Two dragons stood side by side on top of the arena, unnoticed by everyone.
"What do you want to do?" Idu asked his older brother.
"The Immortal is in there," Zeddro remarked. Flashbacks played in his mind of the time when the Hero King's Party invaded the Demon Continent.
Members of the Hero King's Party were all-powerful individuals. Luckily for them, Luna was a unique existence who merely accompanied the party to spectate, so she was no direct enemy of theirs.
The Hero King was dead. So, there was no reason to fight. The most important fact was that of all the individuals who played a crucial part in the war, they were the only ones to survive until now.
It was the cruel reality of war. So what if they fought for their ideals? Changes only lasted for a short time before fate played its games, making their efforts worthless.
"She'll fuck us up." The white dragon added. As beings who lived in multiple eras, their relationship was complicated.
"Right." The black dragon nodded and spotted Alea with his sharp eye. "The Elven Princess of this generation... Her potential is crazy. She reminds me of the Hero King."
"Another monster to this Kingdom's arsenal." Idu sighed. "It's a good thing these elves are lazy and peace-loving."
"More importantly, look at that boy next to Lilith."
Idu grinned. "I smell Shadow Magic on him."
"He must be the one. The Child of Prophecy."
The two dragons laughed manically.
"We've seen enough. Let's go. We'll come back... later."
Alea POV
How refreshing!
How satisfying!
How liberating!
A wide smile is plastered on my face as I eliminate the other competitors one by one to my heart's content. I feel so free and relaxed.
This action was a terrible political move, but I did not care. Snatching the throat of the person closest to me, I attach an explosive spell and toss him into the crowd.
Boom!
"Gahh!!"
"The Princess has gone mad!"
"Attack her!"
"Someone hold off the monsters!"
I let out a loud and release my arrows, eliminating more from the crowd.
I was throwing a tantrum. That's what I was doing. But, at the same time, I could feel my instincts sharpening. I'm getting to the point where there is almost no delay between my thoughts and my body now.
Their cries of anguish enter my deaf ears.
Some were commoners. Some were nobles. I did not discriminate. They all fell to my fist and arrows.
Before I knew it, I was the only one left standing alone. The predatory glares of these monsters press down on me. It felt like I was alone in my world.
Perhaps this is the first in history. Usually, the competitors would work together to exterminate the monsters before switching to a full-on brawl.
However, in my case, I was left standing alone, but that did not matter.
I was strong enough.
POV End.
It was dead silent in the crowd of spectators. They could not believe what they were seeing.
When they saw Princess Alea suddenly attack her fellow competitors without warning, they thought she had gone crazy. They thought she doomed herself. By antagonizing a massive crowd like that, there was no way they weren't going to fight back.
They were quickly proven wrong. It was a battle of a single person against over a hundred people. Among the hundred people, there were even a few Expert ranks sprinkled in there. They were all defeated under the princess's ruthless might.
Every movement of hers was quick and efficient, like a well-oiled machine. She was a natural-born fighter.
And now, she was alone fighting against hundreds of monsters. Her body that was so small and frail compared to these savage monsters, flickered all across the arena. Arrows rained down from the sky, and blood bathed the ground.
Rather than the one being hunted, she was the one hunting them down. She was the predator.
As the massacre continued, the crowd's shock and fear slowly turned into captivation. There was a hidden beauty in Alea's brutality.
The way she would gouge out the eyes of goblins and crush their brain with an arrow in hand.
The way she would cut a troll's chest open before kicking a minor phoenix in there, eliminating them both at once.
The way her ice flames lit up so powerfully it froze a giant yeti to death.
These were all things that captivated the audience. There was no hesitation in her actions. Whenever there was an opening, she would seize it without a trace of doubt.
One hour later, countless monster corpses littered the ground. In the middle of the arena, corpses were piled into a small mountain. Alea stood at the peak, bathed in blood with a bow in hand. After today, her fame would spread far and wide.
As if to announce her victory, a swarm of spirits suddenly arrived from afar. It looked like a cloud of rainbow from an outsider's perspective. Then, they swirled around her body in a cyclone formation. The number of spirits surrounding her figure was so dense that it formed a tornado of rainbows around her body. They chirped joyfully, showing their full approval of her performance from earlier.
The spirits could not get enough of Alea. They chirped endlessly, almost like they were trying to play a song. Then, to announce her as the winner, more and more spirits entered the colosseum endlessly.
The sheer quantity of these spirits painted the sky a rainbow colour. It was a magnificent sight to all observers alike—a complete stark to the bloody scene on the ground.
Finally, all the spirits gathered in a clump and pierced a hole in the sky. A pitch-black hole of darkness appeared before cracks started forming around it. Then, a giant pair of hands covered in a set of gauntlets reached out from the hole and held the sky and... ripped it open.
Shhhhh!
A sound similar to gas leaking could be heard as Spirit Mist spilt out of the hole like a tide.
Crack. Crack. Crack.
The hole in the sky became more prominent and significant. Finally, the figure from behind the hole stepped out into the world.
The Spirit King... had arrived in the Middle World.
The Spirit King, the Living Armour.