The massive, fleshy tentacle above their heads suddenly began to grow even heavier with brutal, pulsating shocks, as if the grotesque creature in the shadows threw all its cosmic weight into the battle with one psychopathic jerk. The viscous purple runes on the skin of the monstrous thing lit up terrifyingly bright, and the immense downward pressure increased with such brutal speed that the complete circle of gods and heroes visibly began to waver.
KRAAAKKK!
The sound of breaking stone and creaking bones thundered over the battlefield. The massive boots of the Shinto gods and Kali sank dozens of centimeters deeper into the tearing flesh floor with a brutal thud. Their knees, which were standing bone straight just a moment ago, began to bend dangerously under the inhuman weight. The brutal arms of the goddess Kali trembled so violently that sparks flew off her divine aura, while Karan and Arjan Pandava tried to push their weapons upward with loudly grinding teeth, their complete armor rattling under the immense load.
The entire block holding back the tentacle began to sink irrevocably to the ground millimeter by millimeter, the gravity of that purple corruption simply too powerful to keep still any longer.
Shrimpy kept his back as straight as a board, his gaze unbothered and completely focused on the mechanical task before him. Although his muscles trembled violently, his salute remained hanging mid air with a cold, monotonous precision, as if his brain completely ignored the physical pain and the approaching apocalypse to complete the military code to Beat.
"Pressure parameters... exceeding... maximum capacity," Shrimpy brought out with a flat, wooden, and emotionless voice, while the veins on his neck were about to burst and his feet sank deep into the flesh. "Position... untenable. We are sinking."
"Men, for God's sake hurry up!" Karan Pandava roared over it in full panic, his voice hoarse with pure adrenaline as he pressed his sword upward with both hands. "It's getting heavier!! It's getting far too heavy?!"
They slid irrevocably deeper away millimeter by millimeter, their boots deeply buried in the trembling flesh floor, while the hoarse crisis shouts of the Pandava twins cut through the inner sector. The black monster smeared with runes above them pressed down with such brutal, cosmic mass that the complete Guard Elite threatened to be crushed into an amorphous mass of blood and armor plates.
BOOOOOOOOOOM!
Right at the absolute breaking point, the massive, meters high stone outer walls of the VIP box exploded in a dazzling spectacle of pure destruction. The complete glass facade shattered into millions of razor sharp, glistening crystals that spun through the air like a deadly storm.
From the center of the wreckage, two hyper concentrated energy streams shot straight down. It was a visual masterpiece of pure dominance: on one side, a dazzling silver storm of pure moon spells cut through the purple mist, while on the other side, an aggressive, deep purple barrier vortex of pure shield energy wrapped around it. The two lightning fast auras merged mid air into a cosmic drill that struck the colossal tentacle head on with a brutal, mechanical rotation.
The effect was instant and merciless. The silver purple energy ecstasy shredded the fleshy tentacle covered in runes completely to ashes and liquid snot with a sickening, hissing violence. Pieces of mutilated tissue exploded all around and evaporated before even touching the ground.
The grotesque puppeteer creature in the shadows let out a chilling, dysmorphed shriek that cut through bone and marrow as its complete right arm shattered into thousands of glowing black shards.
However, the immense impact of the silver purple destruction was too much for the already weakened arena. With a deafening, seismic crack, the entire rotten flesh floor of the inner sector split open across its full width. Gigantic fault lines shot through the stone foundations, and the complete floor collapsed entirely with an apocalyptic noise, leaving a bottomless, pitch black ravine behind.
The intercom system above the arena glitched, sparked wildly, and gave a loud hissing bang, after which the Hype Man began to scream the lungs out of his body over the crackling speakers, his voice trembling with pure, ecstatic ecstasy:
"WHAT A DAY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!! NOT ONLY ARE THE GUARD LEGENDS HERE... THE SECRET ARENA CAN BEGIN!! THE TOURNAMENT DESCENDS TO THE UNDERWORLD!! THE COMPLETELY COLLAPSED REVOLUTION IS IN FREE FALL!!"
The inner sector transforms into a majestic, breathtaking freefall. Everyone plunged straight down into the bottomless depth, surrounded by gigantic, tumbling granite blocks, flashing lightning bolts, and thick clouds of purple mist that were torn apart by the immense airflow. In the center of the descent fell the mutilated, possessed Child, who together with the shrieking Joker puppet was sucked down with them in pure visual escalation, roaring and clawing.
As the depth swallowed them, the chaos turned into a visual spectacle of the highest webnovel epicness.
The Shinto gods Izanagi and Izanami stabilized their floating forms mid air with absolute, divine grace, their ceremonial robes fluttering in the brutal upward gust of wind, while the Pandava twins positioned themselves next to them with a fluid somersault.
Shrimpy maintained his icy, tight focus. He kicked a detached, meters high piece of stone floor with a brutal shockwave and began to surf through the air like crazy, his gaze unbothered and directed straight ahead. But amidst his autistic precision, his face suddenly tightened, and he let out a brutal, unfiltered scream of pure adrenaline and intense fun that ran perfectly in sync with the crackling violence of Beat and Blitz, who spun wildly around him like a cobalt blue high voltage whirlwind.
A few meters away, Jeshua hovered cross legged on a gigantic, flat granite block that calmly descended through the ravine. Kaelid was sitting next to it chilling casually with his back against his shield, rolling a smoke as if they were at a quiet dinner instead of an apocalyptic free fall.
Silarias and Aurelius meanwhile tensed every fiber in their bodies. Their gaze shot upward, where they saw Nyx and Jane diving straight at them through the airflow at brutal speed. Both men were already mentally bracing themselves for the absolute, destructive lecture of their lives. They expected furious blows, jealous tirades, and toxic words about the quarantine and the fact that they had stolen the show.
But reality hit with a majestic, emotional impact.
Instead of anger, the two men were completely hugged half to death in full free fall. Jane launched herself onto Aurelius with tears of jealous relief in her eyes, her arms clamped so tightly around his neck that his photon aura almost glitched from it. At the same time, Nyx wrapped her arms around the neck of her black flaming lion Silarias with a brutal, possessive, and intense love. Their auras exploded mid air upon contact: the pitch black lion ash of Silarias and the shining silver moonlight of Nyx blended into a breathtaking, cosmo visual spiral that illuminated the complete darkness of the ravine.
As they held each other in the whistling wind, the gaze of the complete group shifted definitively downward.
There, deep in the dark guts of the complex, the immense, terrifying contours of the Secret Arena became visible. A gigantic, mythical battleground that had been hidden directly under the amphitheater all this time, with massive pillars and an ancient aura that hungry waited for their landing.
The brutal impact with which the complete formation hit the floor of the Secret Arena made the ancient, mythical foundations tremble to their deepest fibers. The landing was no simple touchdown, it was a visual escalation of the highest order, where the kicked up dust clouds and purple mist were immediately torn apart by an explosion of divine and sovereign auras.
When the smoke cleared, they stood there. An unshakable wall of pure dominance.
Silarias stood in the absolute center, completely transformed into a terrifying, black burning lion warrior. The pitch black flames roared around his massive shoulders like possessed ash, his eyes glowing with the brutal, unfiltered hunger of a predator ready to tear this underworld apart. Directly at his side stood Nyx in her sovereign moon form. Her silver hair blew around her like a living, shining storm, fluttering wildly in the energetic slipstream, while her ice anting lit up terrifyingly bright, making an icy, glistening frost crawl across the ancient floor. Their combined auras formed a breathtaking contrast of pitch black destruction and serene, deadly silver.
Right next to them, Jane and Aurelius broke through the mist. Jane had gone full on electric lynx mode, her complete figure drenched in crackling, high frequency lightning flashes that danced across her arms and claws with a hissing violence, ready to shred every shadow into ribbons. Aurelius stood firmly at her side, his photon aura pulsating like a beacon of pure light that refused to tolerate the darkness of the arena.
On the other flank, Beat and Blitz stood like an inseparable, cobalt blue high voltage whirlwind, the electricity blasting off them so intense that the air around it distorted and vibrated with pure, pent up kinetic energy.
The Shinto gods Izanagi and Izanami floated a few centimeters above the trembling debris, their ceremonial robes now drenched in a threatening, divine light, while the Pandava twins, Karan and Arjan, held their gigantic weapons in front of them with a brutal swing, their heavy armor rattling with adrenaline. Shrimpy landed with a mechanical slide on his meters high piece of stone floor, his gaze icy and unbothered, the monotonous precision still anchored in every fiber of his body.
The calmness in this absolute chaos came from Jeshua. With a terrifying serenity, he stepped casually off his descent, his feet landing on the ancient floor as if he were entering a serene temple. He knelt briefly, did a quick kid bid on the cold ground, and at the exact moment he stood up again, his complete presence shifted with a majestic shockwave. A monumental golden halo appeared with a bright flash above his head, and his complete figure transformed into his Holy Spirit form, a figure of pure, uncut heavenly light that illuminated the entire inner sector.
Almost synchronously, Kaelid crashed into the floor with a brutal, dull thud. His massive shield rammed into the stones with such a gigantic impact that a colossal, rough rock immediately shot up from the depths of the ground. Within a fraction of a second, that complete rock mutated and petrified, transforming into Kaelid full stone, an unshakable, monolithic barrier of pure granite that sealed the complete defense of the group.
The Secret Arena was activated, the formation stood ready in full, terrifying glory, and the underworld immediately knew it had made the mistake of its life by swallowing them up.
The ancient runes on the floor of the Secret Arena flashed with an aggressive purple intensity as the mutation of the threat took place with sickening speed. The mutilated, possessed Child and the Joker puppet, whose right arm had just been popped into shards, merged before everyone's eyes in a gruesome, liquid escalation. Their physical forms lost all human structure and completely dissolved into a colossal, meters high mass of pitch black void gunk that pulsated like a living organ.
From the top of this steaming, boiling mass rose an empty, hollow shadow, with only one terrifying detail inside: a broken, madly laughing white mask that stared at them soullessly.
The Puppeteer had not only recovered, he had evolved into a divine horror.
With a psychopathic chuckle, the creature threw waves of thick, viscous void gunk across the battlefield floor. The purple slop immediately began to hiss and boil, after which dozens of minions crawled upward with brutal force. These were top tier ram beasts: monstrous, asymmetrical quadrupeds with razor sharp bone protrusions that broke through their own flesh like spears, clawing limbs that tore open the stone floor, and glowing purple runes carved deep into their muscles. In the midst of this bloodthirsty horde rose two gigantic mini bosses. These were colossal, deformed titans of pure corruption, their bodies built out of solidified void crystal, while hauling meters high, heavy hammers that made the entire arena tremble under seismic pressure with every step.
At the same time, the ancient, hungry aura of the arena's massive pillars began to pulse heavily, actively pulling at the energy of the heroes to keep this underground half running. Everyone had to fight against the clock and against the corruption.
In the center of this apocalyptic shift, the emotional high of the free fall instantly transformed into a deadly, coordinated combat focus on the ground. Silarias and Nyx stood unshakably side by side. Their combined auras, the pitch black, swirling lion ash of Silarias and the shining silver moonlight of Nyx, exploded outward like an impenetrable, cosmo visual spiral. The purple corruption and the liquid void gunk splashing their way hissed and evaporated directly into ash upon contact with their barrier. Jane and Aurelius formed the second unshakable duo, with Jane's electric lynx lightning tearing the advancing minions into pieces with deafening crackles, while Aurelius hermetically shielded the flanks with his razor sharp photon aura.
The focus shifted with a bright visual transition to the other side of the battlefield, where the Shinto gods and the Pandavas were so deeply locked in combat that adrenaline practically leaped off the screen. They slashed and struck their way through the horde of ram beasts with brutal dominance, their weapons flashing through the purple mist. Step by step, they backed up to keep their formation closed, until in the hectic chaos they ran hard into each other back to back.
Karan held his heavy weapon in a clamp, chopped a ram beast vertically in half with a brutal swing so that the purple gunk sprayed over his face. He looked over his shoulder at the trembling, sparking arms of the goddess and brought out with a hoarse, adrenaline filled voice: "Sister in law!!"
Almost synchronously, Arjan rammed the butt of his weapon into the maw of an advancing monster, turned his head with a wild, rushed look to his side, and shouted: "BROTHER!!"
Before the brothers could finish their tactic or launch their next attack, they were suddenly interrupted by the Shinto gods. Izanagi and Izanami split an advancing void titan with a perfectly coordinated strike, their swords leaving a deep, hissing flash of light behind. They turned around cool headedly, whipped the remaining void gunk off their blades with a fluid wrist movement, and said with a sharp, challenging look in which pure divine pride shone: "...and what do you think about 'for old time sakes'?"
Arjan ducked just in time for a meters high crystal hammer that zoomed right past his head, slid with extended legs across the opening floor with sparks flying from under his boots, and tried to casually talk his way over it with a crooked grin: "Hard to do without armor, not everyone brought theirs, right?!"
Izanami looked at him with a meaningful, laughing look, while her ceremonial robe fluttered wildly in the energetic storm raging through the arena. "We all know everyone wears it for sentiment... Come on, we are family." With a fluid, royal movement, she reached her hand out to Arjan, her fingers lighting up softly.
In the middle of the brutal chaos, Arjan burst out laughing out loud, the pure battle spirit and the memory of their old glory burning in his eyes. "You know what, alright sister... like old times!"
In one coordinated, majestic movement, the complete group threw their ceremonial outer clothing and robes aside with a brutal yank. What followed was a visual explosion of pure, blinding light that completely pushed away the darkness of the underworld and made the purple mist around them evaporate in an instant. When the light faded, they all stood there in their special Pandava armor. Each set of armor was a visual masterpiece of divine smithing, heavily personalized with their own unique traits and specific elemental powers that immediately began to pulse with a hissing violence to dominate the Secret Arena.
But the Puppeteer gave them not a single second to enjoy this visual transformation. With a lightning fast, unpredictable movement, a gigantic, liquid void slime tentacle shot from the central, steaming body of the monster straight across the battlefield. The brutal, sticky mass wrapped around the bodies of Beat, Blitz, and Shrimpy with a suffocating, psychopathic grip, smothering their cobalt blue high voltage whirlwind for a short moment under a thick layer of hissing slop.
The creature with the broken white mask uttered a chilling, dysmorphed scream that thundered through the entire inner sector: "ALEECCC!!!"
Believing that this was the perfect way to eliminate them definitively and mercilessly, the Puppeteer threw the trio with a brutal, cosmic swing straight toward the furthest outer edge of the arena. They flew meters through the air and crashed with a dull, heavy impact hard against the massive stone wall, right at the spot where a gigantic, ancient mechanical valve was anchored in the foundation.
Before they could break free from the sticky void gunk, the tentacle shot after them at terrifying speed, grabbed the heavy metal wheel with its liquid extensions, and transferred all its cosmic weight to crank the valve completely open with a brutal jerk.
KRAAAKKK!
The metal mechanism popped open with a loud metallic clank, and with a loud, terrifyingly swirling noise, the icy, wild water squirted inside with immense hydraulic pressure. The sealed sector in which Beat, Blitz, and Shrimpy were trapped began to fill up completely at a raging, suffocating pace.
The Puppeteer pulled its hissing void tentacle back from the mechanical valve with a slow, theatrical movement, as thick drops of purple slop dripped off the metal. From the depths of the steaming void cavity above its liquid body rose a sound that cut through bone and marrow. The monster let out one more brutal, psychopathic scream into the surroundings, after which the creature leaned back arrogantly into the shadows. A sinister, insane laughter pulsated from the broken white mask, a rolling, giggling sound that made the walls tremble. With pure, sadistic satisfaction, it watched as the icy water sucked into the sector of Beat, Blitz, and Shrimpy with destructive hydraulic pressure, convinced that the trap was perfect.
However, on the other side of the Secret Arena, the atmosphere had just shifted into something bordering on the divine.
The special Pandava armor sets pulsed with an intense, terrifying harmony. It was a visual reunion that summarized decades of history and battle in one breathtaking moment. The Shinto gods Izanagi and Izanami stood flanked by Karan, Arjan, and the rest of the family, their armor glowing with specific elemental runes that forcefully pushed back the purple corruption around their feet. Gold, deep blue, and flaming red light flowed through the grooves of the metal.
The intercom system above the battlefield began to spark and tremble wildly under the pure sound pressure as the Hype Man went completely wild, his hand rattling against the microphone while his voice, hoarse and breaking from pure, ecstatic ecstasy, blasted through the speakers:
"HOLY CRAP, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!!! THIS IS NO LONGER A TOURNAMENT, THIS IS AN HISTORICAL APOCALYPSE!!! THE PANDAVA FAMILY IS REUNITED!!! IN FULL SPEC ARMOR!!! THE SECRET ARENA IS GOING TO BE COMPLETELY REDUCED TO ASHES!!!"
Above the gaping ravine, far up in the highest rings of the amphitheater, the complete crowd exploded into a deafening, seismic cheer. Millions of throats screamed out of pure thrill, stamping on the bleachers so that the roar pulled through the stone foundations of the underworld like a constant earthquake.
And the family gave them exactly what they came for.
"Show them why we earned this armor!" Karan roared, while spinning his heavy weapon above his head with two hands, making the elemental energy buzz like a circular saw of light.
Arjan balanced on the ball of his foot, his eyes narrowed. "No survivors. Let's go!"
With a brutal, synchronous movement, the Pandava formation shot forward, a wall of flashing metal and pure divine pressure. The two gigantic mini bosses, the colossal titans of solidified void crystal, raised their meters high hammers to build a defense, the heavy crystals shining in the purple light, but they were simply too slow for the absolute dominance now rushing at them. They were not even given a fraction of a chance.
Karan and Arjan were the first to break the sound barrier with a loud BOOM that distorted the air. Their specific armor powers flashed synchronously in a perfectly coordinated cross attack. Karan slashed from the left, Arjan hammered from the right. The first void titan was hit with such a brutal, astronomical impact that its complete crystal body shattered into millions of glowing purple shards before it could even lower its hammer a single centimeter. The sound of breaking crystal sounded like an exploding iceberg.
Almost simultaneously, the rest of the family unleashed their unique abilities on the second mini boss. Izanagi executed a lightning fast lunge forward, leaving his sword in a trail of pure gold light that pierced the titan's knees. Izanami followed immediately after, her palms facing forward as a tidal wave of elemental energy pushed in the monster's chest. A visual ecstasy of pure destruction hit the mini boss, which was reduced to an amorphous, lifeless patch of boiling slop with a dull, hissing explosion.
"Keep up the pace! Clear the rest!" Izanami called out, as she gracefully leaped over the popping remains.
The complete horde of ram beasts was literally wiped off the map in an instant. The Pandavas moved like a well oiled machine: strikes, kicks, and elemental discharges crossed each other without hitting one another. The monsters were chopped into pieces in mid air, crushed against the ground, and completely wiped in a tidal wave of pure, uncut Pandava dominance. Where a bloodthirsty army stood just a moment ago, nothing was left now except a battlefield heavily echoing and trembling under the aftermath of their brutal reunion.
While the void remains around them evaporated into a thin grey smoke with a hissing sound, the combat focus immediately transferred to the next danger. The gaze of the complete family turned synchronously to the far corner, where the icy water kept rushing into the sealed sector with brutal, roaring force.