The battlefield shook like a wounded creature struggling to stay alive. Runes flickered along the cracked stone, their glow pulsing in chaotic rhythms as the arena desperately tried to stabilize itself. Hard-light barriers sputtered, flaring and collapsing like dying stars. Magma vents hissed open. Gravity surged, flickered, and dipped without warning. And overhead, clouds of smoke and dust drifted across the broken sky, illuminated by intermittent lightning arcs from malfunctioning storm nodes.
For the first time since the Battle Royale began, the fighters—those who still remained conscious and un-teleported—felt a brief, fragile sense of relief.
Danny and the Wolf King were no longer looking at each other.
They stood separated by an enormous newly formed ravine, hard-light walls crackling between them, the arena's emergency partitions desperately holding the two titanic forces apart. Danny stood motionless, hands in his pockets, head slightly tilted. Wolf King stalked along the edge of the ravine, snarling, golden aura rippling like fire.
They were contained.
Not defeated.
Not diverted.
Just… stalled.
And everyone else on the battlefield understood that this was the only reason they were still alive.
But Danny and Wolf King were not the story of this chapter.
Because elsewhere—far from the titans' silent tension—the battlefield screamed with chaos, fire, ice, lightning, and blood.
And the other fighters were not taking the reprieve lightly.
Every second counted for survival.
Every heartbeat was another battle.
—
Swift exhaled, silver mist curling from his breath as his Half-Silver Dragon form deepened. Silver scales layered down his arms and torso, shimmering like moonlit metal. His eyes blazed argent-white. His hands extended into claw-like talons, and a faint spectral shimmer teased the outline of future wings across his back.
"Jake!" Swift shouted, sliding across an ice patch as a fighter swung a flaming glaive toward his head. "LEFT!"
Jake, in full Bronze Dragon humanoid form, fists arcing with crackling electricity, turned right.
"NO—OTHER LEFT!"
Jake spun in terrified circles. "I CAN'T TELL ANYMORE EVERYTHING IS SPARKING!"
Swift grabbed Jake by the collar and yanked him out of the path of a collapsing pillar. The pillar crashed to the ground, lighting the battlefield in flickering orange glow.
From the shadow of the falling debris, a squad of twelve fighters emerged—eyes sharp, weapons drawn, senses locked on the dragons.
"Dragons first!" one snarled. "They're too strong to leave for later!"
Swift smirked. "They're not wrong."
Jake whimpered. "I don't like being first…"
The fighters charged from all angles at once.
Swift slammed a palm into the ground—frost erupting in a wave of icy spikes. Four fighters slipped instantly, slammed onto their backs, and teleported away in beams of golden light.
Jake roared with bronze crackling through his throat. He swung a heavy right hook—electricity surging out like a whip—crashing into a shield fighter. The man spasmed, dropped his weapon, and teleported out before he even hit the floor.
Two spearmen thrust simultaneously.
Swift ducked, froze the spears midair, snapped them off at the middle, and knocked their wielders into each other.
Jake grabbed a fighter by the legs and swung him like a flail into another attacker.
Swift deadpanned, "That's… effective."
Jake wheezed, "I'M REACTING TO FEAR!"
Within moments, all twelve fighters were eliminated.
Swift straightened his posture and exhaled gently. "Okay, Jake… not bad. We might actually be a team."
Jake raised a bronze fist triumphantly. "YEAH WE—OH GOD ANOTHER ONE!"
A fireball streaked toward them.
Swift froze it midflight.
Jake punched it.
It exploded.
Swift facepalmed. "Why… why did you punch it?"
Jake shrugged. "Instinct…?"
—
Across the field, Jade Killington racked his arms CH-CHNK like loaded shotguns. Chi glowing along his forearms shimmered brilliant gold. He grinned at three fighters closing in—a juggernaut with a runed warhammer, a long-range kinetic mage, and a shield knight.
"OI!" Jade barked. "Come on then! Let's see who wants it most!"
Shadeclaw snarled beside him, lupine eyes gleaming, claws at the ready. "Why are you so loud?"
"'Cause it scares the weak ones," Jade replied with a cocky grin.
The warhammer juggernaut charged.
Jade met him halfway with a chi-charged hook punch to the ribs.
KA-BOOM.
The explosion launched the juggernaut into the sky, teleporting him out instantly.
Shadeclaw vaulted past Jade, claws slicing through the mage's kinetic shield like paper. The mage collapsed to his knees before vanishing.
The shield knight hesitated.
Jade stepped forward, cracking his chi again.
Shadeclaw growled. "If you run, it'll be worse."
The shield knight didn't get the chance. Jade swung a chi-laced headbutt that sounded like an artillery blast, and the knight teleported out before his shield hit the ground.
Jade brushed dust off his knuckles. "Easy."
Shadeclaw snarled, "Stop using me like your personal cover."
Jade clapped him on the back. "Be faster then, bruv."
—
Meanwhile, Sedge Hat's "art studio" was in full swing.
Dozens of runes, pressure mines, spring pads, dirt tripwires, and gravity-flip tiles created a death maze across half the battlefield.
Sedge revealed his newest trap—
The Rebound Rotator Explosive Platform.
Fighter steps on it.
The platform spins 270 degrees.
Fighter is launched backward.
Second trap triggers.
Boom.
Three eliminations in under ten seconds.
Jimmy stood from the commentary booth. "SEDGE HAT IS PLAYING BATTLESHIP BUT HE'S THE ONLY ONE WHO KNOWS WHERE THE SHIPS ARE!"
Julian hid behind his chair. "HE'S UNHINGED. HE NEEDS SUPERVISION!"
—
On the far side of the chaos, Ember Claw and Tundra Lynx were demolishing a firestorm squad.
Ember Claw unleashed a spiraling inferno that melted through five fighters' armor. Tundra Lynx froze the ground behind them, turning it into a slick mirror. Ember Claw's flames hit the ice, creating boiling steam explosions that sent enemies flying.
It was a brutal dance of fire and ice.
"More!" Ember Claw shouted, flames erupting from her back like wings.
Tundra Lynx nodded quietly. "Freeze where needed. Burn where weak."
Together they eliminated another squad before their opponents could even react.
—
Then there was Mira-the-Silent.
She drifted through the steam clouds left by Ember Claw like a ghost. Each time a fighter tried to reposition or hide, Mira appeared behind them, tapping a nerve cluster. They collapsed instantly, teleportation beams swirling around them.
One assassin lunged, double daggers extended.
Mira stepped left.
The assassin's momentum carried him too far.
She touched his neck with two fingers.
He teleported out mid-motion.
Mira whispered, "Too noisy…"
Another fighter hiding behind rubble peeked out—
Mira appeared behind him.
"Too slow."
He vanished.
Even Jade, casting a glance her way, muttered, "I hate when she does that."
Shadeclaw shivered. "She terrifies me."
—
Then came the thunderous footsteps.
Giga-Ronin.
His body glowed with blue kinetic lines.
He had absorbed:
falling debris
shockwaves
Ember Claw's fire
Sedge Hat's random traps
and even a few stray arrows
Now he was nearly unstoppable.
Ten fighters leaped onto him at once.
He stood still.
Absorbing.
Building energy.
Then—
BOOM.
A massive kinetic pulse sent all ten fighters flying, teleporting in golden streaks.
Giga-Ronin stood unmoving in the crater he created.
—
The battlefield felt like it was stabilizing for a moment—
Until the builder bot came screaming across the field.
"ERR0R! ERR0R! STABILIZATION CRIT1CAL!"
Its welding arm blasted random laser arcs.
Its thrusters misfired.
It attempted to glue a fighter's feet to the floor.
It tried repairing Shadeclaw's claws.
It zipped past Jake and declared: "FR4CTURED STRUCTURAL AN0MALY!"
Jake shrieked. "IT'S CHASING ME!"
Swift kicked the bot away, but it spun midair and returned even faster.
Julian screamed through the mic, "WHY WON'T IT DIE?!"
Jimmy shouted, "BECAUSE THE WAFFLE MADE IT STRONGER!"
As if summoned, the waffle appeared overhead, glowing brighter than before. Runes spun rapidly. A humming sound vibrated the air.
The waffle pulsed—
And a massive rune surge erupted from the ground.
The entire battlefield trembled.
Cracks spiderwebbed across the arena.
Hard-light structures flickered.
Gravity seized, reversed briefly, then slammed down harder.
Sedge Hat shouted, "NOT AGAIN! MY TRAPS!"
Fighters stumbled, fell, rolled as the floor shook violently.
Then—
The ground collapsed.
A huge sector of the battlefield—nearly a quarter of it—sank downward into a lower chamber that hadn't been revealed before. Fighters screamed as they slid on collapsing stone slabs.
Swift grabbed Jake as they slid.
Shadeclaw leaped between falling debris.
Jade blasted a chi shot that propelled him upward.
Sedge Hat skated across his own trap tiles like a man possessed.
Giga-Ronin simply fell straight down with no fear.
The new battlefield opened below—a subterranean combat arena filled with glowing blue vein-lines of unstable mana.
The survivors crashed into it, regrouping, panting, bleeding.
Above them, Danny and Wolf King remained frozen, their standoff unchanged.
But down here—
the fight continued.
Fighters Remaining: 300 / 500
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