The oppressive heat within the Vanguard’s subterranean staging camp was thick enough to choke on.
Searing updrafts from the magma-trenches below carried the stench of ozone and roasting marrow throughout the expansive execution amphitheater.
Sunny stood upon the raised, heavily warded balcony overlooking the primary slaughter-pits.
His pale, aristocratic features were locked into a flawless mask of demonic apathy, though internally, he was entirely consumed by exhaustion and a throbbing migraine. He explicitly desired nothing more than to return to his isolated pavilion and sleep.
However, attendance at the Vanguard’s mandatory ’Aura Synchronization Drills’ was non-negotiable for Elite Commanders.
The drills were essentially public gladiatorial executions designed to weed out weak fiends and intimidate the lower ranks.
Hovering directly above Sunny’s crown, projecting a localized, bruised-purple shadow over his face, was the Abyssal Void-Sac.
He explicitly utilized the spatial anomaly as a grotesque parasol to block the agonizing glare of the soul-fires.
Coiled lazily around his left forearm was the newly acquired Sanguine Void-Leech, pulsating with a faint, warm crimson light, passively feeding on the ambient dark Qi.
To the thousands of gathered demonic cultists in the amphitheater, the sight was profoundly horrifying. The Supreme Flesh-Crafter appeared as a walking god of death, draped in living, pulsing anomalies.
Down in the pit, Executioner Mian, a scarred veteran, struck a massive bone-gong.
"The Vanguard accepts no frailty!" Mian roared, his voice magically amplified to echo off the jagged obsidian walls.
He gestured toward a heavy, rune-carved iron cage in the center of the sand. "This entity was captured near the Abyssal Rifts. Test your resolve, or feed your beasts to the hounds!"
Mian hauled the release lever.
A massive, plated monstrosity erupted from the cage. It was a heavily mutated Obsidian-Plated Tortoise. However, this was not a slow, defensive herbivore. The beast was entirely feral, its jagged shell fused with volatile dark-metal spikes, and its jaws snapped with enough kinetic force to shatter solid stone. It released a guttural, earth-shaking hiss, its crimson eyes sweeping the amphitheater.
Sunny activated the System’s diagnostic overlay.
[Target Identified: Obsidian-Spiked Tortoise]
[Monster Level]: Tier 3 (Peak)
[Monster Grade]: Elite
[Monster Condition]: Frenzied (Agonizing shell-growth)
[Monster Attribute]: Earth / Metal
[Special Characteristic]: Absolute Kinetic Absorption (Physical strikes against the shell are absorbed and immediately violently reflected as concussive shockwaves.)
Sunny explicitly recognized that this beast was a walking trap. Any physical brawler that attempted to strike its shell would simply blow their own limbs off via the reflected shockwave.
"I shall demonstrate the supremacy of the Blood-Axe Cohort!" a massive, heavily scarred mercenary roared, vaulting over the barricade and landing heavily in the sand.
The mercenary commanded a towering, bipedal Bone-Crusher Ape. It was a formidable brute-force fiend, its massive arms thicker than tree trunks, designed solely for localized bludgeoning.
Sunny watched with absolute, chilling boredom. He explicitly knew this was going to end in a catastrophic, bloody failure. The Ape was a pure physical striker going up against absolute kinetic reflection.
The mercenary barked an attack incantation. The Bone-Crusher Ape roared, launching itself at the Tortoise. The Ape raised its massive, fused fists and brought them down upon the Tortoise’s spiked shell with the force of a falling meteor.
The impact sounded like a detonating spirit-cannon.
The Tortoise did not even flinch. Instead, its dark-metal shell rippled with concentrated energy. The sheer kinetic force of the Ape’s strike was instantly swallowed, violently compressed, and immediately projected outward in a devastating, localized shockwave.
The concussive blast hit the Bone-Crusher Ape at point-blank range.
The sound of shattering bone echoed through the amphitheater. The Ape’s massive arms were instantly pulverized, the bones exploding outward through its flesh in a shower of gore. The beast shrieked in absolute agony, its massive body violently launched backward, crashing into the heavy iron barricade with sickening force.
The mercenary in the sand staggered, spitting a mouthful of black blood as the psychic backlash of his crippled fiend tore through his soul-tether. He stared at the Tortoise in sheer, paralyzed disbelief. The beast was entirely unscathed.
Executioner Mian sneered, a cruel twist to his scarred lips. "Pathetic. Absolute garbage. Remove the trash from the pit."
Two heavy Abomination-Golems dragged the weeping mercenary and his ruined Ape out of the arena.
A heavy, suffocating silence fell over the amphitheater. The remaining cultists explicitly recognized the impossible nature of the beast. Physical attacks were suicide.
"Who else?" Mian challenged, his eyes scanning the balconies. His gaze lingered slightly upon Sunny, explicitly testing the boundaries of the Young Master’s notorious arrogance.
Sunny remained perfectly still, taking a slow sip from a chilled skull-goblet he had just extracted from his Void-Sac hat. He explicitly had absolutely no intention of volunteering. His primary combat asset, the Phantom Ash Scorpion, relied on physical strikes to inject its venom. Striking the Tortoise’s shell would shatter the Scorpion’s pincers. He was not going to risk his assassin on a trivial exhibition match.
"I have no interest in striking immovable objects," Sunny stated, his voice a freezing whisper that somehow cut through the clamor of the pits. "My arts are reserved for absolute slaughter, not tedious masonry."
The surrounding cultivators recoiled, explicitly interpreting his refusal as an unfathomable display of supreme arrogance. They firmly believed the Young Master viewed the armored behemoth as so utterly pathetic that he wouldn’t even dirty his fiends by deploying them.
Mian’s eyes narrowed, but he dared not press the issue. The legend of the Sovereign Ghoul Ape was too terrifying.
"Then the exhibition concludes," Mian announced, turning toward the cage. "Return the beast to the isolation wards."
However, the Obsidian-Spiked Tortoise, driven entirely feral by its agonizing mutations, explicitly refused to be contained. As the Abomination-Golems approached to herd it, the Tortoise violently spun its massive body. Its jagged, metal-spiked tail lashed out like a massive scythe, instantly severing the legs of one of the Golems.
The Tortoise let out a deafening roar and charged directly toward the reinforced obsidian wall separating the pit from the lower spectator stands.
The Vanguard disciples in the lower tiers screamed in absolute panic, scrambling backward as the armored behemoth slammed into the wall. The heavy obsidian cracked under the immense kinetic impact.
"Contain it!" Mian roared, drawing a heavy executioner’s blade.
Before Mian could strike, a massive, towering shadow detached itself from the gloom directly beneath Sunny’s balcony.
The Sovereign Ghoul Ape, shrouded in its heavy, light-absorbing cloak, dropped effortlessly into the arena sand. The impact of its landing was heavy, yet utterly silent.
The terrified disciples instantly froze, their panic momentarily overridden by a profound, suffocating dread. The towering undead construct did not move to attack. It merely stood perfectly still, interposing its massive form between the charging Tortoise and the cracked wall.
The Tortoise, blinded by feral rage, lowered its spiked head and charged the shrouded figure with the momentum of a runaway siege-engine.
Sunny stood upon the balcony, his crimson eyes glowing. He explicitly knew that if the Tortoise struck the Ape physically, the kinetic reflection could shatter the Ape’s metallic ribs.
"Ape. Resonate," Sunny commanded via telepathy.
The Sovereign Ghoul Ape did not raise a weapon. It did not assume a combat stance. It simply flared the violent, green flames within its eye sockets.
Beneath the heavy shroud, the Abyssal Heart violently pulsed.
Thrum.
A highly concentrated, localized wave of absolute cardiovascular resonance erupted from the Ape. It explicitly bypassed the Tortoise’s impregnable external shell entirely, penetrating straight into the beast’s internal biology.
The charging Obsidian-Spiked Tortoise suddenly seized up, its momentum violently arrested mid-stride.
Its heavy hooves dug into the sand as its massive body shuddered uncontrollably. To the naked eye, the Tortoise was entirely untouched. There were no lacerations, no burns, no physical trauma.
However, internally, the beast’s massive heart was explicitly being forced to synchronize with the apocalyptic, erratic rhythm of the Sovereign Core.
A sickening, wet popping sound echoed loudly in the sudden silence of the amphitheater.
Thick, dark blood violently erupted from the Tortoise’s eyes, nostrils, and the gaps in its spiked shell. The beast’s internal organs had explicitly ruptured under the impossible cardiovascular pressure, instantaneously liquefying into a grotesque soup.
The armored behemoth collapsed heavily into the sand, completely dead, its impenetrable shell entirely unmarred.
The amphitheater descended into absolute, terrified silence.
The thousands of seasoned executioners and battle-hardened mercenaries stared at the shrouded Ghoul Ape in sheer, paralyzed horror. The undead construct hadn’t even lifted a finger, yet it had instantaneously eradicated an Elite-grade siege-beast that had just effortlessly crippled a veteran’s fiend.
The sheer, invisible nature of the kill was profoundly terrifying. It was an absolute display of overwhelming, inescapable death.
Sunny maintained his chilling, apathetic posture on the balcony. He took another slow sip of his chilled elixir.
"Remove the trash from the pit," Sunny whispered into the silence, his voice dripping with freezing contempt.
Executioner Mian swallowed hard, his scarred face pale with sheer terror. He explicitly bowed deeply toward Sunny’s balcony.
"Y-yes, Supreme One!"
The surrounding cultists immediately fell to their knees in the stands, entirely convinced that the Young Master possessed the power to liquefy their organs with a single, casual thought.
Sunny internally sighed, realizing he had just cemented his reputation as the most terrifying entity in the camp, guaranteeing he would never, ever be left alone to sleep...