[The Execution Arena – Ironhold]
The air in the arena of Ironhold was not merely gas meant for breathing; it was a solid block of lead pressing against the chest, saturated with the stench of sulfur, burnt iron, and a "killing intent" so thick it almost manifested as a red mist swirling around the pit. In this abyssal hole of the world, where gravity was the absolute sovereign, every movement was a desperate struggle against the very will of the planet.
Before my eyes, the scene was a nightmare beyond the reach of sanity. Three armored giants—their bodies like walls of rusted steel—stood before me. Their faces... those distorted human visors carried an eternal, frozen grin, as if they had been carved into the flesh by a mad surgeon's scalpel. Their expressions reflected neither pain nor rage, but a terrifying "void" that sent a primal chill down the spine.
"Heeeeeeegh!"
The sound erupted from the throat of the middle giant, the wielder of a hammer the size of a massive barrel. It wasn't a heroic roar; it was a broken, mechanical laugh, akin to the sound of bones being ground in an industrial mill. His colossal mass moved suddenly, with a speed that defied his sheer bulk in this crushing gravity. He hoisted his hammer high, eclipsing the pale blue light of the torches with its shadow, then brought it down with a force that shook the very foundations of the arena.
"BOOM!"
The hammer slammed into the solid stone floor where I had stood only a fraction of a second prior. The rock exploded, sending jagged shards flying in every direction like shrapnel. A thick cloud of dust choked the air, and thousands of spectators in the stone tiers held their breath, waiting to see my body reduced to a pulp of mangled flesh plastered against the ground.
But I wasn't there.
I was in the air, fighting the gravity that tried to pull my internal organs downward like a gargantuan magnet. The moment the hammer descended, I used the giant's own arm as a launchpad. I performed an acrobatic leap, and though my weight in this world equaled that of a small elephant, my muscles—fortified by $[Grand Reward]$—responded with the lethal grace of a predator.
I landed lightly atop his broad, armored shoulder. "You're slow..." I whispered near his helmet, my voice as cold as the frost of the White Corridor. "And your smile... makes me want to vomit."
I extracted a bone-dagger from my elbow, grown in an instant from my marrow thanks to my regeneration. The dagger was so sharp it cut the air in silence. I drove it with all my strength into the only exposed gap: the narrow space between the helmet and the neck guard.
"Shuck!"
The bone pierced through flesh and plating. Viscous black blood erupted like a fountain, drenching my face and tattered armor. I expected a scream of agony, a retreat, or a flinch. But the giant... did something worse.
He laughed.
He laughed as black blood poured from his neck and filled the cracks of his armor, shaking his shoulder with a manic violence to throw me off. I leapt backward, and in mid-air, the corner of my eye caught the sweep of a massive axe-blade from the second giant. It was a wide horizontal strike aimed at cleaving me in two at the waist.
I contorted my body in mid-air with impossible flexibility. I felt the slipstream of the axe's passage brush against my skin, nearly tearing my hair out from the sheer force of the blow. I landed on the ground and slid between the legs of the third giant, who was swinging a heavy iron chain tipped with a massive spiked ball.
The situation was dire. Gravity here was not a passive foe; it was a warrior stabbing me every second. My lungs burned with every breath, and my heart hammered so hard I could hear it like war drums in my ears. These "Crushers"... they weren't human, nor were they ordinary monsters. They were biological machines, "dead flesh" animated by an unknown fuel, feeling no pain and knowing no exhaustion.
I looked toward the stands. Thousands of Vanguard, the "dwellers of weight," stared in silent shock. They had never seen a "Sky Demon" last more than seconds against the Crushers. "He's... moving!" "How does the gravity not crush him? Look at his speed!" "The Sky Demon is dancing... a dance of death!"
In the high royal box, I saw King Gorath. He sat with the stillness of a statue, but I noticed his fingers had stopped tapping the hilt of his hammer. His blind face was directed toward me, as if he were sensing the vibrations of my feet on the ground with surgical precision. I had caught his attention; that was half the battle.
"Good..." I said, blood trickling from a wound on my forehead, my crimson eyes glowing with a lethal red light. "I will show you a performance that your history will not dare to forget."
$[Opponent Analysis: Activated.]$
In that moment, time slowed within my mind. My eyes scanned the arena and analyzed the attack patterns. Giant One (Hammer): Relies on crushing vertical power, but leaves his back completely exposed after every failed strike. Giant Two (Axe): Wide horizontal attacks, making him dangerous in open spaces, but his flank is his fatal weakness. Giant Three (Chain): The most dangerous; his iron balls cover a massive circular area, and he is responsible for restricting my movement.
"Let it be a war of attrition, then."
I ran. I didn't run away from them; I ran directly toward them, defying all logic. The giant with the chain swung his flail. The ball tore through the air with a sound like the shriek of a damned soul. Instead of retreating, I ducked so low my chest brushed the dust of the arena, sliding beneath the lethal trajectory of the ball.
I reached his massive feet. I didn't strike the steel armor; I targeted the Achilles tendon at the heel—the small gap where flesh met metal. With my claws reinforced by my hardening ability, I severed the tendon, flesh, and bone in one precise, ambush-like strike.
"CRACK!"
The giant suddenly lost his balance. He crashed down onto one massive knee, and the entire arena shook from the impact of his mass. But he didn't stop smiling. He turned on his knee, attempting to seize me with his free hand, which was the size of my entire body. His steel-like fingers clamped around my waist before I could escape.
"CRRRK!"
I heard the sound of my ribs shattering. The pain was excruciating, as if I had been placed inside a hydraulic press trying to turn me into rubble. The crowd in the stands roared with bloodlust: "He caught him!" "Squeeze him until his blood explodes on the sand!"
I looked into the giant's face, which was so close I could smell the rot emanating from his gullet. His dead eyes stared at me without a spark of life, and his smiling mouth dripped yellow, viscous saliva.
"Big... mistake..." I whispered, blood flowing from between my teeth.
In that instant, I erupted sharp bone-spikes from my back, chest, and sides—much like a cornered porcupine. The spikes grew with such explosive force that they pierced the giant's palm from the inside, tearing through his joints and tendons. He loosened his grip immediately, not from pain, but because the spikes had severed the nerves controlling his fingers.
I fell from his paralyzed hand, and before I touched the ground, I kicked his knee and leapt toward his face. My target was singular: the eye. I drove my fist, reinforced with bone-hardness, deep into his right eye. The eye exploded in a spray of yellow fluid, and my hand reached into the depths of his skull... and there, I felt something cold and hard.
I yanked my hand back with all my might, bringing with it a small "crystalline orb" glowing with a pale blue light.
The giant stopped entirely. The smile vanished from his face for the first time since the fight began. His massive body toppled forward like a wooden puppet whose strings had been suddenly cut.
"BOOM!"
A dead silence fell over the arena. Thousands of spectators stood in their places, unable to process what they had seen. I—the small, "soft" Sky Demon—had brought down one of the Crushers.
I stood atop the giant's lifeless carcass, panting heavily, black blood coating my armor and skin. I raised the crystalline orb in my hand and crushed it before their very eyes until it turned into blue dust scattered by the heavy winds. I looked at the remaining two, my eyes blazing with a terrifying red light.
"Your... turn."
But... something strange and maddening began to happen.
The remaining two giants did not attack. They stopped in their tracks. They looked at their dead comrade with cold indifference, and then... their smiles widened even further, until the corners of their mouths tore open to reach their ears, black blood oozing down their cheeks. Their bodies began to vibrate violently, and their armor emitted a shrill metallic screech, as if something inside them was boiling.
"The Fusion! The Fusion! The Fusion!" The crowd began to chant with manic, hysterical fervor.
I looked at King Gorath. He was smiling now—a small, cold, and terrifying grin.
The two giants began to move toward each other. Their flesh began to melt and interweave, and the armor began to fuse and meld in a scene of "biological horror." Bones snapped and ground together to reshape themselves into a single, massive entity, twice as large as any individual giant.
They had transformed into a two-headed monstrosity with four arms, wielding all their lethal weapons. It was a creature that embodied the very meaning of "Weight" and destruction.
I took a step back and wiped the blood from my mouth. I felt the energy of [Eyes of Sin] beginning to boil within my head, as if something ancient and dark was awakening in response to this threat.
"Now..." I muttered with a blood-soaked grin, and the gravity began to feel strangely light—perhaps it was the madness of battle. "It seems the real party... has just begun."
The new monstrosity lunged toward me, the sound of its footsteps like muffled thunder beneath the earth. I was ready—not just to survive, but to turn this arena into a slaughterhouse for their legends.