Valtos was in motion.

  Now standing at eight feet tall, his frame rippled with power as he tore across the battlefield at sonic speed. His silver eyes locked onto the Blood Chalice — a streak of crimson light darting through the chaos. Taking relics from others was easier than hunting them himself, and one such opportunity had just presented itself.

  A Reliard sprinted with the chalice in hand, a horde of challengers chasing him.

  Valtos bent his knees and slammed into the ground, launching himself forward. He blurred past the mob in a single gust, wind exploding outward and bowling them over. By the time they blinked, the chalice was already in his hand.

  Mach 900. Untouchable.

  He didn’t stop. His gaze swept the battlefield until he caught another flicker — a moving red light.

  A slow, predatory smile curved his lips.

  The Wailing Crown.

  A Pesterio was running with it, his four arms pumping furiously. Valtos streaked toward him, arm outstretched — but the Pesterio reacted in an instant. Two right fists lashed out: one to Valtos’s jaw, the other slamming into his gut.

  The blows detonated like thunder.

  Valtos’s body was launched, tumbling violently through the air for eight kilometres before he hit the ground, carving a crater and lying flat on his back. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth.

  He stared up at the sky, expression unreadable.

  Then, slowly, he got to his feet.

  His body expanded — now eight feet, five inches — muscle and bone thickening, the air around him vibrating from the shift. He bent his knees and leapt, the ground beneath him splintering under the force.

  When he came down, it was directly atop the Reliard.

  BOOM.

  A crushing force exploded outward in all directions, blanketing a ten-kilometre radius. People collapsed, screaming as gravity itself seemed to triple, quadruple, then crush further still. The closer they were, the more their bones groaned under the weight.

  Beneath his boot, the Reliard was reduced to pulp.

  A crater, twenty kilometres wide, yawned into the battlefield — deepest at the centre where Valtos stood. He stooped, picked up the Wailing Crown, and raised his head.

  Above, a green beam cut through the chaos — the Mirror Blade.

  Over his head, two relic-lights flared red and yellow.

  Valtos blurred forward once more, a streak of living destruction.

  The beam’s holder was a Dragoon woman. She felt him coming — and met him head-on. Her fist smashed into his face with a force that sent him sliding five hundred metres, heels digging trenches in the dirt. He swayed but didn’t fall.

  When he stopped, her face was right in front of his.

  "You want my relic?" she asked, voice low and sharp.

  Her sword flashed, slamming into his ribs. The slash ripped outward in a shockwave, slicing four mountains clean in half.

  Her blade bit one inch deep into his side — and stuck.

  Valtos looked down at her.

  Then he began to grow.

  Twelve feet tall. Looming, monstrous. His shadow swallowed her as he stared down mere inches from her face.

  For the first time, her confidence faltered.

  She looked into his silver eyes — and saw his irises begin to glow white.

  The ground within a hundred-kilometre radius shuddered violently. The entire island trembled. She couldn’t move. Her knees weakened.

  Steam began to rise from his skin. Heat rolled off him in waves.

  Then, with a slow flex, the muscles along his torso bulged — and the sword stuck in his side snapped apart.

  He looked down at her, expression carved from stone.

  All around, challengers collapsed under the pressure.

  “I will give you three seconds…” His voice was low, resonant, each word like a hammer. “To hand me the Mirror Blade… and keep your life. That is the only mercy I will give you.”

  “Three.”

  The air thickened, the weight intensifying. The Dragoon dropped to one knee.

  “Two.”

  All across the island, people fell flat to the ground, faces pressed into the dirt, screaming in agony. Bones splintered. Blood vessels burst.

  She choked on her breath. “Take it! Take it, please!”

  The pressure deepened still. Far from the fight, Valerius felt it. Eryndor felt it. Ziraiah felt it. They remained standing, but the strain was immense.

  In the dark chamber elsewhere, nobles were crushed into their chairs, screaming. The Titans of Yilheim sat unbothered, as if nothing had changed, their cold eyes ignoring the suffering.

  Elian and Maloi lay face-down on the ground, unmoving, their bodies locked in pain.

  ---

  Valtos looked down at her — and the pressure vanished.

  Love this novel? Read it on Royal Road to ensure the author gets credit.

  It had lasted only six seconds, but that was enough to nearly kill Kaelan, Elsa, Isabela, and Juvian.

  Steam rolled off his body in thick waves as he shrank back to eight feet, his frame still radiating residual heat. In his grasp were now three relics. Above his head, three beams of light shone — red, yellow, and green — marking him for all to see.

  He was the number one target on Plunder Island, and he knew it.

  Valtos lowered himself onto a jagged rock and sat, waiting.

  One by one, the challengers emerged from the haze — hundreds of them. Casters, Augmenters, Bravo users… and among them, Valerius.

  The moment the nearest man crossed within a hundred meters, the air thickened with a crushing force. His body flattened to the ground like a pancake — dead before his mind could register it.

  Another stepped forward. The same fate.

  Some tried crawling. None could stand. Dozens died before even reaching him.

  Valerius watched.

  He stepped forward, stretching his hand out. The air rippled, pressing against his skin like the weight of the deep sea. A smirk touched his lips.

  It’s only on that side, he realised.

  He stomped once, hard, fortifying the ground beneath his feet, and took another step. Then another. And another.

  Through the intense gravity, Valerius walked as though crossing an empty field.

  All eyes turned toward him. The challengers stared, wide-eyed. Even Valtos raised his gaze slightly.

  He saw the faint glow of a relic’s beam above Valerius’s head.

  Valerius stopped before the seated giant, looking down at him.

  Valtos’s eyes drifted to Valerius’s boots. “I don’t appreciate being looked down on.”

  “Oh, really?” Valerius replied evenly. “Well… too bad.”

  He reached out to take the relics —

  — and in that instant, his left eye went dark.

  A burning line split his face, blood running hot down his cheek. The cut’s force reverberated outward, carving a thousand-kilometre gash across the island behind him.

  Far from the battlefield, Balling’s voice exploded through the speakers.

  “Damn… now that’s a powerhouse!” he roared. “Who the hell is that guy?! One swing—one!—and he just split the island open like it was paper!”

  The crowd in the viewing chamber erupted in gasps and shouts, their voices clashing with Balling’s commentary.

  “I’m telling you now,” Balling continued, half-laughing, half-shouting, “whoever’s standing in front of that monster better start praying.”

  Valerius touched his face. His fingers came away wet. He blinked in shock.

  Valtos sat exactly as before, elbows on his thighs, gaze still on Valerius’s feet — but now his frame was nine feet tall.

  “Are you willing to trade your life for these relics?” Valtos asked, voice low and cold. “If you are… I’ll happily start by plucking out your other eye.”

  The words hit something buried deep.

  Memories surged — the cannibal in the Rift, tearing his eyes out again and again. The taste of helplessness.

  Valerius’s hand tightened around the hilt of his sword, rage flickering in his chest.

  Then Eskys’s voice whispered in his memory: Only draw your sword when you’re willing to kill.

  Valtos’s lips curved faintly. “You hesitate. Are you afraid of me? Who could blame you?” He leaned forward, steam curling off his shoulders. “I am the mightiest Catastrophe after all.”

  ---

  Valerius remembered Eskys’ voice, calm yet cutting, echoing in his mind:

  “This is a very big world. You will meet many arrogant people who believe they are the strongest—because where they came from, they were. When that happens, I want you to humble them… properly.”

  The memory pulled a slow grin across his face. His hand loosened from his sword hilt.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  Valtos tilted his head, as though considering whether the boy even deserved an answer. “As you have endured my pressure,” he said slowly, “I will allow you to know it.”

  He rose to his full height as he grew. Ten feet. Eleven. Twelve. His shadow swallowed Valerius. Their faces were now inches apart, the air between them trembling with heat.

  “I am…” Valtos’ voice deepened into a near-growl, “…the Walking Catastrophe. The Living Star.”

  His silver eyes ignited to blinding white. The ground underfoot splintered and the entire island groaned, shaking as though it feared what stood upon it.

  “The mightiest to ever walk this land… You stand before Valtos Brigarde.”

  Valerius didn’t blink. “You really do like hyping yourself, don’t you?”

  “That chill in your veins,” Valtos rumbled, “that’s your body begging you to run from me.”

  Valerius laughed—not nervously, but with the kind of defiance that could cut stone.

  “You? I’m afraid of you? Not in a million years.”

  Then his tone sharpened.

  “This is how it’s going to go, Valtos. You’re going to hand over two of your relics… or I’m going to mop the floor with you. Literally.”

  Ever since he had attained his monstrous strength, Valtos had never once met a man who could speak to him like that—let alone stand toe-to-toe under his presence. No one dared. No one could.

  Yet here stood Valerius… unmoving. Unflinching.

  The air between them thickened like molten steel as their eyes locked.

  Neither moved. Neither yielded.

  ---

  Elsewhere on the island, Eryndor was a lone bastion against a sea of enemies. Dozens of challengers encircled him, their killing intent suffocating the air.

  They came all at once.

  Blades flashed. Fists hammered. Arrows hissed.

  A knuckled blow cracked against his jaw, sending him skidding across the ground. A kick crashed into his back, hurling him through a spray of shattered stone. Then a Dragoon closed the gap in an instant, her sword slamming into his torso and launching him several kilometres back.

  Eryndor twisted in mid-air, landing lightly. Not a drop of blood fell—yet the ground trembled under his stance. He slammed his legs into the earth, and the land before him—fifteen kilometres of solid terrain—heaved upward in one colossal sheet, carrying his attackers skyward like insects on a breaking wave.

  He raised his right hand to the heavens. His fingers curled into a fist.

  And then he brought it down.

  A shadow fell over the battlefield—no, an extinction.

  A blazing asteroid, fifty kilometres wide, tore through the clouds, its surface boiling with fire and stone. It came screaming down at impossible speed, colliding with the risen landmass in an impact that could be felt for hundreds of kilometres. The sky lit white; the earth roared in agony.

  Through the chaos, an elf shot forward like a spear. His staff pierced straight through Eryndor’s abdomen, the force of the strike propagating outward in a shockwave that split the battlefield for eight hundred kilometres.

  Eryndor staggered, groaning as hot blood ran down his side.

  The elf sneered, voice dripping venom. “You mages are inferior to us.”

  With a flick of his staff, he hurled Eryndor into the air.

  Even in my augmented state… he breached my defenses, the thought was glacial, appraising. Such prowess marks him as truly formidable.

  But there was no reprieve. Nine men surged upward from the ground like arrows loosed from the earth itself.

  Is this the true extent of Bravo’s puissance?

  Eryndor’s eyes hardened. Nevertheless… I shall not be bested.

  A whip-like tail of steel and muscle coiled around his waist—another Dragoon. The warrior leapt, pulling him down with crushing force before slamming him into the ground hard enough to shake the island. Then he swung Eryndor like a rag doll, smashing him into the earth again and again.

  “You must be the strongest Augmenter I’ve ever seen,” the man laughed between strikes. “To take all of our attacks and still breathe… I’m impressed.”

  He flung Eryndor skyward again.

  The elf raised his staff. It extended in a blink, stretching five hundred metres, and came down like a divine hammer, striking Eryndor’s ribs. The sound was sickening—bone giving way under impossible force—as Eryndor was hurled through several mountains.

  He lay in the crater, bleeding, the sky spinning above him.

  Slowly, he opened his eyes.

  Then, with a burst of will, he shot into the air, climbing higher, higher, until the battlefield was a blur far below. Above the clouds, the air grew thin and biting cold.

  At the peak of his ascent, he spread his arms wide, facing the blazing sun in a cruciform silhouette.

  If terramancy proves ineffectual, then I shall marshal the dominion of the wind

  To Be Continued...