CHAPTER 395: 395: THE HUNDRED ELITE FALL PART THREE

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One more kick. Then Kai dropped low, grabbed the shaft of his own spear, and made a choice that would end the noise for good. He drove the point up between the captain’s legs with both hands and all the weight in his back and shoulders. The spear cut through the ruined soft into his balls and man’s part. It goes up through the groin, through the gut, and out at the base of the spine. The tip burst from the small of the back and flashed wet in the moonlight.

The captain’s eyes went wide and empty. His jaw worked once. Then he sagged down the length of the shaft toward the ground like a coat on a peg. The spear stuck upright with him on it. It came out of his butt hole.

No one spoke. The night made a thin, high ringing sound where the spear point vibrated.

Kai pulled the shaft free with a short, mean jerk and let the body fold in two. He stepped over it without looking down. The crown over his head hummed louder for a heartbeat and then went quiet again.

Around him, the elite line broke for real. Some ran. Some dropped. Some stood because they had been trained to stand when the thing in front of them was too big to name.

Mardek had not moved from his stool in the center. He was no longer grinning. His face was flat and careful. He had a chill under his plates he did not like. He had never been scared and thrilled at the same time. He hated it. He covered it with orders.

"Do not fight him clean," he snapped to his last standing captain. "Make him move. Make him spend. Keep him in the sand until he is light in the legs. I want him to be tired when he comes to me."

The other captain saluted with his spear and turned to the remnants. "Circles! Move! Breathe and move!"

They did not like it, but they did it. They spread, they turned, they feinted. Some threw spears from a distance and made him turn, made him step. A few bold ones darted in to cut and jump out. It was not pretty, but it was enough to make time pass and make breath burn.

Kai followed the plan he had given himself without knowing he had made one. He did not chase long. He stepped three steps, killed the one in reach, stepped two back, ignored a man who ran away too well, took the one who hesitated, cut the one who overreached.

He crossed the line of his hundredth elite kill with a short blade in a rib and a boot to a knee.

[Ding! System notifications- Experience threshold reached. Congratulations to the host you Level Up. Current level: 50.]

[Rank-up available. Requirement: 100 five-star cores or 500 four-star cores worth of star aura to advance to Five-Star Rank. Two nine-star cores in storage excluded from auto-use.]

He did not answer. He was still moving. Men still came because their orders said to come. He cut them. He took a spear and threw it through two at once when they lined up wrong. He picked up a fallen shield and smashed a face that peered over a shield rim. He used the shield once more to catch a thrown blade and then tossed it aside.

Another chime slid through his head.

[Ding! System notifications- The host is unresponsive. Auto Rank-Up protocol eligible. The system will begin siphoning available cores in host storage and on battlefield to queue rank-up within five minutes unless host cancels. Two nine-star cores will not be used.]

Still he did not answer. The words slid past the place where the rage lived. They did not stick. He widened the hole between rows and kept walking toward the center where the dome and the cage were. He did not shout Mardek’s name. He did not need to. His body wrote the name in the sand.

On the ridge, Azhara stopped dragging for one breath and simply watched with her lips parted. Then she remembered herself, shook the leash, and kept moving. "Do not slack off," she told Rauk. "You do not want him to look back and see you slow." Rauk was very scared seeing Kai. He stumbled faster. He had nothing left in his arms. He held the leash with his teeth and went faster on his feet and hoped it’s all a dream.

Skyweaver made a slow circle in the high air. Her chest hurt from holding the same breath too long. She let it out and pulled another in and counted fallen shields and bodies again. "He is not listening," she whispered to herself. "He is not calling. One call and I drop like a knife. One word." She held the line. She did not dive in yet. Waiting for her master.

Silvershadow was almost near the cage now. He had the angle. He had the rope ties mapped. He had the dagger path measured. He had the distance from the stool to the bar. He had Mardek’s foot pattern counted. He waited for the beat to fall on the wrong drum.

Mardek watched with his hands flat on his thighs. He saw the black crown glow. He saw that it did not waver. He saw the way the sand moved around the white-haired man’s feet. He saw men pretend to faint and he saw the ones who pretended too late. He spat into the sand again because his mouth felt dry.

He stood up.

He walked the ten steps to the cage door. He looked at the small golden body inside. He saw a paw twitch. It was a small movement. It moved just once. It was enough.

He smiled with an evil smug, it was a happy smile and reached for the bar with one hand and for the dagger with the other.

Back in the yard, Kai saw movement in the center, felt it in the way the camp’s fear shifted, and took three fast steps that made two men panic and throw weapons on the ground before they got killed by Kai. He did not stop to kill them. His Predator instinct showed him no hostile movement from them.