Noah stared at the brilliant flames dancing around the girl like obedient servants, momentarily surprised.
There was no incantation.
Not only that, she was directly manipulating raw magic power.
The temperature of those flames was terrifying; even standing five meters away, he could feel an intense blistering heat.
Noticing the shock on his face, the girl immediately pulled the flames back into her body.
"My apologies," she said softly. "This phenomenon naturally occurs when my emotions fluctuate. However, you should understand now, shouldn't you? You cannot possibly defeat me."
There was absolutely no arrogance in the girl's voice.
On the contrary, Noah could clearly detect genuine apology and sympathy in her tone.
Before he could reply, the girl tilted her head back and glared at the VIP balcony above the arena.
"I told you before! I need the strongest opponent you have!"
From the dark passageway, the same burly masked guards from earlier emerged, escorting a severely overweight, sweaty man down to the arena floor.
The fat man clasped his hands together, rubbing them greedily as he spoke in a slimy tone.
"Your Royal Highness, please listen to reason! A scheduled duel cannot be changed once the fighters are in the ring. This is the absolute rule of the underground arena. The only ones who can leave this cage are the defeated, or the dead!"
"I had arranged for Your Highness to duel our most formidable gladiator, but it seems a tiny clerical error has occurred. No matter! Please, do not hesitate. Just kill Number 3, and we will immediately bring out your original opponent," the fat man persuaded with a wicked smile.
Noah glanced at the fat man.
'This fucking pig was lying through his teeth.'
Noah's appearance in the arena was no accident.
From the looks of it, this promoter had deliberately set a trap for the princess to walk into, and based on his words... he wanted the princess to murder a child in cold blood.
The girl's expression immediately darkened upon hearing the fat man's demands.
"How could I possibly do that?!" she shouted angrily. "You have already admitted that this is your own mistake, so why can't you just let this child leave?!"
Forcing her to execute a boy younger than herself just to get a real fight?
Were these people completely insane?
Just kill him without hesitating? That was a living, breathing human life!
"No!" the fat man refused decisively. "Rules are rules. If Your Highness wishes to fight someone else, you must first deal with Number 3. Or perhaps, Your Highness... are you planning to admit defeat?"
The fat man licked his greasy lips.
His wicked, lustful gaze swept up and down the young girl's body.
"Your Highness hasn't forgotten our contract, have you? The loser must unconditionally accept the demands of our arena. Even if you are the Second Princess—no, precisely because you are the Second Princess, you wouldn't break a royal promise, would you?"
"I..." The girl gritted her teeth, caught in an impossible dilemma.
To become stronger, she had defied her father and mother, sneaking into this illegal, state-condemned arena to hone her skills in real life-or-death combat.
But right at the very beginning of her journey, she had stepped into a vicious trap.
Vermillion was a small country.
It maintained proud Western traditions, but its military, territory, economy, and population were all slowly declining.
In such a struggling nation, there were many dark corners that even the royal family could not control.
One of those dark corners was... the deathmatch.
Since ancient times, this inhumane blood sport had persisted in the shadows.
The so-called gladiators were mostly slaves bought by the arena, treated as disposable meat to keep the violent games running.
She had come here to experience real combat, but she never expected these criminals to be bold enough to blackmail a princess.
The Vermillion royal family valued its reputation above all else.
A promise made was a promise kept. To break her contract would be to disgrace the royal family, which was something Stella could not accept.
But the thought of surrendering and submitting to this disgusting fat man's "unconditional demands" made her stomach turn.
Her only other option was to murder an innocent, pitiful boy.
However, the young princess had not yet realized that this trap was rigged from the start.
Whether she surrendered her body to the arena, or stained her own hands with the blood of a slave, it would lead to total tragedy.
It was the royal family of Vermillion that actively suppressed these illegal deathmatches.
If the daughter of the King publicly murdered a slave boy in an underground arena, it would be a fatal blow to the prestige and power of the crown.
The fat man was all smiles.
His beady eyes narrowed into mere slits, looking extremely pleased with his flawless trap.
Just as he was happily admiring the young girl's pained conflicted expression, a battered, rusty sword blade suddenly burst through his chest.
Schlick!
The blade stabbed violently from behind, got stuck halfway through his thick spine.
Without missing a beat, Noah forcefully slammed the heel of his palm against the sword's pommel.
The heavy impact successfully drove the dull, jagged blade straight through the fat man's heart, bursting out the front of his chest.
"Ah—AHHHHHHH..."
The fat man's face instantly turned the sickening color of a purple.
He weakly tried to clutch his chest, but his trembling hands couldn't find a place to land.
The jagged foreign object and the excruciating, paralyzing pain in his heart prevented him from drawing a breath.
He could only helplessly expel wet, bloody air from his lips.
Hot blood sprayed across the dirt, splashing onto the face of the princess standing just a few feet away.
She froze completely in place.
Standing right behind the dying promoter, Noah kept a firm grip on the blade, preventing the fat man's heavy body from collapsing to the floor.
Taking advantage of the man's fading consciousness, Noah whispered coldly into his ear.
"Enough. I am sick of listening to you. Let your third-rate conspiracy shut up along with your mouth."
The boy lifted his foot, planted his boot firmly against the fat man's back and yanked the hilt.
Shhlick!
He ripped the blood-soaked, broken sword out of the promoter's chest.
The massive, lifeless body flopped face-first into the dirt.
Feeling the hot warmth of the blood splattered on his hand, Noah couldn't help but wonder if this was actually just a dream.
It felt far too real.
Watching the blood gush from the corpse like a fountain, Stella's heart was dealt a massive shock.
'He killed him.'
'That man was just executed by a young boy?'
She stared blankly at Noah.
He had an entirely nonchalant expression on his face.
He had clearly just pierced a man's heart with his bare hands, yet he acted as casually as if he had just swatted a fly.
"You... just who are you...?" Stella whispered.
Although he heard the girl's shaky voice, just as Noah was about to answer her, he suddenly felt a powerful summons echoing from the depths of his soul.
The feeling was incredibly strange.
It wasn't a voice or a message transmitted through any normal medium. Yet, he could perfectly understand the meaning of that cosmic pull.
"Is this dream about to end?" Noah muttered to himself.
He casually tossed the bloody sword into the dirt.
Guided by that mysterious summons, he understood that as long as he chanted that single "spell," he could immediately wake up from this realistic dream.
"Yog-Sothoth."
Click—.
The exact moment the spell ended, an abrupt, heavy clicking sound echoed through the depths of his soul.
It sounded exactly like a grandfather clock that had suddenly stopped ticking.
No.
That wasn't the sound of a clock.
It was the distinct, unmistakable sound of a heavy door unlocking.