The heavy iron gates at the edge of the arena groaned open, and a boy walked out. His footsteps were completely silent against the sand. He wore a sleek, flowing black robe, with a prominent dragon symbol emblazoned across the chest.

  As he stepped fully into the sunlight, my eyes zeroed in on his features. He had silver hair, just like mine, and he was a handsome kid, clearly around my age. But his eyes were a flat, dull brown.

  And then, I saw it. Peeking out from the collar of his robe, right there on the right side of his neck, was a very familiar mark.

  The Symbol of Reincarnation.

  (Are you kidding me, Talestia?) I screamed internally. (Is there a whole batch of us running around? Did I not read the fine print on the respawn contract?!) But that wasn't all. Glowing faintly on his forehead was a weird, golden symbol. It looked like a pair of wings attached to a sword.

  King Caryon gestured gracefully toward the boy. "This is Drake," the King announced. "He was left in the Death Forest by his parents. We found him when he was hunting monsters when he was just eight years old, so I adopted him."

  (Left in the Death Forest? Hunting monsters at eight?) I blinked, my snark practically short-circuiting. (Alright, so we're basically sharing the exact same tragic backstory and aesthetic. Cool. Not derivative at all.)

  "He too has a semi-dragon core," the King continued, his calm smile never wavering. "He too is on the same level as you, and he too has unlocked his transformation."

  I narrowed my glowing blue eyes. My Spirit Sense didn't need to be told. The aura rolling off this 'Drake' kid was suffocatingly heavy.

  (His aura is so strong,) I thought, my muscles tensing as I gripped the hilt of my sword.

  "Alright," I breathed out, locking eyes with the silver-haired prince. "Let's see."

  King Caryon chuckled, floating effortlessly back up toward the royal viewing box. "Don't worry, Ragna. You will be admitted into the Academy even after being defeated. This is just to confirm."

  My eye visibly twitched. (Excuse me? 'After being defeated'? The absolute disrespect.)

  "Alright, then," I muttered, my competitive side instantly flaring up.

  At the King's signal, everyone went back to their places. The guards retreated, clearing the massive Colosseum floor. The frantic whispers of the audience died down into a tense, suffocating silence.

  The fight began.

  Drake didn't draw a weapon. He didn't even take a combat stance. He just stood there, completely expressionless. He held nothing, looking as calm as a frozen lake.

  But I didn't let his lack of a weapon fool me. I was genuinely tense under the crushing weight of his aura. I couldn't afford to hold back or test the waters. I had to end this immediately.

  I exploded forward, channeling my Qi into a blinding burst of speed. I went for a strike, swinging my blade and hitting him with absolutely all my might.

  Schwing.

  There was no resistance. My blade sliced clean through.

  The next thing I saw was Drake's headless body standing perfectly still in front of me. A split second later, his severed head dropped down from the sky, hitting the sand with a dull thud.

  The entire Colosseum gasped. Pure, unadulterated shock rippled through the massive audience.

  My heart completely stopped. (Oh my god. I just murdered the King's adopted son. In front of the King. My dad is going to kill me before the royal executioner even gets the chance!)

  I whipped my head up, fully expecting the Royal Guards to swarm me.

  But King Caryon wasn't angry. He was sitting in his box... just smiling.

  Before my brain could even process why the King was happy about his son's sudden decapitation, reality fractured.

  BANG.

  I was kicked incredibly hard from behind. The force was astronomical. I flew through the air like a ragdoll and bumped onto the arena wall hard, the stone cracking against my spine.

  I groaned, spitting out sand, and looked up, my vision swimming.

  Drake was standing right behind where I had just been.

  I watched in absolute, logic-defying horror as the headless body calmly took a few steps toward its own severed head, reached down, and picked it up.

  I watched in absolute, logic-defying horror as the headless body calmly took a few steps toward its own severed head, reached down, and picked it up.

  And then... the head smiled.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  The severed, bleeding head smiled at me. Suddenly, black flames erupted, completely engulfing the head in a dark, ominous fire. And then, the absolute lunatic pulled his arm back and threw his own flaming head at me like a baseball!

  (Nope. Not dealing with that! What is he, a Dullahan?!) "Wind Walking! Body Boost!" I shouted, channeling a massive surge of Qi into my legs and violently launching myself out of the way.

  The flaming head sailed past me and hit the Colosseum wall behind me. KRA-BOOM. The explosion was massive, sending shockwaves of dark heat washing over my back.

  I didn't waste the opening. I used the smoke and debris as cover, pivoting on my heel and launching myself straight at Drake's headless body while he was supposedly distracted. I swung my blade with everything I had.

  But before the steel could even arc downward... BAM. A foot slammed directly into my spine. He was behind me.

  (What?!) My eyes went wide. (I didn't even see him move!) Before my brain could even register the pain or process how he had outmaneuvered me, he struck again. A devastating punch caught me right in the gut before I even hit the ground, launching me straight up into the sky like a rocket.

  My vision was spinning. I was completely disoriented, flying upward into the clouds. But before I could even try to stabilize my trajectory in mid-air, a massive shadow fell over me.

  I blinked through the rushing wind. Drake was already above me. And he wasn't alone.

  He was sitting casually on the back of a massive, serpentine Black Dragon. It was a Chinese-style dragon with pure, glowing white eyes and a stark white mane. An aura of dark, suffocating energy rolled off its jet-black scales like thick smoke.

  And Drake? He wasn't even looking at me. He was resting his chin on his hand, looking profoundly bored. He literally yawned.

  The black dragon's massive tail whipped around and smashed directly into my chest.

  CRACK.

  I plummeted like a meteor. Before I could even brace for impact, a surge of Earth Magic erupted from the ground below, slamming into me just as I crashed into the arena floor.

  I coughed up a violent mouthful of blood. My vision swam. My ribs felt like shattered glass.

  (Who... who the hell is he?) I thought, my arrogant confidence bleeding out into the sand.

  Drake floated down gracefully, stepping off his dragon. The severed head from earlier had somehow regenerated or reattached, resting perfectly on his shoulders again. He looked down at me with those dull brown eyes.

  "You're weak," he stated simply.

  That did it.

  The CEO ego, the True Demon pride, the sheer spite of a kid who survived the Death Forest. Everything inside me snapped.

  The dust around my broken body began to swirl. The earth beneath me trembled, quaking under a sudden, overwhelming pressure. I didn't even try to stand up. Gravity simply ceased to apply to me. My body floated into the air.

  The surrounding magicules—the ambient mana in the very air—rushed into my body like water into a whirlpool. A blinding, violent blue light erupted from my core. The air pressure in the Colosseum plummeted.

  BLUE ORIGIN. The absolute, terrifying power of the True Demon state locked into place. Blue smoke trailed from my glowing eyes, and the pain in my chest vanished beneath the sheer density of my aura.

  Drake tilted his head, watching the transformation. "Interesting," he murmured.

  (Oh, I'll show you interesting.) "Mizuki!" I roared.

  The golden light of the Invincible Dragon exploded from my spiritual space, coalescing into his massive, elegant serpentine form right there in the arena. I landed gracefully on Mizuki's back, soaring up to match Drake's altitude.

  I raised my hands, pulling the destructive density of my Blue Origin mana into a concentrated point.

  "Aura Sphere!" I hurled the hyper-dense singularity straight at him.

  It crossed the arena in a fraction of a heartbeat. BOOM. It hit him dead on.

  The smoke cleared. Drake was still hovering there, looking slightly pushed back but mostly unbothered. He wiped a smudge of dust from his cheek.

  "Fast enough to hit me," Drake said, his voice entirely devoid of panic. "Then I have to transform, too."

  As he spoke the words, the sky above the Colosseum violently shifted. Thick, unnatural black clouds rolled in, instantly blotting out the sun. The arena plunged into a suffocating, terrifying darkness.

  But it wasn't just the light that vanished. He started pulling mana. And not just from the atmosphere. I could feel the life force, the raw energy being forcibly drained from the terrified audience, from the plants, from every living thing in the vicinity.

  Suddenly, the black clouds vanished, replaced by a blinding, holy-looking bright light erupting directly from Drake's body. The dark robes burned away entirely, leaving his upper half completely naked.

  And spreading across his skin, weaving through his muscles... were intricate, glowing golden lines.

  The glowing lines wove themselves together across his chest, forming a brilliant, radiant sun pattern that looked like a layer of divine armor. And then, tearing through the skin of his back, came the wings.

  Pure, brilliant white elemental wings stretched out, scattering feathers of light across the arena.

  (Oh, come on! Really?) I thought, my CEO-brain practically throwing its hands up in defeat. (He looks like a literal angel. Scratch that. With that heavy, suffocating aura, he looks like the Angel of Death himself.)

  And then, just because the universe completely despises me, a weapon materialized in his grip. A massive, elegantly curved golden bow.

  (Ah, yes. The legendary Heaven's Arc. Because of course he has a mythical ranged weapon. That is just the cherry on top of this absurd, ridiculously overpowered sundae!)

  "Behold!" King Caryon's voice boomed from the royal box, sounding entirely too enthusiastic. "The power of a low-angel! The evolution of the higher humans!"

  (Low-angel? What is this, a JRPG final boss?) I gripped my blade, genuinely feeling the cold grip of despair starting to creep in. My Blue Origin mana was burning hot, but the sheer scale of what I was looking at was terrifying. His massive black dragon uncoiled itself and began to slowly circle around him in the sky, a dark halo to contrast his blinding light.

  "This is my true form," Drake stated, his dull brown eyes finally reflecting the divine light radiating from his body.

  (Meanwhile, in a completely different dimension...)

  Arya Bhardwaj, the First King and current God of Enjoyment, was lounging in a ridiculously comfortable recliner. He had an ice-cold glass of Coke in one hand and a massive bucket of buttery popcorn in the other. He was watching a gigantic, floating projection of the Colosseum fight like it was a pay-per-view championship match.

  "Man! What a thrill watching two heroes fighting," Arya cheered, stuffing a handful of popcorn into his mouth. "I wonder who will win? Both of them have one of the 9 pieces... The 9 Sovereigns of God."

  He paused, his attention suddenly shifting away from the epic battle. A beautiful spirit in flowing, ethereal robes happened to be walking past his viewing screen.

  Arya lowered his sunglasses, flashing a sleazy grin. "Hey, girl. Would you let me lay my hands on those things of yours—"

  SMACK.

  The sound echoed across the divine realm.

  A few moments later, Arya was back to quietly sipping his Coke, wincing slightly. A massive, glowing red handprint was perfectly plastered across his cheek.

  "I was just joking," he muttered into his drink, looking profoundly confused. "I wonder why she slapped me."

  On Earth

  "Why did I even made a character like that." I(writer) said, pinching my nose bridge as i exhale.