The Tenth Floor's Colosseum (2)

[You have completed the Eighteenth Round]

Nox stood over piles upon piles of corpses of beast, some were charred, some sliced, while a few others left nothing except bones behind.

He took deep, calm breaths, not out of exhaustion, but out of surprise.

The majority of the crowd wore a wide grin on their faces. They actually enjoyed him slaughtering the hundreds of beasts.

People enjoy bloodshed.

It was a true fact. In the Tower as well as on Earth, no matter how much anyone would try to hide it, it was an unchanging fact.

"I'll do what I need to," Menace mumbled, flicking his wrist, making all the blood fly off from his sword.

[The Nineteenth Round will be initiated]

The corpses all faded away, leaving behind only bloodstains on the barren battleground.

The two moons had taken their place high up in the star filled sky by now.

All of a sudden, the pleasant night air grew dry and chilly. Most of the people were confused, while a handful of the ones sitting in the towers –the ones who had seen players challenge the nineteenth level– looked eagerly at Menace.

At the centre of the arena, the air crackled, as black sparks appeared following it. A small ball formed in the middle of the arena, which kept on spinning around like a spinning-top in the air.

In the matter of a few seconds, the ball compressed itself, changing its size from that of a basketball to smaller than that of a ping pong ball.

The air was filled with small black sparks, barely visible in the moonlit night. But, the sparks stopped. So did the spinning.

It was as if the world itself had come to a standstill for a moment.

Unfortunately, the Tower couldn't allow such peace to exist longer than a fleeting moment.

The ball shrunk down further, before finally bursting, making the mud on the ground fly around.

What it left behind was a veil of darkness, at the centre of the colosseum. The veil was more like a sheet of paper, darker than the darkest shade of black. It was almost twenty feet tall and ten feet wide, resembling some sort of a portal.

Through the black portal, a leg, covered in metal plates of armour, emerged, sinking into the hard ground beneath it.

Following the leg, the rest of the body slowly materialised, gradually revealing itself from the veil of darkness. Only a single skeletal hand remained extended behind it, still grasping at the remnants of the portal.

A cold shiver ran through the spines of all the players present in the colosseum, irrespective of what level they were. The high levelled players were quick to compose themselves, unlike the others, who shook in sheer terror.

What had just emerged from the portal, had no skin, nor any muscles. It was a huge skeleton, with plates of thick, black metal armour all over its body.

Its skull wasn't covered with any armour or even a piece of clothing. The hollow eyes with which he gazed emptily at the ground emitted a strange green light.

Its body was barely visible under the layers of armour it wore, except for its torso, which didn't have a single piece of metal covering it, displaying a part of its muddy backbone and huge ribs.

It was a few feet taller than Menace and with a much broader frame, it looked almost double the size of the man's fit build.

An ancient leather belt clung to its waist, worn and on the verge of disintegration. Massive black iron gauntlets adorned its forearms, stopping just short of its wrist, leaving its claw-like fingers exposed. Its legs were clad in massive iron boots, adorned with intricate designs and engravings.

Pieces of some kind of blood-soaked cloth, was stuck on a few places all around its body, covering some parts, which its armour didn't.

Not a single person had expected sometime like it to come out of the portal, on merely the tenth floor. Almost no one physically present in the colosseum had seen it appear in the trial, since hundreds of years had passed since anyone challenged the nineteenth round.

What had just emerged from the portal, was a being few encountered in their climb of the Tower. The ones who did encounter it seldom spoke of it.

It was one of the underworld's highest-grade minions, almost on par with a few of the creatures who ruled the underworld. In the entirety of the Tower, there was only a single being it obeyed… the True Ruler of the underworld.

[Death Knight]

It slowly moved forwards, with a bent back and slumped shoulders. The hand that had emerged from the portal clutched the wide hilt of a giant sword, which the monstrous being dragged behind it on the ground, leaving a deep, ominous trail in its wake.

At the bottom of the hilt, where the blade met the handle, a small black skull with a gaping mouth and curved, pointy horns was attached, adding a sinister touch to the already foreboding weapon.

The edges of the massive black blade were chipped almost everywhere. Even though it had long lost its sharpness, just a gaze upon it induced fear in the hearts of any being.

This gargantuan weapon dwarfed anything Menace had ever laid his eyes upon. It surpassed even the hulking piece of metal that Lobo, the beastman, carried around.

The air grew colder and thicker with each slow step that the monster took towards Menace. The ground under his feet, which could stay firm under the weight of hundreds of beasts, sunk down whenever he placed his feet over it.

Menace stared at the monster, not daring to blink even for a moment in front of the being who walked towards him.

He slid his feet behind him and lowered his hips, bending his body towards the monster. Pointing his sword at the ground behind him, he waited for his opponent to make his first move.

The death knight stopped, coming to a stand still. With a very slow movement, he raised his head to face Nox.

The air around it sparked and crackled as it raised an open palm toward him.

A small ball of dark arcane started swirling in the air in front of its open palm. With each passing moment, the air was filled with more and more sparks of every colour, representing the different attributes of arcane.

All of a sudden, the ball disappeared, as well did the sparks.

[A higher level entity *Death Knight* has been detected on a lower floor]

[All of the skills of the monster *Death Knight* have been sealed]

[All of the stats of the monster *Death Knight* have been partially reduced]

"The Tower isn't equal, but the Tower is fair," mumbled the trial's conductor, Xangril, looking down at the ground from atop one of the four towers.

Confused, the monster looked at its own palm, bedazzled as to why its skill did not work.

'This is my chance!' internally exclaimed Nox, launching himself at the monster, who still looked wide eyed at its own hand.

Reaching in front of the knight in under a few seconds, he swung his sword at its neck with full force.

The monster was heavy, so heavy that its feet sunk to the ground with every step he took. Every single movement it has made upto now was incredibly slow and left almost his entire body full of openings.

At least… that's what Nox had been able to deduce.

What met his blade, was not the monster's armour, nor was it the skeleton inside the armour, but thin air.

Menace's eyes widened as he glared at the place where the death knight stood just an instant ago. His arm was still extended in the air, floating due to the slash's momentum.

His spine instinctively straightened as he felt a cold shiver passing through it, as if freezing water had been poured directly over his bones.

As he looked down, he saw the shadow of the massive skeletal being stretching over him, enveloping him in darkness. Its elongated hands seemed to reach out from the abyss, extending far beyond his own height, casting an ominous and intimidating presence.

From the tips of its bony fingers, a long, thin, and sinister dark shadow emerged, like an extension of the monster's malevolence itself. The shadow seemed to dance and sway, almost as if it had a life of its own, adding an eerie and unsettling dimension to the already foreboding sight.

Gritting his teeth, Menace charged all his arcane into his feet, before discharging it all to the ground, launching himself forward.

He rolled on the muddy ground a few times before swiftly getting back on his feet and turning to face the skeletal monster.

Baaam!!!!!

The spot where he was standing just moments ago exploded, on impact with the minister's sword.

Mud flew all around the field and the only thing visible beyond it was the monster's vague figure and the cyan glow that one of its eyes emitted.

There was a reason almost nobody was able to reach past the nineteenth round in the colosseum's trial, in centuries.

If the eighteenth round depended on the sheer number of monsters to overwhelm the challenger, the nineteenth round compressed the prowess of all the beasts of the eighteenth round, into a single, over powered, monster.

Gripping tightly on his sword, he exhaled a deep breath, re-composing himself.

Even though he was stronger than the rest of the players around him, he still wasn't strong enough. He needed to get stronger. So strong that no being or object would be a hassle in his path towards his parents.

"Yong," he called out, "Kenichi."

He didn't wish to show his shadow soldiers in front of a large audience, yet.

Since he had already used them on the zeroth floor to free the slaves, although he had made sure that no one would notice them… it wouldn't take long for the people to link his identities due to the rarity of the skills he used.

In due time, he 'needed' to take some time off and decide on which skills to use while the people were looking and while they weren't.

The shadow behind him, formed by the bright white light of the two moons, stretched out, as two figures slowly emerged out of it.

{Author's Note: I Plan to do a Q&A section one reaching chapter One Hundred! Please do leave your questions below, no matter what they may be.}