The floor beneath him gave way. He 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, glowing as if binding him in place. They pulsed with scanning light, stripping him bare of every enhancement and artifice. He felt naked, exposed, powerless. His false ascension state—[AMBER]—was gone. Only his natural body remained, his basic skills and biological functions intact but strained.
All around, the light of enormous torches—monoliths as tall as skyscrapers—bathed the arena in a heavy crimson glow. The atmosphere thickened until sound itself seemed to bend. His perception slowed. A cold pressure coiled in his chest. His breath shortened. His spine trembled. For the first time in what felt like eons, Arc felt something he thought long dead within him.
It was fear. Pure, soul-chilling dread.
From the far end of the arena, a being emerged—towering, monstrous, clad in black and red armor that bled energy like molten veins. It stood colossal, dwarfing him in its immense stature. Four blazing eyes burned through the openings of its helm, and from the shadows beneath its faceplate came the suggestion of a hollow, mechanical grin.
The first strike came without warning. A massive fist slammed against his crossed arms. The impact was deafening, a quake that sent him skidding across the arena floor. He dug his feet into the ground, spikes forming from his soles as he tried to halt his momentum. The friction screamed. His bones groaned. When he looked down, his arms were shattered—twisted chunks of flesh, purple and pulsing with pain. His hands were gone, reduced to stumps.
He glanced back at the bloody trail behind him, his breath heavy. Then the silver Norvanite under his skin began to stir. It shimmered, crawling to the surface and hardening as his arms reshaped in seconds.
The creature stood unmoving, towering at fifteen meters with four arms ending in colossal gauntleted fists twice his size. Red and black energy oozed from its armor, creating a miasma that distorted the space around it. Arc scanned the surroundings, his sensory field widening until it burned through his mind with data. The information came like a flood—raw, invasive, unbearable.
These things were not his creations. They resembled his vestiges, yet they were older, stronger, something beyond.
[ANTARE]
The name burned in his mind.
He knew the rule of survival: where there was one, there were more.
As his gaze swept the colosseum, he saw movement—another Antare crouched with all four hands pressed to the floor. Another hovered above the ground, metallic wings unfolding like angelic blades. Three eyes tracked his every movement, the air around it bleeding with cyan energy that decayed into red and black. Its forearms extended, forming blade constructs as tall as Arc himself.
A third figure rose beyond them—a barbaric giant clad in reinforced armor, wielding a hybrid weapon that shifted between glaive and axe. It was enormous, even among the others, a titan forged for annihilation.
Arc felt his pulse quicken. His senses screamed as static filled the air around the altar. He could feel something activating—code fragments, divine locks. A pressure seeped into his skull, thoughts not his own whispering from within the altar's energy.
There were more. Eleven more. Fifteen in total. Three greater entities. Twelve lesser ones.
He had only faced one—and that alone had destroyed his arms.
A radiant tablet materialized in the air, its letters carved in an ancient, unknown script that burned through 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, and pressure returned. The ground cracked beneath him. A thousand spikes tore through his body in an instant.
Then silence.
He gasped awake—back where he had started. Blood pooled before him. His own corpse lay shredded on the altar floor. One of the rings surrounding the arena flared crimson. A single slit of light. A counter.
A death counter.
He rose slowly, trembling. His body had regenerated, but the sight of his 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 a reset. Every failure recorded.
The realization clawed at him. Not because of pain, but 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 Amaterasu's command. 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 was efficient, logical, unfeeling—a machine wrapped in flesh.
Now, facing his own reflection in death, something inside him broke.
He clenched his fists, blood sizzling off the Norvanite as his voice trembled with rage.
"Death to the Amaterasu."
He sprinted forward, body thrumming with energy as beams of scorching light erupted from the distance. He dodged them narrowly, weaving through explosions that turned the sand to glass. The Antare of Reformation fired again, cannon-arm glowing like a dying sun. Arc moved faster, calculating trajectories mid-motion.
Then his gaze locked on a structure at the far end of the arena.
A throne.
A massive figure sat upon it, motionless—an incomplete Antare. Its body was broken, parts missing, its shell barely functional. Yet he recognized the fragments scattered among the others. Each functioning Antare carried a piece of it.
It was clear now.
To escape, he had to reform the statue.
He gathered his breath, energy crackling across his body. His back flared as compressed Ura erupted from his joints, a propulsion technique from his former masters—the Amaterasu's own design.
URAULTRA.
His speed multiplied tenfold. He shot across the arena in a blur, dodging another blast and closing in on one of the Antare.
But before his strike could land, a massive hand seized him by the chest. Electricity surged through his body. His vision turned white as the Antare representing the Herald of Energy—Evaltol—unleashed its fury.
The world blinked.
Darkness.
Then light.
He awoke again in the circle, the death counter now showing two.