The hounds regrouped, crimson eyes burning, paws cracking the floor with each step. They didn’t hesitate. As one, they pounced.
His breath was steady. Focus razor-sharp.
His telekinesis, now at Level 2, moved like a second set of limbs — faster, cleaner, more instinctive. But it was gravity that had truly evolved.
Not just in himself — in the world.
In a ten-meter radius, gravity bent to his will. But now, within a five-meter core, he could create localized gravity centers. No longer just pulling objects toward himself — he could pull them anywhere inside his field.
It was like discovering he had hands he’d never used before.
As the hounds closed in — claws out, maws wide — Dirga reached out with his will.
One meter in front of him, on the floor.
He set a gravity point.
The beasts hit it mid-pounce.
It was as if the air itself had become a trap — the three hounds were yanked downward like meteors, slammed into the stone floor with bone-snapping force.
The Crimson Core snapped into the shape of a curved sword in his grip — weightless yet deadly.
Three blurs. Three arcs.
The blade hissed through air and flesh. Necks severed. Blood painted the floor in a wide spiral, steaming against the cold stone.
But no celebration came.
Dirga’s instincts screamed.
He barely saw them — tiny, cloaked in that frustrating camouflage — but his mind caught them in time.
Dirga clenched his hand midair. The air warped.
Gravity surged between the insects. They collided mid-flight with a wet crack, crushed together into a smear of wings and legs.
Dirga exhaled, stepping back.
Sasa floated above, arms crossed, eyes glittering.
"Well done. Round one cleared," the devil announced, voice smooth but approving.
He flicked his fingers. "What’s your reward?"
Dirga wiped blood from his brow, gaze steady. "One minute of rest. I’ll bank it."
Sasa raised a brow. "Smart. Just don’t forget you’re still human."
"I won’t," Dirga muttered, rotating his shoulder.
The next portal opened.
Dark mist poured out — thick as oil, curling across the arena floor.
Something lumbered through it. Unseen. But felt — like pressure behind the eyes.
Sasa floated above, grinning like a god dealing cards.
"Let’s begin round two," he said cheerfully.
And the nightmare kept marching.
Hours blurred into one long scream of motion. Steel clashed. Bones shattered. His Crimson Core shifted form again and again — a spear against the lunging beasts, a whip to slash from afar, a shield to absorb the impact of claw and fang.
Faster. Smarter. Meaner.
The next enemy lumbered in.
Big, green, dumb — and exactly like every game Dirga had ever played. Their brutish confidence made them predictable. Too easy to bait into traps.
Dirga cut through them with surgical precision. He claimed another minute of rest.
Then came harpies — shrieking wind-witches that clawed from the skies.
Worms — grotesque serpents that tunneled through the arena floor, trying to catch him off guard.
Skeletons with rusted swords, their empty eyes burning.
Goblins with daggers, quick and chattering and utterly infuriating.
His body kept moving. His reflexes sharpened. His gravity control shifted enemies mid-attack. The Crimson Core danced between forms with lethal grace.
There was always something else.
At first, he sensed them early — little distortions in the air. A prickling across the back of his neck. He could crush them before they got close.
Two days. Three. Four.
And now there were four.
Their camouflage had leveled up.
Their presence became near-invisible. They only gave themselves away when they were too close — too late. And every sting was a bolt of agony, like hot nails driven under his skin.
Dirga gritted his teeth, trembling as he blocked another skeleton’s blade.
More than tired — his body was beginning to fray. Physically, mentally. The arena never slept. There was no pause. Only survival.
He’d tried to be clever. To cheat the system.
Wounding an enemy — then waiting. Trying to steal rest while the beast bled out.
But Sasa was watching.
If Dirga stalled, the arena closed in. The beast went berserk. Dirga had learned that the hard way — nearly losing his leg to a frenzied skeleton with glowing red bones.
He didn’t try that again.
He earned every breath the hard way.
He was on the fiftieth battle.
Sweat dripped from his brow, salt stinging his eyes. Blood — his and others — stained his clothes.
He checked his reserves.
But even that felt... thin.
His legs ached. His arms felt like lead. His mind throbbed from the strain of multitasking — maintaining his gravity fields, shaping the Crimson Core, tracking every sound, every twitch, and always, always, sensing for mosquitoes.
Dirga staggered back, breath ragged.
"I’ll use..." he rasped. "Ten minutes of rest. One food. One water."
Sasa descended slowly, arms behind his back like a waiter presenting a menu.
"Of course, my patron," Sasa said with a devil’s grin.
With a flick of his gloved fingers, the swirling portal vanished.
Dirga sighed, body trembling as he reached for the provided tray. A hunk of hard bread and a cold, sweating bottle of water. He took both and sat cross-legged on the stone floor, the arena’s twisted red sky flickering like a dying fire above.
Up there — projected high above the arena — floated the countdown.
His time. His only time.
Dirga tore off a piece of the bread, chewing slowly. Each swallow sent warmth through his broken body. The water was clean, chilling, glorious — like it flowed from heaven itself. For a moment, his hands stopped shaking.
The sound barely existed. A ghost of a hum. But he knew it now.
He didn’t move. Just closed his eyes and felt.
His senses, sharpened by constant pain, whispered.
Dirga gritted his teeth. "Four days, four mosquitoes..."
The first two he pinpointed. Their cloaked signatures trembled against the edge of his telekinetic field.
With a silent breath, he summoned the Crimson Core into the air beside him. It shimmered and split — transforming into six hovering needles, floating like red-glowing daggers aimed at the sky.
Like missiles, the first two needles launched and skewered the nearest invisible invaders. Their bodies dropped — small, twitching, broken.
The next two approached faster, more cunning, darting erratically.
But Dirga’s mind was honed.
He flared his gravity just enough to tug at the air.
A shift — like a ripple on glass — betrayed the third.
A needle shot. Another hit.
The fourth tried to circle behind him.
Dirga turned, slow and steady, and raised one finger.
The final needle ended it.