The throne room, once a sanctuary of "divine" light, had become a slaughterhouse. The smell of Valerius's cooling blood filled the air, thick and sweet. Sora stood in the center of it, his shoulders shaking.
The sound started again. A low, bubbling giggle that grew into a roar of pure, unadulterated madness.
"HAHA—HAHAHAHAHA!"
Sora's mouth was stretched so wide the corners of his lips began to crack, beads of crimson tracing the lines of his manic grin. His teeth looked like jagged tombstones in the dimming light. He wasn't just laughing; he was screaming his soul out through his throat, a sound so loud it rattled the stained-glass windows of the cathedral miles away.
"Seize him!" the King shrieked, his voice cracking as he scrambled behind his throne. "Kill the defect! Burn him! Erase him from existence!"
The Royal Guard swarmed. Thirty men in enchanted plate armor, their halberds glowing with runic power. They moved like a silver wave, a coordinated strike meant to crush a god.
Sora didn't even blink.
'Left foot forward. Pivot three degrees. The third guard's grip is too tight on his spear—his shoulder will pop if I pull it.'
He didn't have mana. He didn't have a "System" like the other hero's telling him where to strike. He had something worse: The Memory of Perfection. He had fought this exact battle in the seventy-billionth loop. He had lost, won, died, and killed here more times than these men had drawn breath.
The first guard lunged. Sora stepped into the strike, not away from it.
CRUNCH.
With a sickening wet thud, Sora's palm slammed into the guard's visor. The metal buckled like paper, driven into the man's skull. Sora didn't stop. He grabbed the dying man's halberd, snapped the wooden shaft over his knee, and used the jagged splintered wood to bridge the gap between two other guards' neck seals.
"Is this it?!" Sora roared, his laughter reaching a fever pitch that made the other "Heroes" cover their ears in agony. "A trillion years of waiting for this?! You're too slow! You're all just ghosts! Replays! Echoes of a script I've already burned!"
He moved like a glitch in reality. He wasn't running; he was appearing where the guards were most vulnerable. He was smiling so hard his facial muscles were twitching, his eyes bugging out as he watched the "Hero of Light" Ryu vomit in the corner.
"Look at me, Ryu!" Sora screamed, grabbing a guard by the jaw and literally ripping it clean off the bone with a sickening pop. "Don't look away! This is the 'hero' you wanted to save! This is the world you're supposed to protect!"
Sora was covered in it now. Blood sprayed his hair, turning it a matted, sticky scarlet. He looked like a demon birthed from a nightmare. Every time a blade swung at him, he danced through the gap with a fraction of an inch to spare, his laughter never once breaking. It was a rhythmic, terrifying soundtrack to the carnage.
'Fourteen left. The captain is reaching for a holy grenade. The King is wetting himself. The God of Death must be masturbating to this view.'
One guard managed to nick Sora's cheek. A tiny, thin line of red.
Sora stopped. The laughter died for a split second. He touched the cut, looked at the blood on his finger, and his smile grew even wider—if that was even possible.
"Oh... you touched me," Sora whispered, his voice a jagged razor.
Before the guard could even scream, Sora slammed his forehead into the man's face, pulverizing the bone. He didn't use his hands for the next three; he simply used the environment, slamming heads into marble pillars and tripping them into their own falling blades.
In less than a minute, the thirty elite guards were nothing but a pile of twitching silver and red.
Sora stood in the middle of the "divine" circle, his chest heaving, his face a mask of gore and that eternal, soul-breaking grin. He looked at the King, who was now sobbing openly.
"Your Majesty," Sora said, bowing with mocking elegance, blood dripping from his chin onto the floor. "I think we need to talk about my 'hero' training. I'm feeling very... motivated."