The dust from the platform sector collapse still hung in the air like a choking fog, drifting in thick, swirling clouds over the scarred battlefield. Fighters stumbled out of the wreckage, coughing, bleeding, limping, clutching broken weapons or shattered armor—only to be met immediately by more violence. The collapse hadn't slowed the battle. If anything, it had awakened something primal in the remaining contenders. The ground-based sector was tighter, closer, with nowhere to escape upward. No more floating platforms to flee across. No more easy repositioning. This was now a pit of pure survival.
And in that pit, brutality reigned.
A swordsman swung wildly at a spear-wielder, knocking the weapon free and driving the flat of his blade into the man's stomach. Before he could follow up, a shockwave tore through the area as Craterfist punched the ground ten yards away, sending the swordsman flying into the air. He burst into shimmering hex-light mid-flight, teleported instantly to the medbay.
In the medbay, unconscious fighters floated in crystal-clear Magic Water Baby tanks—massive oval pods filled with glowing blue restorative water. Suspended inside like peaceful infants, warriors healed from shattered bones, ruptured organs, and concussions in seconds. It was soothing, beautiful, and horrifying all at once. Even fighters who woke early chose to stay in the tanks until their hearts stopped racing.
Back in the arena, there were no such comforts.
Ember Claw slashed her burning talons across the faceplate of an armored guardian, the metal melting under her flames. The guardian screamed, staggered, and teleported out just before collapsing. Ember Claw pivoted, launching a spiraling fire wave that set two approaching fighters ablaze. They vanished into golden particulates before hitting the ground.
Mira-the-Silent flickered behind a bulky fighter who was still disoriented from the collapse. She tapped his neck with two fingers. He fainted instantly and warped away.
A streaming announcement echoed faintly above the arena as eliminations flashed on the massive board. The count was dropping fast.
Shadeclaw tore into an oversized brawler with vicious ferocity. His claws danced across the man's chest, sparks flying as they screeched against reinforced armor. The brawler roared and grabbed Shadeclaw's arm, swinging him upward—but Shadeclaw flipped mid-air, twisted, clamped his claws into the man's shoulder, and slammed him down with a sickening crunch.
The brawler teleported out in a burst of gold.
Shadeclaw spat dust. "Next."
Three fighters rushed Jade at once from the right. She ducked under the first strike, deflecting the second with a precise parry and sidestepping the third entirely. She retaliated with a clean, efficient slash that clipped two of them across the thighs. They collapsed instantly, teleporting away.
The third fighter tried to flee—Jade flicked her blade upward, slicing a falling stone in half before stepping forward and tapping the hilt against the back of his head. He vanished in a beam of gold.
"These fighters are getting sloppy," Jade muttered.
Shadeclaw snorted through labored breath, "They aren't sloppy. They're afraid."
And they had every reason to be.
Because Danny was walking again.
Every step was a disaster.
Danny crossed the terrain slowly, almost lazily, as though he were strolling through a quiet park rather than a battlefield filled with screaming warriors. But the terrain refused to behave normally around him. The cracked earth rippled as though bowing under strain. Stones quivered. Metal beams twisted. A damaged pillar crumbled the moment Danny neared it, collapsing in a plume of dust.
A fire mage, trembling but determined, launched a massive torrent of flame directly at him.
Danny didn't stop.
The fire wrapped around him harmlessly, dispersing like mist. The mage stared in horror as the flames he poured every ounce of mana into failed to even warm Danny's coat.
Danny glanced at him.
Not a glare. Not even a meaningful look.
Just a glance.
The mage fainted instantly and teleported away before hitting the ground.
Further away, a sniper lined up a precision shot from the ruins of a collapsed wall. His rifle thrummed with charge, glowing with crackling blue runes. He exhaled and pulled the trigger.
Danny lifted his hand absentmindedly as he stepped forward.
The bullet curved midflight—bowed, bent, warped—and shot off course entirely, ricocheting off a metal girder and knocking the sniper unconscious instead.
He teleported away in golden light.
A squad of eight fighters launched a coordinated rush at Danny, seeing an opening. The first three swung heavy weapons. Danny tilted slightly to the right. The weapons collided with each other in midair, knocking all three fighters backward.
Another fighter hurled a stone spike.
Danny stepped left.
The spike hit a sixth fighter instead.
A seventh fighter tried to flank him. Danny rotated an inch to the left. The seventh fighter tripped over the eighth and both fell unconscious.
Danny kept walking as if unaware he had just eliminated an entire squad by stepping in the correct directions.
Swift and Jake watched from behind fallen rubble.
Jake whispered, "He's not even… doing anything…"
Swift swallowed hard. "He's doing everything. He's just doing it accidentally."
Jake whimpered. "I want to go home."
Swift grabbed him by the shirt as another shockwave swept past. "THEN KEEP MOVING!"
Across the battlefield, Wolf King tore through fighters with savage joy. His claws ripped through armor. His strikes sent bodies flying into walls. His laughter boomed like thunder, spurring panic throughout the sector.
A trio of warriors attempted to corner him. Wolf King lunged through all three in a single movement—one horizontal slash, one vertical, one backhand—leaving them all unconscious before they even processed what happened.
As they teleported away, Wolf King grinned, blood spattering across his muzzle.
"This is no battlefield…" he growled. "This is foreplay."
He looked at Danny.
Danny continued forward, unhurried.
Wolf King's grin widened. His aura flared, cracking the ground beneath him.
"Soon."
The arena's stabilizers whined at a dangerously high pitch. The remaining fighters began to notice a different problem—the environment was becoming hostile.
Gravity flickered, causing one fighter to suddenly float upward with a confused shout before being yanked back to the ground at double intensity. Lightning bolts crackled across the sky as storm nodes malfunctioned. Geysers erupted from cracked rock, launching magma streams into the air.
The arena wasn't malfunctioning.
It was panicking.
Jimmy yelled into the mic, "THE ARENA IS HAVING AN EMOTIONAL BREAKDOWN!"
Julian clutched his head. "IT'S NOT THE ONLY ONE!"
Then—
The waffle appeared.
Just floating in front of a camera drone.
Rotating slowly.
Its runes pulsed with faint light.
Jake saw it and screamed, "IT'S BACK! WHY IS IT IN THE SKY?! WHY IS IT FLOATING?!"
Swift refused to look. "I'm not acknowledging the cursed breakfast. I'm not. I refuse."
The waffle emitted a tiny whommppp, then vanished like a glitch in reality.
Before Jake could continue screaming, the ground erupted.
Craterfist slammed both fists into the earth, sending cracks shooting outward like lightning. Ember Claw unleashed a spiraling inferno, merging it unintentionally with Giga-Ronin's kinetic pulse. The three attacks collided with overcharged runes from the malfunctioning arena.
Everything erupted.
The explosion tore through the battlefield in a massive, sector-encompassing shockwave. Fighters flew like debris in a hurricane. Some bounced off reinforced barriers. Others were flung across chasms. Many vanished into golden teleportation light before their bodies could strike anything lethal.
Danny stopped walking.
Wolf King stopped hunting.
The air went deathly still.
Ash drifted from the sky.
When the smoke cleared, dozens of fighters were gone.
The battlefield was a charred wasteland of shattered stone, flickering runes, and crumpled metal.
Danny and Wolf King took one step closer to each other.
Just one.
But that single step sent a crack across the earth, splitting the ground between them like a lightning strike frozen in stone.
Every fighter still conscious felt an instinctive, primal terror.
The battlefield was beginning to understand fear.
Fighters Remaining: 375 / 500