The king of the basilisk flame

Watching over each of the so-called champions actions, Ignosi gathered information on the situation of the world, the main antagonists or the people that seemed to be wrecking even further havoc in this broken lands were, not much really.

One of the champions had already been crushed by one of them and unlike the people, the champions truly died, their souls sent away as they proved their unworthiness by being felled.

As for the peculiar newcomer, he was progressing very fast, his level increased quickly and he developped abilities at a neck breaking speed.

'Not only can you still do it, you can do it at this extent' thought the mage as he looked up.

"Mmh?" he let out a sound as he noticed another champion had died, split in half after being pierced by an enormous crab's pincer.

The fauna had truly stopped following any sense of logic or order, all creatures had evolved to become predators, no herbivores remained at all despite the presence of food for them.

Their form had evolved in crooked ways, they functioned but all creatures seemed plagued with difformities, some had lost limbs, some had developped unadapted respiratory systems and other had simply turned into short-lived abominations much like some of these antagonists that seemed to be the best way to earn the will's attention and be considered worthy.

Among the many that he had located, Ignosi only considered five of them to even be remotely threatening enough that defeating them would be impressive.

Monitoring the situation for a long time, Ignosi saw many champions die trying to earn the will's attention and many others giving up on it, the few that remained were Ignosi, the young man, the female champion that seemed to follow all of Ignosi's word and others who could hardly be seen as attempting to do anything.

Those last ones had resorted to simply helping the accursed populace, a sneaky way of simply giving up and since the stone armored champion was nothing more than Ignosi's minion, only the him and the young man remained.

And today, it seemed like the young man was going to prove himself to the great hall as he had infiltrated the castle of one of the five antagonists.

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The young man took a small break after defeating a group of soldiers, he was wearing a very basic set of armor and using a stone club as his main weapon.

He advanced toward a large door, which, just like the rest of this castle was decrepit and lacking any majesty, he pushed it open, the wood creaked and cracked as he did so and on the other side, smashing his own head against the floor while muttering something was the owner of said castle.

"Worthy, worthy, worthy, worthy, worthy, worthy! I am worthy! I am the most worthy of all! I am the king of the basilisk flame! Worthy, worthy, worth-" the mad man suddenly stopped raising his bleeding head to look at the intruder.

"Ahahah, one of you, again, you come meet your end" loudly exclaimed the man, standing up.

The man looked dead, his body was skinny, his face was one of an old man contorted in both anger and joy, his teeth black for the few that were left, his skin expulsed pus constantly, his few hair were long and grey just like his beard.

However the man was still extremely tall, two and half meter tall with one arm reaching down to the ground and the other of normal size.

A shiny crown rested upon his head and his clothes, despite being dirty and torn, were still recognisable as nobility clothes.

"Your kind, coming all the way here, like pigs to the slaughter, believing that you are even a match, FOR ME! You believe you are worthy?! I AM! not you!" the man speech was messed up.

He picked up an oversized sword with his elongated arm, the sword erupted in a grey flame as he held it.

"I AM THE KING OF THE BASILISK FLAME!" he said once more, crashing the sword into the ground and sending it all around the area.

The young man leaped in the air evading the flames and landed right on the mad man's shoulders and smashed the club right in the back of the man's head before leaping away once more as he erupted in grey flames.

"AAAAAAAAHHH" the man yelled like a beast as he swung his sword above his head, creating a tornado of grey flames, he then swung it at the young man, sending slashes of flame.

The champion ran around the man at a distance to avoid them and when he ended up behind him, stomped his left foot, making a piece of the earth jump out of the ground before propulsing it with a hit of his club.

The crazy man was unaffected by it as the moment it entered in contact with the grey flame, the earth turned to stone, lost its velocity and fell down.

"USELESS!" shouted the king of the basilisk flame as he turned around and once more swung his enormous sword at the champion.

Since the tornado had dissipated, the champion went in close, dodging the slash by sliding on the ground and directly hit the crazed man's wrist, he cried out in pain and the young man took this opportunity to stomp on the man's wrist he had just striked, pinning it to the ground and started hammering it repeatedly until it broke, forcing him to ket go of his sword.

"AAH, GNAH, TRUAAAA" the man's pained screams were horrifying to hear.

The champion raised his weapon and prepared to give the same treatment to the man's head.

"Wait, no, no, no, no, no!!!!! I can not die like this! I am the king of the basilisk flame! I am worthy! Th most worthy of all!!!" said the man as he breathed erratically, however the champion still brought his weapon down.

Ignosi saw all of this happen, clearly, this 'king' only got his power from the sword and nothing else, the fire he had used was powerful but he had failed to make good use of it.

He also clearly was completely mad, lost in delusions, the fight could have easily been ended at the very start when he had been speaking while completely defenseless, the fact that champions had died to this failure said a lot about them.

The Ever-Seeking shook his head, now the young man would come back to get access to the great hall in its full capacity.

Ignosi spoke a few words inside of his subordinate's head, ordering her something, he wasn't expecting much but it had to be tested.