Mark Angelo rose from his throne of skulls.
For the first time, the boredom in his eyes disappeared.
Not replaced with excitement.
But with hunger.
The entire dimension trembled as he spoke.
"I challenge the strongest ten."
His voice echoed through the tournament space, distorting the crystal arena, the void screens, and even the laws holding the Ability Tournament together.
His body began to bend.
Not like a human.
Not like a fighter.
Like something that no longer respected physical structure.
Arms twisted in impossible angles.
His spine folded and reformed.
Reality itself seemed to adjust around him instead of the other way around.
A massive fireball formed above him.
Not elemental magic.
A compressed collapse of stolen energy.
It expanded rapidly—
and then dropped.
---
The fireball descended like a second sun, aimed to crush everything below it.
Mark Angelo's voice echoed calmly inside the destruction.
"I will take everything."
"Powers. Souls. Stars."
"I am the God of Pride."
"This dimension exists only to feed me."
The arena responded violently.
Cracks spread through the void.
The tournament space itself was revealed to be a harvesting field—those who died here were never truly gone. Their essence was being stored, refined, converted into fuel for Angelo's magic.
He didn't just fight in the tournament.
He owned it.
He killed the weak without hesitation.
Not out of cruelty.
Out of belief.
Predators survive.
Everything else becomes resource.
---
Then—
the fireball split.
A blade cut through it from below.
A figure emerged.
Azurite-white armor, glowing like fractured starlight, pierced through the collapsing firestorm without slowing.
Jhonathan.
He didn't land.
He arrived.
His body was different now.
Something deeper had awakened.
Wendigo mode.
Shadowed energy surged around him, forming unstable silhouettes that followed his movement like broken reflections.
He slashed forward.
The clones surrounding Mark Angelo formed instantly—dark copies of himself, each one attacking from different angles.
Jhonathan moved through them anyway.
One slash.
Two slashes.
No hesitation.
No wasted motion.
Every clone shattered on contact.
He was not dodging anymore.
He was erasing.
---
Inside him, something expanded.
The mana didn't just circulate.
It evolved.
Each strike refined it.
Each movement sharpened it.
It felt like leveling up was happening mid-battle—not as numbers, but as existence itself rewriting his limits.
His breathing steadied.
His presence deepened.
For a brief moment…
he felt invincible.
---
Mark Angelo tilted his head.
Then stopped.
For the first time, his expression cracked.
Not fear.
Recognition.
Jhonathan's blade struck him.
And something inside Angelo broke.
Not physically.
Spiritually.
A memory surged through the impact.
Ria the mage.
A member of the original Heroes Party.
The one who had once carried hope instead of systems.
A soul imprint inside Angelo flickered violently.
The God of Pride staggered.
And for a moment—
he cried.
Not as a god.
Not as a ruler.
But as something human that had been buried too deep to remember.
---
The soul of Ria wrapped around Jhonathan.
A faint embrace of light and memory.
Not stopping him.
Acknowledging him.
Thanking him.
---
Mark Angelo fell to one knee.
His voice trembled.
"…So this is what we became…"
Jhonathan stood over him, blade still drawn.
But he didn't strike again immediately.
Because he understood something now.
Mark Angelo wasn't the end.
He was part of something larger.
A system of six remaining gods.
And the truth behind the Heroes Party.
They didn't die randomly.
They were taken apart.
---
Jhonathan's grip tightened.
Not with rage alone.
But with direction.
"Then I'll kill the rest," he said quietly.
"Until they're free."
The dimension itself trembled again.
Not from destruction.
But from what was about to begin next.