Chapter 19: Fun
Three pairs of faint lights glimmered in the sea of darkness. One of golden, one of red, and one pair of green.
The bald monk, chanted a mantra and circulated energy into his eyes, revealing not just the whole of the arena, but the energy signatures and fluctuations of everything his sight could encompass.
Mila on the other hand, didn't have to do anything different. It seemed her eyes were just as accustomed to daylight as they were to darkness.
And it was a good thing that the lights were extinguished, for a reanimated hand was grasping the brunette’s shoulder. The hand seemed to be pressing on it hard, almost squeezing it out of color.
That was when the lovely, yet insane brunette then started to whisper into the darkness. Her eyes turned fully black, and her hushed murmurs seemed to transform from a single feminine voice, to numerous unholy whispers.
The whispers only lasted for a brief moment, but the hand seemed to have heard her— or at the very least somehow perceived her meaning even without ears.
It relaxed its grip, no longer firmly grasping her shoulder, but now resting upon it docile.
‘My son is not weak.’ She thought to herself.
‘If you win then you win, child, but if you lose…’
‘I’ll take care of you, baby. I’ll take good care of you…’
BOOM! BANG!
“Cole, I can't see anything!”
BOOM!
The people started to panic, and mass hysteria started to climb and intensify. Super collisions could be heard all around the crowd, but the perpetrators could not be seen.
The earth was constantly smashed near and around the panicking crowd, as stone and rock flew into them, injuring and even crippling the poor, sightless sheep.
“Yela! Hold on to my hand!”
BANG!
Cole and Yela heard a powerful explosion not even ten feet away from them. Wind and rocks blasted towards the two, as Cole hugged Yela away from the flying debris.
Most of them battered Cole’s back, but the boy could only do so much without proper sight— a stray rock then smashed into Yela’s shoulder blade, causing her to yelp in pain.
From the location of that nearby explosion, a golden light glowed dimly. That thunderous sound, and corresponding exploding crash, actually came from Balon who was struck down.
Flying and smashing into the crowd, his inevitable crash into stone was dampened only by numerous broken limbs, squashed muscle, and a few limp corpses.
One poor sod had his skull utterly cracked and broken open— unable to resist the momentous force between Balon’s mighty back, and the corresponding stone cold floor.
Miraculously though, a fair number of individuals actually survived his hard crash towards their otherwise soft bodies.
Ultimately many of them were crippled, but as they groaned miserably beneath Balon’s body, the young man thought to himself how lucky they were to even be breathing.
Unfortunately though, Zan was not going to allow his opponent to rest. From somewhere above he gripped both of his hands above his head, and descended from the skies.
BOOM!
The two handed hammer strike hit the center of Balon’s chest, intending to wheeze him out of air.
The strike’s powerful momentum transferred onto the poor folk beneath Balon, similarly smashing them towards the ground also.
Bone and muscle once again shattered upon the stone floor, but it was not Balon that suffered. The dragon child’s powerful and resilient scales rendered him mostly uninjured despite it all. Instead, it was the dozen or so people beneath Balon who were unluckily smashed into gore.
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In response, the red haired figure did not seem to register what he had done at all. In fact, he did not realize that he had just brutally sent a few remaining survivors into the afterlife.
The extreme pain and unnatural power coursing through him muddled his head and his senses.
The spiral energy continued to circulate through his body— except as it was his first time, he did not take into account what would happen if such raw and uncontrollable energy entered his brain.
He thought he had control of it, but he was simply wrong. Zan’s last remnant of coherent thought disappeared on his first collision with Balon, the golden black dragon.
As soon as their fists collided, a mighty wind extinguished all the fire sources within the underground arena. In that same manner, the lightswitch that was Zan’s logical thinking brain, had turned off.
Now, there was no more calculated thought, no more ingenious maneuvers. His automatic, sensory-reaction state was rendered useless as he could not feel his senses.
There was nothing going on in his mind but the sole presence of an enemy, and the consequent, corresponding actions to neutralize that threat.
What was left within his mind was subconscious instinct, and the life experiences he specifically had gone through, made that not a survival instinct, but a predatory one.
Neutralize. Erase the enemy. Destroy and obliterate them, until even their twitching muscles could no longer move.
WHOOSH!
Within his mind the mindless program executed, and the young man sent out a single punch that suddenly transformed into a myriad of strikes. Zan’s arms disappeared, as a constant blur of punches came down like torrential rain.
From the sound of the blows pounding down, it seemed as if Zan’s fists were striking metal instead of flesh.
…Yet it didn't matter all the same. The endless blurred strikes were like a turbo gatling gun assaulting a metal fortress.
The scales held on but Balon was being rocked from the blows. All the denizens that laid beneath him were already smashed into bloody pulp, while the broken bone inside those bodies already turned into shattered white fragments.
As the storm of blows continued, the soft corpses turned into flesh pulp then started to turn into stringy sinew and juice, while the shards of broken bone threatened to become white powder.
Balon’s shining, glistening scales seemed to take on years of wear and erosion in just the few moments of Zan’s relentless thrashing.
Suddenly though, the scales seemed to come alive, seemingly becoming sentient. The draconic scales on Balon’s body then started to shift into a mysterious and cryptic formation.
Unknown runic symbols were formed from the scales. Tiny golden lights appeared everywhere on his body resembling stars, and his veins shifted into straight lines that connected those glowing lights. The stars and connecting lines now looked just like glowing constellations on Balon’s body.
The sisters watching simply became numb to the transformations that took place. The degree to which their brother surpassed them was already unfathomable.
The bald monk however, finally could peer through the veil that would hide the children from even grandmasters.
The energy fluctuation, this particular vibrance and essence…It could only have come from members of high mutated royalty.
‘Draconic arts, dragon magic, essence of stars and flame…’
‘The core must be here…it’s true.’
Zan continued his gatling gun punches.
He was neglectful— almost dismissive of his opponent’s internal and external changes.
All of a sudden his infinite myriad punches were then stopped. Two huge hands held an iron grip on his left arm, clamping down with such ferocity that it seemed as if it would collapse the very muscle and bone it held. Balon then clamped even harder, and an illusory image appeared over his hands. A pair of five-fingered dragon claws hovered there in the air, seemingly attached to the human hands below it.
Made out of pure golden light, the draconic manifestation seemed to follow the exact movements of Balon’s hands. The glowing images were not simple outlines of dragon claws either. They throbbed with power. Blood seemed to flow through them as veins of light flowed like golden rivers throughout the giant hands. The scales on each of them were intricately detailed down to the last microscopic atom, and the claws held a menacing, razor-sharp glint that shimmered from moment to moment. The manifestation was grand, imposing, somehow graceful and obviously immensely powerful.
Zan did not react to the manifestation however. Before he could exert strength to escape his binds, he was lifted off the earth and thrown into the blissfully unaware crowd. It was as if a bullet entered into a pool of water. Walls of flesh and bone broke against the immense force. The lucky ones were those who only suffered a quick impact and collision— maybe a broken arm or a broken leg.
Those unlucky enough to be pulled and dragged into Zan’s momentum however, felt their bodies break against other bodies over and over until the momentum finally dissipated. Most were seriously injured if not crippled, but an unlucky few died from a series of torn limbs and constant brutal collisions with their fellow slaves' bodies.
Balon sped towards Zan and the battle continued. Explosions would ring out constantly in different areas of the pitch black underground. Screams, groans, cries of misery and pain filled the air. The nobles commanded their servants to ignite new light sources, but the slaves running like headless chickens constantly rammed and forced their way through them. The ensuing chaos made it impossible for order to be reestablished. People ran in all directions for safety when they did not even know where safety was.
Which circle of hell was this? Where they could only see pitch black darkness, yet they knew for sure that this place was not empty— no it was not void. The screams and constant agony reminded the individual again and again that something horrific was going on in the dark.
If only they could see the stone floor bathed red, the blood pulp mash of muscle and bone, the limp and torn body parts strewn all over the ground— ripped off from the very muscle fiber by stupendous momentum and force— then perhaps they would choose to not see at all.
For they would see the panicking crowd trampling mercilessly over those who were unlucky enough to fall. They would see the panicking crowd stamp out the last breath of life from those who were left crippled from the two monsters.
In the darkness, thousands of legs and feet were stomping on the heads, torsos, legs and arms of those that found themselves in “lower” status. Those at the bottom were basically drowned. They could not see, but they could feel each foot crush and smother out their flame.
Until their arms no longer had strength to resist, until their own legs were too broken to move, until their last breath was literally stomped out of their chest.
Perhaps it was better that the lights were off.
As the saying went, when elephants fight, it was grass that suffered. The scene went from blood spectacle to a festival of madness.
Perhaps fate had ordained that the sinners should suffer their own entertainment and “pleasure.”
The three sisters looked towards the ungodly scene. As much as they knew violence they did not know madness. Aela and Renna looked away while Kaerys kept watching. She seemed to be…trembling?
The bald monk saw the scene, and he definitely had the power to stop it, yet he did not take action whatsoever.
‘I cannot have my cover blown just yet…’ He said to himself.
The two wild animals continued to fight each other without care for who they butchered in the process. Zan was mindless while Balon simply viewed everyone else as ants instead of human beings.
The two struck, threw, and collided into each other hundreds of times at the cost of thousands of lives.
“Hey! Where are you going!?” A female voice shouted in the dark.
Quin, the small reanimated hand, launched himself off Mila’s shoulder using his five fingers and disappeared into the hysteria filled crowd.