Ambo’s heart hammered violently against his ribs as the towering weight of his own creation terrified him.
Shocked by the sheer, destructive power he had just unleashed despite feeling absolutely no physical weight in his hands, his mental grip completely slipped.
The massive, 5-meter rectangular hammer instantly lost its rigid structure, dissolving into a chaotic wave of loose black fluid that splattered harmlessly across the sand before sinking back into his pores like a melting shadow.
He stumbled backward into the dust, his breathing ragged as he coughed through the rising gray smog.
As the thick curtain of dust finally faded away, it revealed a bizarre and terrifying sight.
Leeroy Jenkins was still standing.
His physical Premera Astral armor was completely unscratched—not a single plate of the glowing energy suit had been dented, cracked, or fractured by the cataclysmic strike.
But he hadn’t escaped the force.
The sheer, unyielding weight of the hammer had driven his entire lower body literally underground, burying his legs deep into the shattered bedrock of the colosseum like a human nail hammered into wood.
High up on the judges’ balcony, Zaiden’s eyes narrowed behind his bunny face mask, his arms folded neatly across his tailored suit vest.
He looked down at the crater, his calculated mind tracking the trajectory of the strike.
“Look at the bedrock,” Zaiden murmured, his voice flat but filled with a deep, analytical intrigue.
“If the concrete ground directly beneath them is the thing that shattered and cracked instead of the object directly receiving the impact, does it mean the weapon is stronger than the shield?
Is Leeroy’s body stronger than the very concrete bedrock of this fortress?” Xan shook her head, her paranoia tightening her jaw as she gripped the stone railing.
She had spent years analyzing combat data, and she recognized exactly what this anomaly meant.
“No,” Xan replied flatly, her sharp eyes tracing the groaning bully below.
“It means the force didn’t stop at the armor.
The weapon didn’t have actual physical mass, so it couldn’t shatter the energy barrier directly.
Instead of breaking the shield, it simply drove his entire physical frame straight through the floor like a piston.” Down on the arena floor, the bully’s shoulders began to violently heave.
“You…
you little piece of trash,” Leeroy hissed, a terrifying, vein-popping anger distorting his handsome features as his eyes turned a dangerous, bloodshot crimson.
With a roaring grunt of pure, unadulterated fury, Leeroy flexed his upper torso.
The raw Astral energy around him flared, cracking the surrounding concrete into tiny fragments as he violently hoisted his legs out from the subterranean hole, stepping back onto the sandy surface.
He dusted off his armored pauldrons, his sneer returning with absolute malice.
“You know what, kid?
I am quite shocked by that little stunt,” Leeroy growled, stepping forward as the sand kicked up around his heavy boots.
“But you just made me incredibly disappointed.
That toy of yours looked impressive, but it couldn’t even scratch my paint.
Now…
let me show you what a real Culler does.
Get ready to face my revenge.” Ambo’s limbs began to shake with intense stamina exhaustion, his hands gripping his vest as the armored titan closed the distance, ready to unleash a true, unmitigated slaughter.
Leeroy blurred.
The distance between them closed in a millisecond as a massive, aura-coated fist shot forward, carrying enough bone-snapping velocity to execute the rookie where he stood.
Ambo couldn’t move.
His stamina was completely drained, his vision blurring as the heavy metal plate of Leeroy’s knuckles locked onto his face.
CRACK.
The brutal trauma rattled Ambo’s skull, but as the crushing pain flared, it didn’t push him into unconsciousness.
Instead, it tore the floodgates of his subconscious wide open.
Absolute, primal terror collided with an ancient, sleeping reflex deep within his bone marrow.
Before Leeroy’s fist could follow through and cave the rookie’s chest in, a sudden, explosive eruption of thick, oily black biological fluid tore out from Ambo’s skin.
It didn’t form a simple shield or a weapon this time; the fluid bubbled, warped, and violently expanded until it completely swallowed Ambo’s physical frame, manifesting a terrifying, fully completed humanoid silhouette.
This was the true shape of the Laughing Devil.
The entity was a towering, pitch-black humanoid monstrosity born of living mud.
Its face was a featureless mask of shifting goo, broken only by a pair of hollow eyes that glowed with a feral, luminous purple light.
When its massive jaw ripped open, a blinding purple radiance bled from its throat, revealing a cavernous maw lined with rows of razor-sharp, black teeth.
Rising from the top of its skull was a crown of vibrant purple hair that drifted upward against the air, dancing lazily like a supernatural, violet fire.
The beast possessed no wings, but its lower anatomy was entirely inhuman.
Its legs were shaped like an animal’s hind limbs—bizarre, digitigrade legs that featured two jointed knees built for explosive velocity.
Its massive hands looked exactly like the silhouette of Jahek’s oversized gloves, but they were forged of dense, weaponized goo that ended in exactly four massive, razor-sharp finger claws.
Its bestial feet gripped the sand with two thick, bird-like clawed toes, while a long, muscular black tail thrashed behind it, ending in a sharp, wicked arrowhead on the very tip.
The entity did not wait.
The moment the manifestation was complete, the Laughing Devil threw itself forward, launching an unstoppable, hyper-violent barrage of feral scratches and blunt punches.
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
BAM!
Leeroy threw his arms up, leaning into his defensive status.
He let out a booming laugh, enjoying the resistance as he assumed the rookie was simply throwing a desperate, final tantrum.
“Is this the best your little mud-trick can do, stray?!
It doesn’t even leave a dent!” But the entity controlling the black goo possessed an ancient, apex instinct.
Realizing the frantic blunt strikes weren’t piercing the dense energy plates, the cackling devil shifted its frequency.
Its animal hind legs flexed, and its movements accelerated until the humanoid shape dissolved into a complete, overlapping blur—a chaotic ghost tearing through the air.
The speed became unholy.
The cackling laughter echoed off the colosseum walls as the four-fingered claws struck the exact same seam in the armor a hundred times in a single second.
Slowly, a tiny, hairline fracture split the glowing light of Leeroy’s chest plate.
SNAP.
The metal plates began to violently buckle.
Before Leeroy could even process what was happening, the small crack grew exponentially, fracturing outward like a shattered mirror.
With a loud, resonant burst, the genius Premera armor completely shattered, dissolving into a harmless, sparkling cloud of white Astral mist.
By the time Leeroy noticed the barrier was gone, it was already too late.
The four feral claws of the devil tore through his defenses before he could even register a reaction.
A barrage of deep, jagged scratches erupted all over his torso, back, and arms.
Crimson blood spattered violently across the sand, splashing against the stone wall as Leeroy’s breath hitched in raw, suffocating shock.
High on the balcony, Xan’s protective instincts flared.
Realizing the mock battle had turned into a lethal execution, she leaped from the railing, throwing her hands forward to intervene and catch Ambo.
But the Laughing Devil’s velocity was too fast to be seen or physically caught by standard movements.
Pivoting mid-air, Xan shifted her strategy, channeling her immense energy to manifest a thick, invisible Astral barrier around Leeroy’s bleeding frame, sealing the bully away from the predator.
Leeroy stumbled backward, his knees trembling as the blood loss caught up to him.
He slowly dropped to his knees, his vision dazing as he stared at his torn flesh in absolute disbelief.
“What…
what the fuck…” he stammered, his eyes rolling back into his head as he collapsed forward into the sand, entirely unconscious.
The Laughing Devil whirled around, its arrowhead tail lashing against the concrete ground.
Despite the extreme speed and physical force it unleashed, its four claws couldn’t shatter Xan’s invisible barrier the way it had destroyed Leeroy’s armor.
Annoyed, the entity’s glowing purple eyes locked onto the immense Astral signature radiating from the Acting Leader.
The cackling grew deafening as the devil tensed its hind legs, preparing to launch a lethal ambush straight at Xan.
But before its feet could leave the sand, a shadow fell over its path.
In a flash of a second, Zaiden materialized directly between the monster and the judge.
Moving with a precise, soul-crushing velocity, his small leather gloves gripped the center of the entity’s chest.
He didn’t draw a blade, but an intense, localized pressure erupted from his palms, violently disrupting the biological frequency of the goo.
With a sickening, tearing sound, the black fluid was forcefully separated from Ambo’s physical body.
Cut off from its genetic battery, the humanoid form of the Laughing Devil instantly began to disintegrate, its flowing purple hair and arrowhead tail melting away as the fluid faded into nothingness like water dissolving into the parched sand.
Ambo’s pale, curly-haired frame dropped instantly, his eyes closing as he fell limp into Zaiden’s arms, the secret colosseum falling back into an absolute, suffocating silence.