After concluding their fourth round, the golems remained beneath the arena in the waiting hall. Their next matches were scheduled two days later — ample time for most fighters to rest, recover, and prepare. The golems, however, were different. They had no need for sleep or respite and simply stood where they were placed, motionless against the stone wall, silent and unblinking for the entirety of the wait.
Bones was anything but idle.
During those two days, the waiting hall saw a constant flow of activity. Fighters came and went, some casting curious glances at Harmony, lingering a moment longer than necessary before losing interest. Ultimately, the two golems were too inconspicuous to draw sustained attention — just as Bones preferred. Through the link he shared with them, he listened in on passing conversations, quietly piecing together information while remaining unseen.
What he learned surprised him.
There were nearly five hundred active participants in the arena, and a significant portion hailed from large, well-established guilds. Bones had expected a few — Wolford sat within the Kingdom of Everlasting Dusk, a land famed as a crucible for the ambitious — but only now did he grasp what that truly meant. These guilds were nothing like those of the Wezar Kingdom. While both required an Ascendant at their head to earn the title of a major guild, the difference in scale was staggering. Their rosters were deeper, their talent pools far richer. Many of their members were already well known in Wolford, holding steady positions within the arena’s top fifty rankings.
One such individual was slated to face Skully next.
Victor — a man in his early thirties, sharp-featured and openly arrogant — was a rising star of the Bravas family. Even before the match was announced, his disdain was evident. He cast Skully a single look, lips curling faintly as though offended by the mere comparison.
Bones felt a rare moment of speechlessness.
Skully’s slip had only just begun to glow when the announcement was made. To pit his golem against someone of Victor’s caliber so early… it bordered on cruelty. There was no realistic path to victory — Bones could see that much immediately. Still, retreating now would gain him nothing. Testing the waters against a true elite would at least reveal the gulf between his creations and the upper echelons of the arena.
So he sent Skully forward.
The platforms carried both combatants up into the arena. The referee announced their names and the rules with practiced efficiency before giving the signal to begin.
With a casual flick of his wrist, Victor summoned an exquisite longsword into his hand. A thin, luminous layer of mana wrapped around the blade, vibrating with restrained lethality.
Bones stiffened.
“A weapon aura… and at this level?” he muttered.
For the first time in days, the chaotic turmoil within him faded to the background. Bones focused entirely on the arena, his attention sharpening as the true measure of Wolford’s elite stood revealed before him.
Skully rushed forward as he always did, spear thrusting toward the young man’s chest in a clean, practiced motion. His speed was respectable, his movements sharp and decisive — yet the spear met nothing but air.
Victor shifted aside with lazy ease, the weapon gliding past him by a hair’s breadth. A relaxed smirk curved his lips. He didn’t counterattack. Instead, he took a few unhurried steps back and beckoned Skully forward with two fingers. His sword hung loosely at his side, angled downward, as though defending himself wasn’t even worth the effort.
Bones’ expression darkened. There was no need for this level of disdain. But if Victor insisted on treating Skully as little more than a training dummy…
“Go, Skully,” Bones commanded coldly. “Face him with everything you have.”
Skully lowered his stance, knees bending as he gathered strength. Victor snorted softly and raised a hand, curling his fingers in a clear invitation.
“Come.”
Skully crossed the five-meter gap in under a second, spear sweeping wide in a powerful arc. The weapon whistled through the air — and again struck nothing. Victor leaned back just enough to avoid the spearpoint, his footwork precise, almost leisurely.
Skully followed immediately with a tail sweep. Victor’s eyebrow lifted in mild surprise as he hopped back, then Skully lunged forward with a sharp thrust aimed at the chest.
A decent sequence. Better than Bones had expected.
Victor avoided it all.
Skully pressed on. A second assault flowed into a third, then a fourth — relentless, unyielding, refusing to yield ground. Only then did Victor move.
He raised his sword.
The motion was subtle — a flick of the wrist — but it happened so fast neither Skully nor Bones could follow it.
Skully froze mid-step.
His body shuddered as something unseen struck him. He staggered, footing faltering, barely managing to plant one leg forward to keep from collapsing outright.
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“I’ve seen enough,” Victor said, his voice carrying easily through the arena. “I was hoping you might entertain me for a moment, but this?” He shook his head in disappointment. “This is pathetic.”
Murmurs rippled through the stands.
“I don’t know why they allowed your minion into the arena at level forty-four, caster,” Victor continued, eyes flicking briefly toward Skully. “Its performance is no better than a training puppet. If you’d stepped onto the platform yourself…” He let the thought trail off deliberately.
“Whether my minion is allowed to fight here has nothing to do with you,” Bones replied coldly — though he knew Victor wasn’t wrong.
“Hmph. So be it.” Victor straightened, rolling his shoulders. “Observe carefully. You might learn something today. This is the minimum level of skill required to progress in the arena.”
His figure blurred.
Bones didn’t see the attack — he felt it.
Two slashes tore through Skully’s legs in rapid succession. Bone cracked as the first strike bit into the inner thigh, carving deep into the femur. The second nearly sheared the leg apart at the knee, fragments skittering across the stone.
Bones’ grip tightened instinctively.
Any living opponent would have collapsed instantly — the first blow would have ruptured the femoral artery, the second shredded tendons and ligaments beyond recovery. Skully, however, shed no blood. Instead, the damage manifested as a violent disruption in his structure, mana lines flickering and fracturing as his stance faltered.
Victor appeared behind him, pausing only long enough to adjust his grip.
Before Skully could fully turn, Victor vanished again.
A precise thrust pierced the shoulder joint of the arm holding the spear, the blade sliding cleanly between bone and socket. Skully reacted on instinct alone, sweeping his weapon in a wide arc — but Victor was already moving, low and fast. He slipped beneath the swing and drove his sword between the ribs under the raised arm, angling toward where a heart would have been.
“You’re dead,” Victor whispered, just loud enough for Bones to hear.
He stepped back, eyes flicking to his immaculate blade with a faint scowl. It should have been drenched in blood by now.
“Let me show you something else — this is the minimum level of skill required to enter the arena rankings.”
Victor raised his sword overhead and swung downward.
As the last word left his mouth, Victor raised his sword overhead and brought it down in a clean, unhurried arc.
Bones stiffened.
There was distance between them — more than three meters. Victor had already stepped back. No lunge, no surge of speed, no flare of power. The motion itself was almost mundane, something even an amateur could have followed with their eyes — so simple it confused Bones.
And yet —
The moment the blade completed its descent, Skully’s chest split open.
A jagged line carved itself across his frame, starting at the right collarbone, tearing diagonally through ribs and ending near the left hip. Bone fractured and Skully staggered, one foot grinding against the stone as he fought to remain upright.
Bones’ thoughts froze.
There was no contact.
Victor did not pause. His sword rose again and he slashed again — vertically this time.
The impact was neither seen nor heard — only felt. A crushing force slammed into Skully’s frame, driving him backward as if struck by an invisible wall. The silver spear slipped from his grasp and clattered across the arena floor, echoing sharply in the sudden hush.
Victor’s eyes narrowed.
Mana gathered along the length of his blade, not explosively, but with terrifying density. The sword gleamed for a brief instant as he stepped forward and thrust.
The air warped.
A dull, dampened impact rang out as the unseen strike met resistance — a barrier forming inches before Skully’s body. Tiberius had intervened at the last possible moment.
The attack unraveled in his presence, dispersing like mist against stone. Victor clicked his tongue softly but offered no protest. Skully, barely holding himself together, raised a trembling hand.
“Enough.”
The word was faint, but it was heard.
“Should’ve done that from the start,” Victor said, already turning away.
No announcement was necessary. The outcome had been decided long before the final exchange.
Bones watched Victor leave, his expression dark and unreadable.
Skully exhaled a hollow breath as he dragged his nearly cleaved body toward the platform, fractured bones grinding with each step. His stay in the arena had been brief — and brutal — but Bones had anticipated defeat.
What he hadn’t anticipated was just how vast the gap truly was.
After descending into the waiting area, Skully approached one of the arena staff. His skeletal frame was clearly spent, fractures webbing through his bones and mana circulation in disarray — immediate repairs were unavoidable. Even so, Bones couldn’t keep his irritation in check.
He questioned the staff member about Victor Bravas.
How had Skully been matched against a ranker?
The explanation came politely enough, delivered in the measured tone of someone accustomed to disgruntled participants. That only made it worse. Every word grated against Bones’ ears. With a sharp snort, he cast a brief glance at Harmony and turned away, already done with the conversation.
Victor Bravas was a member of Imperial Bravas — a large guild founded by his ancestor, the ascendant Herman Bravas, and headquartered in Bravas Kingdom. The name alone spoke volumes. The Bravas family were royalty, much like Tristan Wezar had been within the Wezar Kingdom.
As for Victor himself, Bones learned that he had entered the arena three years ago at level fifty-six and climbed swiftly, securing the twenty-eighth rank. He hadn’t participated in the last two seasons, however, and his absence had caused his standing to decay to forty-third. Now that he had returned — stronger, leveled, and evidently bored — it was almost certain he was aiming far higher. Top ten, at the very least.
As for Skully’s misfortune?
A bad draw.
Because of his prolonged absence, Victor was required to complete three debut matches before being allowed to challenge ranked contenders again. These initial bouts were little more than formalities — none of them would improve his standing in the slightest.
Skully, unfortunately, had been one of them.
Bones halted at the arena’s exit and informed the clerk on duty that he was withdrawing. The man barely reacted. Many gave up after their debut matches, especially once the difficulty spiked. Some didn’t even last a single fight.
The clerk recorded Skully’s withdrawal and passed over thirty mana stones as compensation for his earlier victories.
Skully accepted them without ceremony, gave a short nod, and left the arena behind. Moments later, he departed Wolford entirely, following the faint pull of his link back toward Bones.
