"Everyone, split up and surround it! Now's not the time to give up! If we beat it, we can get out of here!''
Haley shouted, his voice tense as he tried to rally everyone.
"I know! It uses mana, so it's insanely tough. What's the plan?" Muscular Goblin asked, the one who had scolded Hector during the first time of the challenge, now sounding worried.
One wrong move could mean death. They had to work together if they wanted to take down the wolf beast and survive.
"Yeah, what's the plan?" Another person nearby asked, following their eyes filled with hope as they looked at Haley.
Haley's expression gave away his uncertainty. He hesitated before intending to reply. However, the time didn't wait.
W-Wait! It's charging up the thundering ball!" Another man shouted, voice shaking with fear.
"Everyone, run!"
Electricity crackled loudly, echoing through the arena.
They all turned their horrified eyes towards the huge glowing ball.
Despair hit them hard; none of them believed they could survive the wolf beast's attack.
The lightning ball was huge, five metres wide, glowing with a blinding light.
"Fuck! This is the power of a novice-level beast?!" Haley growled through gritted teeth.
But none of them stood frozen like pigs waiting for slaughter.
Then—something unexpected happened.
One second passed.
Two seconds...
...Eight seconds.
"Huh? What's going on?"
"That lightning ball... It's shrinking," said a young man, hiding beneath a pile of corpses near the wall.
"You're right!..."
"What the hell?!"
"God must be helping us! The wolf beast is dying!" another goblin shouted.
"It's like its lighting core just shut down."
Bam!
The wolf beast collapsed entirely, its terrifying presence reduced to something pitiful—like a lion on its last breath.
But for them, this was a miracle.
Who cared why it happened? No one.
"Haizz..." Haley let out a long sigh of relief, the pressure in his chest finally easing.
Then, another sound echoed across the arena, snapping everyone's attention upward.
"Look at that!" someone shouted, pointing a trembling finger towards the top of the wall where the king sat on his throne.
Everyone turned to look, shock and disbelief written all over their faces.
The king had been stabbed. A sword pierced through the left side of his chest.
He looked awful, his skin deathly pale, and the proud look he had always worn was gone. His golden cane slipped from his hand and clattered to the floor.
The king weakly tilted his head, trying to see who was behind him.
"I-It's you!" he gasped, voice full of shock and pain.
"How...?" he managed to say, each breath a struggle.
"Ah..."
The man behind him slowly pulled his bloody sword out from the king's back, then delivered a brutal kick to the king's head.
"Why?" the man sneered, eyes narrowing with disdain. "Because you're nothing but a weakling hiding behind a mana weapon. Without it, you're just a pathetic pig!"
His gaze shifted to the king's golden cane.
"Every time you used mana, I saw the sweat on your face. It was obvious you were relying on something else," he said with a cold smirk.
"I guess you're just a normal human, like the rest of us."
"And besides, your mana... it feels completely different from anyone else I've ever seen. That only proves you're just someone relying on a treasure to use mana!"
Then he stared at the king for a few seconds before kicking him hard in the stomach, sending him tumbling from the throne. The king rolled across the wall like a ragged, pitiful doll.
Bam!
Now he lay crumpled in a corner of the arena in an awkward position. Looking at the king's sorry state, the young man gave a quiet smile.
"Isn't this exactly the kind of ending you would have enjoyed watching?"
Below the arena, everyone stared in shock at what had just happened. The man they all believed to be the most powerful now lay like a broken corpse, thrown aside like trash.
A wave of gratitude washed over many of them—for the young man, whoever he was.
But not everyone felt the same way.
"Fuck! Why is it always him?!" Haley growled through gritted teeth as he kept kicking the dead body by him, cursing in frustration.
Meanwhile, in another corner of the arena, a young man slowly crawled out from a pile of corpses and stood up, careful and steady.
"I knew it. You could do it," Hector said, the corners of his lips lifting slightly as his eyes locked on Kevin—the one who had just kicked the king down from the throne.
"I think… everything will end soon." Hector sighed quietly, scratching his chin as a piece of old memories surfaced in his mind.
***
"The king's flaw is that he's just a normal human," Hector had said.
Instead of the surprise Hector expected, Kevin nodded.
"Hmm. I knew that. Got anything else?" he asked, eyes dull and disinterested as if he wouldn't waste another word unless Hector told him something actually useful.
Fortunately, Hector still had a few things to add.
"His golden cane. It's a mana weapon. It releases mana after absorbing enough from the air around it... but it takes time, depending on how much mana it's lost."
Kevin nodded as he listened.
"You're right. That explains why the mana around him became unstable when the lion beast lost control."
Then he glanced back at the king before turning to Hector.
"The deal is sealed. What do you want?"
Hector nodded silently. There was no need to say more. Both of them knew—the deal wasn't just about rewards.
It was about trust.
A test was passed.
Hector replied, "I want to take one of your rewards."
But Kevin immediately refused.
"No. Pick one of the others."
Hector scratched his head, realising his words weren't clear.
"Ah, I mean… I want the king's golden cane. You use a sword, don't you?"
After a couple of seconds of thought, Kevin nodded quietly.
"Alright. I will."
After all, Hector was right. The golden cane was probably valuable to someone, but to Kevin, it didn't matter much.
The most valuable things in this world were magical items, imbued with strange abilities that defied logic.
Take Kevin's right eye, for example.
It was made from a blend of metal and gold—a magical item that gave its user third-person vision, like a camera floating behind your back (POV3).
But to use it, people had to sacrifice their eyesight. It was cruel and painful.
If Hector were Kevin, he'd never do that.
Not only would he have to destroy his own eyes in agony, but he'd also have to live with a strange new perspective, a cartoon-like world from the 1900s, just like in Hector's Old World.
And it wasn't just that.
Those eyes drained a tonne of mana. If Kevin's mana ran low, he might only be able to see things within a 5-metre radius.
Wait.
How did Kevin even have mana?
He hadn't passed the first challenge yet…
And that attack, His strike to the king's back... How the hell did he move that fast? From the arena floor to the throne in just a few seconds?
Maybe it was another item.
Then again, he was a member of the Wolfe Clan.
Maybe.