Fifty miles from the pulverized riverbank, at the jagged, smoking base of the Savage Lands' volcano, the Avatar of War was sweating. Gideon stood at the edge of a bubbling magma trench, staring up at the golden system sky. His blood red platinum armor, forged in the divine fires of his Sovereign, felt suffocatingly tight. He had just watched the broadcast. Every surviving Avatar on the continent had watched it.
Silas was dead, and his domain, the Silent Grave, had been ripped apart from the inside. The anomaly had severed his own shadow to break the transfer, and then executed a Legendary Avatar with a single throw of a scythe.
"He absorbed the concept of necrosis," Gideon muttered, his voice trembling slightly. "The System gave him Silas' law."
Behind Gideon, an encampment of over two thousand top tier Avatars stood in terrified silence. These were the elites. The Guild Masters, the S-Rank veterans, the Chosen of the minor Gods of Iron, Thunder, and Beasts. They had aligned with the God of War for protection, believing Gideon was the undisputed favorite to win the Crown of the Zenith.
Now, they were looking at their warlord, and they saw a man who was afraid. The sky above the volcano suddenly churned. The golden clouds parted, revealing the tall, ethereal projection of the God of War. The giant entity was armored in rusted iron, his face hidden behind a horned helm.
"GIDEON." The Sovereign's voice struck the earth like a meteor, causing the magma in the trenches to erupt. "THE AVATAR OF DEATH HAS FALLEN. THE WEAVER'S PET IS MOCKING THE PANTHEON."
Gideon dropped to one knee, bowing his head. "My Lord. His stats are broken. He surpassed the system's evolution. If I engage him in single combat, my laws might not hold against his concept of severance."
"YOU ARE WAR," the Sovereign roared, the sheer pressure cracking the obsidian ground beneath Gideon's knees. "WAR IS NOT A DUEL. WAR IS A GRINDER OF FLESH. USE THE RELIC. TRAP THE ANOMALY. DROWN HIM IN BODIES UNTIL HIS DIVINE MANA BLEEDS DRY."
A heavy object formed in the air and plummeted to the ground, embedding itself in the rock right in front of Gideon. It was a massive battle standard. The pole was made of blackened human femurs, and the flag was woven from raw muscle tissue.
[System Notice: SSS-Rank Divine Relic 'The Standard of the Conqueror' has been deployed!]
[The God of War is forcing a Spatial Override!]
Gideon looked at the grotesque flag. He understood. He wasn't meant to fight Ren Hanshin fairly. He was meant to bury him. Gideon stood up, his fear replaced by a desperate fanaticism. He grabbed the bone pole of the standard with both hands. He channeled his massive aura, pouring every drop of his mana into the Relic.
"I declare a Crusade!" Gideon roared, slamming the standard into the rock. The Savage Lands shattered.
****
Miles away, Ren Hanshin was walking through the dense jungle, the Severance of Destiny resting casually on his shoulder. He was tracking the concentration of mana signs to the west.
Suddenly, the ground beneath his boots ceased to exist. The laws of space and distance were suspended. The tall fern trees, the muddy earth, and the rushing rivers of the jungle were ripped away, replaced by a flash of rusted light. Ren didn't panic. He passively flared his Divine Mana, letting the spatial warp wash over him. When his vision cleared, he was no longer in the jungle. He was standing in the center of a colossal arena. The floor was made of scorched obsidian, stained with the blood of ancient battles. Surrounding him on all sides were skewering walls of rusted iron that stretched thousands of feet into the sky, forming an inescapable cage.
[System Warning: You have been forcibly relocated to 'The Blood-Iron Colosseum'.]
[Spatial Lock active. Escape is impossible until the standard falls.]
[Status: 1 vs. 2,140]
Ren slowly rotated his neck. The sheer scale of the trap was breathtaking. Lining the tiered iron balconies that spiraled up the walls of the colosseum were thousands of Avatars. They were fully armored, their weapons drawn, their staff shimmering with volatile S-Rank magic. Two thousand of the deadliest mortals in the universe, all staring down at a single man in a black coat. At the top of the colosseum, standing on an obsidian Emperor's balcony overlooking the arena, was Gideon. The Avatar of War held the bleeding standard, his red armor emitting a suffocating aura.
The crimson screen instantly manifested in Ren's vision. The text was dripping, burning through the digital interface like acid.
[WARNING: CONSTELLATION 'GOD OF FATE' IS IN A STATE OF APOCALYPTIC RAGE.]
[God of Fate]: A CAGE?! THEY DARED TO PUT MY KING IN A CAGE?!
[God of Fate]: I WILL TEAR THE GOD OF WAR FROM HIS THRONE! I WILL STRIP HIS FLESH AND HANG IT FROM THE STARS!
The entire colosseum began to rumble. The iron walls groaned as an unseen pressure from the heavens pressed down on the arena. The God of Fate was trying to breach the dimensional lock to save him.
"Stop," Ren said. His voice was calm, but it echoed across the silent arena. He spoke to the air.
"I'm not trapped," Ren whispered, his crimson eyes glowing with a chilling certainty. "They just saved me the trouble of hunting them down."
The red text froze for a fraction of a second. The psychotic rage was replaced by a wave of suffocating, overwhelming devotion.
[The God of Fate is gasping, her heart is beating only for you.]
[God of Fate]: Yes... yes, my beautiful, ruthless monster. Show them. Show them that they didn't trap you in here with them.
[God of Fate]: They trapped themselves in here with you.
[The God of Fate has donated 500,000,000 Karma Points!]
High above, Gideon leaned over the balcony rail, his voice enchanted by the colosseum's magic to sound like rolling thunder.
"Ren Hanshin!" Gideon roared. "You are an anomaly! You broke the sacred trials of the system, and you insulted the Sovereigns! You think because you killed Silas in the dark, you are a God?!"
Gideon raised his greatsword, pointing it down at the tiny figure in the center of the arena. "There are two thousand Chosen here! The finest mages, the strongest tanks, the deadliest archers! Your mana will run dry! Your lungs will give out! We will grind your bones to dust and offer your core to the heavens!"
ROARR!!
The two thousand avatars roared in unison. It was a deafening sound, the battle cry of an army. They banged their weapons against their shields, the clatter shaking the obsidian floor. The sheer psychological pressure of an army's killing intent was enough to shatter the mind of an S-Rank hunter.
Ren just stood there, the midnight black Embrace of the Weaver fluttering in the hot wind. He looked at the army. He looked at Gideon.
"You talk too much," Ren said.
Ren dropped the Severance of Destiny. The crimson scythe hit the obsidian floor and instantly disappeared into a pool of bubbling red mana.
The Avatars on the lower balconies paused, confused. 'Had he dropped his weapon? Was he surrendering?'
Ren raised both of his hands, his palms facing the sky. He closed his eyes.
"You brought an army," Ren whispered. "So let's play war."
He didn't activate Executioner's Block, it was designed for close assassination. It was too small for this. He needed something vast and more destructive. He needed to weaponize the Divine Mana burning in his chest.
'I am feeling another technique to expand my mana, but a mortal can have only a single domain' Ren thought, his face confused. 'Why do I have two? No time for these thoughts.'
[System Notice: The Host is forcefully expanding Divine Mana!]
[Warning: Mana output exceeds safe mortal parameters!]
Ren's eyes snapped open. The crimson irises were bright.
"Domain Activation," Ren commanded, his voice carrying the dual resonance of a demigod. "The Weaver's Loom."
The air inside the colosseum shattered. It was an ocean of liquid crimson mana erupted from Ren's body, flooding the floor of the colosseum like a tidal wave of blood. The red liquid climbed the iron walls, creeping up the tiers of the balconies.
Gideon's eyes widened in horror. "Mages! Suppressive fire! Break his cast!"
Five hundred S-Rank mages on the second tier unleashed a barrage of destruction. Fireballs the size of houses, crackling bolts of lightning, and ice spears rained down on the center of the arena, aiming to obliterate Ren.
The magic never reached him. From the sea of crimson mana flooding the floor, millions of sharp red threads shot upward. They wove themselves together in a fraction of a second, forming a massive canopy of crimson silk above Ren. The S-Rank magic slammed into the silk canopy.
BOOM!
The explosions rocked the arena, light filling the colosseum. But when the smoke cleared, the crimson threads hadn't even singed. The Weaver's Loom absorbed the elemental damage, converting it into energy.
"Return to sender," Ren whispered.
The crimson canopy unraveled. The millions of threads shot outward, moving faster than bullets, aiming for the balconies. It was an apocalypse. The threads severed the internal connections of whatever they touched. They whipped through the ranks of the Avatars like invisible razors.
"Shield wall!" a Commander screamed, raising a legendary grade tower shield. The red thread passed through the shield, through the Commander's armor, and cleanly through his torso, cutting him instantly.
Panic erupted, the structured army formation devolved into chaotic slaughter. Limbs were severed. Heads rolled across the iron balconies. Blood rained down from the upper tiers, splashing into the crimson sea of mana below.
"He's a monster!"
"The shields aren't working! Fall back! F-Fall back!"
"We can't! The spatial lock is active! We're trapped!"
Ren stood still in the center of the arena, his hands raised, conducting the massacre like a maestro leading a symphony of death. He was barely moving, but his willpower was millions of lethal threads, painting the iron walls of the colosseum in a coat of red.
[Target Eliminated: S-Rank Avatar (x45)]
[Target Eliminated: A-Rank Avatar (x120)]
[Target Eliminated: S-Rank Avatar (x82)]
The notifications were a blur. The slaughter was so precise, and melancholiously flawless, that it barely registered as combat. It was a culling. Up on the Emperor's balcony, Gideon watched his elite army being shredded to pieces. The psychological damage of seeing his legendary forces decimated by a single man standing still broke the warlord's sanity.
"NO!" Gideon roared, his aura exploding in a display of golden energy. "I AM WAR! I WILL NOT BE HUMILIATED!"
Gideon leaped off the balcony. He fell hundreds of feet, gripping his greatsword with both hands. He evaded the whirling storm of crimson threads by wrapping himself in a meteor of pure force. He was aiming for Ren, intent on crushing the Demigod's skull in an apocalyptic strike. Ren slowly lowered his hands. The storm of threads ceased, retracting back into the sea of blood at his feet.
The remaining avatars on the balconies are less than half of the original two thousand, who were collapsed, weeping and clutching their wounds, watching the sky. Ren looked up at the falling golden meteor. He reached out his right hand, and the Severance of Destiny formed, humming with an unfathomable thirst.
"Come down, Warlord," Ren whispered. "Let me show you how god fights."