The floor beneath him gave way.
Arc plummeted into the depths of the colosseum, landing hard in the corner of a vast circular altar.
The runes engraved beneath his feet flared to life.
Light raced through their patterns, pulsing around him as though the markings were binding his body in place. Scanning energy passed over him, stripping away every enhancement and artificial modification.
For the first time in what felt like an eternity, Arc felt naked.
Exposed.
Powerless.
His false ascension state [AMBER] was gone.
Only his natural body remained.
His basic skills and biological functions were still intact, but they were strained beneath the oppressive force surrounding him.
All around the arena, enormous torches burned like monoliths. They towered as high as skyscrapers, bathing the circular chamber in a heavy crimson glow.
The atmosphere thickened.
Sound itself seemed to bend.
His perception slowed.
A cold pressure coiled inside his chest.
His breathing shortened.
His spine trembled.
And for the first time in what felt like eons, Arc felt something he had believed was long dead within him.
Fear.
Pure, soul-chilling dread.
From the far end of the arena, something emerged.
A towering, monstrous being clad in black and red armor. Energy bled from its body like molten veins, spilling into the air around it.
It stood nearly fifteen meters tall, dwarfing Arc with its immense stature.
Four blazing eyes burned through the openings of its helm.
Beneath the faceplate, hidden within the shadows, was the suggestion of a hollow mechanical grin.
The first strike came without warning.
A massive fist slammed into Arc's crossed arms.
The impact was deafening.
A shockwave rippled across the arena as Arc was sent skidding violently across the floor. He dug his feet into the ground, spikes forming from his soles as he desperately tried to halt his momentum.
The friction made his legs screamed against the stone that ate into flesh.
His bones groaned.
Then he looked down.
His arms were mangled from the forearm and missing from the elbow down.
Twisted remnants of flesh hung where his forearms had been, purple with swelling and pain. His hands were gone, reduced to stumps.
Arc glanced back at the bloody trail he had left across the arena.
His breathing was heavy.
Then the silver Norvanite beneath his skin began to stir.
It shimmered.
The metal crawled toward the surface, hardening as it spread across his ruined limbs.
Within seconds, his arms had reshaped themselves even if it was a lot more painful.
The creature had not moved.
Four arms extended from its enormous frame, each ending in a colossal gauntleted fist nearly twice the size of Arc himself.
Red and black energy oozed from its armor, forming a thick miasma that distorted the space around it.
Arc scanned the arena.
His sensory field expanded.
Then expanded further.
The information flooded into his mind.
Raw.
Invasive.
Unbearable.
These things were not his creations.
They resembled his vestiges, yet they were older.
Stronger.
Something beyond them.
A name burned into his thoughts.
[ANTARE]
He understood the rule of survival immediately.
Where there was one, there were more.
His gaze swept across the colosseum.
Another Antare crouched nearby, all four hands pressed against the floor.
Another hovered above the arena, metallic wings unfolding from its back like enormous angelic blades. Three eyes tracked Arc's every movement while cyan energy bled from its body, decaying into red and black as it dispersed.
Its forearms extended.
Blades formed from them.
Each construct was nearly as tall as Arc himself.
Then a third figure rose beyond them.
A barbaric giant clad in reinforced armor, wielding a hybrid weapon that shifted between a glaive and an axe.
It was enormous even among the others.
A titan forged for annihilation.
Arc felt his pulse quicken.
Static filled the air around the altar.
Something was activating.
Code fragments.
Divine locks.
A pressure seeped into his skull as thoughts that were not his own whispered through the altar's energy.
There were more.
Eleven more.
Fifteen in total.
Three greater entities.
Twelve lesser ones.
He had faced only one.
And that one had already destroyed his arms.
A radiant tablet materialized in the air.
Its letters were carved in an ancient script Arc did not recognize, yet somehow the meaning burned directly into his mind as the words translated themselves.
"FORSAKEN BY CREATION, AT HIS WEAKEST THE LORD WAS VANQUISHED. THE WORLD FELL INTO CORRUPTION. HIS CREATION WAS PERVERTED, TWISTED, REBORN INTO MONSTERS. THE ANTARE WERE BORN OF THAT SIN. THEY SEEK YOUR END. ENDURE."
The voice faded.
The pressure returned.
The ground cracked beneath Arc's feet.
Then a thousand spikes erupted through his body.
Everything stopped.
Silence.
Arc gasped awake.
He was back where he had started.
Blood pooled across the altar before him.
His own corpse lay shredded across the stone.
One of the lights in the rings surrounding the arena had flared crimson.
A single slit of light had appeared within it.
A counter.
A death counter.
Arc rose slowly.
He trembled.
His body had already regenerated, but the sight of his own mangled remains sent a primal chill through him.
Death had not released him.
It had imprisoned him.
He was immortal here.
Functionally, at least.
Every death was a reset.
Every failure was recorded.
The realization clawed at him.
Not because of the pain.
Because it reminded him of what he once was.
A weapon.
A monster.
A false Neo-human driven by hunger and consumption.
He remembered the atrocities committed under the command of the Amaterasu.
Entire factions burned.
Families erased.
Cities silenced to fuel his ascension.
The cries of the dying had become background noise.
A symphony to his apathy.
He had been efficient.
Logical.
Unfeeling.
A machine wrapped in flesh.
Now, facing his own reflection through death, something inside him broke.
He clenched his fists.
Blood sizzled away from the Norvanite coating his hands.
His voice trembled with rage.
"Death to the Amaterasu, and their cause."
He sprinted forward.
His body thrummed with energy as beams of scorching light erupted from the far end of the arena.
He dodged the first.
Then the second.
Then the third.
Explosions tore into the arena floor, turning the sand beneath him into glass.
The Antare of Reformation fired again.
Its cannon-arm glowed like a dying sun.
Arc moved faster, calculating each trajectory in the fraction of a second before the beams reached him.
Then his gaze locked onto something at the far end of the arena.
A throne.
A massive figure sat upon it, motionless.
An incomplete Antare.
Its body was broken.
Parts were missing.
Its shell barely remained functional.
Yet Arc recognized the fragments scattered among the other Antare.
Each functioning Antare carried a piece of it.
The realization struck him.
It was clear now.
To escape, he had to reform the statue.
Arc gathered his breath.
Energy crackled across his body.
His back flared as compressed URA erupted from his joints, propelling him forward.
A technique inherited from his former masters.
The Amaterasu's own design.
URAULTRA.
His speed multiplied tenfold.
He shot across the arena in a blur, narrowly avoiding another blast as he closed the distance toward one of the Antare.
He struck.
Or tried to.
Before his attack could land, a massive hand seized him by the chest he was crushed feeling his body shatter and not an instant later.
a massive surge of electricity surged through his body.
His vision turned white.
The Antare representing the Herald of Energy—
Evaltol.
Its power erupted through him.
The world blinked.
Darkness.
Then light.
Arc opened his eyes.
He was back inside the circle.
The death counter had changed.
Two.
On one end of the arena was ash the other the original corpse.