Starting With an SSS-Rank Goddess Summon!

He laughed.

It was a manic sound of pure ecstasy as he turned his back on the carnage he had just created and calmly walked off toward his designated exit hatch with his bare feet leaving bloody footprints in the mud.

High above the cage, the neon-suited Announcer swallowed hard as he wiped a thick bead of cold sweat from his forehead.

’Thankfully he’s gone now...’

He gripped the railing of his floating anti-gravity platform with a trembling hand, raising his magically amplified microphone to his lips.

"W-WHAT AN UNFORGIVING DISPLAY OF BRUTALITY, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN!" the Announcer’s voice boomed through the massive stadium speakers, forcing the hype back into his voice. "THE SURGEON HAS BEEN DISMANTLED! THE VICTOR OF ROUND TWO... IS THE BLOOD-SAINT!"

The crowd erupted into a massive bloodthirsty cheer, tossing their winning betting slips into the air like confetti.

"CLEAN-UP CREW TO THE DIRT!" the Announcer ordered over the PA system. "WASH THE MUD! WE HAVE MORE FIGHTS TONIGHT!"

The heavy steel hatches built into the Null-stone walls ground open with a metallic screech.

Immediately, the designated Underworld clean-up crew rushed forward out of the dark maintenance tunnels.

There were four of them.

Hardened men wearing heavy, industrial-grade rubber aprons, thick insulated boots, and full-face gas masks to block out the overwhelming stench of the slaughter.

Two of them pushed a rusted, flatbed metal cart, while the other two carried high-pressure water hoses.

"I’m telling you right now," a cleaner named Grits grumbled, his voice muffled behind his heavy respirator mask. "I call dibs on the Surgeon’s boots... Those are genuine imported synth-leather. Worth at least two hundred Spirit credits on the black market."

"You can have the boots, you vulture," his partner, a massive guy named Jaxson, snorted, pushing the rusted cart over a crater. "I just want to check his pockets... These high-tier assassins always carry backup cred-chips."

"Just grab the meat and throw it on the cart," the team leader barked, unrolling the thick water hose. "The Boss wants this ring spotless in three minutes so move your asses before the snipers get bored and start using us for target practice."

Grits and Jaxson reached the Surgeon’s headless bleeding body.

"Jesus, he popped him like a cheap balloon," Grits muttered, looking down at the ruined stump of the neck.

"Grab the ankles," Jaxson sighed, bending his knees. "I’ll grab the shoulders. On three. One. Two. Three..."

The two men reached down.

The exact second their thick rubber gloves made physical contact with the dead cooling flesh.

SQUELCH! BOOOOOOM!

The Surgeon’s dead body violently exploded.

It wasn’t an explosion caused by a hidden bomb as it was a horrifyingly biological one.

Every single remaining drop of blood trapped inside the corpse’s veins violently, instantly pressurized and the dead flesh ruptured outward in a high-speed geyser of dark red fluid.

The blood wasn’t normal... It was highly corrosive and it was magically charged too!

The thick spray of acidic blood shot directly upward, blasting straight across the face of Jaxson.

"AGGGHHHH!" Jaxson screamed.

HISSSSSS!

The heavy industrial gas mask he was wearing instantly began to melt. The thick plastic fused directly to his skin, turning into a bubbling toxic sludge.

Jaxson dropped completely to his knees in the dirt, abandoning the cart.

He clawed wildly, desperately at his own sizzling face as the blood literally ate through his flesh, his muscles, and his bone like high-grade industrial acid.

"Help him! Holy shit, help him!" Grits screamed, stumbling backward and tripping over the cart in pure terror.

The remaining blood splashed heavily onto the packed arena floor.

It hissed violently, bubbling and smoking as it rapidly sank deep into the ground, leaving massive blackened craters in the mud.

The roaring crowd went instantly dead silent.

Thousands of people just stared in horror at the melting cleaner thrashing and screaming on the ground with his face completely dissolving into a red puddle.

High up in the soundproofed climate-controlled VIP private suite, Silas and Evelyn were staring intensely at the massive glowing holographic live feed projecting the arena floor into the center of their room.

They watched the cleaner screaming on the ground and they watched the acidic blood eat straight through the solid dirt.

"Well," Evelyn muttered, taking a slow drag of her premium Red-Lotus cigarette.

She exhaled a thin stream of smoke toward the ceiling. "That definitively confirms it. He definitely has a Lord core."

Silas could easily see it too.

His golden-ringed eyes missed nothing.

Given the physics-breaking way that Blood-Saint had closed the thirty-foot distance to the Surgeon in seconds earlier, it was blatantly obvious to anyone with combat experience that the crazed priest was actively using internal mana to strengthen his muscle fibers.

But still... the actions of the dead body violently exploding after death were very weird.

The massive Null-stone cage explicitly prevented external mana projection.

You couldn’t cast a spell outside your body. You couldn’t throw a fireball, summon a weapon, or trigger a magical trap from across the room...

"He is probably a fanatic supporter of the Blood Deity, Xvesu," Evelyn deduced, her brain rapidly piecing the visual evidence together.

Silas blinked behind the narrow metal slits of his Oni mask.

He was still laying incredibly comfortably on the sofa with his heavy head resting on Evelyn’s soft bare thighs.

He looked up at her chin with his brain processing the new intel.

He knew about the concept of deities.

’They’re like Ititius and Thor...’

They absolutely existed in the higher echelons of the Sovereign Realm, hell he even had a Goddess currently living in his own territory back in the Blessed Land.

But who the hell was Xvesu?

Evelyn saw the obvious genuine confusion radiating from his masked face.

"On one of my earlier streams," Evelyn explained quietly, tapping an ash from her cigarette into a heavy crystal tray resting on the glass table. "I had my army push deep into the territory of a Lord who specialized in Blood Magic. He was a sworn fanatical supporter of Xvesu."

Silas listened intently, keeping his head perfectly still, enjoying the rare moment of rest.

"Xvesu is an incredibly obscure and violent dark god," Evelyn continued, her voice turning completely serious. "He grants his followers the ability to manipulate the iron and the latent mana existing inside blood cells. It increases the physical, destructive power of their own blood by several fold, turning it into an acidic weapon."

Evelyn pointed her glowing cigarette tip directly at the holographic screen, gesturing to the smoking acidic craters left on the ground where the Surgeon had just exploded.

"If you are facing Blood-Saint in the final bracket," Evelyn warned him, her dark eyes locking onto the silver fangs of his mask. "You have to be incredibly careful, Silas. Even though the Null-stone cage strictly dictates that he can’t use mana outside of his body to cast a spell..."

Silas nodded slowly, instantly finishing her sentence.

"The blood itself is a physical biological object," Silas said. "It inherently contains the mana. If the blood leaves his body, or his opponent’s body, he can still manipulate it physically without triggering the Null-stone suppression."

It was a massive loophole in the arena’s rules.

’I really have to learn Blood magic...’

Silas let out a deep sigh as the breath vibrated the metal fangs of his demon mask, sounding like a growling beast.

"I’ll be careful," Silas assured her.

He wasn’t particularly worried about a blood mage or whatever.

He had an entire ocean of Mythic Gold Core mana coursing through his own veins and his bone density was practically adamantium so a puddle of acidic blood didn’t impress him.

He shifted his broad shoulders against the plush velvet cushions.

"Can I get up now?" Silas asked, gesturing to the fact that his head was still firmly planted in her lap. ’She’s still owing me too... tch.’

Evelyn immediately placed her small leather-gloved hand directly onto his dark hair.

"Not yet," Evelyn commanded softly.

She gently rubbed her fingers through his hair to keep him anchored to her thighs. "Stay with me while I think of a plan."

Silas sighed again, crossing his heavy arms over his chest and resigning himself to his fate as a paid lap dog.

"We need to figure out exactly how we’re going to confidently talk to the Boss of the Black-Ash Syndicate when we’re done robbing his casino blind," Evelyn muttered, staring at the ceiling of the suite as her mind rapidly plotted negotiations.

"We just pay him the credits for the hacker if he refuses..." Silas stated the obvious. "It’s a simple straightforward transaction if he doesn’t honor the deal, We buy the Slave Rune trigger and we leave."

Evelyn blinked.

Her dark eyes widened behind her painted Kitsune mask as she realized she had completely omitted a critical piece of tactical intel during their initial briefing.

"Oh, did I tell you?" Evelyn asked casually, looking down at his masked face.

Silas frowned behind the metal. "Tell me what?"

"Apparently, Jax is directly related to the Boss," Evelyn casually dropped the bombshell. "He is his actual son so buying him is going to be a lot harder than we originally thought."

Silas completely froze.

"But hey," Evelyn shrugged, completely oblivious to the gravity of what she had just said. "At least this goddamn underground competition will soon be over, right?"

Silas’s golden-ringed eyes flew wide open behind his mask.

He lifted his heavy head up off her lap, turning his Oni mask to stare directly into her dark eyes with disbelief.

"He’s what?!" Silas demanded.

...

Down in the colossal echoing cavern, time rapidly passed.

The Announcer hovered his anti-gravity platform over the center of the freshly cleaned, heavily blood-soaked field.

It was finally about time for the climax of the night.

The following bracket matches had taken place in rapid and completely unforgiving succession.

The crowd had been treated to a staggering uninterrupted display of Underworld violence.

The remaining elite fighters had viciously eliminated each other one by one, tearing cybernetics and spilling gallons of blood onto the mud.

In a bizarre entertaining twist that had cost the house millions, two of the heavy cybernetic fighters... Rust-King and Ironhide Rex had actually killed each other simultaneously in a brutal screeching double-knockout that involved a lot of torn metal and sparking wires and as for Neon Blade, he was killed unfortunately and stuffed in his changing locker.

The Black-Ash Syndicate were still trying to find out what happened to him.

Which left exactly four contestants remaining for the entire tournament.

Onii-chan... Blood-Saint... Cyber Ghost... Goliath-9...

Fortunately for the house, they were all strong, entertaining and fan-favorite fighters.

"Haah..."

But the Announcer was sweating through his neon-purple suit.

He nervously pulled at his collar. He still desperately needed a way to maximize the betting lines and aggressively market this whole finale to recoup the massive credit loss the house had suffered from Onii-chan’s fake illness stunt.

Suddenly, the secure encrypted comms earpiece in the Announcer’s right ear vibrated violently.

He tapped it instantly.

"Yes, Boss?" the Announcer whispered frantically, turning his back to the roaring crowd so the cameras wouldn’t catch his panicked expression.

"The standard one-on-one brackets are completely boring to me," the deep calm and authoritative voice of the Black-Ash Boss echoed directly into his ear. "I don’t want to sit here and watch two more drawn-out semi-finals. It will take too long."

The Announcer swallowed hard with his throat turning dry. "A... a four-way match, Sir?"

"Call all four of the remaining fighters up to the dirt right now," the Boss commanded coldly with his tone brooking no argument. "We are doing a four-way mini-royale. It prevents the crowd from getting bored, it spikes the betting algorithms, and we can finish this whole pathetic thing in one go. Do it..."

CLICK!

The encrypted line went dead.

The Announcer frantically nodded his head to the empty air.

He spun his floating platform around, facing the roaring stadium as he took up his magically amplified microphone with a massive fake grin plastered across his sweaty face.

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF SHOGITOWN!" the Announcer screamed, his voice booming like rolling thunder across the cavern. "WE HAVE A MASSIVE CHANGE OF PLANS!"

The massive crowd went breathlessly silent, listening intently to the floating man.

"INSTEAD OF A BORING SEMI-FINALS... THE SPONSORS HAVE DECIDED TO ESCALATE THE CARNAGE TO ABSOLUTE MAXIMUM LEVELS!" the Announcer roared, throwing his arms wide. "A FINALS WILL THEN BE HOSTED! A FOUR-WAY SUDDEN-DEATH MINI-ROYALE!"

The crowd was initially surprised by the sudden blatant breaking of the established tournament rules.

But within exactly two seconds, the degeneracy of the Underworld took over.

They were even more hyped!

A massive four-way death match between the strongest killers in the city?

"YES!"

"BLOOD! WE WANT BLOOD!"

They began cheering with intensity, throwing their hands, their drinks, and their remaining credits into the air.

High up in the lower VIP stands, sitting in a guarded bulletproof security booth.

The wicked black-haired receptionist slowly stood up from her squeaking leather chair.

She gracefully smoothed out the wrinkles in her expensive black corporate suit.

’It’s time, huh?’ the receptionist thought to herself, tossing her smoking Red-Lotus cigarette into a glass ashtray. ’I better go meet Dad in the main suite.’

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