The eloquent young man's body instantly went rigid, hovered for a second, and then disintegrated into a heavy rain of golden sparks.
Sunny didn't even pause to watch him disappear. He flourished the odachi, cleaning the non-existent blood from the steel, walked back to his original spot, and indifferently rested the heavy sword back on his shoulder.
The Colosseum, which had been a deafening roar of overlapping conversations and cheering spectators just seconds ago, was now dead silent.
Dozens of Awakened duelists stared at the spot where the famous Leo Striker had just been standing. Then, they stared at Mongrel.
Sunny stared back, the terrifying, three-horned wooden mask giving absolutely nothing away. Internally, however, he was currently rubbing his temples and looking at a mental clock.
'I need to start the stir-fry,' Sunny thought, feeling a profound sense of exhaustion. 'If I don't get the chicken marinating in the next ten minutes, dinner is going to be incredibly bland.'
Before he could open his system menu to log out, two figures leaped out of the crowd and landed heavily on the bloody sand.
Sunny glanced at their names. The Fool and Daoist Saifer. They were Leo Striker's broadcast partners and the co-creators of the damned Roaring Lion Strike that had plagued Sunny all afternoon.
"You bastard!" The Fool barked, raising his heavy broadsword. "You caught him off guard! Striker was talking to his chat! It was a cheap shot!"
Sunny let out a tired sigh. He opened his mouth, fully intending to say: 'He had challenged me while talking to a camera with his guard down. He is an idiot.'
However, the Weaver's Mask instantly intercepted the absolute truth and forcefully inverted it into a terrifying lie.
"He was weak," Mongrel's deep voice echoed across the arena. "The strong do not ask for permission to reap the souls of the unworthy."
Sunny cringed internally. Okay, wow. That was aggressively dramatic.
Daoist Saifer's face twisted in rage. He drew a long, elegant katana. "Let's see how you handle opponents who are actually paying attention! We'll show you the true power of the Roaring Lion!"
They both dropped into the exact same opening stance Leo had used.
Sunny stared at them. Something inside his chest, a fragile, highly stressed string that had been holding his patience together all afternoon, finally snapped.
He was absolutely, definitively done with this style. If they loved it so much, he would show them exactly how flawed it was.
Sunny shifted his footing. To the absolute shock of the two professionals, Mongrel didn't raise his giant odachi in a standard guard. Instead, he lowered his center of gravity, angled his shoulders, and dropped into the perfect, flawless opening stance of the Roaring Lion Strike.
It wasn't just a passable imitation. It was a perfect, terrifying version of their own creation, refined by an Aspect legacy and a year of brutal survival on the Forgotten Shore.
Saifer hesitated, his eyes widening. "Wait-what are you—"
Sunny didn't wait. He launched himself forward.
He didn't just fight them; he humiliated them. Using their own signature footwork, Sunny effortlessly slid between their overlapping guards. When The Fool swung his broadsword, Sunny used the Roaring Lion's signature deflection technique to effortlessly redirect the heavy blade directly into Saifer's path.
Saifer stumbled, trying to avoid his partner's blade. Sunny punished the mistake instantly. Executing the ultimate finishing move of the Roaring Lion style, a move the two streamers had spent years perfecting, Sunny brought the massive odachi around in a blinding, upward crescent slash.
The dark blade cleaved smoothly through both of them in a single, devastating motion.
The Fool and Daoist Saifer froze, their avatars glitching before exploding into a massive shower of sparks.
Three seconds. He had killed the creators of the style using their own technique in three seconds.
The Colosseum erupted. It wasn't cheers; it was pure, unadulterated chaos. Dozens of duelists drew their weapons, abandoning the unspoken rule of one-on-one combat. They rushed the center of the arena, hungry for the glory of taking down the monster who had just humiliated three famous streamers back-to-back.
Sunny looked at the incoming mob. They were all holding swords.
No, Sunny thought, a cold, domestic irritation washing over him. No more swords.
Sunny lowered the odachi and released his mental hold on the weapon's rigid form. The massive, dark blade suddenly lost its shape, melting into a stream of fluid, slithering shadows. The crowd gasped as the weapon completely dissolved, re-forging itself in a matter of seconds.
When the shadows solidified, Sunny was no longer holding a sword. He was holding a massive, heavy length of black, jagged chain.
If he couldn't find a new style to mirror, he would just practice one he already knew by heart. A style he saw almost every single day, but had never tried to emulate because it was utterly deranged.
Cielle didn't fight like a duelist. She fought like a falling building.
She was a Vanguard. Her style had absolutely no poetry to it. It was pure, ruthless, and defied physics to apply trauma . She didn't parry if she could just redirect the hit. She didn't dodge if she could just step into the attacker's guard and physically break their center of gravity. While he did not have the Sepharic domain, the style would still work independently.
Sunny grabbed the middle of the heavy iron links and began rapidly wrapping the chain around his hands. He coiled the dark, jagged metal tightly around his knuckles, locking the ends around his forearms.
When he was done, his fists were encased in thick, terrifying layers of spiked, shadowy iron.
He clenched his hands. The metal groaned, sounding like crushing bone.
'She hits things until they stop being problems,' Sunny reasoned with himself. 'If it's highly efficient for her. Let's try it.'
The mob crashed into him.
Sunny dropped the elegant, elusive stance entirely. He squared his shoulders, lowered his head slightly, and planted his feet. He stopped projecting the aura of a warrior, and started projecting the aura of a concrete wall.
The first swordsman came in with a flashy, spinning horizontal slash.
Sunny didn't try to deflect it. He simply stepped forward, directly into the attack, raised his left arm, and let the sword strike his chain-wrapped bracer. The blade violently rebounded off the metal.
Before the man could recover, Sunny threw a right hook.
It wasn't an elegant punch. It was a heavy, devastating haymaker. Sunny's fist slammed directly into the side of the man's helmet with the sound of a detonating artillery shell. The man's neck snapped sideways, his avatar dissolving into sparks instantly.
A spear-user lunged at his back. Sunny didn't turn around; he simply dropped his weight, spun on his heel, delivering a brutal, unapologetic backhand that caved the man's chest plate inward.
"Whatstylet is that?!" one of the terrified duelists screamed, backing away from the carnage.
Sunny tried to say: 'It's my roommate's. She is very violent.'
The Flaw twisted the words in his throat.
"It is the art of descending heavens," Mongrel's voice boomed, dripping with dark malice. "I was tutored by a creature of pure ruin."
Sunny grabbed the next attacker by the front of his armor, hauled him close, and delivered a brutal headbutt. The three jagged horns of Weaver's mask sank deep into the man's visor.
For the next two minutes, Sunny engaged in absolute, therapeutic barbarism. He didn't use a single sword technique. He just waded through the elite amateurs, punching, slamming, and throwing them into the digital dirt with his pure strength.
'Wow' Sunny thought, sending a man flying with a chain-wrapped uppercut. 'This is incredibly relaxing.'
No wonder Cielle was always so quiet and compliant around the house. She got all of her psychological aggression out by brutally dismantling things with her bare hands. It was a fantastic stress reliever. The lingering irritation from the fridge incident was completely gone.
He checked the counter
[Victories: 42]
[Defeats: 0]
Forty-two wins. His physical frustration was entirely spent. He was done.
He uncoiled the chains from his hands, letting the Soul Serpent melt away entirely, returning to his soul sea. He stood in the center of the ring, dust settling around his boots, completely surrounded by empty space. Nobody else dared to approach him.
'Yeah. Stir-fry,' Sunny decided, ' And I'll buy her those extra-soft pillows she was staring at in the market yesterday.''
"I grow weary of this slaughter," Mongrel announced to the terrified amphitheater. "My hunger can only be sated by true despair."
Without another word, Sunny opened his system menu and hit the disconnect button.
***
A few hours later, the Dreamscape forums were entirely on fire.
Leo Striker's broadcast had been clipped, dissected, and analyzed by thousands of people. And the more the experts watched the footage, the more terrifying the truth became.
It was because the earlier recordings of the public lobby showed Mongrel actually struggling against much weaker opponents.
Now wait a minute… what the hell did that mean?!
How could a demonic swordsman struggle against rank novices, fighting them for an average of five to ten minutes, and then turn around and execute Leo Striker, Daoist Saifer, and The Fool—three experienced professionals—in under five seconds?
The answer was simply mind-boggling. While people who did not know much about combat techniques assumed that Mongrel had just been pretending to be weak to troll the lobby, the actual combat experts came to a stunning, horrifying conclusion.
Mongrel only used the styles of his opponents to fight against them.
He had walked into the Colosseum not knowing absolutely anything about the popular Roaring Lion Strike. He had intentionally prolonged his fights with the novices, using them as living textbooks. He had mastered the style in the span of a single afternoon to such a terrifying degree that the three fighters who had popularized the style in the first place couldn't even resist him for a few seconds.
And then... there was the end of the video.
The part that had the analysts truly terrified.
After mastering the Roaring Lion Strike and killing its creators, Mongrel had clearly grown entirely bored of their swordsmanship. He had turned his odachi into chains, wrapped them around his fists, and switched to a completely unknown, ferociously brutal, bare-handed brawling style.
The forums dubbed it the Falling Heaven style, based on his chilling final words.
"I was tutored by a creature of pure ruin."
The internet exploded with theories. Who was Mongrel? What was the creature of ruin? And more importantly, what sane human being punches through Ascended armor just because they got bored of using a sword?
Meanwhile, miles away in a quiet, warmly lit kitchen, the newly minted legend of the Dreamscape was currently wearing an apron, carefully making sure he didn't overcook the bell peppers.