Where there once had been a man who wore everyday attire, if a bit more suited for a warm climate, there was now a humanoid hound, biting firmly on their attacker’s weapon.

  Everybody that had recovered enough from the burst of divine energy and had turned to the sole floating screen, immediately recognized what they were seeing, Anubis, the Egyptian god of death.

  Where there once was human face, there was now a long canine snout, sharp pointy ears, and short black fur, that was unnatural, not in its appearance, but in the feeling that it evoked. Where most people equated black with death, darkness and all things bad. This black was somehow regenerative, not for the body, but for the soul, giving peace to all who focused on it.

  With a powerful crunch, that not only sounded like wood breaking, but also like something more ethereal had shattered, the jackal broke Aegis’s pike. Using her surprise, rose to his feet with little issue or hurry, even going so far as to dust himself off a bit.

  Once the Third Jackal stood completely vertical, it was revealed that it wasn’t only his head that changed. While the rest of his body was still human, golden lines of divine energy were engraved into his very skin, mimicking the golden adornments that Anubis was usually depicted with.

  With an unmistakable expression of hostility toward their opponent, the Third Jackal snarled and, with zero hesitation, lunged at Aegis.

  Even though Aegis was confused by what exactly was going on, she was still being empowered by divinity beyond her control and it allowed her to gather herself quickly enough to raise her shield, preparing for the incoming attack. But it proved to be useless when her opponent turned to black ash, leaving her confused as to where he had gone.

  Behind Aegis, in the same instant that the Jackal had turned into black ash, black ash took the shape of the Jackal and, with a hand that was now more akin to a claw, tore into her lower back.

  Aegis instinctively reached toward her new wound, only to feel a rush of divine energy flood into it, lessening the pain significantly. But that wasn’t all, more divine energy flowed into Aegis and with a jerking motion, her once broken pike, was whole once more, the fractures still visible as divine energy held them together like glue.

  Feeling somewhat more invigorated, Aegis heightened her senses and quickly turned to where she could sense divine energy taking shape.

  When black ash began taking shape on Aegis’s side, the Jackal was met with the tip of a pike, aiming directly toward his heart. On instinct, the Jackal tried to bite at it, only to miss because it was too far. He tried to disappear once more, the edges of his body visibly turning into black ash, only for it to quickly settle and take form once more as the ability refused to activate.

  Yet, he didn’t appear to be flustered, instead, it looked more like when he tried to bite the pike, an instinctual action and not a true attempt at escaping.

  When the pike began to dig into his chest, the Jackal was already pivoting his body in such a way that by the time the pike should have pierced him, it instead only tore a bit of flesh off of his chest.

  But the Jackal still ended up in an awkward position, looking like he was playing limbo with the pike.

  Not missing the opportunity that was right before her, Aegis quickly brought her pike back and with all the speed she could muster, quickly thrust forward without aiming. Considering how the Jackal was positioned, and how close they were to each other, it was impossible for her to miss.

  And she didn’t.

  With a divinity empowered thrust, her pike pierced the Jackal’s upper abdomen with little issue. Whatever protection had been used to prevent her previous attack was nowhere to be seen, and Aegis soon felt her pike exit through the other side of her opponent, having pierced right through him.

  The strike caused the Jackal to falter, his unnatural posture finally crumbling both because of the pain and the momentum of the blow. As he fell to the ground, his face twisted in pain as the pike left his body, only for it to enter it once more, causing his canine face to wince distinctively. This time, it entered slightly higher, chipping his rib cage. However, unlike before, it didn’t run him through, instead, Aegis retrieved the pike when the tip was still inside him.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl, as a divinity empowered Aegis broke the limitations of her body, allowing her to pierce the Jackal over and over again, all while he was still falling to the ground.

  Cracks of divine energy began to appear on Aegis’s skin, the boost to her physical capabilities being far more than even her evolved body could handle. But it made sense, she knew that at the end of the day, at least according to her god, her body was still only E rank, barely at the threshold for the multiverse.

  However, she didn’t care for the damage that her body was suffering, because while no new divine energy was coming her way, she had more than enough left to not only kill her opponent, but also heal her cracked body.

  When she first pierced the Jackal, she was happy because her attack connected, and he had no protection. When her second attack pierced him, her happiness began to fade, as she instead turned serious to take full advantage of the opportunity before her. Even as she felt her body crack under the pressure, when her seventh strike pierced the still falling Jackal, happiness began to make its way back.

  It was a happiness that overrode her completely, a clear sign of her approaching victory. This was the first fight that had made her worry and there was a hint of mockery to her smile, as if laughing at the very fact that the Third Jackal thought that he could actually win.

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  With every stab that followed, Aegis only grew happier when a sense of accomplishment began to materialize as she became certain of her opponent’s death.

  Even though her expression was one of determination, there was nothing that could override the pure bliss she felt as she cut down the agent of another god, another god that refused to fall in line and follow the flow of the world.

  “Athena says—”

  Aegis stopped her speaking, as all of a sudden, all the divinity she had left began to tremble, rushing to her neck. Immediately, her speed returned to normal, her perception of time regularizing itself in an instant.

  As if the world had just dumped a bucket of cold water on her, Aegis looked at her opponent with surprise, expecting to find something out of the ordinary, but there wasn’t anything of the sort. At her feet was the fallen Jackal, his abdomen riddled with stab wounds that she had personally made.

  Feeling robbed of her moment of victory and elation, Aegis furiously grasped her pike, yanking it back and ready to pierce the Jackal again and again until she felt that what had been robbed from her was returned in full.

  Aegis was so focused on what momentary victory had been taken from her, that she didn’t notice that the abdomen that she saw riddled with wounds, wasn’t actually laying on her feet, it was actually inclined at an angle. She didn’t realize that her pike, which she had stopped stabbing all the way through her opponent, felt a little too deep considering how she was attacking. And worst of all, she didn’t realize that she herself was a bit hunched down.

  When her mind was finally catching up to the reality of the situation, a loud crunch rang throughout the arena.

  ----------

  There was no dust to settle, everything had been clear as day through the giant screens above the arena. The most that the crowd had missed was the slightly blurry movements of Aegis when she empowered herself beyond her limits and surpassed the speed that she was normally able to muster.

  And now, clear as it could possibly be, the Third Jackal stood, blood dripping from his maw and mixing with the blood of his heavily injured abdomen. In one hand, he held a pike, divine energy still keeping it together, and on the other, the head of Aegis.

  ----------

  The crowd didn’t know how to react to the scene before them. Seconds ago, it appeared that the match would go one way, only for Third Jackal to move in an expected fashion, ignoring his wounds, during the final moments and completely subvert their expectations.

  And it was quite a change. Time seemed to crawl as the Jackal’s mouth opened abnormally wide, engulfing the entirety of Aegis’s neck, seemingly devouring some of the distance that existed between the two. And with a snap that crushed bone, Aegis’s head fell cleanly off, barely avoiding the ground as the Jackal managed to grab it with his free hand.

  Even as everyone tried to make sense of what they had seen, from the eruption of divine energy to the decapitation of Aegis, the attendants and those that had organized the tournament cared little for what was going on, their expressions still blank. At most they looked at the arena itself, verifying it’s sturdiness. It appeared that after Stella’s display, they upped their preparations quite a bit.

  Everybody had been so concentrated on what was going on before them, that they hadn’t even noticed that none of the divine energy had even made it into the stands. Whatever energy or impact those from the stands had felt, making them raise their defenses, turned out to be mere air—air that was pushed by the powerful clash of divinities.

  This became even more obvious when the azar’s side of the arena was also perfectly intact. Even with the humans and sovaryns who had gone over to their side out of curiosity, there was no way that they would have been able to put up a similar resistance to those on the other stands. So that left only one explanation, the arena, having undergone some invisible modifications, was responsible for taking most of the brunt of the attack.

  Before anyone knew it, the Jackal disappeared, probably moved underground to either heal his wounds, or die from them.

  The arena, once more proving that it had undergone modifications, was pristine, not a single dent on it. It didn’t even remain empty for long. Like a haze, the divisions were erected once more, creating 10 smaller arenas, along with these divisions, 100 more participants were brought forth to fight.

  ----------

  Because of the impact that the previous fight had on everybody, no one paid attention to the fighters that followed. Even the fighters themselves were a bit lost as to what to do. They felt that continuing the tournament was off, at least for the remainder of the day, anyway. It wasn’t necessarily that they felt bad for the deceased, it was more about how her death was presented. The world seemed to come to a stop and present her gruesome decapitation before them, like a spectacle.

  And yet, when a warning screen appeared before 100 of the recently summoned fighters, they got over their doubts and readied themselves.

  Their attacks were nothing compared to what they had just seen. Not only were they affected by what had happened, but most of them were just simply too weak to even dream of displaying such a level of power. It was barely the third round of matches, the tournament still had hundreds of people to get rid of, and these were none of those that were called a “hidden gem” of any sort.

  All the fighters were so engrossed in their own battle that they hadn’t even noticed what the others that were in the arena were doing. They barely recognized their opponent and that was because they were in front of them, otherwise they would be fighting air, trying to appear as an active participant.

  And this didn’t only apply to the fighters, it also applied to those in the stands. Many were facing the groups that both Aegis and the Third Jackal belonged to. Others moved to the back of the stands, waiting for the Jackal to exit the underground, or perhaps they were simply waiting enough to confirm that he wouldn’t come out at all.

  This sort of mindless attitude continued all the way to the final participants of the third round. This meant that no one was paying attention to any of the final fights, including Jeff, an ordinary human vs. Malprxis, a dark-skinned elf. Jeff was completely unarmed, while Malprxis held a morning star in her hand.

  Malprxis was the only elf that was called on to the arena during this occasion, her team was comprised of humans and sovaryn. But she still showed herself to be an exemplary specimen of the elven species. While everyone else, including her own kin, was preoccupied with other matters, she was completely concentrated on her opponent, an unarmed human.

  With a quick visual inspection Malprxis became certain of her victory. Grasping her weapon firmly, she began to run toward her opponent, pouring more than enough mana into her strike, unwilling to let her opponent dream for even a second.

  But when she was only a few steps away, her body began to fail her. At first, she only felt how her grip on her weapon became loose, not enough to drop it, but enough that any strike she made would be no better than a slight tap. Her movement became groggy, almost cartoonish as she had to drag every one of her limbs forward.

  When she was finally before her opponent, as if the strings on a doll had been severed, her entire body went limb, resting upon Jeff’s own.

  As if embracing Malprxis in a powerful and tender hug, Jeff lifted his arm until he firmly grasped the back of her powerless head. And, with a single and simple motion that appeared to have no power behind it, Jeff broke his opponent’s neck, the snap barely sounding like that of a twig.

  Simultaneously, everybody that was in his little section of the arena, fell along with Malprxis. All of their strings having been severed at the same time, including those that were on his team.

  When Jeff was disappearing toward the underground, a bright, yellow glint was seen in his eyes.

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