Gasp.
He woke up once more, clenching his fists as he glanced at the rings of gleaming metal above him. Two glowing slits mocked him, burning like the red flames of the towering Olympic torches.
This was bullshit.
He moved again, his body already launching toward the Antare representing the Herald of Strength. Its attacks came in relentless waves, each strike aiming to reduce him to nothing. He dodged—not through supernatural foresight, but raw instinct, reading the minuscule shifts in its form, the micro-movements that telegraphed each blow. It was like predicting a gunner's shot by watching the angle of their wrist, the squeeze of the trigger.
Exhausting. Like racing a minivan against a Formula 1 car.
Through sheer effort, he managed to crack its armor. Just a hairline fracture. These things were too tough. Far too tough.
It was like trying to punch through the walls of a vault. Like a gentle stream breaking stone over centuries.
But if a rock shatters on the fiftieth strike, does that mean the first forty-nine didn't matter? No. Each blow weakens the foundation, making the final impact inevitable. The thought crystallized as his mangled fist slammed into that fracture, his knee severing its leg as he dashed past.
The other Antare converged.
Long-range attacks exploded where he had been a moment before. He reached the immobile, damaged statue—his prize. The gold emblem on Onslaught's fist gleamed, a prize within reach.
Then, a giant glaive split him in two.
Dodging was as pointless as trying to evade a sniper's bullet.
—Death counter: 3—
Again.
Again.
He returned to his designated rebirth point. No indicator of time. No way to measure how long this had lasted. The counter was his only reference. The slits of light above glowed like the landing lights of a runway, painting half the arena in crimson hues.
He knew exactly how many times he had perished.
His perfect memory replayed every death in gruesome clarity.
Only two of the fifteen emblems had been returned.
The arena floor was a graveyard—thousands of brutalized corpses, unrecognizable heaps of charred flesh, split faces, mangled limbs, and dead eyes. Each mound of viscera was his own. Each twisted body a remnant of his futile struggle.
Why wouldn't they just die?
Lunacy flickered in his eyes. Norvanite seeped from his wounds, glowing white-hot as he embraced new, suicidal tactics. He became a living bomb. If he always came back, then why not obliterate himself every time?
In one attempt, he tore the hand from the Tribunal-class Antare, Absalom.
In the next, Chileab and Ammon shredded him apart.
And yet, when he respawned, the hand was back. The Antare were whole again.
Mocking him.
His sacrifice meant nothing.
This was endless. They weren't just undying—they were stronger. Each of his deaths fed them. Their glowing emblems pulsed with power, their size increasing, their armor blackening. They crushed his corpses underfoot, each one bursting like a spoiled milk packet, and turned to him at the spawn point.
He needed their cores to restore Jura's representation.
Without them, this torment would last forever.
He tried. He failed.
They battered him down, over and over. Blood pooled at his feet, then rose to his knees. A sea of his own remains. The stench of iron choked the air. His body was smote by the Antare of Perception, annihilated in an explosion of blinding faux-holy light.
His remains crashed through the coliseum pillars, pulverizing ancient metal walls. The structure cracked. Then shattered.
Then detonated under the sheer force of his evisceration.
The Herald of Space ripped him apart inside and out.
Again.
Again.
Again.
He woke up angrier than he had ever been.
Weakness. His weakness. His failure.
He rose from the ocean of blood.
Steam hissed from his skin, his breath ragged. His hands twitched. Something inside him broke.
"I have been unmade before. Reduced to base components. Torn apart until only the function of my existence remained. I have been killed, and I have come back. You think this means something to me?"
His voice was hollow.
"Despair is a luxury. Hope is a disease. I have no need for either."
A pause. His pupils shrank to pinpricks.
"I am what remains when pain ceases to mean anything. I am what is left when suffering is the only constant. I am not lost. I am not broken. I am not weak. Even without my stockpile, I have damaged you."
His teeth clenched, blood oozing from the corners of his mouth. The weight of everything bore down on him.
"My stockpile. My harvest. Reduced to nothing. But freedom is all I want. All I need. The world is shit. All of this is shit. No one is free in this damned system—enslaved by fear."
His eyes narrowed.
"The way I see it, only the strongest survive. If overwhelming every being that oppresses me is the only way, then I will usurp them. I will erase them with my body itself."
The words were final.
The Antare attacked.
A strike hit home, launching him into the air. He watched his own blood spray, his hand sparking.
A cyan glow dripped into the blood below.
A spark.
A flicker.
It grew. More violent. More chaotic. Then, an explosion of pure energy.
Critical Fusion.
The technique he had never thought he'd use again.
He had reached his false ascension state, Amber, once before. That required the highest biome, Lux-en-Tenebris, to fuel it. But now—now he was doing it with nothing but himself.
The death counter flickered.
9999974234.
Time slowed within Darium.
The Antare recoiled as an overwhelming force radiated from his body. Their imposing forms stumbled back, their glowing emblems flickering in uncertainty.
Arc's silver-bloodied eyes burned white. His form destabilized as he landed in the ocean of his own blood.
A shockwave detonated outward, fueled by the very essence of his suffering. The depression in the blood grew deeper, feeding on itself. The world pulsed.
The Herald of Strength loomed over him. Onslaught prepared to strike.
Arc's fist shattered its upper body in a single blow. The sheer force turned the massive construct to dust.
His voice echoed across the ruined battlefield.
"And I will function until you are nothing!"