The primates leaped as soon as they were released,
They moved like King Kong—massive bodies launching through the air, arms outstretched, jaws open wide. Their roars shook the Colosseum walls as they descended upon the scattering prisoners. The humans ran in every direction like ants fleeing a boot, their bound hands useless behind their backs, their legs pumping against the dirt.
But Yuuta did not run.
He stood exactly where he had been standing. Alone. Motionless. A small statue in the center of the storm.
The beasts ignored him. He was not running. He was not interesting. They wanted the ones who fled.
The largest primate—a mountain of black fur and yellow fangs—targeted the man with brown hair and lean muscle. The one who had operated the scanner. The one who had watched Sophia's vitals and said nothing when she suffered. The primate leaped, its shadow swallowing him whole, and landed directly on his shoulders.
The sound of cracking bone echoed through the Colosseum.
It was not a snap. It was a crunch—the wet, grinding sound of a skeleton surrendering to two tons of living muscle. The man collapsed instantly, his legs folding beneath him at angles that should not exist. His face hit the dirt. His mouth opened, but no scream came out. Only blood.
He stretched his hand toward the leader of their team—the man who had punched Yuuta, the one with the rings, the one who carried the code. His fingers clawed at the air.
"Help," he whispered. "Help me."
The leader stared in horror. He did not move. He could not move.
The primate raised its fist—a hammer of bone and fur the size of a man's torso—and brought it down. Once. Twice. Again and again. The brown-haired man's body twisted with each blow, limbs snapping, ribs caving, his face becoming something that was no longer a face. The cracking echoed through the Colosseum, making even the elves shift uncomfortably in their seats.
He was crippled. His body twisted in ways that were not natural. He surrendered—not aloud, but in his eyes. The will to live drained out of him like water from a cracked vessel. He stopped reaching. Stopped begging. He just lay there, broken, while the primate began breaking his limbs and devouring him.
The other prisoners screamed.
The scene was too much. The woman who had not slapped Yuuta—the quiet one, the one who had always followed orders without question—turned and ran toward the nearest exit. Her bound hands swung behind her. Her feet slid in the dirt. She almost made it.
A primate caught her by the ankle.
It lifted her into the air like a doll. Its other hand grabbed her waist. And with a single, brutal pull, it tore her in two.
Her intestines spilled onto the arena floor, steam rising from them in the cold air. The primate lowered its head and began to eat—slowly, deliberately, as if savoring each bite.
The other woman—the one who had slapped Yuuta—watched from the corner where she had pressed herself against the wall. Her face was gray. Her lips moved in silent prayer.
The primates devoured everyone.
One by one, the Graduate Novens fell. The man who had operated the needles. The woman who had recorded the experiments. The two who had always stayed silent, always watched, never interfered. All of them torn apart. All of them eaten.
The elders in the stands shifted uncomfortably. Some looked away. Even elves, who had lived for centuries and seen countless executions, found their stomachs turning at the brutality below.
But the queen did not look away.
She was laughing.
Aerisyl Sylvarion, mother of Sophia, queen of the Sylvan Kingdom, sat upon her throne of living wood and laughed. Her Golden Brown hair trembled with the motion. Her green eyes sparkled with something that was not joy but something worse—consumption. Rage that had twisted into pleasure. She watched the blood spill and the intestines steam and the primates feast, and she laughed.
She was enjoying this.
Three prisoners remained.
The leader—the man who had punched Yuuta, who had scanned Sophia and Yuuta, who carried the code.
The woman who had slapped Yuuta.
And Yuuta himself, still standing in the center of the arena, untouched, unseen, a ghost in the chaos.
The woman was cornered. A massive primate loomed over her, its red eyes fixed on her trembling form, its chest still wet with the blood of her colleagues. It raised its fist.
In that moment, something broke in her. Not her body—her mind. She pointed a shaking finger at the primate and screamed.
"How is this even a fair fight? If our mana was not blocked, we would have killed this thing!"
The Colosseum went silent.
Every elf turned to look at her. Her voice had echoed through the arena, bouncing off the living walls, reaching every ear. She had just said something that no prisoner had ever dared to say.
She pointed at the queen.
"Release my mana!"
The elves erupted.
"Kill her!"
"Rip out her tongue!"
"She deserves death!"
They screamed and shouted, their earlier unease forgotten, replaced by fresh outrage. How dare this human speak to their queen that way? How dare she challenge the majesty of Sylvaris?
But the woman stood her ground. Her finger remained pointed at the queen. Her body trembled, but she did not lower her arm.
The queen found herself challenged.
Her laughter stopped. Her green eyes narrowed. For a long moment, she simply stared at the woman—this small, doomed creature who had dared to speak against her.
Then she smiled.
"Very well," the queen said. "Release her mana."
The Colosseum fell silent.
The executioner hesitated. He looked at the queen, then at the woman, then back at the queen. But he obeyed. He raised his hand and made a gesture. The invisible bindings around the woman's mana core dissolved.
The woman felt it immediately. Power flooded back into her veins—the power she had spent decades building, the power that made Graduate Novens feared even among low elves. Her hands stopped trembling. Her back straightened. A smile spread across her face.
"Now," she said, "let me show you how powerful Graduate humans are."
She began absorbing mana from the air.
The Colosseum watched in breathless silence. They had heard stories of human mages. They had been told that humans could be dangerous. Perhaps this woman would show them something extraordinary.
Then,
She vomited.
She Vomit Violently. Her body convulsed forward, and a stream of black bile poured from her mouth onto the dirt. She gagged and heaved, her knees buckling, her hands clutching her stomach.
The elves began to smile.
The woman's eyes widened in horror. "What—what is happening to me?" she gasped between heaves. She fell to her knees, still vomiting, her body shaking uncontrollably. The mana she had tried to absorb was not nourishing her. It was destroying her.
The queen leaned forward on her throne.
"How ignorant this fool is," the queen said, her voice carrying across the silent Colosseum. "Consuming high mana esper in the land of elves. Believing she can fight on equal ground."
The woman watched in horror "Esper" She understood them.
The entire elf kingdom was saturated with high mana—mana so dense and pure that human bodies could not process it. Where an elf would grow stronger, a human would shatter. Her mana core, already weakened by the bindings, was cracking. Splintering. Destroying itself from the inside.
She had been foolish. Stupid. Desperate.
And now there was no way to save herself.
She knelt in the dirt, vomiting black bile, her mana core crumbling to dust within her chest. The primates waited. The elves watched. The queen smiled.
The elves laughed.
Their mockery rained down from the tiers like a storm of broken glass—sharp and cruel and endless. They pointed at the woman kneeling in her own vomit, her body heaving, her face pale as death. She had tried to absorb the mana of Sylvaris. She had tried to stand as an equal. And now she was crumbling.
"Look!" laugh an elf in the upper tiers, his voice carrying across the arena. "The human was trying to use esper in elf land!"
"What a laughable stock of worm!"
"She is nothing but foolish pile of shit!"
The insults struck her like physical blows. Each word was a dagger. Each laugh was salt in a wound that would never close. She knelt in the dirt, her mana core splintering into dust, and she remembered.
She remembered the laboratory. The cold stone floors. The children strapped to tables with their wide, terrified eyes. She remembered the way she had mocked them when they cried—"What a weak little thing you are"—the way she had laughed when they begged for mercy—"Stop crying, or I'll give you something to cry about"—the way she had smiled when they were thrown into the Death Well, their small bodies disappearing into the darkness.
No one had laughed at her then.
Now the laughter was aimed at her throat.
Now she was the one kneeling in filth.
Now she was the one dying while others watched and smiled.
Fate, she thought dimly, her vision blurring, was taking revenge.
But she could not accept death. Not yet. Not when there was still something she could try. Her body was breaking, her core was shattering, but her mind—her desperate, clawing mind—refused to surrender. She lifted her head. Her eyes darted across the arena, searching for anything, anything at all that might save her.
They landed on Yuuta.
The boy stood in the center of the Colosseum, untouched by the chaos that had swallowed everyone else. The primates had ignored him. The blood had not reached him. He stood like a candle flame in a hurricane—small and fragile and somehow still burning. His eyes were open but unseeing. His chest rose and fell with breaths that seemed to cost him everything.
Zero Karma, she thought. The Dragon Killer. If I can use him—if I can bait the queen—if I can make him awaken—
Her heart stopped.
She saw something.
Not in Yuuta.
Behind him.
Her eyes widened until the corners cracked. Her breath caught in her throat and died there. Her heart—which had been racing, pounding, hammering against her ribs like a caged animal—spiked so violently that she felt it in her teeth, her skull, the tips of her fingers.
She saw something that should not exist. Something that made her forget her dying mana core, forget the elves laughing at her, forget the blood soaking into her tunic. Something that clawed at the edges of her sanity and pulled.
She saw it.
Behind the boy.
Around the boy.
In the boy.
Her mouth opened. Her throat convulsed. And the scream that tore out of her was not the scream of a woman facing death. It was the scream of a mind breaking—shattering—crumbling into pieces too small to ever be gathered again.
"AAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! AHHHHH! AHHHHHH!"
The scream echoed through the Colosseum, bouncing off the living walls, reaching every ear. The primates paused mid-step. The elves fell silent, their mocking dying on their lips. The queen leaned forward on her throne, her green eyes narrowing.
The primate nearest to the woman grew annoyed.
Its massive hand—each finger as thick as her arm—shot out and slapped her across the face. The impact was catastrophic. Her neck snapped with a sound like a dry branch breaking underfoot. Her head swung to the side at an angle that should have killed her instantly. Her body spun and crashed into the dirt.
She did not die.
Her head lay twisted, her cheek pressed against the blood-soaked earth, her eyes still open. From that impossible angle—her spine broken, her neck bent, her body already beginning to shut down—she saw Yuuta again.
She saw it again.
Whatever it was.
Behind him. Around him. In him.
Her remaining eye widened until the white showed all around the iris. Her lips moved, forming words that no one heard, that no one would ever hear. The primate lowered its head, its jaws opening wide, and began to devour her.
She died with that image burned into her ruined eyes.
The last man remained.
The leader. The one who had punched Yuuta. The one who had scanned Sophia and carried the code. He had watched his entire team die—one by one, torn apart, eaten, broken. He had watched the woman vomit her own shattered mana core. He had watched her neck snap and her body be consumed while she was still breathing.
He was afraid of death.
Every fiber of his being screamed against it. His hands trembled. His knees buckled. His bladder loosened, sending warm urine down his legs. He was afraid—more afraid than he had ever been in his life.
But he was not stupid.
His eyes found Yuuta.
The boy still stood in the center of the arena, untouched, unseen by the primates. The beasts had killed everyone who ran. They had killed everyone who fought. But they had not touched him. They had not even looked at him. It was as if he was invisible to them. Or untouchable.
Zero Karma, the man thought. The Dragon Killer. The weapon that was supposed to kill dragons.
The laboratory had spent years trying to awaken him. Years of needles and burns and breaking. Years of blood and screams and death. They had failed. They had thrown him into the Death Well and called him a failure.
But what if he was not a failure?
What if he was only waiting?
The man's mind raced. If he could make the boy awaken—if he could turn him into the weapon the laboratory had always wanted—then the elves would suffer. The queen would suffer. The entire Sylvan Kingdom would burn.
He would have his revenge.
He looked down at the remains of his comrade—the brown-haired man, the one the primate had crushed. A rib bone jutted from the wreckage, sharp and splintered, white as snow against the red of blood. The man grabbed it. The bone was warm. Wet. It fit in his hand like a dagger.
He straightened his back. He lifted his chin. And he looked up at the queen.
"Queen of the Elves," he called.
His voice echoed through the silent Colosseum—strong and clear, without a trace of the fear that was eating him alive from the inside. He laughed. A raw, broken sound that bounced off the living walls and made the elves shift uncomfortably in their seats.
"Queen of the Elves!" he called again, louder this time.
The queen's eyes followed him.
He had her attention.
He knew how to hurt her. He had spent decades studying weakness—in children, in prisoners, in the scientists who worked beside him. He knew how to find the crack in someone's armor and slide the knife in. He knew how to wound. How to bait. How to make someone rage so hard that they forgot to think.
He knew how to die without giving her the satisfaction.
"You love to watch us die painfully, right?" he said. "You love to see us suffer. You love to hear us beg."
The queen did not answer. But her eyes narrowed to slits. Her fingers curled around the arms of her throne.
The man raised the rib to his own throat.
"Then fuck off," he said. "I am dying without pain."
He slit his throat.
The rib bone—sharp and splintered and still wet with his comrade's blood—cut through flesh and artery in one brutal, efficient motion. Blood sprayed across the dirt in a crimson arc. The man raised his free hand and showed the queen his middle finger—a gesture she did not recognize but understood perfectly. It was the same gesture humans had used for thousands of years to say: I am not afraid of you. You have not beaten me. Go to hell.
He fell.
His body hit the ground with a wet thud. His blood poured out of him in pulses—thick and dark and steaming in the cold air. His eyes remained open, fixed on the queen, defiant even as the light faded from them.
The Colosseum was silent.
The queen's eyes widened.
She had just watched a human die by his own hand. Not by beast. Not by executioner. Not by her. By himself. He had robbed her of his death. He had taken her satisfaction—her hunger, her thirst for his suffering—and crushed it in front of her entire kingdom. In front of her elders. In front of her people.
Her aura exploded.
The pressure was immense—a wave of killing intent so dense that the air itself seemed to thicken. Elves gasped and clutched their chests. Some fell from their benches, their bodies seizing as the queen's rage pressed down on them like a physical weight. The primates whimpered and backed away, their red eyes wide with animal terror. Even the executioner took a step back, his bone mask hiding a face that had gone pale.
"HEALER!" the queen screamed.
Her voice was not the serene, musical voice of elven royalty. It was a shriek—raw and撕裂 and utterly inhuman.
"QUICKLY! HEAL THIS WORM! NOW!"
A healer scrambled down the tiers, her white robes trailing behind her, her face bloodless with fear. She reached the man's body. She dropped to her knees. She placed her hands on his chest—still warm, still slick with blood—and her magic flared. Green light pulsed from her palms, sinking into his flesh, searching for something to save.
She found nothing.
His heart had stopped. His blood had drained. His soul had already departed, slipping away through the wound in his throat like smoke through a broken window.
The healer looked up at the queen with terror in her eyes.
"My queen," she said, her voice trembling so hard that the words barely formed. "We are sorry. We cannot save him. His soul has already—"
"FUCK!"
The word exploded from the queen's mouth like a blade.
"HOW USELESS ARE YOU!"
The Colosseum went silent.
No elf had ever heard their queen use such language. No elf had ever seen her lose control like this. She was Aerisyl Sylvarion—the Heart of the Forest, the Voice of the World Tree, the ruler of the most ancient kingdom in Nova. She had been queen for ten thousand years. She had faced down dragons and demons and the collapse of empires. She had never once raised her voice in public.
Now she was screaming like a fishwife.
The elves stared at her—at this ancient, powerful being who had ruled since before their grandparents' grandparents were born—and saw something they had never seen before.
Stress.
Rage.
Helplessness.
The queen was not enjoying this anymore. The satisfaction that had carved itself into her features was gone, replaced by something raw and ugly and barely contained. She had wanted to watch the humans suffer. She had wanted to feed on their pain. Instead, one had died by her own hand and another had cheated her entirely.
Her fists clenched. Her teeth ground together. Her chest heaved with breaths that did nothing to calm her.
The kingdom watched in silence.
Then the elves began to notice something.
The five primates—the war-gorillas that had torn apart the other prisoners—were moving strangely. They were not eating. They were not roaring. They were circling.
Their massive bodies formed a ring in the center of the arena, their black fur blending together into a wall of muscle and shadow. Their red eyes were fixed on something in the middle—something hidden, something barely visible between their legs.
"Look," whispered an elf in the lower tiers. "The beasts. They are circling someone."
The whisper spread like wind through wheat. Tiers above tiers, elves leaned forward, craning their necks, trying to see what the primates were hiding.
"Someone is in there."
"A prisoner? One of the humans?"
"No—all the humans are dead. Except—"
"Except the boy."
The queen's eyes snapped to the ring of primates.
She had forgotten about the boy.
She had been so consumed by her rage, so focused on the humans who had dared to challenge her, that she had forgotten the small, broken creature she had been watching earlier. The one who stood like a dead man waiting to fall. The one with the Blood Red eyes and the Black hair and the mark of Zero Karma on his chest.
The executioner raised his hand. "Move," he commanded.
The primates parted.
Yuuta stood in the center of the ring.
He was alive.
Unharmed.
The primates had not touched him. There was no blood on his tunic. No scratches on his arms. No bruises on his face beyond the ones Rovareth had given him. His small body was intact—unbroken—while all around him lay the torn and devoured remains of the adults who had tortured him.
The primates were not attacking him.
They were playing with him.
One of them poked his shoulder with a massive finger. Yuuta swayed but did not fall. Another sniffed his hair, its wet nose brushing against his ear. Yuuta did not flinch. A third circled behind him and growled—a deep, rumbling sound that should have made any child scream. Yuuta did not move.
They were curious about him. Fascinated. They had killed everyone else without hesitation, but this small, silent creature—this boy who did not run, did not cry, did not even seem to see—held their attention in a way that nothing else had.
The queen's rage, already boiling, reached a new peak.
The boy was still alive.
The boy was unharmed.
While her satisfaction had been stolen, while her vengeance had been cheated, this child—this human child, this weapon—stood in the center of her arena as if the chaos had nothing to do with him.
"Release the Dreadvex Ape," she said.
The Colosseum went silent.
Even the wind seemed to stop. The glowing fruit above the arena dimmed. The living walls seemed to hold their breath. And the elves—thousands of them, from the highest nobles to the lowest laborers—felt a cold hand close around their hearts.
The Dreadvex Ape.
Even the elders—ancient beings who had lived for thousands of years, who had seen dragons fall and kingdoms burn in Slient War, who had forgotten more about death than most would ever know—felt terror crawl up their spines. Their wrinkled faces went pale. Their milky eyes widened. Some of them began to tremble.
The Dreadvex Ape was not a beast of the arena. It was not a creature to be displayed or paraded or used for entertainment. It was a nightmare given flesh—a thing from the deepest roots of the World Tree, where the light never reached and the soil drank blood instead of water.
The executioner hesitated. His hand hovered over the lock of the largest gate—the one made of iron instead of wood, the one covered in runes that glowed faintly red, as if the metal itself was bleeding.
"My queen," he said, his voice low and careful. "The Dreadvex Ape has not been fed in—"
"RELEASE IT," she screamed.
The executioner bowed. He had no choice. No one had a choice when the queen screamed like that.
He placed his hand on the lock.
The chains began to rattle.
Not the heavy, iron rattle of the war-gorillas. This was different. This was the sound of something waking up—something that had been sleeping for a long time, something that was hungry, something that did not care about queens or kingdoms or the difference between elf and human.
The runes on the gate glowed brighter. Redder. The iron began to steam.
And in the darkness beyond the gate, two eyes opened.
They were not red like the primates' eyes.
They were Blood Red.
And they were looking at Yuuta.
To be continued...