Chapter 234: The Blood-Stained Hand
Inside the Corrida Colosseum, the ventilation shafts allowed air to circulate naturally.
But now, the wind felt strange.
Sparse.
Uneven.
Unnatural.
Diamante sensed something wrong.
Proud as he was, he withdrew his arrogance at once and warily scanned the empty battle stage.
This was a stage he should have known better than anyone.
Yet at this moment, that familiar arena felt incredibly foreign.
Aside from the usual scent of blood, there was something else mixed into the air.
Something indescribable.
It caught his attention, but he could not quite grasp it.
"Who's there?"
Diamante shouted sharply.
The shout rang out loud and clear, seemingly filled with courage, but it only left the audience and the commentator, Gatz, confused.
Who?
There was clearly no one else on the stage.
Who was Diamante talking to?
"Who's standing on the stage? Come out!"
Diamante gripped his bullfighting scepter tightly, seeking even a shred of security from the familiar weapon.
"Otherwise, I won't be polite!"
That feeling of sensing something yet being unable to find it was driving him mad.
His repeated shout finally made many people realize that Diamante had discovered something unusual, even if they themselves had noticed nothing.
"Oh? Is Lord Diamante in some kind of trouble?"
Gatz quickly reacted, his voice rising with excitement.
"It seems there is an unknown person on this stage. Let us wait and see. Let us welcome this mysterious challenger!"
His words immediately ignited the audience's passion.
Who was this person on the stage?
How had Diamante sensed him?
They did not know.
But they knew one thing.
This would be a blood-pumping battle.
Unlike the expectant audience, however, Diamante felt fear beneath his irritation.
At this moment, it was not merely that he sensed someone.
From that unseen person, he also felt an aura somewhat similar to Young Master Doffy.
An opponent that could not be underestimated.
Not wanting to remain in such a passive position, Diamante pulled out a party popper from his person and fired it into the air.
In an instant, colorful confetti burst upward and scattered across the entire stage.
Gatz shouted excitedly, "It's Lord Diamante's Death Stardust! An attack that covers the entire stage! How will this unknown contestant dodge it?"
The moment the confetti finished spreading, it transformed into lethal weapons.
Thin iron needles fell from the sky like points of starlight.
Dense.
Sharp.
Inescapable.
No matter who it was, unless they were not on the stage at all, avoiding such an attack would be impossible.
Shua, shua, shua!
The confetti filling the air became a rain of murder.
That was because the confetti had originally been weaponry.
It was only through Diamante's Flutter-Flutter Fruit that it had been turned into flag-like scraps of paper.
Now that Diamante had released his ability, the confetti naturally returned to its original form.
Sharp, cold iron needles.
They rained down without a single blind spot across the entire stage.
The gaps between them were only a few centimeters wide.
Perhaps ants or tiny insects could slip through.
But no human could.
The iron needles struck the stage with sharp metallic sounds, piercing deep into the floor.
From that alone, one could imagine how deadly they were.
After using this move, Diamante finally breathed a little easier.
No matter what kind of enemy he was facing, once this move was used, he believed that as long as the opponent was on the stage, he would be able to detect them.
If the enemy remained on the stage, they had no way to avoid the attack.
If they tried to flee the stage, his perception would catch the movement, and he could attack them instantly.
Diamante tightened his grip on the bullfighting scepter in his hand.
It was a weapon made of special metal.
Through his ability, he could instantly turn it into a light, fluttering flag, then restore it the moment he thrust it out.
Such a sudden change in weight and form was nearly impossible to dodge without prior knowledge.
He slowly scanned every part of the stage, waiting for the enemy to move.
But the iron needles had fallen normally.
He sensed no anomaly.
That made him doubt himself slightly.
Could he really have been too sensitive?
Just then, a voice sounded so close that Diamante's body trembled.
"Are you looking for me?"
The voice was right beside him.
Almost like a whisper in his ear.
Impossible.
As long as the opponent was still on this stage, how could he have avoided Death Stardust?
Diamante did not think.
He swung his bullfighting scepter toward the source of the voice by instinct.
But the strike clearly hit nothing.
He felt no sensation of striking an enemy at all.
In the next instant, he swept the scepter fiercely behind him.
Still nothing.
Not even the slightest feeling of contact.
Where the hell was he?
Just as that thought rose in Diamante's mind, a small, delicate arm pierced through his heart from behind.
The figure that slowly appeared was a boy.
The same boy who had caused a commotion outside the Colosseum.
Axel.
The place where he appeared was exactly where Diamante's first strike had landed.
Yet in that very spot, where the scepter had clearly passed through empty air, a figure now emerged out of nowhere.
Under Diamante's astonished gaze, Axel slowly withdrew the arm that had pierced his heart.
Blood instantly spurted out, adding another layer of gore to the already blood-stained stage.
The blood mist splashed through the air, but when it approached Axel, it slid away smoothly.
As for Axel's blood-red arm, the blood covering it slowly receded, gradually revealing fair skin once more.
No one could believe it.
Such a small boy.
Such a thin arm.
Yet those were the hands of a killer.
Hands stained red.
Just moments ago, they had pierced through a man's heart.
Diamante wanted to scream.
He wanted to resist.
But with his heart destroyed, his body had already lost its strength.
Without the core that sustained life, everything else was meaningless.
He slowly collapsed straight to the ground.
The astonishment in his eyes shifted into anger, then confusion, then emptiness.
In the end, he became one more corpse among the countless bodies that had fallen in this arena.
Everything happened too quickly.
So quickly that neither the audience nor Gatz had time to react.
One moment, Diamante had been standing on the stage in high spirits.
The next, he had become a corpse.
No one expected such a scene.
They had merely been waiting with excitement for the unknown person to appear, followed by another overwhelming display from Diamante.
Instead, the outcome was so abrupt it felt unreal.
The previously invincible Diamante had been killed in an instant.
Unbelievable.
No, it was more than that.
It was impossible to believe.
Axel, the boy who had done all this, only glanced indifferently at Diamante lying on the ground.
"The moment you trusted your eyes, your ears, and your sense of force, you had already lost."
Because of the previous Death Stardust, there should not have been a single intact spot on the stage.
Yet one specific floor tile remained completely undamaged.
That was where Axel had stood.
Diamante had not sensed anything unusual simply because his eyes had been deceived.
Light could deceive the eyes.
The voice had merely been used to stir Diamante's nerves.
As for the sense of touch, changing the direction of force and altering how the body perceived impact was exactly what Axel had done.
That was why Diamante felt as though he had struck empty air, even after making the correct attack.
And all of this was why Axel had been able to kill Diamante so easily.
.....
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