"Something's wrong," I muttered.
The air seemed to hold its breath with me. A second later, a guttural scream tore through the arena a dissonant, horrifying note that reverberated through my bones.
"AGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
We all turned at once, and the world seemed to slow down.
Leon was standing, a crimson blade driven through his torso wide, pulsating, glowing hot like freshly forged iron. Blood streamed down the living weapon in thick waves, vaporizing in the air before it could reach the ground.
Behind him stood something that didn't belong to Atlas.
Its body was an unholy fusion of flesh and chitin, arms covered in red plates, its head swollen and deformed into something that looked like a necrotic beehive leaking a bubbling black substance. Instead of legs, twisted bone structures extended like goat limbs, and its hunched frame formed a grotesque arch.
One of its arms ended in a living blade—the same one impaling Leon—trembling as if savoring the act of devouring.
Leon's scream ended in a dry gasp.
Then the entire arena erupted into chaos.
Norwenna and Nathanael were the first to react, their auras exploding like solar storms, radiating heat and wind in equal measure. The ground shook from end to end, stones rose into the air, and cracks spread instantly beneath the weight of their power as they charged toward the monstrous creature.
Two bursts of energy one black as night, the other green as the forest collided against the creature, and for a moment, the world flared in blinding flashes.
But before their attacks could reach it, everything began to distort.
The coliseum... unraveled.
The stands dissolved into translucent fragments.
The sky, once blue, shattered into shards of black glass.
The ground gave way.
Reality melted before our eyes.
It was as if the entire scene had been a painting washed away by rain, revealing what had always been hidden beneath.
In place of the arena, a vast crater stretched as far as the eye could see, encircled by stone walls over two hundred meters high. The moon was gone—an empty sky, starless, only a liquid darkness pulsing as if space itself were alive. The air smelled of iron and burnt flesh, and its energy felt distorted, unnatural, corrupted.
Leon's body hit the ground lifeless, like the creature was cleaning the filth from its weapon. And behind it, more of them emerged from nothing. Ten... twenty... nearly forty—more than double our number. Each one different, yet equally abominable. Twisted bodies, mouths in the wrong places, duplicated limbs, sewn-shut eyes—and on some, human faces grafted onto surfaces that weren't even skin.
Slowly, we realized they were charging at us, at every remaining survivor.
"Shit!" I yelled, spinning around, trying to make sense of what the hell was happening. "Where the hell are we?"
The celestial pagoda had returned us, but Atlas—or someone—had been waiting.
I just didn't know it had been waiting for me.
The competitors' prana erupted all at once a chorus of instinct and desperation. Magic and techniques flew in every direction, blades cutting through the air with deafening hums, light and shadow clashing in a chaotic spectacle. The ground shattered beneath the weight of gathered power, and the battlefield turned into a hellscape of pure energy—a large-scale war against creatures whose origins we couldn't even guess.
But when I tried to move, something seized every cell in my body.
It wasn't just any force. It wasn't binding it was claiming, anchoring even the smallest, most insignificant particles of me.
My breathing froze.
My heart stopped.
The beating in my ears fell silent, as if someone had torn the sound from existence.
Even blinking was no longer mine to command.
And then... she appeared.
Skin white as polished bone. White hair, white eyebrows, white eyes—so white they seemed to reject all color.
She was a child. At least, that's what she looked like.
Her features were delicate, human, almost beautiful—if not for the sickening aura around her, a density of power and madness so pure and cold that even the air warped.
'A child? What is a child doing here?' I thought, unable to move a muscle.
"Hihihi…"
The sound made my blood run cold.
A sharp, distorted giggle vibrated inside my gut. It crawled up my spine and made me tremble like an animal about to be slaughtered.
"So the boss decided to give the job to the pretty boy instead of just killing him. How intriguing… how intriguing… how intriguing…"
She twirled and skipped through the air like a little girl playing light, carefree, a grotesque contrast to the massacre unfolding around her.
With a small flick of her hand, the upper half of my clothes disintegrated reduced to dust instantly.
My body began to implode from within—there was no other way to describe it. The oxygen vanished, the blood refused to flow, my lungs collapsed, my heart froze again. I was dying in silence.
"Haa… I forgot to put air in the birdcage… hihihi…"
A snap echoed, and air rushed back into my lungs in a single brutal gasp.
My heart pounded, blood surged again—but my body remained paralyzed, stiff as stone. Only my eyes could move, forced to follow her.
She drifted closer floating until she hovered just before my chest. Her slender, pale fingers slid over the tattoo of two wings carved into my skin, tracing them with almost childlike curiosity.
"Now… let's see why everyone's so interested in you, little bird."
Her hand sank toward my abdomen and an indescribable pain tore through me, as if a mountain were being swallowed inside my body.
"Haaa… look at that… look at that…"
Her voice quivered in delight. "You're a complete anomaly. Everything about you is… wrong. Far more powerful than it should ever be."
She leaned closer, her small body floating until her lips almost brushed against my ear.
"So you were still hiding that you're an Overlord… what an intriguing little bird."
My world collapsed.
That thing was reading me like an open book.
"Hahahahaa…"
Her laughter echoed with a madness beyond any human limit, like the sound of a thousand dissonant voices blending into a deranged chorus. It was impossible to tell whether she was laughing, crying, or raving. Between the cackles, meaningless words spilled from her lips—fragments of a language that didn't even seem to belong to this world.
Then came a sharp sound.
"CRAACK!" It snapped my attention aside.
For an instant, I wished I hadn't looked.
Eva's head had just been crushed beneath one of the creatures' feet.
The impact splattered blood, brain matter, and bone fragments across the stone floor, painting a grotesque blur of red and white. Her eyes, still open, stared into nothingness—and that emptiness pierced through me like a blade to the chest.
The screams multiplied.
Alden, bleeding and shaking, was casting three high-level spells at once, weaving overlapping arcane circles that clashed water and earth, distorting the terrain around him. He shielded Calen and Frida with his own body, flesh tearing from the backlash of his own power.
Farther away, Norwenna and Nathanael faced something far beyond mortal comprehension. Norwenna's crystal golem was cracked, nearly shattered, while Nathanael—now a living shadow—moved with the fluidity of death itself. But even so, they were losing.
Branca tilted her head, giggling and mumbling to herself:
"Imagine… what a beautiful specimen you'd become… no, Branca, you can't touch the boss's artifact… but it'd be so lovely, the potential… no, can't, can't…"
Her phrases stumbled over one another.
A stream of chaotic thoughts, a conversation with herself—or with something inside her. Her insanity was so tangible that even the air seemed to respond, vibrating around her as if her words carried physical weight.
Then her white eyes turned back to me.
A shiver ran down my spine as that cursed energy invaded my body once again. It was cold, invasive, like thousands of needles piercing through my soul. I wanted to resist. I wanted to scream. I wanted to fight.
But I couldn't even breathe.
My body was completely immobilized, as if a mountain had fallen upon me.
The energy coursed through my inner channels, seeking out my cores like a starving serpent slithering through the depths of my being.
But then something inside answered.
"BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!"
The sound was deafening, like thunder roaring across the heavens.
From within my inner world, a storm of blue lightning erupted—my phoenix.
It burst outward with divine fury, its wings tearing through space in electric flames as it dove straight toward Branca like a comet cutting through the void.
The impact was cataclysmic.
The ground warped, the air trembled, and the surrounding energy shattered into fragments of light.
The result… was terrifying.
Everything froze.
My body—paralyzed.
My phoenix—paralyzed.
The bright blue lightning—suspended midair.
And Branca… Branca only laughed, even more euphoric, bouncing with glee at the sight.
"He bonded with a phoenix! Hahaha… a phoenix! Little bird, little bird, you're a freak of nature!"
Her voice echoed like a divine decree.
My heart sank.
Not even the phoenix the being that embodied my own lightning, my living hope—had been able to touch that creature. Its surprise attack, its celestial roar… nothing.
Nothing.
Branca stood there, untouched, laughing as if all of this were nothing but a game.
A deathly chill spread through my chest. Despair rolled over me like a dark tide, devouring every flicker of courage I had left. And the longer it went on, the more suffocating it became like the air itself was being drained away by something unseen.
Then she reached into her pocket.
With the casualness of someone holding a toy, she pulled out a small crystalline vial, engraved with glowing runes and black cracks that seemed to move.
Inside it was a dark pearl pulsing, alive and from it emanated an aura so dreadful that, for a moment, I was sure I was staring at the very gates of death.
"No…" I tried to whisper, but no sound came out.
Branca opened the vial.
In that instant, something took control of my body.
My jaw opened on its own, and before I could react, the orb floated toward me, spinning slowly, radiating that abyssal energy.
Then it entered my mouth.
It slid down my throat, burning everything in its path until it reached my stomach.
There, it began to dissolve—spreading as black particles that mixed with my blood, like sugar melting into poison.
Then came the scream.
Not a normal scream a scream of the soul.
Something inside me shattered, and my consciousness splintered into pieces.
My eyes rolled back, and the world around me faded into darkness.
Outside, my body convulsed.
The wing-shaped tattoo on my chest began to glow bright red, pulsing like a heart on the verge of bursting.
And then, slowly, it began to fade erased inch by inch, as if a divine hand were wiping it away.
Branca watched with hollow, fascinated eyes.
"This one's quite a delivery too…" she murmured, tilting her head with a nearly childlike smile.
"Where did the boss even find this thing?"