Chapter 524: Fighting Monsters [Bonus - ]

Chapter 524: Fighting Monsters [Bonus Chapter]

Ten minutes later, a heavy armored limousine was gliding silently through the elevated corridors of Rhyx City.

The interior of the vehicle was lined with dark synth-leather and soundproofed against the city’s neon roar.

Aki sat near the window, wrapped in an oversized charcoal-gray hooded traveling cloak that completely obscured her sky-blue silk gown.

She reached beneath the collar with her fingers lightly tapping the raw mana diamonds of Silas’s necklace, drawing immense silent reassurance from the steady feeling of his energy.

The limousine descended from the sunlit upper tiers, passing through the mid-level corporate plazas and plunging into the lower industrial districts where the light of the sun never reached.

The vehicle pulled into a reinforced subterranean parking bay beneath a sprawling brutalist concrete complex.

Above the heavy blast doors, a buzzing holographic sign flickered in harsh crimson light.

[RHYX SUB-TIER EXCAVATION & COMBAT SIMULATION FACILITY: ARENA 4]

It was the Monster Center.

In Rhyx City, the facility served a very specific purpose... It was an underground training ground where wealthy Unawakened noble scions and corporate heirs could experience combat against real low-tier beasts captured from the Sovereign Realm before they reached the age of sixteen to eighteen to attempt their Lord Core awakenings.

The monsters were strictly managed, categorized by tier, and kept behind reinforced kinetic barriers.

The limousine doors opened, and Alexander stepped out, followed by Aki and two plainclothes imperial guards.

They crossed the polished concrete lobby.

Despite their low-profile attire, the receptionist... a tired-looking man in his late thirties wearing a corporate uniform instantly froze the moment the Crown Prince stepped up to the counter.

The overwhelming pressure of Alexander’s aura was impossible to conceal.

"Y-Your Highness!" the clerk stammered, bowing so low his nose nearly touched the glass partition. "We... we were not informed of an inspection! The director is currently—"

"Quiet," Alexander cut in flatly, tossing an obsidian priority token onto the counter. "I don’t need the director... I need an isolated low-tier pit that is fully enclosed and has Class-C containment."

The clerk grabbed the token with trembling fingers, scanning it through his console.

"O-Of course! Arena Seven is completely vacant! Are you looking to run live combat drills for your elite guard, Prince Alexander?"

"Not for my guard," Alexander replied, his cold gaze shifting sideways toward the hooded figure standing beside him. "For my sister... She wishes to test her personal combat arts against wild monsters."

The clerk looked at Aki, his eyes darting to her slender frame beneath the charcoal cloak.

A look of horrified panic washed over his face.

"Your Highness... forgive my presumption, but... the First Princess is Unawakened," the clerk pleaded in a whisper. "Standard facility regulations strictly forbid non-awakened from entering live pits without a mercenary escort at least! Even a Tier-1 monster possesses enough raw physical strength to—"

VUUUM!

Alexander’s eyes flashed with a razor-thin glint of purple mana as the atmospheric pressure around the desk spiked, and the clerk choked, his voice dying in his throat as cold sweat drenched his collar.

"I am the Crown Prince," Alexander said softly. "Are you telling me that facility regulations supercede my authority?"

"N-No, Sire! Never! My apologies!" the clerk gasped, his hands flying across his keyboard. "Arena Seven is prepped! Access codes granted!"

Beside them, Aki didn’t look terrified at all. In fact, she puffed her chest out beneath her cloak, quietly pumping her small gloved fist with suppressed triumph.

’A real arena...’ she thought. ’Silas wouldn’t let me fight the leeches in the canyon and now I can actually try out what Morwenna and the other girls showed me!’

Everyone said it was tough to train with Brida and she agreed but even Brida had commended her skills too!

The clerk swallowed hard, catching her eager expression, and felt his sanity slipping. ’Is the royal family insane?! She looks like she’s going to a pastry shop!’

They were led down a long, sterile corridor lined with heavy blast doors to Arena Seven.

The chamber was massive... an eighty-foot circular pit lined with reinforced blood-stained concrete walls, roofed by an electrified barrier forty feet overhead.

Flanking the pit was an elevated observation deck separated by bulletproof, mana-resistant glass.

Alexander stepped up toward the observation stairs, pausing to look back at his hooded sister.

"Five beasts," Alexander decreed. "Tier 1 monsters. If you manage to survive all five without crying for the emergency extractors... I will grant you one personal favor. Anything within my authority."

Aki’s azure eyes flared with sharp focus. "A favor? In writing?"

Alexander let out a mocking laugh.

"Upon my honor as Crown Prince. But if you fail... you will submit to Father’s arranged marriage without another word of complaint. Agreed?"

"Agreed," Aki said instantly, without a shred of hesitation.

Alexander turned and ascended to the observation deck, taking a seat in the leather command chair behind the glass, crossing his legs as his guards flanked the console.

Down below, the clerk nervously guided Aki through the staging airlock into the equipment bay bordering the pit.

Racks of heavy standard-issue gear lined the steel walls... iron broadswords, steel round shields, heavy halberds, and crossbows designed for city guards.

"Your Highness... please, reconsider," the clerk whispered frantically. "Take a heavy tower shield! Or a mechanized repeating carbine! You don’t have mana to reinforce an edge!"

Aki ignored him completely.

Her eyes swept across the racks as she looked at the heavy iron swords and immediately shook her head.

’Too clumsy... Morwenna said heavy blades without mana reinforcement just throw your center of gravity into the mud.’

Her gaze settled upon a light recurve composite shortbow crafted from flexible dark ash, paired with a leather quiver holding twelve broadhead arrows with steel bodkin tips.

Beside it on the rack hung a slender, seven-inch hunting dagger with a cross-hatched leather grip.

’This is what I know,’ Aki thought, reaching out and lifting the bow.

During the quiet evenings in the Keep, when Silas was reviewing a lot of things, Tasmin as well as the other girls including Fenna had spent hours teaching her basic bow tension and draw alignment, while Morwenna had drilled her on grip transitions with a utility blade.

She strapped the quiver securely to her right hip, slung the hunting dagger at the small of her back beneath her cloak, and stepped up to the edge of the pit.

The clerk sighed, pulling the master lever with a trembling hand.

"Releasing Monster one... Tier 1 Goblin Scavenger."

CLANK-HISS!

Across the pit, a heavy steel gate rattled open.

From the dark drainage tunnel beneath the gate, a creature shambled out onto the blood-stained concrete.

It was a Goblin... a lean green-skinned feral anomaly roughly four feet tall, its scrawny torso covered in coarse gray bristles and its yellow bloodshot eyes darting around the arena with manic hunger.

In its clawed right hand, it dragged a jagged rusty iron cleaver, its drooling jaw lined with needle-like yellow teeth.

SCREEECH!

The beast spotted the hooded human maiden standing forty paces away.

It threw its head back, letting out a vile guttural shriek, and charged across the concrete floor, its splay-toed feet slapping against the stone with terrifying speed.

Up on the observation deck, Alexander leaned back in his leather chair, a cold satisfied smirk spreading across his lips.

’I just need to let it close the distance,’ the Crown Prince thought, his fingers tapping the armrest. ’The moment she smells the creature’s breath and sees the rusted iron swing toward her ribs, she will drop to her knees and beg for the barrier. A simple painful lesson to remind her where she belongs—’

Down in the pit, Aki didn’t blink.

Compared to a sixty-foot Tier 5 apex titan that shook the foundations of the northern mountains... this green little scavenger looked almost comical.

Her posture settled instantly.

Her shoulders dropped, her left foot sliding forward at a forty-five-degree angle, locking her center of gravity directly over her hips, just as Fenna had drilled into her.

She reached her right hand back, drawing a steel-tipped arrow from her quiver in a single fluid motion.

NOCK!

She drew the bowstring back to the corner of her jaw and the flexible ash limbs arched smoothly under the tension.

She didn’t possess mana to coat the arrowhead but her eyes were calm and as soon as the goblin reached twenty paces with its rusted cleaver raised high and its yellow teeth bared in a feral screech—

THWIP! WHOOOOOOSH!

The arrow released with a razor-thin whistle that cut clean through the concrete chamber.

THWACK-CRUNCH!

The steel bodkin tip struck the charging goblin dead-center between its bulging yellow eyes.

The force of the point-blank shot drove the arrow clean through the creature’s frontal bone, piercing the brain stem and exiting the back of its skull in a spray of dark fluid.

FLOP!

The goblin’s momentum died instantly.

The creature collapsed face-first onto the concrete like a dropped sack of wet flour, skidding two yards across the stone before coming to a dead twitching stop at the center of the pit.

Up on the observation deck, Alexander’s smirk vanished.

His blue eyes snapped wide, his jaw dropping open in paralyzed disbelief as his fingers dug straight into the leather padding of his chair.

Down in the blood-stained pit, Aki lowered the composite bow.

A thin strand of royal-blue hair slipped from beneath her charcoal hood.

She looked down at the dead monster, tilted her head with an amused effortless smirk, and whispered to herself.

"Light work."

The dead goblin lay on the scuffed concrete forty paces out, dark, viscous fluid pooling around its shattered skull.

The steel bodkin point had punched clean through bone and anchored into the floor with a muted tink.

Up in the observation booth, Alexander’s fingers were white-knuckled against the armrests, indenting the synthetic leather so deeply the seams strained.

"Next gate," Alexander barked into the console’s comm grille, his voice sounding tightl.

The facility technician scrambled, hands trembling over the toggle array.

"Y-Your Highness, protocol dictates an extraction cycle to clear the bio-sludge before—"

"I said open the gate."

"Opening Gate Two!" the technician squeaked, slamming a red toggle down.

KZZZZT... CLANK.

Across the blood-spattered arena floor, the heavy iron portcullis on the eastern perimeter rattled upward with hydraulic lines hissing out a thick plume of steam.

From the dark culvert emerged a Skitter-Hound... a Tier 1 monster that looked like a starved hyena stripped of skin, its lean musculature bound together by greasy gray sinew.

Instead of standard paws, its forelegs terminated in three-pronged calcified spurs that scraped the floor with a sickening sound.

TIK! TIK! TIK!

Its long narrow snout had split vertically into three hinged jaws lined with backward-curving teeth, drooling yellow bile that smoked against the floor.

It caught the scent of goblin marrow first as its neck hitched and then its milky lidless eyes locked onto Aki.

"Huuu..."

Aki didn’t backpedal.

Her breathing remained low, pulled deep into her abdomen and beneath her heavy traveling cloak, her posture stayed rooted with her feet shoulder-width apart, knees slightly flexed to maintain her center of gravity over her hips.

’Don’t track the teeth,’ Tasmin’s voice echoed in her mind, clear as if she had placed a speaker in there. ’Predators feint with the jaw so watch the hips... The pelvis tells you where the weight goes before the muscle snaps.’

The Skitter-Hound lunged.

It didn’t charge in a straight line just as the Princess expected, it moved in a jagged erratic zig-zag with the calcified spurs on its forelegs gouging long white tracks into the concrete as it covered fifteen paces in the span of several heartbeats.

TIK-TIK-TIK... SCRAPE!

It feinted right with its torso twisting to throw off her line of sight, aiming to flank her blind spot and tear out her Achilles tendon but like she was taught, Aki didn’t try to track its head.

Her azure eyes stayed locked on the creature’s lower spine and the moment its hindquarters dipped to spring, she pivoted on her left heel, stepping forty-five degrees into its arc instead of retreating.

NOCK-DRAW!

The composite bow arched smoothly with the ash limbs groaning under the tension.

THWIP!

The arrow released at point-blank range.

The hound, airborne and committed to its pounce, saw the steel point rushing toward its chest and snapped its triple-hinged jaw shut mid-air, attempting to bite the shaft in two.

CRUNCH!

The broadhead arrow shattered through the left mandible, splintering the bone and tearing through the creature’s tongue as the force deflected the beast’s trajectory, throwing it off-balance mid-air.

It crashed heavily onto the floor beside Aki, rolling across the stone in a spray of yellow bile and shredded flesh.

THUD-SLIDE!

The beast shrieked as it scrambled to its feet, spurs scrabbling against the floor to whip around and clamp onto Aki’s thigh.

Aki didn’t reach for a second arrow.

’It’s too close for a draw,’ She thought. ’I should use the blade.’

Aki dropped the bow with her left hand, letting it clatter to the concrete as her right hand whipped around to the small of her back with her fingers locking around the cross-hatched leather grip of the seven-inch hunting dagger.

SHING.

She didn’t wait for the beast to regain its balance.

As the hound lunged upward, its remaining jaws wide, Aki lowered her center, drove her lead foot into the floor, and stepped straight inside the snap of its teeth.

Her left forearm, wrapped in the heavy wool of her cloak, drove hard into the creature’s throat, checking its forward momentum with a dull thump.

The beast’s hot acidic breath washed over her face with the bile spattering the collar of her tunic.

Before the hound’s spurs could rake her stomach, Aki reversed her grip on the dagger, bringing the steel down in a clean vertical ice-pick strike!

THWACK-CRUNCH!

The seven-inch blade punched straight through the base of the skull where the spine met the brainstem!