The world went white.
It was not the clean, silent void of death. It was a screaming, physical whiteness, a cataclysm of pure, unrestrained energy that bleached the sky, the sand, and the horrified faces of the crowd into a single, uniform shade of annihilation. The roar of Marcus's final, suicidal scream was swallowed by a sound that was not a sound, a pressure wave that vibrated in the very atoms of my being, a promise of utter dissolution.
He was going to take me to hell with him.
In that timeless instant, suspended in the heart of a blossoming explosion, my mind achieved a state of perfect, terrifying clarity. The panic, the fear, the sorrow for my lost friend—they were all compressed into a single, diamond-hard point of focus.
I had two choices.
Choice A: Let it happen. Die. My fourth death. I would place my faith in the glitched respawn protocol, a system that ARIA herself had warned was unstable. I might come back stronger. I might come back as a puddle of sentient goo. I might not come back at all. And even if I did, the force of this blast would annihilate the front rows of the arena. It would kill hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people—the very people who had just been chanting my name.
Choice B: Do something impossible.
The choice was never really a choice at all.
I am the Stone Bulwark, I thought, the title the King had given me, the name the people had chanted, becoming not just a name, but a directive. A purpose. A bulwark does not stand aside. A bulwark stands in the way.
"Kazuki, no!" Elizabeth's scream was a phantom echo in the back of my mind.
"My lord!" Luna's thought was a shard of pure, empathic terror.
But I was already moving, not with my body, but with my will.
I was at ground zero. The epicenter. I couldn't run from the blast. I couldn't shield the entire arena. But I could contain it. I could build a tomb around the bomb, with myself locked inside.
I dropped to one knee, slamming both of my palms flat against the sand. I poured every last drop of my mana, every ounce of my will, every fragment of my connection to the earth into a single, desperate, and monumental command. It was the most complex act of Terraforming I had ever attempted, a command of creation and imprisonment on a scale that should have been impossible.
COMMAND: CREATE_SPHERE(MATERIAL="GRANITE_REINFORCED", RADIUS="21M", THICKNESS="5M", TARGET="SELF"). EXECUTE: SEAL.
The world responded to my command.
The sand around me erupted, not in a chaotic explosion, but in a controlled, beautiful, and terrifying display of architectural magic. The ground beneath me and the glowing, detonating form of Marcus swelled upwards. The earth rose like a tidal wave, curling in on itself, a thousand tons of rock and sand moving with the fluid grace of a potter's hands. Walls of solid, compressed granite, glowing with the deep brown of my own mana, shot up around us, forming a perfect, seamless dome.
The last thing I saw of the outside world was Elizabeth's horrified face, her hand outstretched, before the final section of the dome sealed itself shut, plunging us into absolute, suffocating darkness.
We were inside. A twenty-meter sphere of solid rock, five meters thick, buried half-underground in the center of the arena. A tomb.
And inside the tomb with me, the bomb was reaching critical mass.
The crimson light from Marcus's body illuminated the inside of our prison with a hellish, pulsing glow. His laughter had stopped, replaced by a continuous, agonized scream as his own power consumed him. His body was no longer human; it was a writhing, unstable mass of corrupted mana and raw, burning hatred.
The heat was incredible, a physical force that seared my lungs. The pressure was immense, the very air vibrating with the promise of detonation.
[WARNING: CATASTROPHIC ENERGY RELEASE IMMINENT,] ARIA's voice was a steel barrier of calm in my mind. [The containment sphere will not hold. Structural integrity is projected to fail by 40%. The resulting shrapnel will be devastating to the surrounding area. A new strategy is required.]
I couldn't just tank the explosion. The containment would fail, and everyone would die anyway. I had to absorb it. I had to eat it.
I stood my ground, my feet planted on the floor of our stone tomb. I raised my hands, palms facing the incandescent form of my childhood friend.
"I'm sorry, Marcus," I whispered. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you."
Then I braced myself, and activated my own glitched, impossible power.
SPELL EATER.
The world detonated.
It was not a quick, clean death. It was an eternity of agony. The force of the 'Scorned Earth Detonation' was a supernova of raw, chaotic energy. It slammed into me, a physical, magical, and psychic sledgehammer.
My 'Stone Skin' cracked, the granite-like resilience of my body shattering under the onslaught. My HP plummeted.
HP: 115/115 -> 70/115 -> 30/115...
But 'Spell Eater' was active. My body, my glitched soul, became a black hole, drawing in the raging torrent of corrupted mana. It was like trying to drink a river of fire through a straw. The energy was poison, a chaotic mess of rage and pain that threatened to overwhelm my own system.
[SYSTEM OVERLOAD! INTAKE EXCEEDING CAPACITY!] ARIA shrieked. [CORRUPTED MANA IS INFECTING YOUR CORE! STABILITY DROPPING! 90%... 80%... 70%!]
The pain was absolute. My consciousness began to fray, my memories threatening to burn away like old film. But through the pain, I held on to one thought. I will not be deleted.
The explosion raged for what felt like a lifetime. And then, as quickly as it began, it was over.
Silence.
Darkness.
I was still standing.
My body was a wreck. My clothes were gone, burned away. My skin was a latticework of glowing red cracks, like cooling lava. My HP was a single, blinking, critical point.
HP: 1/115
But I was alive.
And my mana... my mana was a raging, overflowing ocean. The bar on my HUD had shattered its own limits.
MP: 1500 / 225
I had absorbed the blast. I had eaten a bomb.
The containment sphere around us groaned, its structural integrity compromised. With a final, weary thought, I commanded it to crumble.
The thick granite walls dissolved into a shower of fine sand, revealing the stunned, silent arena beyond.
I stood in the center of a newly formed crater, wreathed in smoke and the faint, crimson afterglow of the explosion. Battered. Broken. But undeniably, impossibly, alive.
The silence of the crowd was absolute. It was a silence of profound, religious awe. They had not just seen a man win a duel. They had seen a hero perform a miracle. They had watched as I built a mountain to contain an explosion, and then walked out of the heart of the fire.
I saw Elizabeth, her hand over her mouth, tears streaming down her pale cheeks. I saw Luna, on her knees, her face a mask of pure, radiant relief. I saw the King, gripping the arms of his throne, his old eyes wide with a look that transcended politics and prophecy, a look of pure, unadulterated wonder.
And I saw the Duke. He was no longer enraged. He was... empty. His face was a blank canvas of utter defeat. He had thrown his ultimate weapon at me, a murder-suicide pawn designed to be the perfect, inescapable end. And I had not just survived it. I had consumed it. In that moment, he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to his very soul, that I was not a player in his game. I was the game engine itself, and I was done playing by his rules.
My gaze swept past them, to the center of the crater where Marcus had been.
His body was gone, completely atomized by the force of his own power. There was nothing left.
Except... something.
A single object lay in the center of the blackened, glassy crater. It was a shard of jagged, obsidian-like crystal, about the size of my fist. It pulsed with a faint, sickly red light, a dying ember of the rage that had fueled it.
[Corrupted System Fragment Detected,] ARIA said, her voice strained but stable. [It is the core of Marcus's 'Berserker' System. A parasitic entity. It appears to have survived the detonation.]
Ignoring the pain, the exhaustion, the stares of the entire kingdom, I limped toward the center of the crater.
"Kazuki, don't!" Elizabeth cried, starting to run toward me.
But I waved her back. This was something I had to do alone.
I knelt before the pulsating shard. It was warm to the touch, and it vibrated with a faint, malevolent energy. It was a concentration of all of Marcus's pain, his bitterness, his hatred.
I reached out and placed my hand on it.
The moment I touched it, a wave of images, of memories, flooded my mind. They were not my own. They were his.
I saw a young boy, full of dreams, being told by the Duke's recruiter that he had 'potential.' I saw him being given his first 'gift,' a small, red crystal that promised him the strength he craved, the strength to escape his station, the strength to stand by his friend's side.
I saw him in the mercenary camps, his 'Rage' system allowing him to defeat men twice his size, earning him a reputation for ferocity. But I also saw the cost. The uncontrollable anger, the memory blackouts, the growing paranoia.
I saw the Duke visiting him, praising him, feeding his resentment of me. "He abandoned you," the Duke's voice whispered. "He never saw you as a friend, only as a plaything. He has everything, and you have nothing. But I can give you the power to take it all back."
I saw the final moments before the duel. The Duke's men giving him a second, more powerful crystal. "This will grant you the power to defeat him once and for all," the Duke had said. "It will be your ultimate triumph." He had not mentioned that it was a suicide bomb.
And then, the final memory. A fleeting moment inside the sphere of rock, as the crimson energy consumed him. A moment of clarity as the rage burned away, leaving only a deep, profound regret. "Kazu..." his final, unvoiced thought whispered. "I'm sorry..."
A single, hot tear traced a path through the grime on my cheek. He had been a pawn from the beginning. A tragic, bitter, and ultimately disposable tool.
The red shard in my hand pulsed one last time and then crumbled into inert, black dust.
But as it did, a new notification appeared in my vision.
[Parasitic System Fragment has been purged.][You have absorbed the residual data.][New Skill Unlocked: 'Berserker's Rage (Tainted).'][Description: You can voluntarily tap into the corrupted rage data to temporarily boost your STR and CON by 100%. However, doing so will disable your INT and WIS stats, suppress all higher reasoning, and cause your HP to degenerate over time. It is a powerful, desperate move of last resort.][WARNING: This skill is a manifestation of a 'Dark System.' Its use may lead to soul corruption. It is not recommended.]
I had not just defeated him. I had absorbed the ghost of his power, a dangerous, tainted gift from a fallen friend.
I stood up, my heart heavy with a grief that was a thousand years old and a single moment fresh. The roar of the crowd began to return, a distant, muffled sound.
I had won the duel. I had won the hearts of the people. I had won the fear of my enemies.
But as I stood in the center of my own destructive power, looking out at a world that I now knew was a lie, I had never felt more alone. The victory was hollow, the cheers were meaningless.
My friend was dead.
And I had just learned that there were other monsters out there, monsters like me, but without a conscience. Monsters created by the Duke, my father-in-law, the man who was still smiling and applauding my victory from the royal box.
The tournament was not over.
My war against the Dark System users had just begun.