The razor sharp form of the agile speed demon that Sancta Valeria once was shoots across the stone floor with an inhuman, flashing speed. Her claws tear deep grooves into the earth, aimed purely at Beat's throat. The air rips wide open from her velocity.
But instead of backing away, Beat bursts right into laughter.
"Hahaha... mmm... you really think you worship a god."
He completely ignores the approaching death and calmly begins counting on his fingers, while the world around him seems to slow down into slow motion. Let her flash around, he thinks with ironclad composure. She does not understand a thing.
The demonic entity tries to strike him with her insane top speed, but she repeatedly cleaves through empty air. The only thing the bystanders can still perceive are hectic, purple white flashes darting across the ground and along the walls. While the razor sharp claws whiz millimeters past his face, Beat remains undisturbed, counting out loud: "Wait a... 1 + 1 = 3 EUREKA!!"
He looks around briefly, casts a quick glance at the spectators along the sidelines, and whispers softly : "Sorry, as a MENTOR of the ward, I have to show my students something... Time to"
At that exact second, his entire presence turns completely purple. Pure, crackling electricity explodes from his body and his clothing flares up electrically, transforming into the shape of a terrifying purple Oni. The atmospheric pressure rises to an absolute boiling point. Out of nowhere, heavy, rhythmic drums begin to echo through the arena, thumping faster and more exhilarating by the second. The vibrations strike directly against the chests of everyone present.
"Hahaha! Ren, Apollo, run in circles and show me how hard you can hit me! Bring the heat!" Beat roars out against the blaring drums.
Ren and Apollo look at each other for one all knowing fraction of a second. There is no doubt, only pure focus. This is the moment, Ren thinks, as adrenaline surges through his veins. Do not think, just go.
Apollo begins to glow scorchingly from head to toe in a deep red fiery aura. He powers up and sprints off; everywhere he passes, bright red flashes tear deep tracks through the dust of the field. Ren does not hesitate for a moment and starts the chase from the opposite side, running counter clockwise. The sound of clanking, heavy iron and scraping blades fills the entire space as they break up the arena into a circle of pure violence.
Beat sees the circle close and shouts full of adrenaline: "JUST LIKE WE PRACTICED ON THE ENSCHENKOV BEAT!!"
He launches out of the starting blocks with a force that turns the stone floor behind him to dust. There is no stopping him; he begins to run so inhumanly fast that he literally flashes through the room, a purple lightning bolt seeking the walls and defying gravity. Ren activates his saw technique. His weapon shrieks with a terrifying, piercing sound. With a brutal boost, he blasts at a breakneck speed straight toward the absolute center of the arena. At the same time, Apollo charges from the other side like a glowing, deep red comet that accelerates harder with every single meter. At the exact intersection where their paths cross, right before Beat's purple blitz strikes them, a bone dry, deafening handclap thunders across the field.
Now! flashes through their minds.
Due to the perfect timing, Ren and Apollo stop instantly, all their built up speed vanishing from their bodies in a single flash, the kinetic energy perfectly neutralized. They absorb the massive shock, turn synchronously toward the purple lightning bolt, and cheer him on loudly: "GET 'M!!"
Like a purple, electric bullet, Beat rockets through the arena. The sky and the surroundings turn completely dark in a fraction of a second, as if light itself is being sucked away by his speed. Beat flashes fully past the lightning fast form of Sancta Valeria. The speed demon instantly lets out a hysterical, demonic laugh behind him, firmly convinced that Beat missed her completely and struck wide. "Too slow, mortal! You missed me completely!" she screeches through the darkness.
However, she did not account for the rest of the family. Nyx and Silarias have just officially joined the fight and tolerate no mistakes whatsoever. My turn, Nyx thinks with a cold, focused gaze. She reacts with terrifying precision and opens a swirling, pitch black hole in the air that instantly sucks Beat inside at his purple breakneck speed. A fraction of a meter away, she immediately opens another portal where he shoots back out. She places the two portals directly on top of each other, trapping Beat in an infinite, insane loop.
With every cycle he makes through the two portals, he excels and accelerates exponentially. The purple lightning becomes thicker and brighter, until he is shot out of the portals at top speed like a loudly exploding dwarf star, heading straight toward Silarias.
Silarias sees the purple meteor approaching and bursts out into a deep, possessed laugh. "NOBODY TOUCHES FAMILY!!"
His voice transforms into a brutal, terrifying roar as he fully fuses into his half lion form. Nobody touches my people as long as I breathe, he swears deep within, as pure power flows through his muscles. This time, the transformation is completely different. His thick mane bursts into an intense, bright blue fire that drives the cold from the arena, and his heavy gauntlets are completely drenched in a pitch black, smoldering sea of flames that distorts reality around him. With all his accumulated strength, he delivers a devastating strike.
While Beat is still accelerating, acting as a living projectile, Silarias uses his burning gauntlets to slam him with a ruthless blow straight through Sancta Valeria.
The impact is catastrophic. The False Saint does not even have the time to understand what is happening before she explodes into ten thousand pieces on the spot. A massive, thick puddle of dark blood splatters apart, while fleshy remains fly everywhere across the entire arena, scattered over the ground and walls. Beat rages onward completely unchecked by the brutal blow, flying into the thin air at tremendous speed, leaving a bright glimpse and a glowing glint at the exact spot where he was just moments ago.
A heavy, suffocating silence immediately drops over this side of the battlefield. The frantic racing stops, leaving only the sound of dripping blood. The narrative lens shifts entirely to a completely different, darker corner of the arena, where a separate crisis is unfolding in isolation.
Lyn, Jane, and Aurelius are under heavy pressure here, staring straight into the eyes of their end; they are nearly slaughtered in cold blood by Doctor Corvus, the Plague Doctor. Corvus approached from the deepest frothing shadows via an underhanded sneak attack. Finally, soft prey, the doctor thinks maliciously, his eyes gleaming behind his mask. He has already drawn his razor sharp, shining surgical knives and strikes with ice cold precision to plunge them deep into their vital organs.
"Die in the plagues!" he hisses.
Even before the blades can even sear their skin, the delayed shockwave of Beat's purple blitz finally catches up, transferring through the air currents. The lingering kinetic energy catches Doctor Corvus completely off guard. With a sudden, explosive pop, the doctor is torn completely apart by the passing pressure wave. The sudden shockwave and the brutal force of the flying debris cause Lyn, Jane, and Aurelius to be completely covered from head to toe in warm, thick blood and rancid entrails.
The high speed thrill of the fight completely vanishes, replaced by a grounded, gritty pause. Lyn and Jane look at their stained clothes, feel the warm slime, and are instantly disgusted. They make repulsed faces and spit on the ground with deep loathing.
"Pff... Better than dying, I suppose... But what an absolute mess this is! My whole outfit is ruined!" Jane cries out, slapping chunks of meat off her shoulder.
Aurelius remains ice cold and calm, his face not showing a single twitch. Maintain focus, the battle is not over yet, he thinks rationally. He says absolutely nothing, letting the girls vent while he immediately begins to clean the slime off his clothes and weapons methodically and tightly.
Just at the moment when peace seems to return for a brief second and the smoke begins to settle, a heavy, insane, and renewed laughter suddenly echoes from a distant, dark corner of the arena.
"Hahahahah..."
It is the unmistakable, rancid voice of Brother Sanguis. The terrifying sound is accompanied by a foul, synchronous clapping that goes faster and faster: he claps his hands with as many as eight fully grown, bloody arms at the same time, a rhythm that turns the stomach.
"You kill two of them... Just feed me, haha! The circle is complete!" he roars out.
Sanguis slowly steps out of the deep darkness, bathed in the dim light. His face has been completely torn apart by the earlier tribal combo, the pieces of skin hanging loose along his jaws, and his entire body has terrifyingly altered into a body dysmorphic monstrosity. With his eight flailing arms, his ripping chest cavity, and his bloodthirsty gaze, he blocks off the arena, ready to consume the remnants of the fallen and draw all the power to himself.
The atmosphere in the arena shifts mercilessly with an ice cold shock. The slow, ominous thumping of Beat's drums cuts off abruptly. For a fraction of a second, it remains dead silent, allowing the reader to breathe before the next sub fight commences. Suddenly, the drums explode into an insanely fast, exhilarating, and completely different rhythm. The music is raw, aggressive, and forces the heart into a murderous pace. This is no longer a rhythm to fight to; this is a cadence to slaughter to.
Without exchanging a single word, the remaining core family members look at each other in a fraction of a second. Eyes meet eyes through the rising smoke. A tight, synchronizing nod goes around, establishing their shared focus. It is the silence before absolute destruction.
In the blink of an eye, the entire arena is shrouded in complete, tangible darkness. It is as if an invisible hand cuts the light out of reality with brute force. No shadows, no contours; pure, black emptiness where only the blaring drums dictate the direction.
Brother Sanguis, who just a moment ago stood clapping with his eight arms full of megalomania, now completely loses his mind in the pitch black. His heavy, deformed mass totters. He begins to flail blindly around him, his massive fists cleaving through the air while his voice breaks terrifyingly from pure, rising panic.
"WHERE ARE YOU?! HIDING DOES NOT HELP!! DO YOU THINK THIS IS FUNNY?!" he roars, his heavy breathing wheezing through the black space. "I AM THE PURIFICATION!! I AM INEVITABLE!! SHOW YOURSEWLFS, YOU COWARDLY DOGS!!" I am a god, they cannot see me, they cannot touch me in the dark, he reassures his own tearing psyche, but sweat breaks out all over him.
His insane screaming is barely finished before a bright purple flash cleaves straight through the darkness of the arena with a piercing sound. Right in the wake of the purple blitz, two other blood red and silver flashes shoot out, blinding the eyes and burning afterimages onto the retina.
Sanguis feels the shift in atmospheric pressure and, in a brute reflex, wants to stretch all eight of his arms wide to crush the entire perimeter in a single blow. "I WILL CRUSH YOU ALL,"
The words die in his throat. Even before the commands from his brain can reach his muscles, the blades already flash through the flesh. Two of his eight massive arms are cleanly chopped off with ruthless, surgical precision. The sound of breaking cartilage and tearing muscle tissue is bone dry. One arm flies through the air in a grand arc due to Ren, who glides past him like a cold phantom. The other arm is simultaneously ripped to shreds by the coordinated, flashing blitz of Beat and Apollo. Pitch black, thick blood spouts in heavy streams from the gaping wounds and clatters onto the stone floor.
"MY ARMS!! YOU RATS!!" Sanguis roars in pure rage. He wants to take a heavy step forward in fury to crush the attackers under his weight, but his momentum is instantly killed.
Out of thin air, Nyx comes flying in at a terrifying, floating speed. She is now completely transformed into her sovereign Moon Form. Her hair has shifted into shining, pure silver locks that drift weightlessly and etherically around her head like an otherworldly aura. The royal crown upon her head lights up brightly and icily, breaking the darkness with a flicker. Her hands begin to glow intensely with a mystical neon blue, the veins in her wrists illuminated by pure moon energy.
With a cold, emotionless gaze, she points her palms downward. "Melt away in the cold," she speaks in a whisper, yet her voice carries through the entire room.
A razor sharp, arctic wave of cold shoots from her fingers and completely freezes the massive feet of Sanguis up to his ankles. The ice forms in a fraction of a second, as thick, compact, and unbreakable as granite. He is stuck completely, deeply nailed to the stone floor.
"Now! Finish him!" the icy voice of Nyx echoes through the arena.
Ren and Miki do not even wait for the command and rush forward at a murderous speed simultaneously, taking advantage of the monster's total immobility. Miki launches herself like a living projectile, transforming completely into a sort of white blue flaming spear of pure energy. "HERE IS YOUR BILL, JERK!!" she screams. She bores straight through Sanguis's left knee with brutal, piercing force. The joint shatters with a loud crack into a rain of bone fragments and blue fire.
At the same time, Ren drives his saw speed to the absolute boiling point. His entire body vibrates with kinetic energy. With a piercing, terrifying sound, he pulls a gigantic, gleaming scythe directly up from his own energy field. "IT IS OVER WITH YOUR CLAPPING!!" he roars, rotating hard on his axis and chopping off Sanguis's entire right knee clean with one fluid, ruthless swing.
The Manic Monk collapses forward onto his bleeding stumps with a chilling, heavy thud, his balance and his dignity completely lost. Control is gone, the power is definitively broken. Sanguis has absolutely no idea what to do anymore; raw, unadulterated fear of death now strikes deeply into his deformed psyche. In pure, blind panic, he begins to count out loud around him, his remaining six arms waving wildly and uncontrollably in the air as he tries to register the phantoms in the dark.
"ONE... TWO... THREE... DOES NOT MATTER HOW MANY... I CAN STILL SEE YOU!! I KNOW YOU ARE THERE, BUT...!!!!" he stamps and raves, his breathing wheezing like a broken bellows. Suddenly, his pupils contract in pure horror as he does the math in his head and realizes the deadliest factor is still missing. His entire body begins to tremble. "WHERE IS THE LAST ONE?! WHERE IS THE LAST OF YOU?!"
At that exact moment, a heavy, hissing sound suddenly echoes right behind his deformed, exposed neck. The suffocating darkness behind him gives way to a scorching, blistering heat that distorts the air, pulling the scene into its absolute final peak.
There stands Silarias, completely shrouded in his terrifying half lion form. His thick, imposing mane flames wildly upward in a deep blue sea of fire, and his heavy gauntlets crackle and hiss with the black fire of pure destruction.
"You were looking for me?" echoes the deep, ruthless roar of Silarias right in his ear.