The air itself grew heavy, thick with the smell of clotted blood and dense smoke. It was as if the sky had opened and poured its curse onto the arena. Beneath Ashen's feet, the ground was no longer ground but a swamp of red liquid, pulsing as if it had a life of its own. The hellish drums on the edges kept pounding, planting in his chest a terrifying rhythm that dragged him closer to madness.
Suddenly…
The twisted giant took a step forward. Every muscle of his swollen, deformed body shook, and every cracked bone seemed to groan under the weight of his strength. Seventeen thousand kilograms of raw savagery… that was his power.
The sound of his foot hitting the ground was like an explosion. The shockwave pushed Ashen's body backward even before the fight truly began.
A massive hand, like a wall, came crashing down.
Ashen raised his arms in desperate reaction, activating both the Blood Crocodile Rune and Iron Skin, but the strike shattered his defense without mercy.
His body slammed into the ground, dirt exploding into fragments around him, and the bones in his arms cracked under the pressure.
A muffled scream tore from his throat as he arched on the ground. Blood burst from his mouth, burning his throat, droplets scattering and mixing with the pool beneath his body.
The giant gave him no moment. Its other arm fell like a warped blade of flesh, striking Ashen directly in the chest. He heard his ribs shatter like glass crushed underfoot. Pain tore through his entire being until his vision blurred red.
Every breath became a knife stabbing his chest.
And yet… amid this massacre, he realized something strange.
The giant had not used any technique.
There were no complex strikes, no summoning of hidden forces, no mimicry of previous styles.
The giant… had become only a massive beast, relying purely on raw power and savagery.
But this was no comfort.
Because the true nightmare still remained: the ability to rebound injuries.
When Ashen's fist slammed into the giant's chest in a desperate blow, the result was only blood. For a brief moment he felt relief as the giant's flesh cracked under his strike… but then he felt the same tearing pain in his own chest. His ribs shattered as if his fist had struck himself.
Every wound he inflicted with his hands appeared on his own body as well.
It was like fighting himself… only weaker, and weaker, and weaker.
Another strike from the giant.
A kick from its massive body made the air explode around him. Ashen flew away like a broken rag doll, his body crashing against the ground with force that shattered stones and scattered blood across a wide area.
His pelvis fractured. His left thigh snapped clearly. Every movement meant a new scream.
The giant did not stop. It leapt forward, its savage roar splitting the sky. Its massive fist fell like a hammer, crushing the ground where Ashen landed. He had no time to dodge; the blow struck his shoulder directly. His right shoulder turned into torn flesh.
Blood gushed like a waterfall, and the thirsty earth drank it all.
In his desperate struggle, he tried to rise, but his knee would not respond. The pain turned his vision dark for a moment.
Still, he dug his fingers into the ground, lifted his body with tears and blood, and lunged forward with a beastly scream, as if something inside refused to fall.
But as soon as he reached the giant and delivered a weak strike to its deformed abdomen… the pain rebounded on him. His own stomach tore internally, blood flooding upward into his throat. He vomited a thick mass of blood that splashed onto the ground and evaporated in the infernal heat of the arena.
The more he struck, the more he bled.
The more he resisted, the closer he came to death.
Even his arms were too weak to lift anymore, like hollow bones covered in skin.
The giant roared again, seized Ashen's body in its massive hand, and lifted him into the air like a small doll. Then it slammed him into the ground again and again.
Each impact broke a new bone.
Each impact carved another bloody crater into the earth.
The ground itself shook, the surrounding walls trembling under the force of the strikes.
Ashen no longer knew which bones were still intact and which had shattered. Pain became a dark cloud covering his awareness.
But what made it worse… the twisted creatures on the edges of the arena had not stopped beating the drums. The rhythm grew faster, deeper, more savage.
It was as if they were celebrating his death, urging the giant into greater frenzy.
"Why…?"
The word left his mouth weakly, barely audible even to himself.
Was this fate? To fight a beast that could not be defeated, to be killed slowly and brutally inside an unmerciful ordeal?
He felt that everything was against him: the ground, the sky, the beast, the drums, even his own body that no longer obeyed him.
Despair surrounded his soul.
Every breath was a battle.
Every moment was waiting for the next strike of death.
But in the middle of this despair… there was something else.
A cold, dark feeling growing inside him.
A feeling not so different from the madness he was staring at.
Ashen could no longer tell his blood from the monster's. The arena had become a sea of red, the air filled with screams, roars, and the hellish pounding of drums.
The twisted giant had complete control of the fight.
Ashen had become nothing more than a bag of blood and flesh, taking blows—and every blow he delivered to the giant doubled as wounds on his own body.
But inside his eyes, within the darkness, something else began to ignite…
A spark of hidden savagery.