The world moved against him now.
The Guilds.
The Monarchs.
The Abyssal Kings.
They could no longer deny his existence.
They could no longer pretend he was a mistake that would burn itself out.
No.
Asura had become a storm too large to contain.
And now, they would try the only thing they knew:
Force.
Public humiliation.
Destruction.
The message was simple.
Delivered on blood-soaked parchment,
carried by a dying courier whose tongue had been severed.
"ROYAL CHALLENGE ISSUED.
BY ORDER OF THE GUILD KINGS.
COME FORTH AND BE JUDGED.
OR BE HUNTED TO EXTINCTION."
Asura burned the message without a word.
The place was set:
The Hollow Arena.
A battlefield carved into the Abyss itself —
where ancient Monarch Candidates were once tested, broken, or crowned.
It was a place of death.
A place of betrayal.
A place no one survived unless the Abyss itself chose to let them.
Perfect.
He stood at the threshold of the Hollow Arena now,
alone, unarmed, untouched by fear.
The stone gates groaned open,
revealing an endless coliseum of cracked obsidian and twisted bones.
Thousands watched from the black terraces —
Guild Masters, Monarch Heirs, Abyss Creatures, Broken Sigil Warlords.
All waiting.
All eager.
All hungry.
At the far end stood his enemies.
Five Monarch Candidates.
Each a weapon forged by their Guild.
Each wielding forbidden Sigil powers mutated by abyssal science.
They smiled when they saw him.
Mocking.
Pitying.
Certain of victory.
One stepped forward —
a woman wrapped in blue infernal chains, her eyes gleaming.
"Welcome, Asura," she purred. "We were worried you'd be too much of a coward to accept."
Another — a brute twice the size of any normal man, his skin armored in bone plates — laughed cruelly.
"You'll make a fine corpse to decorate the Guild gates."
Asura said nothing.
Words were for the living.
The Arena Guardian — a withered creature draped in black banners — raised a skeletal hand.
"By decree of the Abyss Court," it rasped,
"this challenge will be fought to death.
Survival grants ascent.
Failure grants oblivion."
It paused, letting the gravity of those words settle into the roaring silence.
"And so it begins."
The horn sounded.
The chains fell.
And hell was unleashed.
The five Monarch Candidates moved as one —
a perfect storm of fire, steel, corruption, and hate.
Blades of crystallized blood.
Waves of burning void energy.
Shards of shattered light.
Each an execution in itself.
Each designed to leave nothing of him behind.
Asura stood motionless.
For a heartbeat.
For two.
Then he moved.
The first blast — a cyclone of black flame — tore across the arena.
He stepped through it.
Unburned.
Unstoppable.
He closed the distance between himself and the brute first —
the armored one who had mocked him.
A single blow.
One movement.
The sound of bone shattering into dust.
The giant's body crumpled,
his chest cavity imploding like a collapsed star.
Dead.
The others hesitated —
shock breaking their perfect formation.
Fatal mistake.
Asura vanished into shadow —
his bloodline-infused body flickering like a dying star.
He appeared behind the woman of chains,
one hand gripping her throat before she could even scream.
He whispered into her ear:
"You challenged the storm."
He crushed her windpipe in an instant,
flinging her body into the oncoming attacks of the others.
The arena shook.
Spectators howled.
The Guild Masters leaned forward —
no longer smiling.
No longer certain.
The third and fourth Monarch Candidates combined their powers,
creating a fusion storm of metal spikes and venomous abyssal mist.
It should have been unstoppable.
It should have ended the fight.
Asura walked through it.
His Worldbreaker Aura detonated outward —
a pulse of pure authority that shredded the mist,
corroded the metal,
and obliterated the minds of weaker spectators.
Dozens fell screaming from the terraces,
their souls unable to endure the presence of a true Sovereign.
He reached the twin attackers.
A snap of the wrist.
A fracture of the skull.
Two more corpses cooling on the black sand.
Only one Monarch Candidate remained now —
the clever one, the cautious one.
He knelt, trembling,
Sigil power leaking uncontrollably from every pore.
He knew.
He had already lost.
Asura walked toward him slowly.
Each step echoed like the tolling of a funeral bell.
The man raised his hands desperately.
"Wait—!" he choked. "We were only following orders—!"
Asura stared at him.
At the fear.
At the weakness.
At the betrayal.
He raised a single finger.
And spoke one word:
"Fall."
The Dominion Sigil activated.
The man's heart imploded.
He died still kneeling.
Still begging.
Still forgotten.
Silence.
Crushing.
Total.
Final.
Asura stood alone in the arena,
the corpses of Monarch Candidates scattered like broken dolls around him.
Thousands of eyes watched.
Thousands of minds broke.
And one truth seared itself into the fabric of the world:
There would be no new King crowned today.
Because the true King had already risen.
And he did not kneel.
The System, struggling to process the magnitude of what had happened, flashed a single message:
[New Title Unlocked: Abyss King Ascendant.]
[Status Update: Total Threat Level — UNCLASSIFIABLE.]
Asura turned his gaze to the trembling Guild Masters watching from the shadows.
No words.
No declarations.
Only a slow, deliberate gesture.
A hand sweeping across the sky —
from east to west.
From sea to sky.
From the world they knew…
to the world he would tear apart.
A silent promise:
"You are next."