Chapter 20: Disposition
In the air, the two monsters continued their fight.
The crowd could somewhat tell the location of those two beasts because of the glowing orbs that followed the carnage, and desperately, they tried their best to get out of the path of death.
The two never stopped colliding and crashing, they threw each other across vast distances, and likewise, through vast amounts of collateral flesh.
In a similar mad frenzy, the people did not stop pushing and ramming each other to get out of their way.
People slipped on blood and ripped flesh, falling towards the ground just to be stomped on by thousands of hysteric legs.
Within the tumultuous crowd, a boy and a girl held on to each other dearly as they were pushed back and forth in the darkness of it all.
Holding on for dear life, they could not stop themselves from accidentally stepping on those that had fallen to the ground. The two kids felt their bare feet strike the flesh of their fellow slaves.
Moved and pushed in the pitch black darkness, they stomped on multiple heads and body parts just in the effort to stabilize their footing.
Sometimes, the crowd even brought them to one of the special areas.
In these “special” areas, under their bare feet they were exposed to soft, gushy and slippery flesh.
Most still had skin on them though Yela and Cole could have sworn that they had stepped on pure guts and intestines.
Broken bones and fragments would scratch their feet, while those unlucky enough were pierced by them.
The blood that covered these areas made many slip down to the floor, and experience the “trampling,” all the while the smell of blood and guts assaulted their senses.
The stench, the eerie sounds, the texture of it all, all of that while being mercilessly stomped on— it drove many people insane.
Yela already started to cry and whimper, while Cole felt a deep choking pain in his throat and chest.
In the process of it all happening, a hand grabbed on to Cole’s ankle, destabilizing and causing him to slowly fall backward. Yela flailed and panicked as she felt his warm hands start to slip away from her grasp. With all her strength she grabbed the boy’s falling body and hugged it tightly into her embrace. Cole felt the warmth and safety, and with tears in his eyes hugged equally as tightly back.
Suddenly, however, he let go of the embrace and Yela felt that warmth and safety leave her.
Shocked and heartbroken, a soft spoken, sweet, but hurt voice escaped her lips.
“Cole?”
“Yela! Hold on to my hand!”
Suddenly she felt two bodies brush her body as they rose up from in front of her.
“Thank you! Thank you so much!”
In that short moment of separation, Cole had grabbed the hand that grasped his ankle, and pulled the person up.
Cole then shouted amidst the chaos, “Help others as I helped you! Stay close!”
Yela felt his skinny body return to her. The warmth and safety not only returned, but in greater intensity. Cole grasped at her skin almost desperately as he exhaled a deep breath.
Yela could feel his heart beat loudly through his chest, and she felt it calm under her sweet embrace. Unfortunately, her face flushed and her own heartbeat started to rise…
“Hold my hand, I can’t lose you.”
“...Huh?”
‘Huh!? What did he say!?’
Cole dove back under, swiping his hand through the darkness and the floor below.
BANG!
On the opposite side of the underground, stone shattered above the crowd as large and small rocks fell to the crowd below. The large rocks instantly crushed those beneath it while the smaller rocks broke open the skulls and bones of numerous individuals.
Above them, Zan was lodged deep into the gray stone. A wide crater was formed around him from the impact.
A series of glowing lights followed, and a giant man with tremendous muscles flew right into him.
BANG!
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A golden manifestation of a bright dragon fist hammered him square in the chest. The fist was so massive, that it was only a few centimeters smaller than the width of Zan’s whole waist. It felt like an anvil flew right into him— not that he could feel the pain.
Balon then grabbed his left foot and slung him into the crowd.
Zan smashed through flesh and bone once again. From his crash, ragdolled bodies and torn off body parts flew, landing right on top of other people's heads.
The blind sheep screamed and scattered in all directions. Slipping on blood, they inadvertently pushed each other right into one of the monsters they were trying to escape from. The hysteric fools ran to the exact location of where Zan crashed.
Balon saw as the frenzied crowd swarmed his red-haired opponent.
They ran and pushed on top of a hill of bodies, and unfortunately that included Zan who found himself within them.
In their desperate seeking to find some semblance of safety, the crowd instead walked right into the hands of a mindless butcher.
…The mindless beast did not enjoy the thousands of ants crawling on top of him, and his instincts kicked in.
Graceful, spiraling energy erupted in the middle of the crowd. The intense centrifugal force threw the bodies outwards in a tornado-like fashion. Bodies ragdolled and collided, bending and breaking in unnatural and sickening angles.
A circular radius of around ten meters was left empty with Zan in the middle.
Then…perhaps annoyed by the swarm of flies, he straightened his fingers and hands into a chopping posture.
Spiraling energy started to condense in his very fingertips, before he then spun gracefully.
WHOOSH!
A cutting wave of pure energy swept through his surroundings in a 66 meter diameter.
Those within that diameter stopped for a moment, before their torsos fell off their legs, and their limbs slid right off by the tissue and bone.
Most individuals were not sliced so perfectly. They were simply bisected by whatever angle the energy took them by.
In any case…it was a good thing the lights were off.
Those that found themselves just out of range of the area of attack, felt a rushing flood of blood, intestines, and separated body parts.
The gore molested their bodies, causing some to fall deeper into confusion and panic, and others to break down and enter a psychotic episode.
“What the hell just touched me!?”
“What the fuck is this sick smell!? Blood!?”
“Mom!? Dad!? Where are you!?”
“AHHHHH!”
A little boy screamed. His mother and father held a hand of his each to keep him safe, and to his horror, he found both of their hands dropping to the ground, cut off at the elbow.
“By the gods…” Renna said as she looked at two corpses bisected from the waist.
The little boy, now left alone in the world was heaving and gasping for air. Smelling the sick stench of blood and guts, he started to dry heave and tremble, seemingly also having a panic attack.
Renna kept her eyes on him, yet in the next moment, he disappeared. The little boy was drowned out by a wave of the mad crowd, most likely stomped and trampled to death.
Renna’s eyes then darted back to the ruthless champion that caused the slaughter, and consequent ensuing chaos. He stood there remorseless, no trace of emotion on his face as if he was mowing grass instead of reaping lives.
“...Is he really mindless, sister?”
“I don’t know. He shouldn’t know how to do that under the unconscious state that he’s in.” Kaerys responded.
“Natural battle instinct?”
“Perhaps.”
Balon watched from above as Zan mindlessly slaughtered at least a thousand people with that single energy wave. No sign of guilt or regret showed on Zan’s face. Actually, no emotion showed on his face ever since they first collided.
‘A forbidden technique…’
‘You really gave this your all, Arem. Thank you. Your honor has not been tarnished, even though you will die without ever knowing your last moments. It is a shame that you would not remember, but perhaps the dragon gods watching will see your glory, and you could be reborn into our race.’
From a horizontal point of view, Balon squatted into a stone wall, preparing for an explosive dash.
Before he could, however, he noticed something…odd.
A hand— a hand without a body was crawling up Zan’s back! Balon’s eyes opened wide, he thought that maybe it was one of the hands that his opponent had bisected, and somehow it had latched onto his back.
‘Am I seeing things?’
He squinted his eyes.
‘It’s no longer moving, if it was ever moving at all…’
He focused his sight on it further and examined a few details…
‘The hand— it's very small. It can’t have come from an adult.’
Suddenly, a light bulb lit up within Balon’s head. ‘Ahhh…poor peasant child, he shouldn't have been here watching.’ He thought to himself.
Balon concluded the strange sight with his own theories, and just when he was going to lay the matter to rest…the hand suddenly started moving!
Balon’s eyes went wide open as he observed the hand moving deftly and gracefully onto Zan’s head.
Then, an even more unnatural thing happened. The small hand grew in size into a four foot giant, even bigger than his own dragon claws.
Its thumb and pinky wrapped around Zan’s body, and it raised the rest of its three fingers high into the air. Then suddenly…
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
The fingers tapped— no, they smashed into Zan’s head over and over with accurate, acupunctural precision. The massive fingers blurred from the speed, which was impressive in and of itself.
Those who could see in the darkness were stunned from the sudden events. Where did this undead, demonic hand come from? What was it doing? Trying to kill the red haired boy?
Balon suddenly snapped out of his senses, “He is my opponent! My honor! He will die only under my fist in righteous glory!”
BOOM!
Balon pushed his legs off of the stone wall, explosively reaching Zan and the mysterious hand in an instant.
A dragon fist struck one of the fingers of the large monstrosity, intending to blow the undead hand off of his opponent.
Instead though, both the hand and Zan were launched into the air in a perfect forty-five degree arc.
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
Despite being sent flying through midair, Balon’s strike did not stop Quin from continuing his brain massaging process.
The absentminded red haired boy, and the mighty colossal hand, then rapidly started to fall from their arc, right into the middle of a large crowd of slaves.
Surprisingly, this large crowd of slaves were more calm, at least compared to the rest of the mad hysterics. They held onto each other in the midst of the chaos, even helping others up from the ground, and encouraging them to join their circle of uncertain safety.
Yes, indeed, this was Cole’s group that he had helped and unintentionally assembled…
Within the mad darkness, they were a source of compassion, and kindness, in their otherwise violent and uncaring surroundings.
And unfortunately…Zan and Quin were going to splat right on top of them.
Cole and Yela hugged each other tightly right in the middle, and that middle was exactly where two fast falling objects were heading towards.
Yela dearly held on to the blonde haired boy, never wanting to let go of him ever again. He had done enough. His place was here, by her side.
It would have been quite romantic, almost like a royal ball that she heard about when her father used to tell her stories. It would have been, if not for the stench of blood in the air, the mass frenzied people around them, and of course the pitch black darkness.
“Cole? Do you hear a falling sound?”
“What?”
“It’s like…a sort of wheezing through the air. Don’t you hear it?”
“...No? Do you hear those tapping noises?”
“Tapping noises? What?”
“Uhhh…you know, like…a rock hitting wood?”
THUD! THUD! THUD!
WHOOSH!
Within the chaos of it all, the roaring sound of air resisting the two objects breaking through it could be heard.
Quin continued to smash— no massage, the boy’s brain.
In midair, Zan’s eyes rolled in his head: Up, down, left, right, diagonally— All the while the two rapidly approached Cole and Yela, about to smash them into flesh pulp.
And at the crux of the very last moment, Quin raised his three fingers high into the sky.
BOOOOM!
All three colossal fingers smashed into Zan’s head simultaneously.
A sharp glint flashed in the darkness, and clarity returned to the red-haired young man’s eyes.