Chapter 019
1638 Words
As the battle cry shattered the remaining silence, eighty-one recruits of the Shadow Eagle Clan surged forward.
They were no longer men; they were wolves. The sight of Marcus Grady’s blinding speed and Rex Dalton’s terrifying brutality had awakened something primal within them. Their eyes, tinged with a faint, fanatical red, mirrored the Bloodlust of their commanders. They charged not out of duty, but out of a desperate, starving hunger for glory.
The remnants of Radiance, Umbrage, and Astra blocks—now leaderless and broken—took an involuntary step back.
Despair washed over them like a cold tide. Their champions—Silas, Julian Vane, Adrian Starr—were dead. Their heads were rolling on the grass. Even if they managed to fight off this wave of eighty-one maniacs, what then? Behind them stood the Blood Eagle and his inner circle, monsters who had dismantled their strongest fighters in seconds without breaking a sweat.
Resistance was futile. It was just a matter of delaying the inevitable execution by minutes.
From the sidelines, Julian Cross watched with cold indifference. In his eyes, an enemy without the will to fight was already dead. They were just meat waiting for the butcher.
Meanwhile, amidst the chaos of the charge, Dante, acting on a subtle signal from Marcus, detached himself from the main group. He didn't join the s*******r. Instead, he walked calmly, almost casually, toward the far side of the field.
His target was sitting on the bench, staring blankly at the ground. It was Lucas Bright, the "Duke" of Radiance Block.
The prisoners rushing past ignored him. Even Lucas’s own men didn't move to intercept Dante. Perhaps they were too busy trying to survive. Perhaps they knew it was over. Or perhaps they felt that death was a mercy for a king who had lost his crown. At least in death, Lucas wouldn't have to endure the mockery of the victors.
Dante stopped in front of the fallen leader. Lucas didn't look up. He seemed lost in a reverie, perhaps wondering how an empire he built over years could crumble in ten seconds.
A complex smile touched Dante’s lips. It was a strange twist of fate. Who would have thought that the second most powerful warlord in the East Wing would meet his end at the hands of a man named "Short Blade"?
Tides rise, tides fall, Dante thought. Empires are built on sand.
No one pities the loser. History only remembers the conqueror.
Dante moved behind Lucas. He placed his hands gently, almost tenderly, on Lucas’s chin and the back of his head.
CRACK.
It was a sharp, clean sound.
Lucas Bright slumped forward, his neck snapped. He slid off the bench and onto the grass, dead before he hit the ground. That singular, crisp sound was the final cannon shot signaling the end of his era.
Across the field, Julian, Rex, Jackson, and Marcus watched the execution without expression. They turned their backs on the m******e and walked toward the exit gates. The war was over. The cleanup was just a formality.
The s*******r continued for another thirty minutes. By the time the dust settled, the "football field" was a landscape of corpses and severed limbs, adding another layer of crimson history to the soil of The Purgatory.
There were no victory speeches. No parades. Under the watchful eyes of a thousand machine-g*n-toting guards, the inmates of the four blocks filed back to their cages in silence.
Terra Block, Fourth Floor.
When Brandon returned to his cell, he found the heavy iron door already unlocked.
Sitting on his bunk, legs crossed, looking as comfortable as a man in his own living room, was an uninvited guest.
Brandon’s men bristled instantly. They clenched their fists, their eyes darting nervously at the intruder.
Brandon raised a hand, signaling them to stand down. His voice was deep, rumbling like distant thunder.
"Rex Dalton," Brandon said. "What are you doing in Terra Block?"
Rex glanced up, a lazy, predatory grin on his face. "Come in. Let’s talk. If you're scared, bring your boys in too. I don't mind."
Brandon stared at him. For a full five minutes, silence stretched between them. Brandon was a mountain of a man, known for his brute strength, but he wasn't stupid. You didn't survive as a block leader for this long without a sharp mind behind the muscle.
He made a decision.
"Get out," Brandon ordered his men, his voice brokering no argument. "Clear the entire fourth floor. No one steps foot on this level without my permission. If anyone disobeys, I’ll break them myself."
His lieutenants hesitated, exchanging worried glances, but the look in Brandon’s eyes sent them scurrying. They filed out, leaving the two titans alone.
Brandon walked into the cell. Rex hopped off the bunk, his eyes glowing with that familiar, dangerous red light.
"You don't look like you're here to accept my surrender," Brandon said, stopping ten paces away.
Rex licked his lips. "Strictly speaking, The Eagle sent me to see if you were worth recruiting. He thinks you have potential. He wants you. But the condition is absolute, unquestioning loyalty. No second thoughts. No ambition. So… whether I 'persuade' you or not is up to me."
Brandon scoffed. "The Eagle wants to recruit me, but you want to kill me. Isn't that insubordination? Isn't that… having 'second thoughts'?"
"Heh. Don't try to play word games with me, Brandon," Rex chuckled darkly. "But since you're about to die, I’ll tell you why. I don't trust you. I don't believe a former king can ever truly serve another. I don't want a ticking time bomb standing next to The Eagle. And frankly… I don't think I can control you."
Rex cracked his neck. "But, I’m a generous god. I’ll give you a chance. Fight me. This time, no holding back. I’m going all out. If you survive, I’ll let you join the Shadow Eagle Clan. But let’s be honest… the odds are zero."
Brandon looked at him wearily. "Is there any point?"
Rex didn't answer with words. He laughed—a low, guttural sound. He dropped into a stance, one hand hooked forward, the other raised to his chest. It looked casual, almost sloppy, but the air around him instantly grew heavy. The Bloodlust was suffocating. There was a strange, almost religious intensity to his posture.
Brandon took a deep breath, centering himself. He raised his fists.
Then, Rex moved.
He didn't charge. He began to step. His feet moved in a strange, rhythmic pattern, a hypnotic cadence that seemed to distort the space around him. He wasn't running; he was gliding. Afterimages trailed behind him, creating a ghostly blur.
Just as Brandon frowned, trying to track the movement, Rex exploded.
He covered the ten paces in a heartbeat. His body seemed to vibrate, swaying left and right like a pendulum, making it impossible to predict his angle of attack.
"The Sledgehammer!"
Rex roared the name of the technique as he arrived. His palms struck out in a flurry, vibrating with devastating, penetrative force. They slammed toward Brandon’s chest like cannonballs.
Brandon’s heart hammered against his ribs. The attack was overwhelming, but he fell back on his core philosophy: One force to subdue ten skills.
He didn't retreat. He met force with force. He threw two massive haymakers, punches that could punch through drywall, aiming to crush the incoming palms.
But the palms weren't there.
The images in Brandon’s brain—the trajectory he had calculated—were illusions. Rex’s hands ghosted past his defenses.
THUD. THUD.
It felt like being hit by a battering ram. Brandon gagged, spitting a spray of blood as the impact rattled his skeleton. His two-hundred-pound frame was blasted backward, slamming into the iron bars of the cell door.
CLANG.
The bars groaned and bent under the impact.
Rex was relentless. He followed up instantly, launching a sweeping kick.
Brandon, his survival instincts screaming, didn't try to block. He threw his elbows back, smashing them into the bars behind him to propel himself forward and sideways, narrowly dodging the kick.
But there was no escape. Rex was a storm. He leaped and danced, his legs moving in a blur of Advanced Kick Technique. He was utilizing the Shadowless Kick—a variant of the Shaolin style he had modified for pure lethality. The kicks came from everywhere: high, low, hooking, spinning.
Brandon, disoriented and wounded, was forced into a corner. He raised his massive arms, blocking blow after blow. His forearms, usually as hard as iron, began to bruise and split open under the barrage. He gasped for air, blood leaking from his gums, his face twisted in a rictus of exertion.
He was a power fighter. Against Rex’s blinding speed and relentless aggression, he was a statue being chipped away by a jackhammer.
Finally, Rex launched another vicious roundhouse kick.
Brandon, operating on pure reflex, raised his shredded arms to block it.
But it was a feint.
Rex’s leg stopped in mid-air, a physics-defying halt. He retracted the limb and stomped it against the metal frame of the bed, using it as a springboard.
He launched himself straight up. He was directly above Brandon now.
With a roar that shook the cell, Rex coiled his right leg tight against his chest and then snapped it down. It was a piston of destruction.
CRUNCH.
The toe of his boot drove into Brandon’s chest, right over the heart.
The sound was sickening—the cracking of the sternum, the pulping of the organ beneath.
Brandon’s eyes went wide. He slumped against the wall, sliding down slowly until he hit the floor.
Less than an hour after Lucas Bright, another warlord of the East Wing lay dead.
The song of death played on, its melody echoing through the concrete halls.
- Writer
