The Imperial Academy.The Grand Coliseum - Subterranean Staging Pits.10:45 AM.
After the deafening, earth-shaking clashes of the first three brackets had finally concluded, leaving the arena sand scorched and cratered, it was officially time for Bracket Four.
Rudeus sat in the suffocating gloom of the subterranean waiting room. The air down here was thick, smelling heavily of iron rust, stale sweat, and the pungent, unmistakable pheromones of adolescent fear.
He was sitting on a wooden bench, methodically, tightly strapping his fists and wrists with heavy linen cloth. He pulled the wraps taut, ensuring his knuckles were heavily padded to prevent his own bones from shattering upon impact.
He was currently wearing the Academy's standard-issue, cheap black iron armor. Because this was technically an official, graded practical examination meant to test raw skill rather than financial backing, the faculty explicitly forbade the use of personal, highly enchanted family heirlooms. They provided these standardized, bulky, entirely unenchanted iron sets to ensure a baseline level of fairness. There were absolutely no exceptions to this rule—even if you were a high noble, a scion of a Grand Duke, or royalty.
-STRAP!
Rudeus pulled the final linen binding tight with his teeth, tying it off with a sharp yank.
-STRAP!
He flexed his hands, feeling the circulation constrict slightly. Perfect.
-STRAP!
After completely securing his hands, Rudeus stood up. The cheap black iron plates clanked clumsily against each other. It was an incredibly heavy, poorly balanced set of armor that severely restricted lateral movement. For an amateur, it was a death trap. But for a Vanguard Captain who had fought in gravity-wells, it was merely an annoying, temporary handicap.
He reached down, his leather-gloved fingers brushing against the cold, heavy iron head of the Six-Flanged War Mace resting snugly in the leather loop on his left waist. The weapon felt like a natural extension of his own arm.
Finally, he picked up the heavy black iron helmet.
Before putting it on, his crimson eyes dropped to the center of the iron breastplate. Stamped into the cheap metal, painted in a dull, chipping silver, was the roaring dragon crest that officially represented the Blackfyre Duchy.
Rudeus stared at the crest, his jaw tightening until his teeth ground together.
'I absolutely hate this goddamn crest,' Rudeus said inwardly, a wave of profound, acidic disgust washing over his heart. 'It represents nothing but cowardice, abuse, and a legacy built on the broken backs of kidnapped women and tortured children. After I am done today, I will make sure this crest is associated with nothing but utter humiliation.'
He shoved the helmet onto his head, pulling the visor down. The world narrowed into a thin, rectangular slit of vision.
"Are you completely done preparing, Ser?"
A soft, hesitant voice broke through the ambient noise of the staging area.
Rudeus turned his head. Standing a few feet away was one of the Academy's designated field healers, wearing the white robes of the medical ward. The healer looked incredibly nervous, clutching a clipboard to his chest as he looked at the imposing, black-clad figure of the 'Defect'.
Rudeus didn't reply verbally. He simply offered a single, sharp nod of his heavy helmet.
"Very well..." the healer swallowed hard, nodding back. He took a step backward toward the exit tunnel.
"I... I hope you have good luck out there, Ser."
Rudeus stopped, turning his visor fully toward the trembling medic. He stared at the man in absolute silence for three seconds, offering another, slower nod of acknowledgment before turning toward the heavy iron portcullis leading up to the arena.
'Good luck?' Rudeus mocked inwardly, a dark, incredibly cold smirk forming behind the iron mask. 'You really should save your breath and say that to the legitimate heir. Because he is going to need a hell of a lot more than luck to survive what I am about to do to him.'
***
The Grand Coliseum - Main Arena.11:00 AM.
The Chief Arbiter stood in the dead center of the massive, sun-drenched arena, raising his enchanted amplification horn high into the air.
"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! ARE YOU EXCITED FOR THE HIGHLY ANTICIPATED FIRST ROUND OF BRACKET FOUR?!"
The response was a physical, deafening wall of sound. The crowds—comprised of the highest-ranking nobles draped in silk, the incredibly wealthy merchants dripping with gold, and the fortunate commoners packed tightly into the upper bleachers—screamed loudly enough to rattle the foundations of the Coliseum.
The Chief Arbiter nodded his head, offering a brilliant, showman's smile to the roaring masses.
"VERY WELL! WE SHALL NOT KEEP YOU WAITING!"
He spun around, pointing dramatically toward the eastern gates.
"IN THE RIGHT CORNER! HE IS ONE OF THE LEGITIMATE, PROUD SONS OF THE GRAND DUKE BLACKFYRE! HE IS WIDELY CONSIDERED TO BE ONE OF THE ABSOLUTE BEST, MOST NATURALLY GIFTED FIGHTERS OF THE ENTIRE FIRST-YEAR CLASS..."
The eastern portcullis shrieked as it was raised.
"I INTRODUCE TO YOUUUUUU....."
"AEMOND BLACKFYRE!!!!"
The crowd erupted into a massive, coordinated cheer, heavily led by the sycophantic noble factions looking to curry favor with the powerful Duchy of the North.
Aemond walked out into the glaring sunlight of the arena. Unlike Rudeus, Aemond was wearing a beautifully crafted, significantly lighter, and perfectly fitted set of silver-plated steel armor. It bore the exact same roaring dragon crest, but his was polished to a mirror shine. He held a standard, albeit high-quality, Academy broadsword in his right hand.
He walked to the center of his designated starting ring. He raised his sword to the crowd, basking in the adoration.
But beneath the shining silver helmet, Aemond's mood was absolutely nothing like the arrogant, untouchable superiority he always displayed to his family and his classmates.
He was not arrogant right now. He was entirely, profoundly terrified.
'Shit! Shit! Why the fuck am I in the very first round?!' Aemond screamed inwardly, his heart hammering a frantic, sickening rhythm against his ribs. Sweat was pouring down his face, stinging his icy grey eyes. 'Did someone actively trigger this matchup to happen early?! I swear i will completely butcher the bureaucratic assholes who rigged this schedule the second I get out of here... right after I kill that goddamn defect!'
Aemond's panic was deeply rooted in a catastrophic logistical failure.
He had fully expected to be seeded into the third or fourth round of the day. He had counted on it. Because he had been so incredibly careless and inherently arrogant, he hadn't even bothered to formulate a contingency plan if things went south.
His entire grand plan to humiliate and destroy Rudeus had been completely ruined. He had desperately needed the extra hours of the morning to finalize an illegal, back-alley transaction. He was supposed to meet with a smuggler to purchase a highly restricted, incredibly lethal abyssal artifact from the Capital's black market—a minor relic designed to paralyze an opponent's nervous system upon proximity. He had intended to use it to effortlessly beat his newly muscled brother without breaking a sweat.
But because he had been abruptly thrown into the very first round of the fourth bracket, his meticulously laid plans were entirely ruined. He didn't have the artifact. He didn't have any time to prepare. He only had a standard broadsword and his own magical core.
'Tsk! It doesn't matter!' Aemond lied to himself inwardly, desperately trying to artificially inflate his own crumbling ego. 'He is just a defect! A bastard! Muscles don't equate to magical talent! I am a pureblood! I will completely destroy him right here and now!!!'
The Chief Arbiter spun around, pointing his horn toward the dark, shadowed tunnel of the western gates.
"AND IN THE LEFT CORNER!"
The announcer's tone noticeably shifted. It lost its booming, complimentary reverence, taking on a slightly mocking, highly dramatic edge.
"A FIRST-YEAR STUDENT! A BASTARD SON OF GRAND DUKE RAEMOND! A BOY WIDELY KNOWN THROUGHOUT THE EMPIRE AS THE DEFECT! WILL THIS BE HIS ABSOLUTE LAST TIME TO PROVE TO THE WORLD THAT HE TRULY CARRIES the BLOOD OF A BLACKFYRE?"
The crowd did not cheer. Instead, a massive, echoing wave of jeers, boos, and condescending laughter rippled across the fifty thousand spectators.
"I INTRODUCE TO YOUUUUUUU....."
"RUDEUS MAXIMILIAN BLACKFYRE!!!!"
Up in the heavily shielded VIP Royal Box, Princess Veronica sat rigidly on the edge of her plush velvet seat.
She wasn't looking at the cheering crowds. She wasn't looking at her father. Her oceanic blue eyes were locked entirely onto the dark, open maw of the western gate.
She brought her gloved hands together, clasping them tightly against her chest, her knuckles turning white.
"Please win..." Veronica murmured under her breath, her voice trembling with an anxiety that had absolutely nothing to do with her royal reputation.
"Please win, Rudeus."
She wasn't just praying for him to win so she could fulfill her System Quest. After their brief, incredibly raw conversation on the bench earlier, after realizing the sheer magnitude of the abuse he had suffered... she genuinely, desperately didn't want to see him be humiliated and broken by the very sibling who had tortured him.
Down in the arena, heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed from the tunnel.
Rudeus walked out into the sunlight.
He didn't wave to the crowd. He didn't acknowledge the deafening boos raining down upon him. He simply marched forward in his bulky, cheap black iron armor, looking like an implacable executioner walking to the block.
He stepped into his designated starting ring, stopping exactly thirty feet away from Aemond.
Rudeus stared through the slit of his visor. Even from this distance, his enhanced, veteran perception could easily read the microscopic shifts in his opponent's body language. He saw the slight tremble in Aemond's sword arm. He saw the rapid, shallow rising and falling of his chest plate.
'Hmmmm....' Rudeus hummed inwardly, a dark, cruel amusement filling his soul.
'I bet my entire allowance that he is currently standing there, desperately trying to convince himself that he can still somehow magically beat me in a fair fight, huh?'
Rudeus slowly reached down to his left hip.
'He really, genuinely thinks he could? The delusion of the aristocracy is truly a bottomless pit. Listen here, little brother... even if you had managed to successfully buy that pathetic little abyssal artifact you were looking for on the black market... I would still absolutely, fundamentally beat your ass into a bloody pulp.'
With a slow, metallic scrape that echoed loudly in the tense silence of the arena floor, Rudeus unsheathed his Six-Flanged War Mace. He let the heavy iron head drop, resting it casually against the sand.
Up in the stands, the crowds were frantically starting to place their final, last-minute bets with the roaming bookmakers.
"Hey, who are you going to put your gold on for this round?" a wealthy, finely dressed noble asked, holding a velvet pouch of imperial coins.
"I'm gonna pick that green-haired guy. The bastard," his merchant friend replied, pulling out a massive stack of silver bills. "He seems incredibly physically strong. Look at the way he carries that heavy mace. That's not the posture of a victim."
The noble's jaw dropped in absolute disbelief. "Really?! Are you insane? You know that's the notorious 'Defect' of the Blackfyre Duchy, right? He has a crippled mana core! Aemond is going to slice him to ribbons in ten seconds flat!"
His merchant friend simply nodded, a shrewd, calculating glint in his eye. "I know the rumors. I know the odds are fifty-to-one against him. But I have a gut feeling. A very strong feeling that I am going to strike absolute luck today."
The merchant smiled widely as he unhesitatingly handed his entire stack of silver to the bookmaker, placing it all on Rudeus.
"Tsk. You are throwing your money into a fire," the noble sneered, shaking his head. "Just don't come crying to me to cover your carriage fare home when you inevitably lose your entire bet."
The noble, along with ninety-nine percent of the entire Coliseum, confidently bet their fortunes on Aemond's side. They were blinded by bloodlines. They knew that even if Rudeus had somehow miraculously changed his physical physique over the last few months, he still possessed absolutely zero practical combat experience, and his mana core was fundamentally inferior.
Or so they entirely, foolishly thought...
'Tsk. They really should not underestimate him,' Veronica said inwardly from the Royal Box, her nails digging painfully into the fabric of her dress.
She was incredibly worried about Rudeus. But her anxiety did not stem from a fear that he would lose and biologically humiliate her by association. She was terrified of seeing him physically hurt again by one of his monstrous siblings. She had seen the sheer, unyielding determination in his eyes earlier.
Without a second thought, Veronica had secretly dispatched one of her loyal attendants to the high-stakes royal bookmakers. She had bet a staggering portion of her personal royal treasury entirely on Rudeus, regardless of the astronomical cost or the terrible odds.
"I trust him," Veronica whispered to herself, clenching her fists tight against her chest. "Even if the entire world knows he theoretically has no chance to win against a pureblood... I still trust him."
Down in the sand, the Chief Arbiter raised his hand.
"COMBATANTS! READY YOUR WEAPONS!"
Aemond raised his broadsword, dropping into a standard, albeit slightly sloppy, aristocratic fencing stance.
Rudeus didn't change his posture. He simply stood there, perfectly relaxed, the heavy mace still resting lazily against the earth.
"BEGIN!"
The Arbiter dropped his hand and blew the starting horn.
The match had officially started.
But neither Aemond nor Rudeus rushed forward to attack. They began to slowly circle each other around the center of the massive ring, their boots kicking up small clouds of dust.
Aemond, desperately trying to regain his psychological footing and assert his dominance, decided to try and provoke his brother into making a reckless, emotional mistake.
"Hey! What's wrong, Defect? Are you too terrified to move?!" Aemond shouted across the sand, his voice cracking slightly with nervous energy. "I am feeling incredibly generous today! I will even give you the very first opportunity to attack!"
Aemond let out a loud, highly forced laugh. He raised his free left hand and mockingly slapped the side of his own silver helmet.
"So come on! Go ahead, then! Attack me! Try and hit me like the goddamn, pathetic, crying child you truly are!" Aemond taunted, pointing a mocking finger at his own faceplate.
Rudeus didn't reply to him. He didn't flinch. He didn't let out an angry scream.
He didn't speak, because he knew from a lifetime of brutal psychological warfare that absolute, dead silence is the most terrifying, unnerving weapon you can deploy against a narcissist trying to elicit a reaction. Not replying to their desperate provocations inevitably forces the hot-headed, insecure aggressor to overcompensate and attack first to break the tension.
Rudeus simply stared at him through the slit of his visor. The crimson eyes burning in the darkness were utterly devoid of emotion.
Then, very slowly, Rudeus raised his free hand. He didn't ball it into a fist. He simply extended two fingers, offering a small, unmistakable, and utterly condescending 'come here' gesture.
He taunted him back without speaking a single word.
'This motherfucker!!!' Aemond screamed inwardly, his fragile ego completely and violently shattering into a million pieces.
Rudeus's tactical assumption was flawlessly correct. Aemond was instantly, catastrophically provoked.
"DIEEEEE!!!!"
Aemond roared, a sound of pure, unadulterated humiliation and rage. He abandoned all pretense of tactical fencing and recklessly sprinted directly across the sand towards Rudeus, holding his broadsword high above his head in a two-handed grip.
He closed the distance in seconds, launching himself into the air, aiming a massive, devastating downward cleave intended to split Rudeus's black helmet directly in half.
Rudeus didn't raise his mace to block. He didn't even brace his legs.
He simply waited until the blade was mere inches from his visor, and then executed a flawless, minimalist pivot. He shifted his weight slightly to his right heel, moving his upper body exactly three inches out of the trajectory of the descending steel.
-WHOOSH!
Aemond's broadsword cleaved violently through the empty air, burying itself deeply into the sand.
Aemond's eyes widened in shock beneath his helm. His momentum carried him awkwardly forward, completely exposing his flank.
He quickly wrenched the blade free and immediately began unleashing a furious, chaotic flurry of horizontal slashes, thrusts, and diagonal cuts, trying desperately to overwhelm his brother with sheer volume.
Swish! Swish! Swish!
But all of his frantic, rage-fueled attacks were entirely, utterly for nought.
Rudeus didn't even need to use his weapon to parry. He effortlessly, languidly dodged every single strike. He ducked under a sweeping decapitation attempt, swayed backward away from a thrust to the gut, and side-stepped a clumsy lunging attack. He moved with a terrifying, fluid economy of motion, expending absolutely zero unnecessary energy while Aemond rapidly burned through his cardiovascular reserves.
After dodging a particularly sloppy overhead strike, Rudeus stepped back, leaving Aemond gasping for air.
Rudeus simply shrugged his heavy, black-iron shoulders, tilting his head as if to say, Is that really it?
He taunted him again, utilizing the absolute worst insult possible: sheer, unbothered boredom.
A thick, pulsing vein practically popped out on Aemond's forehead beneath his silver helmet.
"YOU—!"
"YOU PATHETIC BASTARD AND A DEFECCCTTT!!!!" Aemond roared, his voice tearing his vocal cords, echoing across the stunned, silent Coliseum.
"STOP COWARDLY DODGING MY ATTACKS AND JUST DIE ALREADY!!!"
'Ah. The classic, pathetic cliché,' Rudeus said inwardly, a cold smile touching his lips. 'The villain gets outmaneuvered and immediately demands the protagonist stand still and let themselves be killed. How utterly predictable.'
Aemond swung his broadsword again, putting his entire body weight into a massive, horizontal sweep aimed at Rudeus's ribs.
This time, Rudeus didn't dodge.
He lazily raised the heavy iron haft of his Six-Flanged Mace.
-CLANG!
The impact was like a cannon shot.
Rudeus didn't just block the strike; he parried it with such overwhelming, devastating physical force that the kinetic feedback violently transferred straight down the blade of the broadsword and into Aemond's wrists.
Aemond's entire body was violently thrown off balance to the side. The impact sent a painful, vibrating shockwave up his arms, nearly forcing him to drop his weapon.
Though he didn't fall to the sand, his eyes and his mind were entirely consumed by a singular, blinding obsession: to brutally kill the boy standing in front of him, right here, right now, regardless of the tournament rules.
Aemond took a massive step back, planting his feet firmly into the dirt.
He closed his eyes and violently activated his magical core.
"RAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!"
A blinding, icy-blue aura erupted from Aemond's body, swirling around him like a localized blizzard. The temperature in the arena plummeted. He infused his broadsword with his ancestral magic, the steel glowing with a lethal, freezing light.
"You... I admit you did somehow manage to physically change your body!" Aemond panted, pointing his glowing sword at Rudeus, his voice echoing with absolute killing intent.
"So what?! Even if your physical reflexes are fast enough to dodge my raw, mundane attacks... then you will absolutely not be able to dodge these wide-area slashes imbued with the absolute peak of my magical aura!"
Aemond pulled the blade back, his aura flaring to its absolute maximum capacity.
"DIE!" Aemond roared.
He unleashed a terrifying barrage. He swung his broadsword in rapid succession, sending six massive, crescent-shaped projectiles of freezing, razor-sharp aura tearing across the arena floor directly toward Rudeus. The slashes tore deep trenches into the sand, freezing the moisture in the air as they moved.
Rudeus's eyes instantly turned dead serious.
He knew that while his physical body had reached a high baseline, his cheap, unenchanted iron armor would be sliced like butter by high-tier magical projectiles. Every single one of those aura slashes could easily amputate a limb or cause a massive, fatal internal injury.
He couldn't block them with a mundane mace. He had to evade.
But standard dodging wouldn't be fast enough to escape the area-of-effect radius of the freezing crescents.
Rudeus bent his knees, lowering his center of gravity to the absolute minimum. He focused every ounce of his newly forged, explosive muscular power directly into his calves, hamstrings, and quadriceps.
'Let's see if this frail body can handle the sheer kinetic stress of mimicking a magical art,' Rudeus thought, visualizing the perfect assassination technique.
'Night Raven Art: Shadow Step Cascade!'
Rudeus didn't actually use magic. He had no mana to spare for teleportation.
Instead, he utilized pure, unadulterated physical velocity.
He kicked off the ground with such terrifying, explosive force that the sand beneath his boots instantly turned to glass from the friction and pressure.
He physically launched himself forward.
To the untrained eye of the spectators, it looked exactly like high-tier teleportation magic. Rudeus repeatedly, violently jumped in a complex, zigzagging trajectory, ricocheting off the invisible boundaries of his own momentum so incredibly fast that he left physical afterimages in the air. He was a blur of black iron, seemingly blinking in and out of existence, completely avoiding the six massive aura slashes that harmlessly detonated against the far walls of the arena.
Up in the VIP Royal Box, Princess Veronica stood up from her velvet seat.
'That's—!' Veronica's oceanic eyes widened in absolute, unadulterated disbelief. She leaned heavily against the golden barrier. She couldn't even track Rudeus's movements. He was moving significantly faster than many of the Royal Guards stationed in the palace.
Meanwhile, over in the Blackfyre Duchy's section of the stands.
Professor Avalon Pendletree, who had come up to the VIP section to observe the matches, immediately leaned over the railing, his vibrant brown eyes tracking the incredible display of physical supremacy.
He turned his head and approached the man slouching in the back row.
"Hey, Ryekard, look down there!" Avalon said, his voice brimming with professional awe, pointing down at the arena. "It seems your little brother is literally, physically mimicking the visual and tactical application of the Night Raven's highly classified 'Shadow Step' technique! And he's doing it without using a single drop of mana! Huh? Have you ever seen anything like that?"
Ryekard Blackfyre didn't sit up. He didn't look excited. He simply shrugged his broad shoulders, taking another long, slow, depressing pull from his heavy glass bottle of ale.
Avalon sighed deeply, a look of profound disappointment crossing his features.
"You know, you really should compliment your younger brother for a feat like that, y'know," Avalon reprimanded gently, crossing his arms. "He's fighting for his life down there."
Ryekard didn't reply. He didn't offer a defense. He simply lowered the bottle, keeping his dead, icy grey eyes fixed intensely, unblinkingly, on both of his younger brothers fighting in the sand below.
Getting back to the center of the arena, the dust finally began to settle.
Rudeus had successfully, flawlessly dodged every single one of Aemond's highly destructive aura attacks.
Aemond, having completely burned through his entire mana core to launch that desperate barrage, was completely gassed out. He was hunched over, leaning heavily on his broadsword, gasping frantically for air, his chest heaving like a dying horse. The icy-blue aura had entirely vanished.
Aemond looked up, his grey eyes frantically scanning the dust clouds for the shredded remains of his brother.
But the space in front of him was entirely empty.
Rudeus had disappeared.
"!!!" Aemond's eyes widened in sheer, paralyzing terror.
The instinctual, primal fear he had felt in the classroom yesterday returned with a vengeance. He wildly looked left, right, and above him.
Then, he heard the faint, terrifying crunch of sand compressing directly beneath his line of sight.
He looked down.
Rudeus was already there. He had closed the distance during the chaos and was currently crouching in a low, coiled stance, positioned perfectly inside Aemond's absolute blind spot, looking up at him through the slit of the black visor.
Rudeus didn't hesitate. He didn't monologue.
He violently twisted his hips, utilizing the entire kinetic chain of his legs, core, and shoulders to generate maximum torque.
-SLAM!
Rudeus swung the heavy, solid iron head of the Six-Flanged War Mace upward in a devastating, perfect diagonal arc.
The iron flanges smashed directly into the side of Aemond's beautifully polished silver helmet.
Aemond didn't even have time to register the strike. He instantly felt a massive, blinding explosion of pain erupt from the side of his face. His vision flashed entirely white.
The sheer, overwhelming kinetic force of the blow lifted Aemond's entire body off the ground. He was violently thrown sideways through the air like a discarded ragdoll.
-BOOM!
Aemond sailed fifteen feet across the arena before violently crashing back-first into one of the massive stone pillars supporting the lower tiers of the stadium.
He collapsed into the sand, completely disoriented, the world spinning wildly around him. A high-pitched, agonizing ringing filled his ears.
He desperately, pathetically tried to push himself up onto his hands and knees, blood dripping from his nose inside the helmet.
"HOW?!" Aemond sobbed, his voice muffled by the dented silver metal.
"How did you... how did you get so—"
Before he could even finish the pathetic, bewildered question, his vision was entirely eclipsed by a shadow.
He looked up just in time to see Rudeus.
Rudeus had not walked over. He had sprinted. He was currently in mid-air, having launched himself into a leaping dive, his hands firmly grasping the sides of his own black iron helmet.
He was bringing his head down like a meteor.
-SLAM!
-BAM!
Rudeus executed a brutal, unrestrained, mid-air headbutt, smashing the thick, reinforced iron forehead of his cheap helmet directly, squarely into the center of Aemond's already compromised silver faceplate.
The impact was so horrifically loud, so undeniably brutal, that the cracking sound of metal and bone echoed clearly across the entire amphitheater, completely silencing the crowd.
Every single person watching—the high nobles, the sneering commoners, and even the wealthy merchants who had confidently bet their fortunes on Aemond's inevitable victory—were left in a state of deep, absolute, breathless shock. Even the members of the Royal Family sitting behind their golden barrier flinched.
The merchant who had placed the massive bet on the 'Defect' earlier that morning simply leaned back in his seat, a massive, incredibly satisfied smile spreading across his face.
"I explicitly said to you earlier, my friend," the merchant chuckled, patting his stunned companion on the shoulder. "I felt incredibly lucky this time."
His noble friend just clicked his tongue in sour, humiliated disbelief, unable to process the absolute dismantling of a pureblood heir.
Up in the Royal Box, Veronica slowly, shakily exhaled the breath she had been holding for the last ten minutes. She pressed her hand against her chest, feeling the frantic beating of her heart slowing down.
'Thank Goddess,' Veronica thought inwardly, closing her eyes in a brief moment of pure, unadulterated relief. 'Thank you, Goddess... he's alright. He's perfectly alright.'
Down in the blood-stained sand of the arena.
Aemond's expensive, custom-forged silver helmet could not withstand the sheer, concentrated concussive force of the dual impacts. The structural integrity failed completely. The helmet shattered, the visor snapping off, exposing Aemond's face to the glaring sunlight.
Aemond lay flat on his back, the broken remnants of his helm scattered in the sand around his head. His forehead was completely split open, a massive gash pouring dark red blood down into his eyes and over his pale cheeks. His icy grey eyes were wide, bloodshot, and completely devoid of focus. He was concussed, hovering on the absolute brink of unconsciousness.
He saw a dark shape standing over him.
Rudeus was slowly, methodically approaching him, the heavy iron mace dragging in the sand behind him, leaving a sinister, serpentine trail in the dirt.
Aemond tried to move. He tried to scramble backward, to beg for the Arbiter to intervene, to call the match.
But—
"!!!"
Aemond suddenly felt it.
He felt a sickening, utterly suffocating wave of pure, absolute [Killing Intent] crash down upon him, pinning him to the earth like an invisible mountain. It was the exact same, terrifying aura he had felt when Rudeus had threatened him with the pencil in the classroom, but magnified a hundredfold. It wasn't the aura of an angry teenager. It was the aura of a reaper who had come to collect a soul.
Rudeus stopped at Aemond's feet. He looked down at the bleeding, terrified boy who had spent a decade making his life a living hell.
Rudeus's crimson eyes flared through the slit of his visor, burning with an ominous, merciless glare.
Without a word, Rudeus stepped forward and casually straddled Aemond's chest, sitting heavily on top of his paralyzed half-brother.
Aemond's breath hitched. He couldn't breathe under the weight.
Rudeus slowly, deliberately raised the heavy, blood-stained head of the Six-Flanged War Mace high into the air, blotting out the sun.
Aemond's icy grey eyes widened to the absolute limits of human physiology. He stared at the descending iron.
'I'm fucked!' Aemond screamed inwardly, his mind entirely shattering into pure, unadulterated terror. 'No... I am completely, utterly fucking screwed!!!!!!'
-SLAM!
Rudeus smiled a dark, incredibly satisfied, terrifying smile behind his iron mask as he brutally slammed the heavy iron flanges of the war mace directly into the side of Aemond's exposed skull, ensuring he didn't hit a lethal spot, but guaranteeing maximum, agonizing trauma.
But he knew this would absolutely not be the last strike.
Rudeus's smile widened into a feral grin as he raised the heavy iron weapon again.
And then, with the methodical, rhythmic precision of a butcher tenderizing meat, he simply continued to repeatedly, mercilessly slam the mace down onto Aemond's head, drowning the arena in the sickening sound of shattering bone.