In that moment, the gun in his hand activated.
It didn't suck mana, so there wasn't that neon aura flash all the high-rank Hunters show off like peacocks.
Instead, the air around the pistol turned cold.
So cold the stadium's humidity froze instantly, falling like black snow around Damon.
"What's happening?!" the commentator yelled, confused. "Zero's aura lost its color! It's… it's transparent!"
"Move, idiot!" Aiwass's voice drilled straight into his brain.
The stone fist came down like a meteor.
Damon threw himself sideways, rolling across the sand and swallowing dust.
His shoulder cracked when he hit the ground.
The shockwave from the punch lifted him and slammed him again, ripping the air out of his lungs.
The golem was already raising its foot to crush him like a roach.
The shadow of the rock covered his vision, promising a quick death.
Damon shut his eyes, done. 'Ten days of my life for nothing…'
But then EVE's cylinder spun on its own. The metal bit into the skin of his palm, collecting its price.
CLICK-CLACK.
The runes on the barrel went dark.
A color of Not-Existing Black pulsed through the metal.
"What is that…?" one of the commentators whispered, voice shaking. "Is… is the absence of light even possible as aura?!"
Damon pulled the trigger.
He felt ten days of his future tear out of him, leaving him cold.
He expected a bang. He expected recoil.
What he got was absolute silence.
The stadium sound vanished. The wind stopped.
The hearts of eighty thousand people skipped a beat.
'Did I just lose ten days of my life for an air gun?' Damon thought.
An invisible blast left the barrel. You couldn't see it, but the space it passed through warped, like heat over asphalt, leaving a trail of dead pixels in the air.
The "projectile" hit the golem's shoulder.
For one second, nothing.
Damon's heart stopped. 'I missed.'
Then that part of the golem simply stopped existing.
Like someone took an eraser to a pencil drawing.
BAM!
The arm hit the sand with dead weight, shaking the stadium. The golem staggered, thrown off balance.
Then Damon's right eye started burning like acid was inside it. The [Legislator's Eye] kicked on by pure reflex.
The world became lines of data. Damon looked at the golem and didn't see stone.
He saw floating code.
And where the arm had been cut off, the code was… deleted.
Reality itself had a syntax error.
[HIDDEN SKILL UNLOCKED]
[NAME: CODE ERASE (Source Delete)]
[RANK: ??? (SYSTEM ERROR)]
[EFFECT: Deletes the target's physical and digital existence at the point of impact. Irreversible.]
"C-code…?" Damon blinked, his eye crying blood. "The golem isn't a monster. It's an algorithm?"
The golem turned, readying its remaining arm. But its movements were wrong.
Glitched.
But Damon wasn't scared anymore, so he raised EVE and aimed straight at the thing's head.
The golem froze. Its artificial survival instinct ran the numbers.
Zero.
In the control booth, Lieutenant Miller was smashing buttons like a maniac.
"Attack! Damn it, move!" Miller screamed.
But the golem didn't obey.
The stone beast lowered its last arm and dropped to its knees with a thunderous crash, accepting defeat.
The crowd was silent, terrified of the invisible power.
A high-end camera drone hovered a few feet from Damon's face, broadcasting in 4K straight to the VIP box.
Damon knew who was watching behind that lens.
'You wanted a show? Fine. Here's your show.'
Damon lifted EVE slowly. He ignored the defeated monster and pointed the rusty barrel straight at the camera lens.
On-screen, it looked like Damon was aiming straight at someone's forehead.
Straight at Ophelia Valen's forehead.
Damon smiled, defiant.
He pulled the trigger.
Silence again.
No explosion. The feed just cut.
Not to black.
The drone simply stopped existing.
VICTORY.
The holographic screen in front of Ophelia just collapsed.
BZZZT!
Ophelia bit her lip. The air turned heavy and her aura made the reinforced glass in the VIP box crack.
'He aimed at me…' she thought, shivering. 'That insolent pup…'
"That wasn't mana…" she said, voice low. Then she smiled like a predator looking at prey. "He wants to play rough. I love it."
Down in the arena, Damon blew the nonexistent smoke off his revolver barrel, holding his "God of War" pose.
The cameras zoomed in on his face. He smiled like an arrogant bastard, but the truth was way uglier.
Damon tried to slide the gun back into his pocket with a quick motion.
His hand didn't respond.
He couldn't feel it.
It was like his right arm wasn't part of his body anymore.
Damon glanced down, hiding his arm behind his body so the cameras wouldn't catch it.
The veins in his wrist had turned black, pulsing under his skin like living ink trying to reach his heart.
A system message flashed blood-red, for his eyes only:
[LIFE PAYMENT EXECUTED]
[30 days consumed.]
[SIDE EFFECT: VOID NECROSIS (Stage 1)]
[Warning: If the necrosis reaches the heart, the user will cease to exist.]
Damon felt his legs go weak.
'Stage 1? What the hell did I do?' he thought, and real panic hit him, way worse than stage fright.
He looked up at the stands.
Eighty thousand people stared at him in silence, waiting.
He'd won the fight.
But feeling the darkness crawl under his skin, Damon understood the real price wasn't just days on a calendar.
He was getting eaten from the inside.