CHAPTER 85: LEADER OF THE FAITHLESS MEN

Alan’s grip tightened around Zarot’s massive blade, his fingers curling with deliberate precision as though he were handling something other than a weapon meant to cleave him in two.

His expression remained calm—eerily so.

His eyes, reflecting the harsh sunlight, bored into Zarot’s with an unsettling clarity. They were not the eyes of a desperate man clutching at survival, but those of a soldier measuring his enemy before striking the killing blow.

The roles had inverted: it was Alan’s hand wrapped around the greatsword, Alan who stood unmoved before a murderous strike, while Zarot—hulking titan of the colosseum—was held still by disbelief.

The crowd, who moments earlier had howled for blood, now fell into silence.

The hush was heavier than any roar. Tens of thousands leaned forward, unable to comprehend what they were seeing.

Their gazes darted between Zarot’s towering frame, frozen and uncertain, and Alan—slender, unremarkable in stature—who held the giant’s killing stroke at bay with nothing but a single hand.

The silence pressed down like a stormcloud. Each spectator felt it, a suffocating weight of anticipation.

Zarot snarled, wrenching the sword back with brute force. The ground shook with his strength. But Alan released it with a casual flick of his wrist, stepping away as though discarding a dull tool.

The momentum of his own recovery staggered Zarot, nearly pulling him off balance.

Somewhere above, Darius gritted his teeth.

"A boy from the streets," he had once said, dismissing him. "An orphan with no lineage, no ki, no mana. A perfect guard for the fourth prince—an amusing joke."

How wrong he had been.

Alan’s life had been written in scars. The alleys of the imperial city had raised him: cold, unfeeling stone for his bed, hunger his daily companion.

A boy with no coin, no family, no protection. On those streets, choices were few—starve, or fight.

By ten, Alan’s fists had already been bloodied in countless brawls. He had learned to defend scraps of bread from thieves, to slip free from the grasp of slavers, to silence pain before it slowed him.

The only laws he knew were the ones carved into him by necessity.

When the city guard plucked him from the gutter, it was not out of mercy. They needed bodies. Warm bodies to train, to drill, to die in the shadows while true soldiers claimed honor.

Alan had accepted his place gladly. Food, shelter, purpose—these were luxuries to a child who had known none.

He trained harder than the rest, but talent was a wall he could never scale. No spark of ki lit his veins, no surge of mana responded to his will. When his peers were sent to the Imperial Guard Academy, he was discarded—left behind with the nameless fodders, forgotten in the empire’s corners.

Perhaps he would have died nameless, faceless, another soldier lost in a border skirmish. But fate—capricious and cruel—intervened.

The summons came suddenly: Alan was to be transferred as guard to a prince. The others sneered at the assignment, mocking him for being given to the weakest of royals.

For Alan had been assigned to Aric—the sickly fourth prince, mocked even by his brothers, dismissed in every council whisper.

The guards grumbled at their misfortune. But Alan... Alan had looked at Aric and sworn loyalty that very moment.

Years had passed since that vow. Now Alan no longer resembled the starved street rat. He stood in the arena, clad in armor forged by Aric’s vision and Lerai’s genius—armor built around a B-rank mana crystal embedded deep within its core.

The crystal pulsed faintly against his chest, worth a fortune in gold, bought with coin and blood.

Every strike, every movement, every ounce of Alan’s being was elevated by its hidden power. He was no mere guard now. He was the damning blade of the fourth prince.

Zarot roared, swinging again. His greatsword howled through the air, cleaving the very atmosphere apart. The force of the strike rattled the colosseum, the sheer ki radiating from him making weaker spectators clutch at their throats.

But Alan was gone.

He slipped past the strike with impossible grace. No wasted movement, no sound, no hesitation. The crowd gasped. Zarot’s ki made his attacks devastating, but Alan’s evasion made them look clumsy, brutish, predictable.

Each dodge was an insult—a quiet statement that power without control was nothing.

Then Alan struck.

He blurred forward, fist slamming into Zarot’s ribcage. The sound echoed like a thunderclap, bones groaning under the impact. Zarot staggered, crimson spraying from his mouth. It was as though Alan’s hand had been sharpened to a blade.

Alan stepped back, measured, calm. His eyes remained cold, calculating.

The crowd could not believe it. Zarot, breaker of champions, feared across provinces, was bleeding before a man with no ki.

In the royal box, Darius’s mask cracked. His knuckles whitened on the arms of his chair. For the first time, his laughter had failed him.

"You were too hasty, brother," Valen’s voice slid like a knife. He did not look at Darius, his eyes fixed on the battlefield below. "And now... look what you’ve done."

Darius did not answer. He could not.

Below, Zarot howled. His ki flared violently, shaking the colosseum with raw pressure. Dust swirled, banners tore in the wind of his rage. He lunged, sword raised high, and brought it down with all the fury of a mountain falling.

The earth split. Stone shattered. Dust and debris erupted skyward.

But Alan was already gone. He slid beneath the strike like water, rising with a fist that cracked against Zarot’s jaw. The giant reeled, blood and teeth spilling, dropping to one knee as his sword trembled in his grip.

"Leave him half dead," Darius had commanded.

And yet it was Zarot who knelt. Broken. Bleeding.

Alan’s voice, calm and cutting, filled the silence:

"You’re not finished. Get up."

The words twisted the silence into a blade.

Zarot snarled, staggering upright. His blood dripped freely, yet his ki roared anew. Rage consumed him, muscles swelling, veins standing out like cords of steel. His eyes, wild and bloodshot, burned with fury—and fear.

He slammed his blade into the ground. The impact detonated outward, a shockwave ripping across the arena floor, splitting stone, shattering pillars, driving dust into the air.

Alan tilted his head slightly, as though intrigued.

"Oh?"

The dust swirled between them, the crowd screaming now—half in awe, half in terror.

The colosseum had not yet decided whether it was witnessing a duel... or the rise of something far greater.