Chapter 96: Hard-Fought Victory

The crack running down the center of the obsidian mask widened, spilling a thread of black, smoke-like blood onto the Silver Trim’s dark collar. The synthesized voices overlapping beneath his throat had lost their smooth, terrifying distortion; they were frantic now, pitched high with a frantic, animalistic horror.

"A false light... a stolen relic... HOW?!" the operative shrieked, his shadow-wrapped hands clawing at the air. "No mere mercenary wields divine authority! The Church guards its secrets with blood and iron!"

His shock rapidly curdled into fanatical rage. The realization that he was facing a monster capable of wielding high-tier frost, spatial illusions, and top-tier holy magic simultaneously triggered a fundamental survival response. If he did not kill Arthur here, the secrets of Equinox’s reconnaissance operation—and his own failure—would be dragged into the daylight.

"I will drag your soul into the abyss!" the Silver Trim roared, slamming both palms down into the shattered bedrock beneath his feet.

He didn’t just cast a spell; he detonated his own mana core.

A violent, boiling tide of dark, corrosive slime erupted from his hands, spreading across the cratered arena floor like a flash flood of liquid shadow. The subterranean temperature surged, shifting from the freezing zero of Arthur’s Frost Sovereign to a sickening, suffocating heat. Where the black tide touched the stone, the solid slate groaned, melted, and dissolved into bubbling, acrid black slag that released clouds of toxic, sulfurous vapor.

The remaining ice constructs scattered throughout the arena didn’t just melt; they violently violently vaporized upon contact with the boiling gloom, filling the air with a blinding fog of superheated steam.

Arthur didn’t retreat. He couldn’t. Behind him lay the archway where Kaelen was pinned against the wall. If the wave of corrosive shadow reached the prince, the boy would be dissolved in seconds.

Arthur held his ground, maintaining the Aegis of the Morning Star. The golden shield spun furiously in front of his forearm, its sacred runes blazing like tiny suns as they repelled the tide of dark slime. The corrosive shadow hissed and spit as it slammed into the holy barrier, splashing upward in violent black geysers.

Inwardly, however, Arthur’s body was screaming.

His core was a battleground of conflicting, incompatible mana signatures. To maintain the Tier 7 Frost Sovereign, his meridians had to channel negative thermal energy, chilling his blood to near-freezing temperatures. To sustain the Tier 8 Dream Weaver, his mind had to continuously process thousands of sensory calculations every second to distort the spatial air around him. And now, forcing the Tier 9 Aegis of the Morning Star through those same overworked spiritual pathways was like pouring liquid gold through a web of fine, fragile glass.

A sharp, searing pain tore through Arthur’s chest. He felt his mana pathways tearing at the junctions near his heart. Blood—hot, bright red, and heavy—welled up in his throat, spilling past his lips and dripping onto the glowing golden sigils of his shield.

His vision blurred at the edges, static tunneling his sight.

Friction, Arthur thought coldly, suppressing the agony with the cold detachment of a battle-tested veteran. My core hasn’t fully adapted to hosting a Tier 9 Light affinity alongside Frost and Illusion. The elemental rejection is tearing my meridians apart. I have three minutes... maybe less... before my core violently collapses.

Across the lake of boiling slag, the Silver Trim saw Arthur’s knee quiver. He saw the blood dripping from Arthur’s chin.

"You are breaking!" the operative laughed maniacally, his cracked obsidian mask splitting further to reveal a pair of frantic, bloodshot eyes glowing in the gloom. "You forced a spell beyond your station, rat! Your body rejects the divine! Flood him! Consume him!"

The Silver Trim doubled his output. The lake of black slime surged, rising ten feet into the air like a crashing tidal wave of absolute void, threatening to swallow Arthur, his shield, and the entire southern quadrant of the Sunken Coliseum whole.

Arthur set his jaw, preparing to force his internal core past its absolute breaking point to fire a localized blast of glacial cold directly through the center of the wave. He knew the backlash would paralyze his left arm, but survival demanded the sacrifice.

Before he could trigger the internal overload, a blinding beam of pure celestial light tore through the subterranean vault, cutting straight through the superheated steam.

Seraphina dropped from the high spectator box.

She did not float down gracefully. She plummeted like a falling star, her white dress trail burning with golden fire. As her boots touched the edge of the crater, the sheer weight of her holy mana slammed into the arena like an anvil, driving the boiling dark slime back by several feet through sheer aura pressure alone.

Her face was pale, her golden eyes wide with a mix of shock and fierce, lethal pride. She glanced at Arthur for a fraction of a second, taking in the blood on his chin, the steam rolling off his shoulders, and the holy shield still active on his arm.

"Hold your shield, mercenary," Seraphina commanded, her voice ringing out like a silver bell that shattered the suffocating gloom. "I will not have a common dog outshining the Church in the dark!"

Seraphina raised her hands toward the vaulted ceiling. Her hovering Tier 9 Grimoire burst into brilliant, celestial flames, its pages whipping so fast they created a humming vortex of wind that blew away the toxic vapors.

"Sacrosanct Chains of the Seven Heavens!" she roared.

Seven thick, solid beams of radiant golden light erupted from the ceiling grates, plunging downward into the lake of boiling darkness. They didn’t strike the slime; they pierced the very shadows anchored to the Silver Trim’s body.

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

The sound of heavy, holy metal binding against dark mana echoed across the cavern. Seven thick, translucent chains forged of pure divine light slammed through the Silver Trim’s midnight robes, pinning his shadow anchor directly to the shattered bedrock below.

"WHAT?!" the operative shrieked, his forward momentum instantly killed. He tried to pull back, but the holy chains locked his limbs in place, burning through his dark silk robes and scorching his flesh. "RELEASE ME!"

"You are bound, pest!" Seraphina shouted, her face strained, sweat dripping from her porcelain chin as she poured every drop of her remaining mana into maintaining the heavy binding spell. "Arthur! NOW! I can only hold his shadow for two seconds!"

Two seconds. To a common soldier, it was an eyeblink. To Arthur, it was an eternity.

The moment the Silver Trim was pinned, Arthur released the Aegis of the Morning Star. The massive golden shield dissolved into drifting particles of light, instantly relieving the crushing pressure on his seared meridians.

With the Tier 9 drain halted, Arthur redirected every remaining drop of his fluid mana reserves into a singular, devastating fusion.

He raised his plain steel longsword.

With his right hand, he channeled the absolute-zero temperature of the Tier 7 Frost Sovereign, encasing the metal in a dense, razor-sharp edge of crystal ice. With his left hand, he drew upon the lingering, residual divine energy of the Tier 9 holy spell he had just released, wrapping the ice blade in a roaring coat of golden, celestial fire.

Ice and holy fire—two opposing, lethal forces—were held in a unstable, miraculous balance along the length of his blade through the sheer, tyrannical force of his willpower.

Arthur stepped forward.

He didn’t use a flashy technique. He triggered a singular, compressed Glacial Step, folding the distance between himself and the bound operative.

He appeared directly in front of the Silver Trim. The heat radiating from his broadsword melted the cracked obsidian mask into liquid glass before the blade even touched it.

The Silver Trim looked up into Arthur’s eyes. He saw no light, no divine mercy, no heroic resolve. He saw only the cold, mechanical efficiency of an apex predator executing a routine task.

"What... are you..." the operative whispered, his voice finally unmasked, revealing the desperate, terrified tone of a dying man.

"Dead," Arthur said.

Arthur swung the blade.

It was a clean, horizontal strike. The synergized blade carved through the air, leaving a trail of frozen white mist wrapped in golden embers. The edge passed through the Silver Trim’s dark-affinity armor, his midnight silk robes, his flesh, and his spine as if they were made of warm butter.

For a fraction of a second, time seemed to stop.

Then, the holy light embedded within the blade erupted from inside the operative’s body, while the absolute-zero ice froze his internal organs solid at the exact same time. The two forces violently collided within his physical frame.

CRACK-BOOM!

The Silver Trim did not bleed. He did not fall to the dirt. His entire body shattered like frozen glass, instantly disintegrating into a cloud of drifting black ash and sparkling, silver thread that was immediately cleansed and vaporized by the lingering holy light.

The dark, boiling lake of slime lost its magical anchor. It shuddered, turned gray, and dissolved into harmless, stagnant water that soaked harmlessly into the cratered earth.

Silence descended upon the Sunken Coliseum.

Arthur stood in the center of the devastated arena, his longsword lowered, the tip resting against the bare bedrock. The golden fire and crystal ice slowly faded from the steel, leaving the metal dark, notched, and dripping with condensation.

Arthur’s knees buckled.

He collapsed to his left knee, catching himself with his free hand against the cold stone. A violent cough racked his chest, and he spat a mouthful of dark blood onto the floor. Steam rolled off his clothes in dense white clouds as his dangerously overheated core fought to cool itself down, his internal meridians throbbing with a dull, agonizing ache.

He stayed there, motionless, his head hanging down, slowly drawing deep, ragged breaths of the damp air, forcing his core back into equilibrium.

A pair of pristine, white leather boots appeared in his blurred vision, stopping a few feet away.

Seraphina stood over him. Her divine aura had completely dissipated, leaving her looking exhausted, her linen dress stained with soot and mud. She stared down at Arthur, her chest heaving, her golden eyes wide with a chaotic mess of emotions—disbelief, intense suspicion, and a lingering, instinctual dread.

"You..." Seraphina’s voice was barely a whisper, completely stripped of her usual arrogant projection. "You channeled a Tier 9 Holy spell without a holy core. You held it for nearly a minute... and then you fused it with high-tier frost."

She leaned down slightly, her eyes narrowing as if trying to dissect his very soul. "Who taught you that matrix? What kind of monster are you, Arthur?"

Arthur slowly lifted his head. His face was pale, his lips stained red, but his dark eyes were as cold, calm, and calculating as ever.

"A alive one," Arthur rasped, his voice raw. "Which is more than can be said for your Equinox friend."

Seraphina bit her lip, her jaw tightening, but she didn’t push further. She straightened her posture, turning her back on him, though her hand remained resting close to her Grimoire. "We are not done discussing this. The Church will have questions about where a mercenary acquired the sacred light."

"Let them ask," Arthur muttered, slowly pushing himself to his feet. His legs were shaky, but he forced his posture straight, sheathing his notched longsword with a dull clack. "I don’t work for free anyway."

Footsteps crunched against the gravel behind them.

Arthur and Seraphina turned to look toward the dark archway.

Prince Kaelen stepped out from the shadows.

The young prince was unrecognizable from the arrogant, naive boy who had strutted around the palace gardens two weeks ago. His leather armor was torn to shreds, his face was bruised and smeared with dried blood and black soot, and his royal longsword was nowhere to be found.

He walked slowly, his boots dragging through the mud, his eyes wide and fixed entirely on the landscape before him.

The Sunken Coliseum—an arena that had stood for nearly a century—was completely unrecognizable. The central floor was a crater thirty feet deep, the stone melted and re-frozen into jagged, glass-like formations. The massive stone pillars supporting the terraces were cracked or collapsed entirely, and the ceiling grates above were shattered, letting the cold night rain pour down onto the leveled earth.

All of it had been done in less than five minutes. By three people.

Kaelen stopped at the edge of the crater, staring at the patch of bare stone where the Silver Trim had been reduced to ash. There was no body. No blood. Only a faint dusting of dark residue being slowly washed away by the falling rain.

He looked at Seraphina, whose divine presence still hung faintly in the air like ozone after a lightning strike.

Then, Kaelen looked at Arthur.

He looked at the mercenary’s soot-stained clothes, the blood on his chin, and the quiet, terrifying stillness of his posture. Kaelen remembered his own pathetic attempt to fight the Silver Trim—how he had swung his sword with a scream, only to be tossed aside like a stray dog, his grand royal bloodline proving entirely useless against true strength.

He had believed he was a player on the grand stage of the kingdom. He had believed that ringing a bell made him a tragic, heroic martyr.

Looking at the crater, Kaelen finally understood the terrifying reality of the world. He was an ant standing among giants who could level mountains on a whim. The palace squabbles, the council debates, the gilded titles—they were nothing more than a fragile sandbox built by his father to keep him safe from the real monsters lurking in the dark.

Kaelen sank to his knees in the cold mud. He didn’t cry this time. The tears had been burned out of him.

"Arthur..." Kaelen whispered, his voice trembling, stripped of all royal cadence. "Is... is this what the world is really like?"

Arthur walked over to the kneeling prince, his heavy boots crunching softly on the glassed sand. He stopped right beside Kaelen, looking down at the broken boy with a flat, unreadable expression.

"No," Arthur said softly, his voice cutting through the gentle pitter-patter of the rain. "This is just the surface. Down deeper, it gets much worse."

Arthur reached out, wrapping his hand around Kaelen’s tunic, and pulled the prince roughly to his feet.

"Now wipe your face, Your Highness," Arthur commanded, turning his back and walking toward the dark exit tunnel. "You survived your first lesson. Now let’s go back to the palace and catch the man who bought you."