When I was twenty, the world didn't end with a bang or a whimper; it ended with the iron portcullis of the Colosseum of Fools slamming shut behind me, sealing my fate in the dark.
In the sunless depths of Hallownest, the Colosseum is where hope goes to be ground into the silt. They call it the "Trial of the Fool," yet there is no humor to be found in the title. There is only the suffocating stench of damp earth, the rusted tang of ancient blood, and the rhythmic, maddening chant of a crowd that hungers for the visceral sound of a shell being cracked wide open.
At first, I fought to survive. I was a man—or at least, something that desperately remembered the shape of one—clinging to the fraying logic of the surface world. I swung my nail with a desperate purpose, searching for an exit, trying to preserve some tattered shred of my dignity. But the Colosseum is a predatory god. It doesn't just demand your life; it hungers for the very architecture of your mind.
The first hundred battles were a fever dream of screeching Primal Aspids and iron-clad Fools. I remember the sound of my own breath—ragged, wet, and claustrophobic—echoing inside the cage of my shell. Every time I thought the tide had receded, a new wave dropped from the rafters in a cacophony of chains. Squires, warriors, beasts—they came in a relentless surge of chitin and malice, an endless conveyor belt of slaughter.
The turning point came during the Trial of the Conqueror. I was pinned against a wall of weeping stone, my left arm hanging as a useless weight, my shell leaking a dark, viscous fluid that lacked the warmth of blood. A Great Hopper hung suspended in mid-air, a living mountain of muscle preparing to crush me into the grit. Above, the crowd was a single, high-pitched, chittering roar that vibrated in my very teeth.
And then, something snapped.
It wasn't a bone. It was the part of me that cared about why I was fighting. The fear evaporated, replaced by a cold, electrifying clarity that tasted like ozone. I didn't want to leave anymore. I wanted to see the exact moment the Hopper's head met the floor. I wanted to hear the crowd's collective gasp when I showed them a cruelty they hadn't witnessed in a century.
I didn't just kill the Hopper. I tore it apart with my bare hands, laughing as the orange infection sprayed across my chest like a morbid baptism. The agony in my arm wasn't a warning anymore; it was a rhythmic pulse of life. It was a reminder that I was finally vibrating at the same jagged frequency as the arena.
That was the day the maniac was born.
For years, time became a casualty of the pit. I stopped counting the days and started counting the rhythms: the clockwork emergence of floor spikes, the hydraulic hiss of lowering ceilings, and the frantic tempo of a heart that only beat for the kill. I grew to love the "dance." I would intentionally let the enemies swarm me, just to see if I could teleport through their ranks fast enough to decapitate them all before the first drop of ichor hit the sand.
I became a scholar of the massacre. I learned that the sound of a Mantis Traitor's shell snapping was the most exquisite music in the world. The System was a distant, forgotten hum; the Seed in my mind was a cheering spectator, whispering 'More' until the word lost all meaning. I was the Colosseum's favorite monster. The Lord Fool would lean forward in his throne, his hollow eyes fixed on me as I turned every "Trial" into a systematic, beautiful slaughter.
But standing now on the 41st floor of the Dungeon, the silence finally caught up to me.
The maniac didn't fade; it crashed. As the final blue mana stones of the ten-thousandth monster shattered into dust, the ringing in my ears died away. I looked down at my hands. They were stained so deeply with gore that the skin was an afterthought. I looked at the canyon behind me—a literal sea of ash, ichor, and broken crystals.
The joyous, frantic rhythm in my chest slowed, replaced by a cold, hollow dread.
'What the hell am I doing?'
I wasn't in the Colosseum anymore. I wasn't fighting for the amusement of a dead king or a chittering mob. I was in a new world, surrounded by people who looked at me with a terrifying amount of trust—people like Tiona, who saw me as an idol; Finn, who saw me as an ally; and Riveria, who saw me as a friend. And here I was, skittering on all fours like a starving beast, bite marks in my jaw and the stench of genocide on my breath.
The "Maniac" inside me was still purring, bloated and satisfied on the violence, but for the first time, I felt a bone-deep disgust at its warmth. I realized that if I didn't find a leash for this thing, there would be nothing left of "Allen" but a hollow shell filled with teeth and Void.
'Never again,' I whispered, my voice a cracked, raw ghost of its former self.
[Host? Your vitals are stabilizing, but the psychological drift is—]
'I said never again, System,' I growled internally, forcing my elongated limbs to retract, forcing my bones to grind back into a human shape. The pain was excruciating—worse than any wound the Dungeon had dealt me—but I welcomed it. I needed the agony to remind me that I wasn't just a weapon. I was a man who chose to be one.
I looked at the carnage one last time. This wasn't a victory; it was a relapse. I had let the "Fool" take the wheel because it was easy. Because it was fast.
'This is the last time,' I told myself, clutching my trembling hands together to hide the gore under the shadows of my sleeves. 'The last time I let the bloodlust win. From now on, I control the power. The power doesn't control me.'
I closed my eyes, letting the blue glow of the canyon fade into a dark, quiet mercy. I had reached ten thousand, but I had nearly lost the only thing worth keeping in the process.
I had survived the quest. Now, I had to survive myself.
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