Meanwhile, at the foot of the mountain, the massive bastion thundered across the plain with a hellish, metallic racket. Immense forests of steam and thick plumes of smoke spewed from the glowing exhausts at the rear, while the ground sank meters deep under the brute force of the continuous tracks. Inside the mechanical cockpit filled with buttons and flashing gauges, Apollo sat with both hands firmly at the wheel. His muscles were tense under his clothes and sweat stood on his forehead as he operated the heavy levers to keep the colossal vehicle on course.
“Keep it stable, Apollo! The spiritual pressure out here is abnormally high!” yelled Nicola, who stood right behind him with her arms tightly crossed, her sharp gaze fixed on the magical, blue-purple contours of the approaching portal on the distant horizon.
Deeper in the belly of the bastion, in an interior illuminated with soft, warm light, sat Nyx together with Lyn, Miki, and Ren. The atmosphere was charged with heavy tension. The entire interior shook and vibrated to its foundations due to the brute speed.
“Hold on tight, Miki,” Lyn said in a soft, concerned voice, placing a protective arm around the young girl’s shoulders as the bastion jolted over a deep bump. “We’re almost there, just hang in a little longer.”
Ren sat swinging his legs on a metal crate, completely unimpressed by the bumpy ride. He pointed with a broad grin at the vibrating ceiling. “Look at that, the whole rolling house is dancing! Are we going to fly like a big bird in a moment too? That would be super awesome!”
Nyx nodded silently, her moon-related energy pulsating very faintly in the shadows of the dark corners. “The portal is close. I can already feel the spiritual pressure of the arena rising to the boiling point. The air outside is sizzling.”
But before the bastion could reach the magical, flashing gate, a deafening crunch echoed through the mechanical systems. The alarm system began to flash bright red. Apollo slammed the heavy levers backward with brute, raw strength.
“What the hell?! Brakes! NOW!” Apollo bellowed.
Those gigantic continuous tracks locked up with a screeching sound, glowing steel scraped over the hard rocks with massive showers of sparks, and with a jarring, heavy crash that made the entire structure groan, the complete bastion was brought to an abrupt halt.
“What in God’s name is going on?!” shouted Nicola, who barely managed to grab the metal edge of the cockpit in time to keep from flying forward.
“Someone is standing right in front of the portal!” Apollo shouted with a deeply raised eyebrow, his eyes wide in pure bewilderment as he looked through the thick glass. “That lunatic isn't yielding a single millimeter for this monster!”
The heavy metal doors of the bastion slid open with a hissing cloud of steam. Everyone, from Nicola and Apollo to Nyx, Lyn, Miki, and Ren, stepped outside in a flash to see what was happening. The fresh, ice-cold outside air hit their faces hard as they gathered on the metal platform of the stopped vehicle.
Miki looked around the platform with wide eyes, her gaze sweeping hastily across the faces of the group, and suddenly her face hardened completely. Panic struck her voice, and she began pulling nervously on Lyn's sleeve with both hands.
“Wait a second... aren't we missing two people??” Miki asked with a high, cracking voice that brutally shattered the silence. “Where did big bro Bala and big bro Izumaru go?? Why aren't they standing here with us??”
An uncomfortable, heavy silence fell over the group in an instant. Apollo looked away directly toward the horizon, his jaw tightly clenched, and Nyx kept her gaze fixed motionlessly on the ground as the shadows around her turned even darker. Nicola swallowed a heavy lump in her throat, took a slow step forward, and placed a hand on Miki’s shoulder to explain with a calm, but visibly shaken voice.
“There... there was something to do with their family that they had to take care of first, Miki,” Nicola began, her voice trembling slightly as she searched for the right words to soften the harsh reality. “And Bala... Bala is simply a bit lost right now. They had to go, they couldn't stay. ‘See you at the university’... that was the very last thing they said before they vanished into the shadows.”
Miki’s eyes grew wide and filled with disbelief. She wanted to ask another question immediately, opening her mouth to angrily demand what on earth was going on with her big brothers. However, her voice was completely cut short by a loud, powerful shout from below.
“Are you going to the tournament too?! The gates are almost closing!”
Everyone looked down sharply and in unison toward the side of the road. A local citizen stood there with wide eyes, staring at the gigantic, steaming bastion and the impressive warriors standing on the platform.
Nicola and Apollo exchanged a brief, meaningful look, after which Nyx stepped forward with a cold, determined posture and placed her hand on the hilt of her weapon. That family situation and the deep grief for the missing brothers had to be pushed aside with brute force for the battle that lay ahead.
“If they were to be anywhere to fight, it must be at the tournament,” Nicola said with a renewed, strong voice as her aura began to flare up very faintly.
“No more time to waste, we’re going through!” Apollo added with a wild look.
Without wasting another second, the entire group jumped off the platform of the bastion in one fluid motion. They walked with fast, resolute steps straight toward the intensely glowing, crackling barrier of the portal and stepped through it simultaneously with total conviction, heading straight into the absolute and destructive chaos of the inner ring.
The transition was so abrupt that the breath caught hard in their throats. In a fraction of a second, the cold outside air shivered away, and the group stepped through the flashing portal straight into a wall of epileptic light and deafening noise. They were instantly completely overwhelmed by the insane scale of the environment. Kilometers-high, steep grandstands reached like massive amphitheaters deep into the clouds, packed with millions of beings who were stomping and shouting like lunatics until the very foundations trembled. Above their heads, magical fireworks exploded one after another in bright, unnatural colors. Purple, neon-green, and golden flashes illuminated the sky, causing a constant rain of sparkling, glowing light particles to fall like a psychedelic snowstorm on the colossal crowd.
“Wow! Look at all those colors!” Ren shouted with twinkling eyes, jumping wildly into the air as he tried to catch the falling light particles with his hands. “It’s like the whole sky is made of candy! Are we going to have a party here?”
It was a crazy, terrifying melting pot of races. Winged celestial beings with feather-light auras, colossal stone giants whose skin grumbled deeply with every movement, and shadowy entities that constantly shifted forms stood shoulder to shoulder. Lyn, Jane, Nicola, Apollo, Nyx, Miki, and Ren simply didn't know where to look. Their eyes darted wildly from the ecstatic spectators to the dozens of gigantic, floating crystal screens that drifted through the air like massive mirrors. On those screens, live footage showed the labyrinth moving deep below them. Heavy stone walls shifted with loud, mechanical groans and rattling chains, while unknown warriors ran in blind panic for their lives.
Miki held Lyn’s hand in a tight grip and looked up at the flashing sky with big, glistening eyes. “What is all this?! Where on earth have we landed, Nicola? It hurts my ears!”
Nicola tried to organize the massive stream of visual stimuli in her head, her own eyes wide in pure amazement as the bright colors reflected on her face. “I... I’m trying to understand it, Miki. But I’ve never seen anything like this. This truly defies all logic and everything I’ve ever read in the ancient books!”
“Well, little sweetie, let me explain that crystal clear to your brain!” a warm, deep voice suddenly sounded right beside them.
An impressive, meters-high Kangaroo beast-human stepped forward. He wore a thick, stained leather apron, and various steaming snacks, sizzling skewers, and exotic delicacies stuck out from his large, deep pouch, spreading a strong aroma. With a broad, furry grin, he bent his large head slightly toward Miki.
“You have to see that gigantic, moving thing down there as one giant, lethal puzzle,” the merchant began with a raw laugh, pointing a thick, furry finger at the floating crystal screens. “A puzzle you have to fight and run your way through with brute, raw strength. The ultimate prize, the highest achievable goal, lies right in the magical center. But the joke is that the structure of that puzzle is constantly changing! The walls shift unexpectedly, familiar paths vanish into the abyss, so you have to fight differently and run differently every single second to survive. Make it out alive in the center? Then you or your entire team win a prize that exceeds your wildest dreams! Making teams is allowed inside these walls, but yeah... can you really make trustworthy friends on such a murderous field full of egoists? I think not, haha!”
Miki listened to the story with her mouth open, but her head quickly turned back toward the screen as a massive, gold-white explosion caused an entire hallway to collapse. She sniffed deep a few times, looked the big kangaroo straight in his furry face with a cheeky, mischievous smile, and pointed at his pouch.
“Interesting, mister... but do I happen to smell fresh cookies there?” she asked extremely dryly.
The kangaroo merchant slapped his knee hard and burst out laughing loudly, his entire pouch shaking wildly back and forth. “Hahaha! Whatever battle is going on, you don't lose sight of priorities, little one! You have a damn good nose!” He reached his large claw deep into a side pocket of his apron and pulled out a generous handful of warm, golden-brown, fragrant cookies, pressing them straight into her small hands. “Here, on the house! Because you have the courage to stand here so calmly.”
Ren pushed his head straight between them, sniffing loudly. “Cookies?! Can I have some too? I’m a really big boy, so I can eat at least ten!”
The merchant burst out laughing again and generously handed out free large cups of drinks and some hearty, steaming meat to the rest of the astonished group, while slipping Ren an extra large cookie. “Here, you too, cheeky little guy! Go get 'em, you guys look like you’re going to need that energy really badly in a moment.”
“Thank you, mister!” Miki called out, taking a large bite immediately.
With the food in their hands, the group hastily sought out a quiet spot on the stone edge of one of the lower, slightly less crowded grandstands. They sat down to take in the chaotic situation, but the tension between them remained heavily palpable. Jane and Nyx stared with a somber, dull gaze at the thousands of fighters moving like ants across the screens. They scanned every face, every unique fighting style, but found nothing.
“Nowhere to be seen...” Jane whispered with a heavy, deep sigh, her shoulders slumping despondently as she held her cup. “It was obviously way too good to be true that we would find them right here at the entrance.”
Nyx nodded slowly, her gaze ice-cold and her eyes glowing dark in the shadow of her hood. “We are too late for easy encounters. Either they are already hidden deep within the inner ring, or in the blind spots where the cameras cannot reach.”
Ren took a large gulp of his drink, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and looked at the two girls with big, questioning eyes. “Why do you look so sad like someone took your toys away? We’re just going to look for them in that big maze, right? I’ll run right over there!”
“THE HOURGLASS IS RUNNING OUT, ELITE FIGHTERS! ONLY THIRTY MINUTES LEFT!” the theatrical voice of the Hype Man suddenly bellowed again with a screeching sound through the millions of loudspeakers. “In exactly half an hour, the monumental entrance closes irrevocably! Anyone not through the barrier by now is relentlessly out! The clock is ticking, the pressure is rising!”
Right at that moment, Nicola shot up with a start, almost dropping her cup. Her eyes were wide with excitement and her entire body seemed statically charged with spiritual tension. “Eureka... I get it completely now! I just took a very fast and thorough look at it from this height.”
Apollo looked up with his mouth stuffed with food, asking curiously, “What do you get then, Nicola? It’s just one giant chaos.”
“Those cameras, idiot!” Nicola pointed frantically at the sky far above the arena, where small, flashing dots moved. “I just saw a few sharp flashes of light between the fireworks. They are mechanical, crystal birds! They fly extremely high in the air up there and transmit everything their lenses register directly to these floating screens. I don't see any familiar faces on the live footage yet... but what I still can't logically reason out: what exactly is that prize at the center of the puzzle? What is all this scum here actually fighting for with their lives?”
Before anyone could even respond to her intricate theory, an astonished, terrifying voice rang out from the audience in the row right behind them. A grim, muscular Hellspawn with burning, red-glowing horns pointed a trembling, clawed finger straight at the central, absolute largest crystal screen.
“What... what in God’s name is happening there?! That doesn't belong to the tournament!” the Hellspawn shouted in a raw, cracking voice.
Every member of the group, including Nyx and her entire company, turned their heads in unison toward the designated screen. The festive, noisy atmosphere on the entire grandstand flipped into an icy silence in a single instant. The image on the gigantic crystal was suddenly filled with jet-black, suffocating smoke, and heavy, fire-red explosion after explosion flashed across the surface. Adrenaline spiked among the spectators as the camera jolted into focus on a severely wounded, bloody warrior. The man was crawling on all fours through the rising dust, his clothes in tatters and his face completely contorted in pure mortal terror, heading straight for the camera lens as if begging the millions of spectators for help.
“Help me... they are...” the man on the screen stammered, reaching his hand out toward the glass.
Down below him, true panic set in as a brute, black shockwave flashed through the frame. With a terrifying impact, the fighter was completely wiped out in a brutal cloud of blood, splinters, and ash. The screen shook.
Then the sounds of the explosions died down. Heavy, slow, wet footsteps echoed through the screen’s loudspeakers. Splat. Splat. The footsteps came terrifyingly close, until suddenly a figure emerged from below right in front of the lens. It was a young child. The creature stood right before the screen, completely smeared with fresh, pulsating, deep-red blood from head to toe. His hair was plastered to his forehead by the moisture. The child slowly tilted his head, stared with hollow, pitch-black, possessed eyes straight into the camera lens, and pulled the corners of his mouth up into a broad, ice-cold smile.
“I see you!!” the child whispered in a distorted, echoing voice that went straight through bone and could be heard across the entire grandstand.
Immediately after those words, the entire crystal screen froze with a loud, sharp crackle. The colors drained away and the picture went completely dead with a loud, hissing static and white lines. The screen turned black.
Ren turned pale and huddled a bit closer to Lyn, pointing a trembling finger at the black screen. “That... that little boy isn't nice at all. Why does he have so much red paint on his face? I think his smile is stupid.”
Up on the central stage, the Hype Man went wild with panic. He grabbed his golden microphone with both hands, his theatrical voice cracking and trembling completely. “How?! What is going on here?! Technical department, report! Those crystal birds fly at an extremely safe altitude! How on earth did that thing get up there to smear the lens?! We are losing signals from the entire sector!”
The millions of spectators erupted into deep turmoil. Fear and sensationalism fought for dominance. Large groups of creatures, including Nicola, Apollo, and the rest of their group, ran in a wild, thundering sprint to the other side of the grandstand to see what was happening on the secondary screens. These screens were directly connected to the secret, underground crystal lenses built deep into the massive stone walls of the labyrinth, offering a completely different, lower perspective of the horrific situation.
On this new screen, the thick, jet-black smoke slowly cleared in the wind. The visual escalation revealed was nothing short of spine-chilling. Everywhere on the shattered marble ground lay dozens of mutilated, lifeless bodies of strong warriors and entire groups of dojo fighters in broad, gleaming puddles of blood. Their swords lay in pieces around them. And there, right in the center of the slaughter, walked the bloody child with a skipping, terrifyingly playful step among the dead.
“Come... come on, the way is clear,” the child called out in a soft, melodious, and almost friendly voice, waving his small, bloody hand.
The child walked slowly from one side of the destroyed square to the other, toward a dark hallway. And right behind him, moving out of the shadows of the walls, a terrifying group joined. Dozens of freaks, deformed creatures, and corrupted humans with black, pulsating veins across their faces and bloodshot eyes stepped forward. They followed the skipping child blindly and silently through the hallways, as if they had found their new, bloodthirsty leader in the depths of the tournament, straight into a shadow and out of sight.