Grey’s voice wasn’t loud either, but the acoustics in the coliseum were truly something to behold. One might have thought that he had spoken into a loud speaker, and yet had whispered into every one of their ears at the same time.
Many of the guards froze, a small minority of them actually unsheathing their weapons in response. But the king’s hand was still up and none of them dared to move.
A grin spread across the king’s face. For a moment, all of his royal air vanished and Grey felt like he was facing off against a war lord who had just got done pillaging a village of all its food and women.
"I hope that mouth of yours remains so sharp. Drag the losers away. Clear the arena. Leave our little hero where he is. Today, we will have Blood!"
"BLOOD!"
"BLOOD!"
"BLOOD!"
The guards came and dragged the trio away.
Actually, while they were all heavily injured, and the mohawk man was facing both severe burns and an equally severe lack of a hairline, Grey had left them all alive.
The sword he had sent flying at the middle-aged man had missed him on purpose. But that didn’t stop the old man from pissing his pants and losing consciousness. He had been certain he was going to die, but that wasn’t just because of Grey’s attack, but also because of Void Gaze.
Grey doubted they would survive another battle if they were forced to fight like this. Even Megan, the least outwardly injured of them, might very well have broken her neck on that fall. But he had done his best. What happened from here would depend on them.
He had his own problems to deal with.
If not for the man’s words earlier, Grey would have just killed them all. But since the mohawk man had tried to be helpful in his own way, Grey tried to be helpful in his.
Now, however, he could only watch them be dragged away. Their fate had nothing to do with him now.
As for the crowd chanting Blood, that had nothing to do with him either. So he ignored it as well...
Until he realized that Blood was actually someone’s name. Someone he had already seen before.
A behemoth of a man came in dragging a new set of prisoners. The guards rushed toward him, trying and failing to explain something.
The behemoth shrugged them off and kept dragging the prisoners forward, only to be stopped by the guards. This time they were just close enough for Grey to hear them trying to explain to the man that he would be the one fighting this time.
’They want me to fight this spec ed giant? How am I supposed to get amped up for this—?’
Blood suddenly roared and the wave of wind made Grey squint.
A bloodthirsty light radiated from the enormous man, and Grey realized that this was actually the first time he was looking at the man head on.
He was truly enormous, but his head was covered in what looked like a BDSM mask, some cross between something kinky and something only Hannibal Lecter would wear.
Even his mouth wasn’t all that clear to see, bars running up and down and across blocking much of it... but not doing much to block the spittle and rabid foam coming from his mouth.
"BLOOD! BLOOD!"
The enormous man seemed to have been injected with a stimulant when he realized that he was going to be fighting. He forgot that he was holding onto prisoners, or that the guards trying to advise him were on his side.
His forearms and biceps bulged, his head tilted to the skies and he smashed his fists together.
The prisoners screamed, their bodies whipping through the air and smashing together.
A meat grinder of flesh and bone formed in the skies, the bodies—or more accurately the corpses—flying into one another with the speed of a raging missile.
The guards that were too close got caught up. Some of them managed to dodge, but the majority did not.
Blood didn’t care. Maybe he didn’t have the capacity to care.
He took a step and the earth quaked, then he took another and it split.
His momentum built up, slowly, but surely. By his fourth step he was in a slow jog, and by the seventh he was gearing up into a real run.
But his strides were too long. By the time he was taking his ninth, he was already a step away from Grey, chains and strung up corpses whistling through the air like a revving rocket engine.
’Well, shit.’
Grey almost wanted to laugh. This was an obscene amount of strength. Was this guy even human? There was just no way.
Every part of his senses was telling him that this monster was in the Proving Class, but even with all the strength he had gained, there was no way that Grey would be able to whip around what was essentially handfuls of five or more hundred pounds as though he was swinging a baseball bat.
And now those chains with what remained of the corpses once attached to them were coming for his head.
Grey glanced toward where the key to his chains was supposed to be. Unsurprisingly, the guards had already taken it down. He couldn’t get to it even if he wanted to. But again...
He didn’t need it.
He just wanted to decide how much he needed to show.
’Fuck it.’
Grey said with a wild grin.
The chains whipped for his head, so close his cheeks were already deforming under the wind.
’Let’s go wild.’
Chi.
The chains ripped right into Grey’s body and Blood rumbled to a stop dozens of meters away, roaring about his victory. But the crowd wasn’t cheering Blood, though they were certainly cheering.
Grey stood with a hand on his hip and a blinged out pinky finger in his ear.
"Hey, tub of shit for brains. You missed."
Black fog dispersed through where Grey had been "hit", shadows blazing around his feet.