Two full hours. Ten meals. Ten bottles of water.
And he used it all — cycling between sleep and food like a soldier savoring his final reprieve. Thirty minutes of sleep. A heavy meal. More sleep. Another bite. He didn’t waste a second.
But as he sank into his third nap, one thing gnawed at the back of his mind.
There were no mosquitoes.
Not a single sting. No buzzing. No warning flare in his senses. It was too quiet.
He froze mid-bite on his last slab of meat, chewing slowly.
He didn’t need to ask Sasa. He already knew.
But he still muttered, "What the hell are you planning now, you smug bastard?"
So Dirga finished his food.
Because whatever was brewing behind the curtain, he’d face it full-bellied.
Sasa appeared like he always did — not with fanfare, but a step. One step out of nowhere, boots echoing on nothing.
He was walking this time. Calm. Smiling. Too quiet.
Dirga, still wiping grease from his hands, didn’t even look up.
"You’re planning something again, right?"
Sasa only grinned wider and flicked his fingers.
A portal opened in front of them — small, human-sized, pulsing like a heartbeat torn from another dimension.
From within... it stepped out.
Dirga’s instincts screamed.
Not fear. Not caution.
A humanoid figure — just over 180 cm tall. Purple skin, rippling like muscle carved from mist and shadow. Strange carvings spiraled across its body, a darker violet etched like ancient runes — writhing, alive.
It wore only tattered shorts. No armor. No shoes.
Nothing where eyes, nose, or mouth should be — just a smooth surface. Blank. Empty.
But Dirga felt it watching him.
He staggered slightly, eyes narrowing. His breath came shorter.
Tentacle-like strands swayed from the creature’s scalp like hair underwater — slow and deliberate.
And then... it spoke.
Its jaw didn’t move. It had no mouth.
But a voice echoed — not in the air, but in Dirga’s skull.
"Sasa... what are you doing?"
The voice was neither masculine nor feminine. It was everywhere and nowhere — like being whispered to by a mirror.
Dirga’s hand tightened around the Crimson Core. It pulsed in his palm.
This wasn’t a monster.
It was something worse.
But one thing was certain.
This fight... would be different.
Sasa stepped forward, still calm, still smiling like nothing in the world could shake him.
"Let me properly introduce him," he said, voice eerily casual. "Dirga, meet one of the former 13 Menace — the Faceless Devil, Eidomos. He died during the Great Menace War... oh, about a thousand years ago. What you see now is merely a spark of his soul."
A pulse of psychic pressure flooded the arena.
Dirga’s breath hitched.
That thing standing across from him radiated the kind of presence that made his body instinctively want to run. Fight or flight wasn’t a question — it was screaming flight.
Not through ears, but straight into his brain.
Soft. Cold. Dissecting.
"Ah... so that explains this strange hollowness. Only a fragment. But still enough to stretch."
"Sasa, is this your new toy?"
The faceless head tilted. No eyes, no mouth, and yet Dirga felt seen — from every angle, inside and out. Like his blood was being read, his soul being indexed.
"Not a toy," he said. "A patron. My gamble. I want you to spar with him today."
Eidomos’s faceless mask pulsed. A ripple of emotion — amusement?
"For you, brother... of course. How much of me should I lend?"
Sasa tapped his chin, mock thoughtful. "Hmm... let’s say ten percent."
Ten percent of this thing’s power?
He could feel it — Eidomos hadn’t even moved, and yet space around him had begun to warp ever so slightly, like the air was trying to forget how to hold its shape.
Sasa turned his head toward Dirga. His voice lowered, unusually serious.
"This is the final round of your training arc," Sasa said, his voice lower than usual. "You don’t need to win. You just need to survive... thirty minutes."
Dirga exhaled, slow and steady.
He stepped back, widening the space between himself and the faceless devil.
Every instinct in his body screamed. Run. Hide. Escape.
But there was nowhere to go.
Eidomos didn’t move like a beast.
Didn’t posture like a warrior.
He simply stepped forward — and yet, that step boomed inside Dirga’s soul like a war drum.
"Show me, Sasa’s patron,"
the voice slithered into his skull like smoke.
"Because if you’re not ready for me...
You’re not ready for what’s coming."
And then — Eidomos disappeared.
No wind. No flash. Just gone.
Dirga’s body moved before his brain could finish thinking.
But it wasn’t fast enough.
A fist smashed into his ribs from his blind spot — a clean, straight punch, but Dirga only saw a glitch of motion before it landed.
His body launched across the arena like a kicked ragdoll, crashing into the ground in a spray of shattered stone.
Pain exploded through his side.
What the hell was that?
He forced himself to breathe, threw out his will, and used telekinesis to twist mid-air. Then he pulled — a concentrated burst of gravity, dragging his body to a controlled landing.
His boots skidded against the cracked floor as he slid back to position.
From across the field, Eidomos stood motionless.
No gloating. No threat.
Dirga narrowed his eyes.
His telekinesis hadn’t landed on Eidomos — not even brushed against him. It was like trying to grab a shadow.
Like trying to grip air in a dream.
Dirga clenched his jaw, then summoned the Crimson Core, morphing it into bandages that wrapped tightly around both his arms.
Focus. Survive. Understand.
He needed to figure out Eidomos’s concept.