Chapter 1076: The Colosseum
A guttural roar ripped from Dirtclaw’s throat as hellfire ignited across his body. Without hesitation, he charged, a living battering ram aimed at the tide of demonic monsters swarming across the horizon.
The war had begun, sudden and brutal.
Orion hovered mid-air, a silent observer looking down upon the clashing tides of demonic flesh. It was a surreal spectacle—creatures of the same hellish origin, same monstrous forms, same fearless contempt for death, tearing each other apart.
He frowned. Maybe I jumped the gun. The thought was a quiet critique of his own recent decision.
The two armies of demonic monsters, each spawned from a Black Tower, were now locked in a maelstrom of violence, and Orion’s forces were on the back foot.
His legion was primarily composed of Cyclopes, Mist Wraiths, and Ghouls. The enemy’s ranks, however, were built on Flail Brutes, Mist Wraiths, and Ghouls.
The Cyclopes and the Flail Brutes filled a similar role on the battlefield—hulking, frontline behemoths. But where his Cyclopes wielded massive spiked clubs and axes, the enemy’s brutes swung devastating flails on long chains.
The critical difference, Orion observed with tactical coldness, was that the Flail Brutes could link the chains of their weapons, forming small, localized kill-zones that shredded anything caught inside. With his Cyclopes outnumbered, it was the swarming Ghouls that paid the price. Pockets of Flail Brutes erupted throughout the battlefield, their chained weapons a whirlwind of iron that pulverized the Ghouls leaping into the fray.
Looks like I’ll have to even the odds myself.
Orion raised his trident, and an array of countless blood-red spears materialized in the air around him. He unleashed the Eightfold Spear Barrage, deciding that if he couldn’t match the enemy’s tanks, he would simply annihilate their cannon fodder.
The spears rained down, a torrent of crimson death that fell upon the areas where the Flail Brutes were rampaging.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Each spear detonated on impact, obliterating a huge swath of the Cult of Four’s demonic monsters. In a single moment, the tide turned.
Orion’s beleaguered forces seized the opening, surging forward to smash deeper into the enemy’s disorganized rear lines.
Just then, a sudden spike of danger pricked at his senses.
Acting on pure instinct, Orion snapped the trident down, ramming the haft into the space just below his feet.
CLANG!
A colossal impact threw him skyward, the force of the blow launching him higher into the air. His unseen attacker, thrown back by the rebound, slammed into the ground below, carving out a small meteor crater upon impact.
The shockwave radiated outwards, indiscriminately annihilating demonic monsters from both sides and clearing a wide circle in the chaotic battlefield. The few that survived were instantly buried under the displaced earth.
High above, still ascending, Orion’s body flickered. He activated Instant Impact, vanishing from his position and reappearing like a thunderbolt inside the very crater his attacker had created.
A split second later, the afterimage he’d left behind in the sky was shredded into nothingness by a strange wooden club that swung out of the void.
The ambush, the counter, the kill—all executed in a blink.
A brief, heavy silence fell over the crater.
Orion slowly stepped out of the impact zone. Impaled on the tines of his trident was a lifeless body that looked like it had been dead for centuries.
He looked up. Four figures, arch lords all, slowly materialized from the void, positioning themselves to lock down all escape routes. Then, directly above him, a fifth figure appeared, a silhouette cloaked in a black so deep it seemed to swallow the light, its face completely hidden in shadow.
“A decoy artifact?” Orion’s lip curled into a smirk. “You’ve got a lot of nerve, trying to ambush me.”
He shook his Flame of Will trident gently. A lick of fire erupted, incinerating the decoy and turning it to ash.
“Is it not beneath an arch lord’s station to slaughter those who are defenseless?”
The voice came not from the cloaked figure, but from a female arch lord clad in golden plate armor to the east. She couldn’t be human; a pair of magnificent black wings grew from her back. Though her wings were dark, they radiated no evil aura. She wasn’t a Fallen Angel.
“Beneath my station?” Orion shot a glance at the female knight, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “You mean like picking on the little guy?” He paused, his gaze sweeping over the others. “Or was that an unfair fight? Maybe you think I lack sportsmanship?”
Orion cracked his neck, his eyes gleaming with a manic excitement as he stared up at the five arch lords surrounding him. A decent lineup, but it’s not nearly enough.
“So what do you call five of you ganging up on me, starting with a cheap shot from the shadows?”
Before the knight could retort, Orion pressed his advantage, turning their own actions into a weapon against them.
For a moment, the knight was silent. The other four remained pointedly quiet as well.
“Hahaha… It’s always the same with your kind,” Orion laughed, his voice booming across the field. His aura flared, sharp and defiant as a sword thrust into the heavens.
The sheer force of his arrogance seemed to put all five of his would-be assassins on edge.
“He’s gathering power! Take him out, now!” the cloaked figure above commanded. His voice was the trigger. As the other four arch lords instantly moved to attack, the leader once again vanished into the void.
But by the time he had spoken, Orion was already gone.
Aura Lock.
Instant Impact.
His target was the female knight with the black wings—the middle arch lord. Rule one of a group fight: take out the weakest link first.
He was too fast. Even though his enemies were reacting, they had no time to intervene. A flash of crackling energy and a deafening sonic boom later, a shower of black feathers drifted down from the sky.
Orion pulled his trident back, a slight frown on his face.
He had definitely hit the winged knight, and the blow should have been lethal. But he knew, with a sinking certainty, that she wasn’t dead. An arch lord always has an ace up their sleeve.
Sure enough, a short distance away, the fabric of space rippled and the female knight reappeared. Her golden armor was cracked and scorched, and the magnificent wings on her back were gone.
But Orion wasn’t even looking at her.
The moment he realized his attack hadn’t been a one-shot kill and that her allies hadn’t moved to save her, his focus had already shifted. He had seen the truth. While he was launching his assault on the knight, the cloaked leader had reappeared in a different position, joining the other three to erect a spatial containment field.
The world around him warped and twisted.
When his vision cleared, he was standing on the sand-swept floor of a massive arena that looked just like the colosseum.