Chapter 385: Unleashing Fury

Chapter 385: Chapter 385: Unleashing Fury

Damon let the mask go.

The Polymorph that had hidden his cultivation for three days peeled away, and King Spirit Realm Ninth Level rolled out of him in one heavy wave.

The stone under his boots cracked in a wide ring. Black and gold threads of Incubus Aura rose around his shoulders, and the patterns in his golden eyes began to turn.

The six cultists slowed.

Not by much, but Damon saw it. One of them let his foot hover a moment before setting it down again.

"King Spirit Realm," Eclipse Sovereign said. He sounded almost pleased, like a man who had found a coin in an old coat. "Ninth Level, and you wore a child’s mask the whole tournament. Whoever taught you to hide that was careful."

"I wasn’t hiding it from you," Damon said. He drew the Chaos Devourer from his back, and the black blade came out with a low hum that made the air near it wobble. "I just didn’t think you’d show up this early. I had a few more matches planned."

"You think any of this is amusing to you?" Eclipse Sovereign’s voice carried a cold edge, sharp enough to cut.

"No," Damon said flatly, the Chaos Devourer steady in his grip.

"I think you’re loud, and loud men waste time talking. If taking her is as simple as you seem to believe, then stop announcing it and come try."

Eclipse Sovereign’s smile didn’t vanish—it just thinned, pulling tight at the corners like a blade being drawn slowly across leather.

King Aurelius didn’t wait for the answer.

"Guards!" His voice cracked across the arena like a whip, and the Solar Light around him flared.

"Every guard in this building, form on the princess. Royal Guard, sect guards, I don’t care whose banner you carry. Nobody gets within ten steps of her, and anyone who breaks the line answers to me."

Armor rang on stone.

Soldiers poured down from the upper tiers and out of the tunnels, gold-trimmed and silver-trimmed, shoulder to shoulder in two rings around Lumina.

Spears came down level.

A shimmering dome of layered formations snapped into place above them, thin and bright as soap film.

Ariel caught Lumina’s wrist and pulled her back toward the middle. The Trident was already in her other hand, water curling up its shaft.

Lumina yanked free.

"No." Her eyes were bright and wet and furious. "Damon, they came here for me. I’m not going to stand in the middle of a bunch of soldiers while you bleed for it."

Damon didn’t turn around.

"Lumina, listen to me." He kept his eyes on the cultists and his voice low enough that only the women near him could hear.

"You aren’t hiding. You’re the one thing they want, so I need you alive and standing behind a wall while I break everything in front of it. That’s the job, and I’m good at it."

"And if you’re not good enough this time?"

"Then I’ll be bad at it in a very loud way, and they’ll still have to get past me." He flicked a glance back at her, just once. "Stay with Ariel. Please."

Her mouth trembled.

She stepped back.

Mio and Mia moved up on either side of the ring of guards, bow and daggers ready. Seraphina’s wind spun at her ankles, and Flare’s hands were already smoking. Alena planted her staff and said nothing, which meant she was frightened.

The cultists stopped waiting.

All six raised their hands at once, and the arena went dim. Black fire rolled off the first one’s palms in a flat sheet.

The second spun chains of shadow that hissed as they uncoiled, and the third dragged a ragged circle of eclipse light across the floor, a crescent of white-edged darkness that sliced through the stone like paper.

The other three just ran.

Damon moved first.

He slid into the path of the crescent and swung the Chaos Devourer in a short, flat arc.

The tear in space opened wider than a door, and the eclipse light fell into it and vanished, the edges of the rift smoothing shut with a sound like a swallowed breath.

"That was a Peak Emperor technique," one of the cultists blurted.

"Was it?" Damon said. "It was thin."

The black fire reached him next.

He stepped through it, golden Dragon scales rising across the backs of his hands and up his forearms, and the flames slid off him without even singeing his sleeve.

A chain lashed around his ankle. He stamped down and the shadow snapped like old rope.

Behind him, Selene’s frost flooded the floor.

Two cultists went skidding sideways with ice locked to their boots, and her blade came down in a silver line that opened one of them from shoulder to hip.

Mei didn’t draw anything. She simply appeared next to the third runner and put one finger on his chest, and he folded up and hit the stone like a sack.

Vane’s pressure took the last two.

They dropped to their knees, mouths open, with nothing left to scream. Vane never even looked at them.

It had taken less than ten breaths.

Bait, Damon thought, and the thought was cold and clear. Six men thrown at the strongest people in the arena. They weren’t meant to win.

He turned.

Eclipse Sovereign hadn’t moved. He stood at the center of the ring with his hands folded behind his back and the dead cultists at his feet, and the other cultists around the arena hadn’t moved either, waiting on a signal that hadn’t come yet.

The darkness above the stage kept thickening.

Damon felt it settle on his skin, heavy and slow, the pressure of something far above him still holding back. He rolled his shoulder once and lifted the Chaos Devourer until its point aimed across the broken stone at the man in the black robe.

"You lost six people," Damon said. "You don’t look upset."

"I don’t count them," Eclipse Sovereign said.

His eyes found Damon’s and stayed there, and for the first time the patience on his face had a crack in it, thin and bright, something hungry showing through.

Damon took a step toward him.