Balamore lay crawling in agony on the floor, severely burned. The hissing of melting flesh cut through the thin air, a rancid vapor rising suffocatingly from his torn throat, mixed with the boiling, liquid material of his own destroyed totem.
Izamaru sought his brother’s gaze among the rubble. When he saw those vacant, breaking eyes of Balamore, the last remnants of his human rationality snapped like overstrained, bloody strings. Something irreversible cracked deep within his chest.
“No… No, this is not the order. This is not how it ends!” he whimpered at first, but his voice instantly shifted into a rabid, raw scream that tore his throat open.
His Flower of Life eyes began to spin with psychopathic speed, so possessed that the geometric, sacred patterns in his pupils liquefied and faded entirely into a frantic, flashing green haze. The emerald feathers on his arms and back shot upright, trembling and hissing under a destructive charge of adrenaline that flooded his nervous system with pure venom.
Give up, that darkness whispered in his head. You are nothing. You are a nobody.
“Shut your filthy mouth!” Izamaru roared at his own thoughts, pressing his nails so deep into his skull that blood streamed down his temples.
Right at the moment he threatened to lose his mind completely to that black void, a brute, ice-cold vision of their heavy struggle here in the colosseum flashed through his consciousness. It was as if time stood still. In a fraction of a second, he saw the bloody sacrifice of that family here in the arena before him, those gigantic, monstrous transformations of Bogo and Koda, and Jane standing there with her brand-new, dazzling Valkyrie Crown amidst the ash. He smelled that heavy heat; he felt that absolute, merciless destruction of the God Eater. It was not a memory; it was a bloodright surging through his veins.
In the midst of that suffocating madness, Beat broke through his own line of attack with brute, beastly force. The purple Enchenkov electricity crackled wildly around his atomically mutated Oni flesh, those sparks burning holes in the falling rain of blood. Beat injured his own jaws through the sick intensity of his psychopathic Oni grin. He spat a thick, smoking glob of blood straight onto the obsidian floor, looked at Izamaru with rolling eyes, and roared with a raw, possessed voice that thundered across the entire arena:
“I give you these shoes right here! Show me that you can run and smash this entire gang! Let them feel who the Outcasts are!”
With a heavy, brute swing, he hurled those legendary artifacts right before the feet of Izamaru. The ancient boots clattered heavily against the deformed copper. They were alive. The soles spat aggressive, thick blue sparks that instantly melted the copper splinters on the ground, vibrating to the heavy, metronomic beat of evolution.
Izamaru did not hesitate for a single microsecond. He did not compose himself like a panicked bird. He looked at the shoes, spread his jaws wide, and swallowed his own fear until it became a pure, ice-cold murder frequency.
“For the Tribe… for my brother… I am going to fillet you to the bone,” he whispered, his voice terrifyingly calm now in the midst of the chaos.
He stamped his feet with full force into the heavy boots. The impact was instant and all-consuming. The ancient boots immediately closed tight around his feet like a living, mechanical armor, the metal fasteners anchoring into his flesh and muscles with a bone-dry crack. The moment his heels touched the obsidian floor, that pure kinetic legacy of the Hero Twins broke loose. A brute, lead-heavy rhythmic shockwave exploded, pulling the copper corridors of the colosseum inside-out. Thick, fierce blue sparks shot like razor-sharp lightning bolts from the fittings of the soles, causing the ground beneath him to rip open in deep, geometric patterns. The Enchenkov speed tempo of Beat’s drum pumped directly through his veins, causing his silhouette to begin to glitch in reality.
Armed with those boots and the tied-up, brute force of the Full Tribe, Izamaru launched himself into the fray with impossible hyperspeed. The heavy, rhythmic clatter of his steps on the floor sounded like an overclocked machine gun.
“Catch me if you can, fake purifiers!” he screamed, while in a fraction of a second he evaded the razor-sharp blood currents of Sanguis and the kinetic blur of Sancta Valeria as if they were frozen in time.
At his side, the front closed with brute, military precision. Jane, Cilla, and Lyn moved synchronously with his murderous tempo.
“Nobody touches the Outcasts as long as I still breathe!” Jane roared, her absolute, royal presence so intense that the lower Inquisitors spontaneously began to spit blood and immediately collapsed to their knees under the lead-heavy weight of her aura. Izamaru broke that entire front line open with his burning blue sparks, every step an explosion of kinetic glass.
Behind them, Beat, Nicola, and Apollo formed a rabid triangle of neon, purple lightning, and intense solar heat to shield Little Ren and Miki.
“Stay behind us, little one! The show has just begun!” Nicola called out with a psychopathic laugh, his neon energy coloring the air blue.
Ren’s Iron Straw Voodoo dolls absorbed the hissing blood currents of Sanguis, the eyes of the dolls beginning to weep blood before they spat the absorbed damage right back at the Inquisitors in toxic, bloody mists. Simultaneously, Miki sliced through the deepest shadows with her Shadow Needle like a black glitcher to hermetically cover the flanks, every strike a silent cut into the flesh of the enemy.
The mentor then claimed the entire space with a spine-chilling dominance. The Chrome Mimic did not transform into a simple, static shield, but spread his liquid substance into a meters-wide, living tidal wave of mirrored quicksilver that folded around the Outcasts like a colossal dome.
“Look closely at yourselves, Inquisition. See the monsters you truly are!” the voice of the mentor echoed through the reflection.
The purple, white, and neon-blue auras of his students reflected with such frantic, blinding intensity on the liquid chrome that the approaching Inquisitors were literally struck blind by the reflection of their own bloodlust, their eyes hissing from the fierce radiation.
Qayin thought to break that line of quicksilver with brute force, his gaze rabid and his heavy, bloodied axe raised high.
“Die, rats! Your blood is mine!” he raged, his axe raised high above his head.
But he collided frontally with the absolute, divine peak of the solar god.
Apollo drove his form to the absolute, destructive boiling point. There was not a shred of humanity left in him. His ash-gray poncho fused completely with his nervous system, changing his silhouette into an agile sun demon of pure, pulsating white-hot light that finally pushed away the darkness of the colosseum.
“Your fire is nothing more than a spark in my cosmos,” Apollo spoke, his voice a distorted, hissing sound of pure heat.
The falling rain of blood around him did not even vaporize; the entire air molecules around his body ripped open audibly with a terrifying crackling due to the intense, compressed heat.
With a brute, impossible acceleration that defied the laws of physics, Apollo shot straight toward Qayin. This was no longer a normal fight; this was pure, cosmic horror. Apollo grabbed Qayin full by his throat with an iron, glowing grip. Qayin still tried to lower his axe, but that heat of a dying star exploded inside-out from Apollo’s palm. Qayin did not even have the time to let out a scream. His scream remained stuck in his throat as his flesh melted, his heavy axe turned liquid, and his bones were completely pulverized within a single microsecond into glowing ash and atomic dust that melted away without a trace in the scorched corridor.
While Nicola used his kinetic neon energy to definitively bring the severely burned, gasping Balamore to safety behind the massive wall of the Chrome Mimic, the tactical front overflowed into pure, psychopathic escalation. The Legends Malakor, Pyra Vael, and Velox saw the brute force of the rebels and amplified the pressure to the maximum, their veins swelling with adrenaline.
“We are not going back! Demolish that barrier!” Malakor roared, his copper plates glowing red-hot.
Just when the last ash of Qayin touched the ground and drifted down like black snow, the mirrored eyes of the Chrome Mimic locked with those of Izamaru. There was a look of absolute, spine-chilling urgency within them. The real monster was about to move.
The dense ash clouds and heavy blood mists of the colosseum suddenly split into perfect, fluid geometric paths, as if the air itself bowed to a higher power. Absolute silence fell like a bone-dry blow over the arena as reality held its breath. From those breaking geometric paths of light, Maelo Poro stepped forward.
He did not walk. His feet did not even touch the blood-smeared obsidian floor. He floated through the ripping ash clouds with a terrifying, serene slowness, surrounded by an aura so heavy and divine that the air pressure in the arena turned into a vacuum in one single blow. The copper plates along the walls bent deeply downward, groaning under the weight of his pure presence, as if even the dead metal knew it had to kneel.
His gaze glided over the Outcasts, over the panting Legends, over the hissing muscle tissue of Sanguis, as if he were looking not at enemies, but at insects trapped in a glass jar. There was no anger in his face. There was only an infinite, psychopathic disdain that cut deeper than any razor-sharp sword.
He slowly spread his arms sideways. His Golden Egg Earring activated in the most surreal, detailed manner. The egg split visually into floating, liquid shards of pure, liquid goud that rotated in a perfect, mesmerizing circle around his head against all laws of gravity. From this, massive, flashing light rays suddenly shot forth, cutting through the arena with a serene yet all-destroying force.
“Behold,” Maelo Poro spoke, his voice a rancidly perfect, harmonious sound that resonated directly within the eardrums and the nervous systems of everyone in the arena. It echoed from within their own skulls.
“Behold the architect of your destiny. The scout of the new world, the absolute leader who has already drawn the boundaries of your soul before your first breath was born. You do not kneel before a man. You kneel before the unavoidable order. I am the sun that claims your shadows, the founder of the altar where your blood shall soon speak. Look at me, rebels, and realize the absolute futility of your struggle. To me, you are nothing more than a temporary ripple in a perfect, golden eternity.”
The copper plates and massive obsidian walls were ripped open with surgical, terrifying precision by those golden rays, as if it were warm butter. The light was so intense, so overwhelmingly large that the gigantic quicksilver wall of the Chrome Mimic immediately began to hiss, crack, and evaporate under loud noise into thick, silver clouds.
Izamaru stood there, his teeth bared, with burning, blue sparks rushing from his boots and a psychopathic focus directly opposite Sancta Valeria and Sanguis. He looked straight into the approaching destruction as those blinding golden rays shot with the speed of light right at his face, while the ground beneath his boots began to split deeply with a deafening crack.
Those fierce, golden destruction rays shooting straight at Izamaru’s face barely missed him. For before that pure radiation could scorch his flesh, the entire stratosphere above the colosseum ripped open in an apocalyptic chain reaction of light and violence.
It was as if the sky were pulled inside-out. Massive, deep blue and violet infernos emerged from nothingness, devouring one another in the air, while waves of raw, kinetic air pressure slammed down like meters-high tsunamis. Those geometric light rays of Maelo Poro struck these lead-heavy barriers and deflected in all directions with a murderous rotation. Copper stands exploded instantly into millions of glowing splinters, and the brute blow of the air pressure was so intense that the divine, floating form of the leader was abruptly jerked out of his serene balance. With a bone-dry, heavy impact, Maelo Poro crashed with his entire back hard against the massive obsidian wall, which immediately began to web deeply from the blow. The remaining Inquisitors, Sancta Valeria, and Sanguis were swept along like soulless ragdolls by the shockwaves and slammed painfully hard against the copper walls, their tight formation completely shattered.
In the midst of the flying debris and suffocating smoke screens, the brute, mighty clattering of gigantic claws and heavy, wind-slicing wings was suddenly heard rushing through the arena. A colossal, flying bastion of metrically reinforced steel crashed through the cloud deck with impossible speed, pulled by a horde of legendary, rabid griffins that tore the storm wind to shreds.
Atop the battlements of the flying fortress stood a knightly silhouette in lead-heavy, mirrored armor, his sword held high in the burning sky. With a loud, brute voice that thundered across the entire battlefield and made the hearts of the enemy shrink, Sir Galahad shouted from above:
“Ether Corps acknowledges you! Ode to the Nobodies!”
At the heavy reins of those gigantic, screeching griffins stood a figure that made the hearts of the Outcasts stop instantly from pure shock. It was Ren the Beast Master. Their own Ren, the brother with whom they had trained and toiled side by side, but older. He was about 19 years old, still a young guy, but his familiar face had gained a brute, hardened appearance of someone who had seen a bizarre amount of bloodright and combat in a short time. His gaze radiated pure, cold experience and his arms moved with heavy, military precision to keep those colossal beasts under control in the midst of the flashing explosions.
He looked down, saw the tactical front of his old comrades, and that recognizable, rabid Oni grin broke through his scarred face.
“Hahaa… Family… Good moment for our paths to cross!” Ren the Beast Master roared across the arena with a deep, raw voice.
Without losing a microsecond, he grabbed an ancient, gleaming flute and brought it to his lips. He blew a single, majestic tone that immediately tore the eardrums of the Inquisition. The sound resonated with the heavy hearts of the beasts; the majestic winged beast in the lead opened its beak wide and spat a gigantic, pulsating buff-wave of pure, heavenly blue light into the air.
That wave descended onto the battlefield like a warm, divine blanket. The impact was instantly palpable. Balamore’s melting flesh immediately began to recover on a molecular level, his torn throat closed in a flash, and the vital energy immediately pumped back into his exhausted totem. Izamaru, Beat, Jane, Apollo, and the entire Tribe felt their muscles swell with brute, renewed strength, their wounds instantly cauterized and healed. But for the Inquisition, it was pure hell. The moment that blue glow touched the flung-away bodies of Maelo Poro and his troops, their sacred radiance began to evaporate like snow before the sun, their muscles instantly weakened and their divine gold and blood magic heavily suppressed by the brute counter-frequency.
Ren the Beast Master looked steadily down, his voice serious and commanding beneath the roaring of the wind.
“We can do nothing more from here on out! The Ether Corps has reached its limit!”
With a powerful swing, he hurled a heavy, glowing rune stone straight down from the fortress, which sliced through the burning air with a fierce rotation.
One of the enemy monks saw the glint of the artifact and leaped high into the air with a rabid, predatory jump to intercept the stone midway. But before his fingers could touch the surface, Nicola shot upward like a fierce, neon-blue lightning bolt. With a brute grin, Nicola delivered an all-destroying dropkick straight against the chest of the monk. The bone cracking was bone-dry. The monk was slammed perpendicular back to the ground with furious speed, but due to the brute impact of the collision, Nicola barely missed the stone.
The gleaming object tumbled wildly further through the air. Everyone from the Outcasts leaped after it with full adrenaline, their fingers spread wide amidst the falling copper splinters, but nobody gained a grip on the hissing stone. Silarias launched himself upward last with brute force, his hand clawing toward the glow, but fate struck; the stone slipped painfully close through his fingers.
The artifact plunged with a fierce rotation straight into that deep, dark corner where Balamore had just been crawling in agony among the rubble.
The moment the stone hit the ground, the logic of space inverted completely. All the air, the smoke, the ash, and the remaining blood mists of the colosseum were pulled directly into that specific corner with an eerie force. It created a black, rancid implosion that devoured the light completely. A microsecond later, that corner exploded with such brute, deafening violence that the entire massive construction of that stand collapsed with a bone-dry noise, causing tons of obsidian and copper debris to crash on top of Balamore.
Izamaru saw it happen and felt his whole world collapse. The blue sparks from his boots faltered as he dropped to his knees with a raw shock, his Flower of Life eyes wide open from pure panic.
“BALAMORE! NOT YOU!!” he roared, his voice torn completely hoarse by pure grief.
The kicked-away monk had meanwhile gathered himself, bleeding, and saw his chance. With a rancid, sadistic look, he crept silently toward the emotionally broken Izamaru, his claws raised to grab him brutally from behind and finish him off.
But he did not get the chance.
Suddenly, a blinding, red-golden flash shot straight from the collapsed rubble of that dark corner. The explosive power of that discharge was so gigantic that massive fragments of hundreds of kilograms were shot in all directions like glowing bullets with murderous speed. The monk was blown backward meters by the pure air pressure of the flash, his defensive barrier breaking into a thousand pieces instantly.
Heavy, metronomic footsteps echoed deep from the burning dust. The steps were not those of a dying man; they carried the lead-heavy, metallic weight of a titan.
Out of the suffocating black smoke came a figure walking. It was Balamore.
“The gods have favored me!” he spoke, his voice now a deep, vibrating bass sound that made the copper plates on the ground tremble.
Maelo Poro, who had just pulled himself free from the wall, spread his golden eyes so wide that the veins on his forehead were on the verge of bursting. His divine logic broke on a molecular level. This was impossible.
“HOW CAN YOU ALREADY BE AWAKENED?!” the leader of the Inquisition raged, his serene calmness completely turned into rabid madness.
When Balamore stepped fully out of the dark into the flashing light of the arena, the spectacle became truly terrifying. All his severe burns had vanished completely, his flesh rancidly perfect, healed without a single scar. But his body had changed unrecognizably. His entire hands and underarms were heavily plated with massive, gleaming iron that seemed to have grown from his own pores, like brute, mechanical combat gauntlets. Across his entire body, his chest, and his face ran glowing, deeply carved iron signs and runes that pulsated on the exact frequency of his heartbeat.
He looked at the stunned Outcasts and the terrified Inquisitors with eyes that glowed like liquid steel.
“The earring… it… I am the totem now,” he whispered, while slamming his iron fists together with a bone-dry, metallic clatter.
The monk who wanted to grab him refused to flee and struck out with a rabid, deadly claw straight toward Balamore’s throat. But Balamore did not even move to dodge. The moment the attack approached, his entire iron plating began to scale up in a fraction of a second. The metal plates on his arms fanned inside-out, sliding over one another like razor-sharp, mechanical scales of an iron dragon, effortlessly deflecting the complete attack of the monk with a brute, sparking blow.