Chapter 160: The Tournament Begins

A cataclysmic roar detonated across the Colosseum, vibrating so violently that the velvet draperies of the Sovereign Concourse snapped like sails in a gale.

Hundreds of thousands of throats howled their bloodlust toward the sky.

Deep within the sands, massive arcane arrays flashed with blinding, iridescent azure.

The vast, unified arena floor ground downward, splitting into eight segregated, fortress-sized dueling platforms enclosed by shimmering, blood-red containment barriers.

Azriel’s interface exploded in a torrential cascade of gold, crimson, and violet pings, the mental chat scrolling at blinding speed:

[LIVE CHAT]

[Sadistic69] (Red): A SNAKE GRAND ELDER SNIFFING HIS NECK IN FRONT OF FIVE EMPRESSES?! BRO IS THE ULTIMATE MENACE!

[Nine_Tailed_Vixen] (Cyan): Did you see Maeve’s heavy coils?! Pure, sleepy, voluptuous perfection! And Rosalind almost drew blood from jealousy!

[Lusty_Sera] (Golden): Maeve smelled the ancient bloodline immediately. An airhead on the surface, but an Overlord monster underneath. She wants a private tasting!

[God_Slayer_Klara] (Red): Look at Katarina seething over there. She’s realizing that ‘slave’ she gave away is catching the eye of the highest authority on the continent.

[Moon_Priestess] (Cyan): The board is set. Two hundred slots. Thousands of highborn beasts about to be broken.

Empress Mahesa lowered her hand and turned gracefully, settling back onto her blazing golden throne beside Maeve.

The serpent elder had already slouched sideways against the white jade armrest, her cheek squished into her palm as she peered lazily down through the open balustrade, though her heavy, emerald-dusted coils shifted with subtle restlessness.

Across the concourse, the tension shifted from suffocating court etiquette to raw, feral competition.

Before the dust from the herald’s horn could settle, a sudden, biting frost descended over the entire basin.

The sweltering desert air plunged toward freezing in a matter of heartbeats.

Up from the center of the Colosseum, a slender figure rose effortlessly into the sky, hovering aloft without wings or mechanical aid, sustained purely by condensed frost-aether.

She was a highborn beastwoman of the Nivus Clan, an elder arbiter of the snow leopard lineage.

Draped in fitted silver-and-white battle-robes trimmed with pristine frost-fox fur, her white hair fluttered against the glacial updrafts she generated.

Twin pale leopard ears twitched with absolute precision, and her icy blue eyes looked down upon the tens of thousands of contenders with aristocratic detachment.

“By the decree of Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Mahesa, and the esteemed Senior Envoy, Grand Elder Maeve, the preliminary selection shall now begin,” her voice rang out, crisp, clear, and laced with absolute cold that carried across every tier of the stadium without an echo.

She raised both pale hands and struck them together.

Crack!

A frost-rune detonated in midair, expanding into a colossal, translucent crystal screen that spanned over a hundred paces across the open sky.

With a hum of ancient mana, the screen neatly partitioned itself into eight equal, glowing sectors, each marked with a massive runic numeral from One to Eight.

“Upon registering your names, each of you was bound to an imperial entry token,” the arbiter announced, her frigid gaze sweeping over the ranks below.

“These eight screens correspond directly to the eight consecrated combat rings. When your match is drawn, your image, registration number, and name will appear upon your designated sector.”

“When your call is made, you have precisely five minutes to cross the ward line. Exceed the mark by a single second, and your token will shatter in forfeiture. Leniency does not exist within these walls.”

She struck her hands together a second time, the sharp clap echoing like snapping ice.

“Let the sands be tested. First eight pairs, step forth!”

Instantly, the eight partitioned sectors flashed with blinding azure light.

Sixteen portraits snapped into crisp, towering focus alongside flowing gold script listing names, empire allegiances, and clan sigils.

Down on the assembly floor, sixteen figures moved without a moment’s hesitation.

Like hunting falcons loosed from their tethers, sixteen armored beast-maidens leaped into the air, crashing onto the reinforced sand rings with thunderous impacts that kicked up plumes of white dust.

Their weapons cleared their scabbards with synchronized metallic shrieks, broadswords, curved scythes, heavy morningstars, and razor-sharp claw gauntlets glinting beneath the desert sun.

Waiting inside each of the eight containment rings were seasoned, stoic judges, battle-hardened grandmasters from the imperial armies, clad in dull obsidian armor and holding suppression rods to enforce the rules of life and death.

Up in the private Bastet skybox, Rosalind leaned back into the velvet cushions, taking a slow sip from her wine glass as her golden eyes flicked across the eight glowing boards.

“Eleanor is held for Block Four,” Rosalind murmured, a cruel, satisfied smirk playing upon her lips as the containment barriers flared blood-red around the first eight rings.

“Let the chaff exhaust their blood first. The real slaughter begins when House Bastet takes the floor.”

The blood-red containment barriers sealed with a heavy, concussive hum, locking the sixteen warriors inside their respective killing grounds.

The instant the obsidian-clad judges dropped their suppression rods, the arena floor detonated in violence.

In Ring One, the clash was pure, unadulterated savagery.

A wolf-kin berserker from the ZalTusk frontier, broad-shouldered, scarred across her sun-darkened cheek, and wielding a slab of serrated iron the size of a tavern door, lunged with a throat-tearing howl.

Her aura detonated in a shockwave of muddy crimson mana, cracking the flagstones beneath the sand.

Opposite her, a raptor-kin skirmisher from Skraal Krag exploded into motion, her steel-tipped talons whistling as she blurred through the air.

The iron slab slammed down, pulverizing the reinforced sand into a crater, but the bird-maiden had already ridden the updraft, diving down with talons aimed straight for the tendon of the wolf’s heel.

A vicious spray of crimson painted the white sand, drawing a manic, blood-drunk roar from the outer tiers.

In Ring Three, the fight was lethal, venomous, and blindingly fast.

A scale-crested serpent-maiden from the Naga Realm glided forward in unnatural, undulating shifts, her curved twin daggers trailing viscous green fumes.

Her opponent, a heavily armored rhino-kin vanguard from Karnvokh, charged like a runaway siege engine, her broad kite shield glowing with dull amber earth-mana.

The collision sounded like a battering ram striking iron.

The naga didn’t break, she bent, twisting her spine with liquid elasticity to bypass the shield’s edge, driving her dagger clean through the armored joint of the rhino-girl’s shoulder.

The brute dropped to one knee with a choked gasp as the numbing venom seized her veins, the judge stepping in with an obsidian rod to end the bout within three brutal seconds.

Azriel stood quietly at the edge of the Bastet skybox balcony, his dark violet eyes tracking the movement across every platform at once.

Underneath his calm, aristocratic mask, his jaw remained tight.

Among men, his awakened SSS+ bloodline and physical conditioning made him an apex anomaly.

But down on those sands, he was looking at the distilled, generational monsters of Gorgorath’s matriarchal hierarchy.

These girls had been nurtured since birth on celestial elixirs, ancient cultivation arts, and sovereign beast bloodlines.

In raw mana density and destructive aura output, at least half of the young scions down there outstripped his current realm.

A direct, head-on collision with that rhino-kin’s earth charge or a clean swipe from the wolf-kin’s massive blade would tear his current flesh to ribbons if he relied solely on brute force.

He had the bloodline foundation, but his awakening was fresh.

Because of that, he was still lagging behind these women, he remained a mere Awakener, while almost all the girls down on the sand were already Adepts.

The private live feed across his vision flickered with rapid, analytical commentary:

[LIVE CHAT]

[Sadistic69] (Red): Damn, look at the aether density on that rhino girl! The raw crushing power is insane!

[God_Slayer_Klara] (Red): Respect the gap, Azriel. You’re an apex male, but these girls are high-tier scions backed by centuries of matriarchal breeding.

[Nine_Tailed_Vixen] (Cyan): That makes it even hotter though? When he drags these monstrous, prideful little killers down to their knees, the fall will be so much sweeter!

[Moon_Priestess] (Cyan): It sure will be… not now but in the academy…. hehehehe

[Lusty_Sera] (Golden): Watch Katarina over in the Tigris box, her girl is in Ring Two!

Down in Ring Two, the Tigris clan’s brutality took center stage.

Down in the sand was Lyra Tigris, the blood daughter of Duchess Katarina.

Lean, tightly corded with muscle, and marked with bold amber stripes, she sported the exact same feral, slit-pupil gaze as her mother as she systematically dismantled an iron-horned goat-kin from Karnvokh.

The Tigris girl didn’t use blades.

Her fists, encased in heavy brass knuckle-guards, were coated in dense, explosive flame-aether.

Each strike against the armored girl’s ribcage landed with concussive, sickening thuds that shook the barrier.

With a vicious, cackling laugh, the tiger-maiden caught the girl by her horns, wrenched her off balance, and planted a heavy, steel-toed boot straight into her solar plexus, blasting her across the blood-slicked sand until she smashed into the containment ward.

“Winner, Ring Two: Tigris Clan!” the judge’s voice echoed through the local amplification rune.

Up in the Tigris viewing terrace, Katarina tossed her head back, downing a golden flagon of mead in one long pull before slamming it on the railing.

“Weak! Bring out someone who can actually take a fist!” she bellowed toward the sand, her amber slit-pupils flicking arrogant mockery toward the Bastet skybox.

Rosalind didn’t give her the satisfaction of a glance.

Her slender fingers rested on the cool crystal of her wine goblet, a faint, predatory hum vibrating in her throat.

“Brutes,” Rosalind purred with aristocratic disgust.

“They mistake senseless brawling for martial elegance. Eleanor will show them what true lineage looks like.”