“BANG!”
A thunderous crash shook the ground.
As the last opponent collapsed, the entire arena fell deathly silent.
Valsa stood expressionlessly at the center of the fighting ring, blood still dripping from his right hand.
Towering and powerfully built, he stood beneath the spotlights like an immovable giant, looking down on everyone around him.
No one could have imagined that the man hailed as the strongest fighter in the Kingdom of Lenk—last year’s champion of the underground arena, whose strength had been hyped to the heavens—would be knocked unconscious after just two punches, his eyes rolled back in his head.
All the invincible image that had been carefully built around him shattered in an instant.
He had become nothing more than a stepping stone beneath Valsa’s feet as the latter claimed the throne with an overwhelming display of strength!
The arena’s master of ceremonies froze at the sight.
It took several seconds before he finally came to his senses.
“Uh…
uh, the winner is…
Valsa!”
Valsa raised his right hand.
A deafening roar erupted from every corner of the arena.
“Valsa!
Valsa!
Valsa!
Valsa!…”
“The champion from last year lost just like that?
But wasn’t he supposed to…”
A spectator in the stands was questioning his friend when the other man hurriedly clamped a hand over his mouth.
“Shh!
Keep that to yourself!
Do you want to lose your head?!”
His friend’s reaction startled him.
He quickly glanced around and, seeing that no one seemed to have noticed them, finally breathed a sigh of relief.
“But putting that aside, Lord Valsa is seriously powerful.”
“Yeah.
A hundred consecutive victories and then taking the championship.
Has anyone done that in the Kingdom of Lenk in the past hundred years?”
“Not a single opponent even lasted two rounds against him.”
At the judges’ table, however, every judge wore a different expression.
One by one, their gazes drifted toward the man seated at the far right.
As he listened to the cheers from the arena, the somewhat elderly-looking man still wore a smile.
But the veins bulging on his forehead and the fists clenched beneath the table betrayed the turmoil raging inside him.
“Get him out of there.
Are you planning to let him lie there and embarrass himself?” he hissed at the bodyguards standing nearby.
The two bodyguards didn’t even have time to wipe the cold sweat from their foreheads.
They hurried onto the stage and carried the defeated champion away.
Inside, the older man was still roaring with fury.
Useless!
What a damn useless fool!
Without even staying for the final championship ceremony, he angrily shoved his chair aside and stormed backstage.
His other bodyguards hurried after him.
Just before leaving, he cast one last cold, murderous glance toward the arena.
“I want everything you can find on that kid.”
“Yes, sir!”
Only after he was gone did the other judges finally allow the smiles they’d been suppressing to spread across their faces.
They laughed gleefully at his misfortune.
The underground arena was, in reality, a playground for the kingdom’s nobles and other members of the upper class.
Every year’s champion was predetermined, nothing more than a product of the dark political interests of the ruling elite.
Valsa’s overwhelming rise to the top this year had damaged the interests of the older man and caused him to lose face in front of his fellow nobles.
There was no way he would simply swallow that humiliation.
The master of ceremonies approached Valsa with a tray held carefully in both hands.
Only when he stood in front of Valsa did he truly understand just how terrifying the man was.
Over two meters tall.
The stench of blood clinging to his body.
And the overwhelming presence of someone who had just won an utterly dominant victory.
The pressure was so immense that the master of ceremonies didn’t dare raise his head.
With trembling hands, he presented the tray.
Resting upon it was a pair of golden brass knuckles.
Four sharp spikes protruded from the front, gleaming brilliantly beneath the lights.
Valsa picked them up and examined them carefully.
The brass knuckles were largely made of pure gold, but some strange material had been incorporated into them.
Their golden surface gleamed brilliantly, yet an occasional flash of black shimmered across the metal.
He weighed them in his hand before giving them a hard squeeze.
They were far heavier than a piece of gold of the same size should have been—and incredibly hard.
Only then did Valsa confirm that these weren’t merely decorative trophies.
They were genuine weapons, capable of inflicting devastating damage on an enemy.
He slipped the brass knuckles onto his hand.
They fit perfectly.
“Not bad.
Not bad!”
Valsa grinned and raised both hands once again.
The golden brass knuckles sparkled beneath the spotlights, and the entire arena exploded into another wave of cheers.
Then, suddenly, someone in the stands shouted:
“Overlord!”
The arena went silent for a brief moment.
Then the entire crowd erupted.
“Overlord!
Overlord!
Overlord!…”
And really, with a hundred consecutive victories and an utterly invincible presence, wasn’t he just like the legendary overlords of old?
Valsa listened to the chant and thought to himself:
Not a bad title.
Overlord, huh?
And so, a new champion was born in the underground arena.
Surrounded by deafening cheers, Valsa turned and headed toward the exit.
As he passed through the doorway, the two towering men who had been standing like iron towers on either side of the entrance followed him out.
The cheers gradually faded behind them.
One of the men tried to flatter his boss, but his naturally deep voice came out like the rumble of a giant’s growl.
“Heh heh, boss, you’re amazing!
You won the championship!”
His name was Lucas.
Valsa had taken him in only a few months ago.
The other man was Adrian, whom Valsa had also recruited around the same time.
The two had originally been the trump cards of a local crime syndicate.
A few months earlier, Valsa had single-handedly killed the syndicate’s boss.
It was then that he discovered the two men possessed remarkable talent.
For the first time, he had the thought of cultivating his own subordinates.
So he recruited both of them and took over the entire syndicate at the same time.
But Valsa felt no joy at his victory.
He had quietly taken note of what happened at the judges’ table.
He had seen everything.
It seemed the waters surrounding this underground arena ran far deeper than he’d expected.
Valsa sighed.
“Damn.
Trouble really does follow me everywhere.
But whatever.
When soldiers come, we’ll meet them with soldiers; when the floods come, we’ll stop them with earth.”
Adrian took a moment to process that.
“Uh…
Boss, what did you say about soldiers and…
uh…
earth?”
Valsa pressed his aching forehead and said helplessly,
“Forget it.
Just be careful these next few days.
Someone’s going to come looking for trouble.
Go back and make sure everyone understands.
Increase patrols for the next few days.
Anyone who looks suspicious gets taken down.”
The moment Adrian heard that someone was coming after them, he immediately flew into a rage.
“What?!
Someone wants to mess with us?
Good!
Good!
Let them come!
I’ll make sure they eat their fill and leave with a full stomach!”
Valsa chuckled and kicked him.
Whoosh!
Adrian went flying five meters through the air.
“You idiot!
The saying is ‘eat until you can’t finish it and leave with your tail between your legs!’ Is that even a phrase you should be using?!
Why are you copying expressions when you don’t understand them?”
Adrian got back to his feet, dusted off his backside, and hurried back.
“Oh…
Oh.”
Seeing his ridiculous expression, Valsa once again rubbed his throbbing forehead.
Are everyone’s brains in this world really this hopeless?
The Kingdom of Lenk was divided into an Inner City and an Outer City.
The Inner City was the world of the royal family and nobility.
It was a place of dazzling lights and extravagant pleasures—a place the people of the Outer City could only dream of entering.
As for the Outer City, calling it an “Outer City” was being generous.
To put it bluntly, it was a vast collection of slums.
Chaos reigned there.
Bloodshed, betrayal, greed, and every other kind of human vice permeated the streets.
And Valsa and his men came from the Outer City.
The underground arena was located inside the Inner City.
They had bribed the guards at the gates to gain free passage in and out.
Even so, each trip through the gates cost them 5,000 Berries.
Don’t think 5,000 Berries was a trivial sum.
That amount of money was enough to support an ordinary resident of the Outer City for an entire month.
And yet, they had to pay that much simply to pass through the city gates.
It was enough to show just how rotten this kingdom had become.