The gladiatorial bouts continued as usual—originally one match a day, but now Lady Styx was running a fire sale: two a day, sometimes with a bonus round thrown in.
The cleanup robots worked fast. Carts of corpses and broken weapons were hauled away, the gates opened, and the next batch of gladiators filed in.
Hmm?! Thea had been watching with casual disinterest, but the moment she spotted one particular figure among them, her expression flickered.
What the hell was he doing here?
Lean build. Scraggly beard. Two daggers in hand. The kind of man you'd lose in a crowd without a second thought.
Thea recognized him—or more precisely, recognized his divine energy signature. A member of Darkseid's Elite, the God of Shadows, the assassination master who claimed proficiency in over a hundred million fighting styles: Kanto.
Her first thought was conspiracy. She scanned the arena in every direction—no sign of the other New Gods, let alone Darkseid himself.
Stranger still, she noticed Kanto had sealed his own divine power. He was fighting like an ordinary man.
She watched him slip a dagger neatly between a brute's ribs, then twist airborne to dodge a battleaxe swinging at his back. What was he actually here for?
Gathering intelligence? What kind of spy operates in a public arena?
Here to assassinate someone? With his own divine power sealed? That level of stupidity wouldn't last five minutes.
Process of elimination left one answer.
This idiot had come here for fun—to sharpen his martial skills.
Thea thought of her own original reason for being here and figured Kanto had the same idea. Or maybe he simply enjoyed the thrill of killing.
She wasn't the only one watching. Plenty of eyes had caught Kanto's technique. The average spectator could only appreciate the spectacle, but experts like Fiona and Lady Styx saw deeper. Kanto's combat art was gorgeous in its lethality—simple thrusts, kicks, hooks flowing together like a dance, every motion laced with killing intent. One man, single-handedly conjuring a storm of slaughter.
Mastery of over a hundred million fighting styles, distilled and fused into a single personal art. Kanto's reputation as Darkseid's premier assassin was well-earned.
Still, from Thea's perspective, it was nothing special. He'd gone down the wrong path—too obsessed with technique, blind to what actually mattered.
You could do every trick in the book on a bicycle. So what? Could it outrun a car?
Technique mattered, sure—up to a point. Once you had solid proficiency, that was enough. Spending eternity cataloguing a hundred million fighting styles? All Thea could do was tip her hat to the man's dedication.
She already thought Batman's 127 martial arts were excessive, though Batman at least had the excuse of having no other avenue for growth. By Thea's reckoning, a dozen or so styles were more than sufficient for any combat scenario. A hundred million? Truly unnecessary.
The higher one climbed, the less technique mattered. Had Darkseid ever trained in a specific martial art? What weapon style did Highfather specialize in? Go higher still—the Monitors, the Endless—at that level, martial arts were irrelevant.
Her Ladyship was thoroughly unimpressed, but that didn't mean she'd pass up a free lesson. A New God performing live demonstrations? It would be a waste not to study every move.
Kanto's killing continued. Lethal, fast, without a wasted motion.
His rampage drew the remaining gladiators into desperate pack tactics, but Kanto was unfazed. His daggers danced, and every swing claimed a life.
Thea had him figured out. He wasn't here to train. He was using "honing my skills" as a convenient excuse to slaughter ordinary people for entertainment.
"He's making a mess in your arena." Thea turned to Lady Styx. "Aren't you going to teach him a lesson, my lady?"
The four-eyed alien didn't quite follow. She couldn't parse the deeper meaning behind Thea's words. Was this just a skilled gladiator? Was she being told to go kill him?
"He's at least your equal. Given that he's fully focused on killing, his combat effectiveness is probably above yours."
Having said that, Thea reached out and tapped the space between Lady Styx's brow-eyes—the location of her brain—transmitting a packet of information directly.
"This is a method for amplifying your psychic power. Once it surges, those two brow-eyes of yours will grow to normal size, and your overall strength should increase by at least thirty percent."
Lady Styx studied it carefully. Her first reaction was elation—the method was perfectly tailored to her physiology, highly feasible, and a major power boost by any measure.
But she couldn't understand why Thea was giving her this. She hadn't sworn allegiance. They weren't allies. They'd been enemies not long ago, forced together only by coercion.
A free training method? She looked at Thea's smiling face. Were there really people this generous in the universe?
She read through the information a second time and finally spotted the catch: insight born from life-or-death experience.
Lady Styx was at a loss for words. She looked at Kanto in the arena, then back at Thea and her entourage.
"Of course, you could always challenge one of us instead." Her Ladyship indicated she was perfectly flexible.
Lady Styx pursed her lips. She couldn't even beat Fiona. She'd never fought Kerrigan, but the gap between them was probably just as narrow. One against four—she'd be dead before the round was over.
After spending a few days with Thea's group, she'd more or less figured out their purpose: they were here to watch life-or-death combat. And now they were forcing her into the ring.
As a long-lived being who valued self-preservation, she had no appetite for mortal combat. Her hesitation was obvious.
In the end, the desire to grow stronger won out. Regardless of whether she'd ever escape these she-devils, getting stronger was never wrong.
Besides, she honestly couldn't see what made Kanto so formidable. A nimble alien with decent moves—nothing more.
She nodded, stood, and walked down the passage from the viewing platform.
Not entirely confident in her assessment, she brought along all six diamond golems she'd summoned over the past few days. Worried there wouldn't be time on the battlefield, she hastily summoned two more—eight total. By her estimate, that was more than enough.
By then, Kanto had already killed every gladiator in the ring. He stood with both daggers pressed to his chest, as if in prayer.
Seconds ticked by. He slowly opened his eyes. Why hadn't the cleanup crew come out? The fight was over.
The crowd began to murmur, unsure what this break in routine meant—until the gates opened and gave them their answer.
"Gods above! Lady Styx herself is fighting!"
"That's Lady Styx? Why?"
"What's happening?"
The audience erupted into heated discussion. Among them were longtime residents of this world and newcomers who'd come for the spectacle. Word spread fast, whisper by whisper, and in under a minute every spectator knew: Lady Styx—sovereign ruler of seven sectors, overlord of hundreds of worlds—was entering the arena personally.
It was as if the chairman of a megacorporation had walked onto the sales floor of one of her own department stores. Utterly unthinkable.