Chapter 107: Chapter 107: Royal Rumble – Part 4

The Royal Arena, which had long been a place of enjoyment for the Royals and nobles, had been quiet for a while now.

The entire arena, capable of holding thousands of guests, was empty.

However, the topmost platform was filled with a crowd of nobles as they followed King Magnus and Queen Eleanora.

The subject of their curiosity was naturally the duel between Adonis, the Rising Star of the Royal Academy, and Alina Harbinger, the Royal Executioner.

Just from their titles alone, the winner already seemed decided.

Alina had been working as Royal Executioner for years, doing the King’s dirty work that others could not. She was extremely merciless behind that beautiful facade.

The moment these two stood opposite each other, even the very air turned frigid.

Alina looked at Adonis’s Chaos, which had been buzzing with chaotic purple energy until now.

Meanwhile, her Soul Weapon was a rusty old iron dagger, emitting a chilling dark energy around it. The very light seemed to be getting sucked into the dagger itself.

This dagger eerily resembled Millia’s Darkness Blade. To say her talent was not ordinary would be an understatement.

Adonis took her seriously. And that is why he summoned his Soul Sword from the very beginning.

“That sword of yours, it feels very unstable. Do you even know how to control it?” she asked calmly, completely indifferent to the tense atmosphere.

It was as if she was here for a stroll, nothing else.

“I can,” Adonis replied, also maintaining his composure. “After all, it is a part of me.”

“Oh really?” She did not seem convinced. “What do you call it?”

“Her name is Vexa, and yes, she is a little bit naughty,” he replied, smiling.

< Ah, that is so mean, Master. Vexa is very obedient > Vexa said internally.

Meanwhile, Alina raised an eyebrow. “Vexa… Even the name sounds chaotic. But are you sure you can hold me off for two minutes without dying? I will not show you any mercy, you know that?”

Adonis fixed his stance. “I know. But you do not know me.”

Just as Alina was about to speak again,

“Begin!” the King’s voice rumbled across the massive arena, reverberating against the tall stone walls.

The King had given his order, and thus Alina moved almost immediately.

Swoosh!

In one fraction of a second she was there, and in the next moment she was already smirking at his face.

Adonis was frozen with shock.

She was fast. Too fast.

Not a single muscle in his entire being had been able to react against her impossible speed.

Splash!

A thin line of crimson opened across Adonis’s cheek before he even registered that she had moved.

“Slash!” Then his shoulder.

Then his side.

Each cut was clean, placed with the cold practiced efficiency of someone who had spent years learning exactly where to strike to maximize suffering without immediately ending a life.

Alina moved between each attack like smoke passing through a cracked door, there and gone before the eye could follow, her rusty iron dagger drinking in the light around it as dark energy rippled outward from each slash.

Adonis staggered backward.

It was the first time in a long while that his body had been forced backward by someone else’s hand.

As the blood dripped onto stone ground, he felt searing pain from all the cuts from his body.

He tried to knit the wounds together, but the dagger had infused darkness energy, which blocked his body’s recivery function temporarily.

The blood continued to pour down, bring him sense of dizziness.

Nonetheless, before he could die of bloodless, he channeled his own chaos energy to neutralise the corruption.

Vexa buzzed in his grip, agitated.

“Master, let me out.” she urged internally. “Let me out properly.”

Adonis said nothing. His golden eyes tracked Alina’s movement as best they could, which was not well enough. Not yet.

She appeared to his left.

Splash.

Another cut, this one across the back of his forearm as he raised it instinctively.

“Argh~” he groaned painfully.

The impact sent a shockwave of dark energy crawling up his arm like frost spreading across glass, numbing the limb from the elbow down for a brief, terrifying moment.

He dropped to one knee.

The arena was absolutely silent.

Up on the topmost platform, not a single noble spoke. Not a single whisper passed between them.

They watched with the wide, stunned eyes of people witnessing something they had expected to be a formality rapidly reveal itself as something far more brutal.

Beside King Magnus, Queen Eleanora sat with her fingers locked tightly together in her lap, her expression composed in the careful, practiced way of a queen who had learned long ago not to let a court full of watching eyes see her flinch.

And then there was Mariana.

She stood at the railing of the platform with both hands gripping the stone balustrade, her knuckles pale, her pink hair stirring in the cold arena air. She had not looked away from the moment the first cut appeared on his cheek. She had told herself she would not react. She had told herself he was strong, that he knew what he was doing, that two minutes was two minutes and he would endure it.

She had told herself all of that.

But watching the blood soak through his robe, watching him drop to one knee on that cold stone floor with four separate wounds bleeding freely, watching Alina Harbinger circle him with that serene, merciless expression as though she were simply finishing a task she had started, something inside Mariana’s chest cracked open in a way she could not hold shut.

Her eyes burned.

Then the tears came, quiet and unstoppable, sliding down her cheeks one after another as she gripped the railing tighter and bit the inside of her lip hard enough to ache.

“Adonis, stand up. You’re my husband, you cannot be defeated. Never.”

Everyone who were watching heard her clearly. But none said anything.

Even Claudia said nothing. Her teeth were clenched tight as her eyes fixed on the arena floor below, her hand resting on the hilt of her blade in the involuntary grip of someone physically restraining themselves from acting.

Down in the arena, Alina came to a stop a few meters away from Adonis’s kneeling figure and regarded him with that same indifferent expression she had worn since the beginning.

Not triumphant. Not cruel for the sake of cruelty.

Simply professional.

“1 minute and 40 seconds remaining,” she said quietly, almost gently. “You are already bleeding from four places. Your left arm is partially numb from the dark energy transfer.”

She tilted her head.

“You should consider giving up.”

Adonis raised his head slowly and looked at her through the blood trailing from the cut on his cheek.

His lips curled into a sadistic smile.

“HAHAHA…”

The laugh was loud enough to reach everyone’s ears.

They were shocked to see the manic smile spreading across Adonis’s face.

“Give up? We have barely even started.”

As Alina narrowed her eyes into slits out of caution, Adonis did something no one could perceive.

From the Attribute Bank where his one thousand attribute points were stored, he finally began to distribute them.

But this time, he did not distribute them across all categories.

He assigned them precisely where he was lacking in this very moment.

[ Strength: 584 (+400) ]

[ Agility: 683 (+500) ]

[ Intelligence: 280 (+100) ]

How would the battle turn out now?

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