The special Pandava armor sets were barely pulsating in their divine glory when the complete dynamics of the arena shifted with a shocking transition. Right in the brutal heat of battle, while the Shinto gods and the Pandavas prepared to push forward, bright, alien flashes suddenly began shooting out from the closed, flooded sector.
It started as a deep, vibrating cobalt blue cutting wildly through the cracks of the stone walls, but within a fraction of a second, the color mutated with terrifying violence into a flaming, blood soaked crimson red. The hydraulic pressure in the sector was gigantic, but the energy fighting back from the inside was astronomically larger. Electric, fiery red flashes shot up along the massive pillars with the sound of tearing steel, across the floor, and struck like whip cracks right past the back of the Puppeteer.
The sinister, rolling laughter from the broken white mask stopped abruptly.
The monster froze in the middle of its sadistic triumph. With a jerky, mechanical movement, the hollow shadow turned its head to look directly behind itself.
Right at the moment the creature looked back, the sealed sector exploded from the inside out.
BOOM!
The meters thick, reinforced glass blew out with a deafening noise into millions of deadly shards. Together with an immense tidal wave of icy water, Blitz and Beat shot out like two brutal, crimson red electric bullets, blasted into the arena by pure, condensed kinetic energy.
The Puppeteer let out a hideous, deformed shriek that cut through bone and marrow. In pure panic, the creature leaped straight up with an inhuman reflex, grabbed the massive arena wall, and began flashing crisscross through the entire inner sector at a terrifying speed. Wherever the monster landed, the stones broke open, while the water from the ruptured valve now began pouring into the Secret Arena by the tens of thousands of liters at a time. The floor level rose at a murderous pace.
Up in the commentary box, the intercom system almost exploded under the hysterical voice of the Hype Man:
"WHAT IS THIS?! NO! THIS IS NO LONGER A TRAP... HE IS TRYING TO DROWN THE COMPLETE ARENA!! THIS WILL BE A BLACK PAGE IN THE HISTORY OF THE TOURNAMENT!!"
High in the VIP bleachers, the mood instantly shifted into pure terror. People began knocking wildly against the thick glass of the skyboxes, screaming for a way out. Amidst the chaos, Nicola and Apollo stood dead still behind Ren Miki. With a respectful, somber movement, they placed their hands over the eyes of Ren Miki to protect her from the approaching, brutal end.
Meanwhile, the Hype Man screamed through the microphone with a breaking voice:
"WAIT... WAIT WHAT?! WHO IS HE?! DOWN THERE!!"
Nicola's eyes suddenly began to sparkle with a bright, recognizable excitement. He abruptly pulled his hands away from Ren Miki's eyes, his complete facial expression transformed from concern into pure ecstasy. He looked at the figure preparing himself down in the swirling water.
"Shrimp Von Etherhart?!" Nicola brought out with a breathless, trembling voice, after which he sprinted forward like crazy. He rammed his hands against the glass of the skybox, pounded on it with his fists, and screamed with pure lung capacity down toward the deep battlefield: "HE IS THE LEGENDARY SPEEDSTER OF ETHERCORPS!!!"
Down on the battlefield, the focus shifted with a bright, cinematographic transition to what was happening beneath the water surface. The cameras underwater captured a visual masterpiece.
In the center of the swirling, flooded arena, Shrimpy suddenly began to glow with an intense, serene energy. With the unprecedented speed of a master gunslinger, he began shooting all around him. From his fingertips came no bullets, but perfectly coordinated, glowing bubbles of pure energy. They flashed through the water with bizarre precision, hitting no one, but flying closely between the heads of Silarias, Aurelius, Jane, Nyx, and the entire Pandava family.
As soon as a bubble touched their faces, it instantly expanded into a perfect, luminous diving helmet. Suddenly, all the heroes had their own sphere in which they could breathe freely and communicate amidst the tidal wave.
The Puppeteer noticed that his waterfall was not suffocating the heroes and decided to completely overhaul his form. With a sickening, liquid transformation, the void slop merged into a gigantic, leviathan like sea monster to gain maximum aqua movement and brutal dominance underwater.
But Shrimpy did not even give him the chance to accelerate.
With a blinding flash, the Speedster blasted through the water. He appeared right in front of the Leviathan form of the Puppeteer and swung disastrously. Because water conducts soundwaves and impact, the hydro environment amplified the blow astronomically for Shrimpy. His fist hit the jaw of the monster with such a brutal, exaggerated impact that a gigantic shockwave was created underwater.
BOOM!
At an astronomical speed of Mach 5, the Puppeteer was struck right through the gigantic arena, his liquid body deforming from the pure friction of the water, until he slammed motionless against the far bottom with a dull thud.
While the monster lay heavily battered on the ground recovering and trying to repair its void structure, Shrimpy took a backward run across the arena floor at terrifying speed. He needed meters for the mercy blow. He accelerated so hard that the water behind him split in two.
With a brutal, explosive push off, Shrimpy leaped through the already broken arena floor, broke through the water surface, and shot dozens of meters high into the air, right in front of the glass of the VIP skyboxes.
In a split second, frozen in time, the eyes of Nicola and Shrimpy locked with each other through the glass. Shrimpy looked at him tightly, brought his hand to his forehead in a fast, respectful salute, and then threw his fist straight into the air with brutal dominance.
Above the open cockpit of the arena, it immediately began to thunder and flash terrifyingly. Blitz, standing on top of the edge of the outer wall, reacted instinctively. He raised his hands to the sky and unleashed a gigantic, crimson red thunderbolt that struck straight down with a deafening CRACK, hitting Shrimpy right in mid air.
The Speedster became fully fueled with crackling, blood red lightning. His complete silhouette turned into a pulsating, crimson projectile.
With a terrifying acceleration, Shrimpy blasted back into the water like a meteorite, aimed straight down at the Puppeteer. The red lightning boiled the water away around him as he shot toward his target.
KABOOM!!!
The impact was astronomical. Shrimpy hit the Puppeteer so inhumanly hard that he punched his crimson fist straight through a vital liver in the central void body of the monster. The shockwave that followed was so destructive that all drains and mechanical outlets in the arena floor spontaneously burst open from the air pressure.
Within a few minutes, all the water swirled away at a raging speed through the drains of the arena.
The Secret Arena lay completely dry again in no time, marked by deep scorch marks of red lightning and debris. In the center of the wreckage lay the Puppeteer, completely transformed back to his deformed base form. The broken white mask was full of cracks, while the creature sat trembling on its knees reanimating and spitting thick streams of dark black void blood onto the stone floor.
As the water disappeared into the depths with a final, slurping gurgle, the Secret Arena lay desolate. Heavy vapors rose off the scorched stone floor. The Puppeteer sat on his knees, his liquid void body trembling and hissing while vomiting dark patches of black blood. The broken white mask hung crooked, full of deep cracks from which a weak, purple light leaked.
However, the psychopathic madness in the creature was not broken; it was reduced to pure, destructive survival instinct.
With an unexpected, jerky reflex, a thin, black slime tentacle shot out from his side. The extension flashed across the ground and grabbed the mutilated, possessed Child, who still lay half conscious in the slop, with a suffocating grip. Before anyone from the Pandava family or the heroes could intervene, the Puppeteer pulled the small body toward himself at sickening speed.
His liquid torso split open vertically like a giant, toothless maw of pure darkness. Without hesitating for a single second, he threw the Child directly inside.
There was a dull, crunching sound of bones and flesh being compressed together, followed by a greedy, liquid gulp. He devoured her completely, alive and well, purely to absorb her divine, possessed energy into his own mutating cells.
Immediately, the void slop around him began to boil wildly. The remaining purple runes on the arena floor flashed so brightly that they burned into the stone with a hissing sound. From the pulsating mass, the hollow shadow rose upward again, but this time something new materialized in his rattling, liquid right hand. The shadow reached into his own chest and pulled out a gigantic, rusty sword covered with glowing black runes and pulsating veins with a shrill, metallic sound.
Up in the commentary box, the Hype Man went silent for a split second, as if his brain refused to believe what his eyes were seeing. Then he slammed both fists onto his panel and went completely insane over the intercom, his voice breaking in pure, hysterical panic:
"NOOO!!! THIS CANNOT BE TRUE!!! NOT THAT WEAPON!!! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS IS THE AWAKENED BLADE OF THE CURSED GOD!!! HE IS GOING TO DO IT!!! HE IS GOING TO MAKE THE ULTIMATE SACRIFICE!!!"
Down on the battlefield, the Puppeteer took the massive, possessed sword in a firm grip with both hands. The broken white mask looked at the arena one last time soullessly with a hollow, triumphant gaze.
Then he drove the razor sharp, cursed blade straight into his own stomach area with a brutal, backward thrust.
The blade bored deep through his own liquid core until the tip came out the back with a bloody jerk. The monster uttered no scream. Instead, the absorbed crimson red blood of the Child flowed synchronously with the pitch black void slop along the edge of the sword to the outside, straight onto the ancient floor.
What followed was a visual escalation of pure, uncut horror.
The sword began to devour and morph the Puppeteer from the inside out. His meters high pitch black void structure began to violently tear and dysmorph, breaking out of human proportions. Bones could be heard breaking and reshaped into asymmetrical, armor like protrusions that poked through the liquid flesh. The pitch black slop mixed with the crimson red blood, creating a terrifying, two tone hybrid form.
On the left side of the transforming mass, the fragile, pale limbs of the Child grew out of the corruption, studded with sharp crystals, while the right side turned into a massive, clawing shadow giant holding the Awakened Blade firmly clamped. The broken white mask merged with the face of the girl; the left side showed her crying, stone facial features, while the right side was dominated by the insanely laughing porcelain mask.
The complete Secret Arena began to shake under a seismic pressure three times heavier than before. The pitch black lion ash of Silarias and the silver moonlight of Nyx began to flicker heavily due to the brutal, divine aura exploding from the hybrid. The new transformation was no longer a monster; it was a merged, divine horror defying the laws of the underworld.
The hybrid slowly raised the Awakened Blade, while the two tone lightning began to strike the battlefield.
And at that absolute boiling point, with the heroes in action poses and the Pandava family locked in, the screen cut to black.