The abrupt light blinded Ji Bai, whose eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness. When he was not paying attention to his surroundings, the area above the surrounding walls had been filled to the brim with standing spectators.
Having no choice but to disregard the intense light, he gave his surroundings a cursory glance. What fell onto his retinas and entered his perception was the rough image of a tomb that had laid dormant for countless years and epochs.
Its architecture was similar to the Roman Colosseum that had been created before the middle ages1. He was currently situated within a hexagonal arena.
Naturally, a colosseum could not do without a crowd of cheering spectators.
The stands were filled with a dense crowd — Made up of perfectly crafted and exquisitely designed humanoid sculptures. The characteristics of their faces were extremely true to life, with the extraordinary workmanship and sculpting skills behind their engravings causing the sculptures to be no different to living beings. If one examined them in detail, they would be able to tell even their gender and exact age. Through the expressions on their faces, it was easy to guess what emotions and thoughts were going through each of their heads at this exact moment.
Some were clapping with a large smile on their face, some shouting and pointing below and some even standing up in agitation to cheer.
The high degree of fidelity made one worried that these stone sculptures could come to life at any moment.
Murals depicting the insignia of a general on a flag were carved onto the walls surrounding the colosseum. While it was too blurry for him to make out the minute details, he could tell that the flag was made up of a pair of crossed longswords whose colors had long-faded as well as a scorching sun. The former was placed in the center, with the latter occupying the foreground of the flag.
‘This coat-of-arms seems very familiar…’
Ji Bai knitted his brows slightly upon seeing the coat of arms on the surrounding walls. He had a nagging feeling that this logo was very familiar to him, as if he had seen it somewhere before, but a search of his memories failed to turn up anything.
It was at this moment that something crawled out from the inconspicuous black sarcophagus in the center of the colosseum…
The lid of the sarcophagus had already disappeared without a trace; Rather, it would be more accurate to say the black “metallic plate” that had flown outwards earlier was precisely that object.
“Ji Bai, over there!” The usual calmness in Lin’s voice was long gone. Her voice even trembled slightly, as if she had seen something that unsettled her, but no one at the scene noticed that.
Her voice alerted Ji Bai, whose attention had been focused on the murals on the wall. Tracing Lin’s slightly bewildered gaze towards the pitch-black sarcophagus, he noticed a pitch-black gauntlet holding onto its edge, as if its wearer was attempting to climb out from within.
Immediately following that, a black metallic helmet adorned with a dragon ornament arose, revealing the tall and sturdy body lying inside the sarcophagus. Blood-red radiance suddenly flickered behind its seams like a terrifying creature opening its eyes.
Its gaze first landed on Ji Bai who stood not too far away, before slowly averting it a moment later.
“!” In that brief moment, Ji Bai’s heart had been overwhelmed by horror. It wasn’t until it had moved its sight away that a wave of trepidation, similar to what someone experienced after surviving a great calamity, washed over him like a series of tidal waves.
His breathing instantly hastened, as beads of cold sweat spilled down his back.
After the pair of terrifying red lights radiating out from the seams of the dark helmet shortly rested on Ji Bai, they moved towards the corner — at the hole in the wall created from the griffin’s impact, whereby they unexpectedly grew brighter.
It slightly moved its neck around, letting out a series of crisp ‘cracking’ sounds.
Immediately afterwards, its dark silhouette flashed past like a lightning bolt or dancing sparks. A series of consecutive eardrum-shattering explosions later, the griffin was stomped on by the black knight’s foot, causing its massive body to instantly sink into the ground.
“￥#￥&@%@……#@” A deep voice uttered words that were utterly incomprehensible to Ji Bai. Even as he rummaged through his memories and linguistic knowledge, he was incapable of finding one familiar syllable in the entire sentence.
In layman’s terms, if those words were brought to the modern era, it would whip numerous mondegreen lovers into a huge frenzy.
But for reasons unknown, Ji Bai had a nagging feeling that he had heard the bizarre intonation of this language before, probably when…
“Cough, cough… W-What is this blasted thing??!” Seemingly woken up from the commotion earlier, the purple-gowned elder who had been pinned under the griffin spat out a mouthful of fresh blood while dazedly looking at the black armored individual above stepping on him.
From the fresh blood spilling out of the elder’s abdomen and chest, it was almost certain that his internal organs had pretty much ruptured.
As for the black-gowned elder accompanying him, he had met an extremely unfortunate end – The griffin’s body had squashed him alive and turned him into a unsightly pile of scattered flesh.
“H-How despicable! Where did this low-tiered race appear from! Griffin! Get up and stomp this trash into pieces! …-Ahhhh!”
As if the unceasing chatter of the purple-gowned elder had made the knight lose all its patience, it suddenly increased the strength it exerted on the griffin.
The massive crushing power ruptured the flesh and bones of the purple-gowned elder and nearly caused his eyes to fall out of their sockets, as they widened and filled with sparks of blood.
As if it was just crushing an ant, the violent death of the purple-gowned elder did not make the black-armored individual pause in the slightest.
It placed its foot down and single-handedly tossed the griffin, which was several times larger than itself, into the air before brandishing the large sword from its waist and aiming it upwards.
“Booom!!” Dark ripples pouring out of the blade appeared for an instant before the knight returned its sword back to its scabbard.
Blood streamed down in torrents, with pieces of meat hitting the ground like raindrops.
A loud bang resounded. Two large meat pulps, formerly connected to another, now landed on both ends of the colosseum in badly mangled condition, as dust rose a meter into the air.
Lin was completely dazed. The griffin which had firmly suppressed her in their clash was easily killed by the unknown creature decked in enclosing armor before her. It was done in such a brutal yet casual manner, without giving the griffin the slightest room to resist…
‘What sort of burial ground is this…’
But in her daze she failed to realize that the black silhouette had already shifted its gaze onto her.
“Whoosh…!” Before she could even return to her senses, its massive sword tip was shockingly mere inches away.
One could imagine the result if a vampire who had lost their regenerative ability was to take this unknown creature’s attack head-on.
‘I’m truly unwilling to die in such unclear circumstances…’
“Clank!!” The massive sword-edge chopped off one strand of Lin’s hair before an intense metal colliding sound rang out and caused a large amount of sparks to burst forth.
When Lin woke up from her daze, a massive silhouette stood in front of her.
“Tss…” Ji Bai exhaled through his gritted teeth when blocking this move. He reckoned that the full strength of a troll chieftain was far weaker than a tenth of this domineering brute force.
Blood spurted out of Ji Bai’s elbows, arms, legs and waist from his incessantly worsening injuries, as he wielded his sword in bitter resistance.
If this continued, his opponent would not need its massive sword to pierce through himself and tear him to pieces; Just its tyrannical strength would be enough.
“Zzzzt…” Sparks shot out violently, as the fang-shaped longsword in his hands continuously let out sorrowful wails under the pressure of the massive blade.
“Ra…diant…!” Ji Bai gritted his teeth.
“Whoosh!” Pure white particles appeared and covered Ji Bai’s body before quickly dissipating. A dark gray fully enclosed armor instantly took their place, enveloping his body as a blue tassel on its helmet fluttered in the surging wind.
In the colosseum, two knights equipped in fully-enclosed armor, one in silver, one in black, began to fight.
“That is…” Lin was slightly shocked upon seeing the tall and fully-armored dark-gray knight before her.