosseum, a sound unlike others, John had heard it many times before. It wasn’t the usual celebratory chime; it was a somber, almost mournful bell, and its effect was immediate. The cacophony of the crowd vanished, replaced by an absolute, unnerving silence. This was a different bell, a different song—something new. Then, with a swift, precise movement, John kicked the first minotaur that reached him, his foot connecting with its knee with a sickening snap. The creature’s leg buckled, the bone shattering, and as its head fell towards John, he delivered a powerful punch, his fist connecting with the decaying skull with a wet thud, causing it to explode in a shower of bone fragments and gore.
He launched himself upwards in a powerful backflip, his body arcing through the air. As he reached the apex of his jump, he spread his arms wide, his shadow stretching across the horde below like the wings of a vast, predatory crow, a dark omen against the backdrop of the silent arena. As John began his descent, a green bamboo fly rod materialized in his right hand, appearing as if summoned by his will. He cast the line with a flick of his wrist, channeling a surge of Time-Chi through the line, enhancing its sharpness and speed. It shot out fifty feet, a shimmering thread of temporal energy. Then, as he fell, he began to spin, his body rotating with impossible speed, each movement precise and calculated, guided by his enhanced perception of time. One pass was all it took. The fly line, now taut and razor-sharp, sliced through the undead horde with terrifying efficiency, severing limbs and torsos with effortless precision. But it wasn’t just a single pass; his spinning trajectory, amplified by the flow of Time-Chi, created a devastating vortex of death, each rotation cutting through the throng, leaving the minotaur's in three distinct pieces. Before the first drop of ichor could even touch the ground, John propelled himself upwards again, a blur of motion against the backdrop of the silent colosseum. To the unseen onlookers in the stands, he was no longer just a man; he was death incarnate, a force of nature far more terrifying than the undead minotaur's he so effortlessly decimated.
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John’s cold eyes flickered with a sudden glint of amusement, a predatory smile briefly touching his lips—a stark contrast to the carnage surrounding him. Then, as quickly as it had appeared, the fly rod vanished, disappearing as if it had never been there. A low chuckle rumbled in his chest, escalating into full-blown laughter that echoed through the eerily silent colosseum, the sound strangely unsettling in the sudden absence of the crowd’s previous roar. He then bent down, seizing a severed leg in each hand—one still clad in decaying, rusted armor, the other a bare, rotting limb, the contrast grotesque and jarring. Then, in a blink, he was gone, reappearing amidst the oncoming horde. They want a brutal show? he thought, his laughter abruptly ceasing, replaced by a chillingly calm focus. Let’s not disappoint.
The fly rod had been efficient, clean, almost clinical. But these legs… these were different. They were visceral, brutal, far more impactful visually. The unarmored leg practically disintegrated in his grip, chunks of rotting flesh and bone scattering across the blood-soaked arena floor. A minotaur lunged, its decaying jaws snapping shut just inches from John’s face, the fetid breath washing over him. But at the last possible instant, he spun, using the momentum to shove the jagged end of the leg bone into the creature’s open mouth. The bone crunched through teeth and skull, emerging from the back of its head in a spray of black ichor. He dropped the ruined limb, instantly seizing both arms of the now-impaled minotaur. With a brutal kick to its chest, he sent the creature hurtling backwards. The arms tore free from their sockets with sickening rips, the sound echoing through the silent colosseum, propelled towards the wall like grotesque projectiles. The impact was devastating. The armless minotaur, its momentum unchecked, slammed into the wall with a thunderous crash, the force shattering the stone and sending chunks of debris flying, mixed with a fresh spray of blood and ichor. The chest plate, instead of preventing the explosion, contained it, focusing the force into a devastating outward blast of bone fragments, gore, and shattered metal.
As the body flew off in one direction, John moved in the other, a single, purposeful step carrying him into the churning heart of the horde. With each swing of a severed arm, a sickening crunch of bone resonated through the colosseum, the sound a gruesome counterpoint to the wet thuds of decaying flesh impacting decaying flesh. At some point in this macabre ballet of unadulterated violence, a shift occurred. The usual, monotonous moans of the undead began to morph—not into roars of rage, but into something far more disturbing: groans of pain, of genuine suffering, a sound utterly incongruous with creatures supposedly devoid of life. The crowd, if they were capable of coherent thought, would have expected such sounds from the living, not the dead. John’s laughter, sharp and chilling, echoed off the blood-slicked walls, transforming the arena into an eerie, macabre theater of death. How does one kill death? he thought, his mind a relentless engine of destruction. If one punch doesn’t do it, then how about a hundred? A thousand? The thought of his own demise was utterly absent, a foreign concept in this moment of brutal focus. Just keep hitting them. Just keep breaking them. Keep going until they stop moving. Simple enough—at least in his brutal, unwavering view.
John casually tossed the remains of the arms at the legs of an incoming minotaur, the decaying limbs tangling around its ankles and sending it crashing face-first at John’s feet—a grotesque parody of a stumble. With a swift, brutal motion, he seized a horn on each side of the bull’s head and ripped the beast in two, the sound of tearing flesh and snapping bone a jarring intrusion on the unnatural silence that hung heavy in the air. He then hurled the two horns at the remaining two minotaurs, the sharpened points finding their marks with deadly accuracy, each impact a final, decisive punctuation mark on this macabre scene. John then vanished, as if he had never been there, leaving behind only the carnage, the oppressive silence, and the lingering, cloying stench of death—a testament to his brutal efficiency.