Chapter 68: Purple Death
The rain in the Inner City carried a metallic bite.
Far above, neon towers pierced the lead gray sky, their outlines half hidden behind sheets of acidic drizzle. Color bled down the energy conduits on the sides of those colossal buildings, smearing the puddles below with sickly, iridescent light. Every reflection looked like an oil painting left too long in poison.
Beneath Hodell's feet stretched a long corridor of cold black metal.
Both walls were lined with dormant magic turrets packed so tightly they resembled coiled vipers waiting for a command to strike. Pale violet sensing fluid flowed in thin channels across the ground. Every footprint he left behind was immediately recorded, scanned, and filed away.
There was no overt malice here like in Shadow Valley.
Instead, there was order.
And that order was far more suffocating.
Hodell narrowed his eyes behind the mask of White Crow.
"So this is what civilization looks like near the Silent Silver Disk."
Shadow City was closer to the Silent Silver Disk than the Wasteland ever was. Yet thanks to its vast citywide arrays and painstaking infrastructure, the chaotic energy that plagued the outer zones had been combed flat and forced into obedience. The currents beneath the streets ran with cold precision, pulsing like arteries beneath a giant mechanical beast.
"Mr. Pale. Please stop."
A synthetic voice descended from the ceiling without the slightest emotional fluctuation.
A scanning beam swept across White Crow's armor. Then a tray slid from the wall, presenting a silver black metal ring.
"During the Ranking Festival, all temporary entrants must wear a monitoring ring. It will record kill count, energy fluctuations, vital signs, and movement trajectory. Any attempt to destroy it, jam it, or enter restricted zones will be regarded as an act of war."
The ring rose under magnetic guidance and snapped around his exposed wrist with a cold click.
A thin chill immediately seeped into his skin. It felt less like a device and more like something living trying to root itself into his flesh.
[Sensing Shackles: A monitoring device. It acts as temporary identification within the city and will track your position when necessary.]
Hodell glanced at it once.
"Annoying."
Behind him, another participant cursed under his breath while extending his own hand obediently. No one here had any interest in testing how serious Shadow City was about its rules.
A drifting Glow Species floated ahead to lead him onward.
Hodell looked at the creature with mild curiosity.
Glow Species were an old era magical beast with a low but genuine degree of intelligence. They were small, their core mass glowing softly beneath a membrane body that looked like smoke frozen into jelly. Dozens of thread thin tendrils trailed beneath them, crackling with faint static. They floated by manipulating lightweight gases stored in internal sacs, giving them the appearance of translucent jellyfish drifting through the air.
They had once been highly valued as domestic servants. The cilia around their bodies could generate minute vortices, letting them clean rooms, purify air, and manipulate fine dust with exceptional efficiency. They had no visible ears, but their entire membrane acted as a resonant receiver, allowing them to understand surprisingly complex spoken commands.
By the standards of the new era, beings like them should have been protected.
But this was Shadow City.
The Empire banned the enslavement of intelligent species on paper. In practice, remote and lawless places always found loopholes. Hybrids became indentured labor. Glow Species had restraining runes buried in their cores. Creatures meant for the high skies were reduced to hovering two meters above the ground until their lifespan ran out and they collapsed into nameless slime.
As the little creature led him through the corridor, Hodell noticed countless gazes peering down from the one way glass high above.
The Inner City liked spectacle.
And the Ranking Festival was one of its favorite entertainments.
Participants were diverted into different registration lanes according to status, reputation, and assessed value.
"Top one hundred of the death list. Special lane to the left."
The Glow Species gurgled the instruction through a faint psychic pulse.
Hodell rubbed his chin beneath the mask.
"Liuli Star really has built its entire civilization around power. Even the servants speak in whispers of the mind."
He entered the special lane.
The hall on either side was separated by one meter thick transparent glass. Beyond it, thousands of ordinary applicants were being herded through examinations, viral screening, magical marking, and body checks like livestock on their way to slaughter.
At the registration desk, a man who looked more like a surgeon than a clerk raised his eyes toward Hodell.
"Mr. Pale. The wager from the Polar Merchant Guild has been confirmed."
He slid his finger over a suspended light screen. The ring on Hodell's wrist flashed green.
"Because of your special status, you may choose an independent preparation cabin. Until the Ranking Festival begins, no one will disturb you. Not even those persistent men from the Truth Society."
Then this man had to be one of the Merchant Guild's people.
"Shadow City does not provide babysitting services," the man added with a faintly unpleasant smile. "Your wrist ring will serve as your guide. It will tell you when to kill, and it will tell you when to die. As for the first stage, the location has already been uploaded."
Hodell focused slightly.
The micro arrays inside the ring vibrated, and a detailed map unfolded in his perception.
The so called independent rest cabin turned out to be less a room and more a vertical coffin.
A metal coffin.
Narrow, upright, and designed with all the sterile elegance of industrial cruelty.
All four interior walls were engraved with deep violet lines. Dense runes pulsed in the cramped space, humming with controlled energy. Once he stepped inside, the door sealed behind him, and only the red glow of standby lights remained.
Hodell lifted his wrist and studied the ring again.
In Shadow City, order was more expensive than gold.
This city sat dangerously close to the Silent Silver Disk, yet unlike the Wasteland, the violent energy here had been disciplined into obedience. For the madmen and survivors outside, even breathing air this stable could become addictive. Shadow City's greatest luxury was not wealth.
It was predictability.
The peaceful wait did not last long.
The instant the clock struck midnight, the soft cabin light was replaced by a violent scarlet glare.
"The first stage of the Ranking Festival begins now."
Then the floor beneath him split open without warning.
The metal panels slid away.
Hodell dropped.
No transition. No buffering. No ceremony.
One moment he was sealed in a vertical coffin. The next, he was falling through open darkness into a giant pit more than a hundred meters deep.
And he was not alone.
When he landed, tens of thousands of participants were already packed into the subsidence zone below.
Some were still cursing at the organizers. Some had already drawn weapons. Some were staring upward with widening eyes.
Hodell followed their gaze.
Then the sky cracked open.
No, not the sky.
The energy density overhead had just been pushed beyond the critical threshold.
Twelve distant neon towers lit up at once, their crowns erupting with blinding violet radiance.
A deep, world shaking roar rose from beneath the earth.
Then the tide descended.
It came not as rain, but as a vertical sea.
A half year's worth of stored magical turbulence, compressed and refined by the Truth Society, poured down into the subsidence zone in a single catastrophic release.
A Level Three Magic Tide.
The artificial violet torrent smashed down like an inverted galaxy.
"Help! My shield is breaking!"
"These lunatics really released a Level Three Tide!"
"This is murder!"
The screams barely existed for more than a second before they were drowned in the roaring energy.
Those caught in the middle without preparation were destroyed instantly.
Bodies twisted first, stretched by violent fluctuations.
Then they burst.
Blood mist and flesh sprayed upward only to be torn apart again by the falling tide. The air was instantly saturated with scorched blood, burnt mana, and the thick metallic reek of opened bodies.
Hodell stood near the edge of the pit and frowned behind his mask.
White Crow emitted a faint creak as it took the pressure.
In front of him, a mage wrapped in crackling lightning desperately tried to reinforce a thunder shield. His eyes were bloodshot from energy backlash, and his face was already collapsing into panic.
"Pull me in! Your armor can take it!"
The man stumbled toward him and stretched out a hand.
Hodell nodded once.
"Sure."
Then he stepped forward and caught the man's skull before those fingers even reached his shoulder.
"I'll pull you straight to hell."
Crack.
The head gave way in his metal grip like rotten fruit. Brain and blood splashed over White Crow's gauntlet.
The corpse was swept away by the purple flood before it could even fully collapse.
[You have obtained 7 Trial Points]
[Ultimate Trial: Current Progress 607 / 1500]
At the same time, the ring on his wrist pulsed.
[Kill confirmed. Festival Points: 12]
The tide intensified.
The giant pit became a grinder of flesh.
Purple currents churned at the bottom of the basin. Blood began to pool across the ground, only to be stirred into fresh foam by every new eruption of energy. Visibility collapsed. Only flashes of shields, screams, and the splitting glow of dying spells remained.
Inside all that chaos, Hodell kept moving.
Not fast.
Not flamboyantly.
Just steadily.
White Crow had been designed for precisely this environment. Now, in the middle of the tide, it displayed its worth. Hodell moved like a stone lodged at the center of a flood. No matter how violently the torrent struck, he remained planted.
He moved along the edges of the pit wall, deliberately avoiding the center.
Not because he feared it.
Because there was more profit in killing survivors than dying with fools.
Ahead of him, a burly participant held a giant shield and knelt half submerged in the rising blood and mana runoff. The defensive runes on the shield were already cracked and glowing red with overload.
"Spare me!" the man shouted hoarsely. "I have a pass! I have crystals! I have ties to the Polar Merchant Guild! Everything I have is yours!"
Even while begging, his right hand slid subtly toward the magic explosive on his belt.
Hodell kept walking.
Each step sank slightly into the blood slick ground.
When he reached the man, he said nothing. He simply brought one armored boot down onto the center of the tower shield.
Boom.
White Crow's power module discharged in that instant.
The shield collapsed inward. The man's arm went with it, crushed into twisted meat and broken metal. His attempt at a desperate detonation died in a wet shriek.
Hodell leaned down and clamped his hand around the man's throat.
"I'll collect the pass myself."
Crack.
[Ultimate Trial: Current Progress 615 / 1500]
[Kill confirmed. Festival Points: 22]
He left the body where it fell and disappeared into the tide again.
High above, inside one of the Truth Society's observation towers, the supervisors were no longer relaxed.
"Death list number seventy two. Mr. Pale."
An observer pointed at a cluster of stable waveform data.
"His vitals remain almost perfectly level. That armor is absorbing physical and magical stress far above our projections. He is not relying on large defensive spells. He is tanking the tide through material performance and force dissipation."
Another supervisor rubbed his forehead.
"That armor is obscene. Liquid aurum would already be excessive. Living mithril is worse. Bagel practically handed him a fortune in metal and a complete workshop."
If Bagel could hear that, he would probably come back from the dead just to curse them.
"He's staying near the perimeter and choosing his kills carefully," someone else said. "This kind of battlefield judgment isn't something ordinary Wasteland trash develops."
Back in the subsidence zone, Hodell locked onto his next target.
A three man formation.
They stood back to back inside a narrow resonance barrier just barely wide enough to contain them. The array was good. Efficient. They had probably spent years working together.
"Hold on!" the lead mage roared through clenched teeth. "The first wave is almost ending!"
The staff in his hand was already cracking under strain.
Then Hodell hit them.
He did not cast. He did not announce himself.
He simply slammed into the edge of the resonance field with the brute force of White Crow's weight and momentum.
The barrier ruptured with a sound like tearing glass.
The lead mage turned in horror.
What he saw was a blank silver mask.
Hodell's hand drove straight into his chest, bypassing the array structure and avoiding the defensive nodes with ruthless precision. His fingers closed around a frantically beating heart.
"Be a good little experience pack."
He tore the heart free.
Then he hurled the corpse into the other two.
The formation collapsed completely.
The tide swallowed them.
Three blood clouds bloomed in the violet flood almost at once.
[Ultimate Trial: Current Progress 667 / 1500]
[Kill confirmed. Festival Points: 145]
Hodell flicked blood from his fingers and kept walking.
"I'm starting to sound like a proper villain," he muttered.
And perhaps he did.
The tide continued to rage.
Time blurred.
The weak had long since died. Those still alive were either genuine monsters or carefully trained agents sent by the three major powers. The Ranking Festival was never just a contest for glory. It was a proxy war. The agents' final standings would determine political leverage, tax shares, trade privileges, and resource quotas in Shadow City for the next six months.
Eventually, Hodell stopped.
He had reached a point near the center of the pit, the eye of the storm where the tide struck hardest.
And there, three figures remained standing.
One was hunched and thin, with nine ancient white bone runes circling his body. Each time the violent tide crashed toward him, those runes devoured it greedily, stripping the energy apart like starved beasts.
Another was a giant of a man, more than two meters tall, with a sword as broad as a door plunged into the ground before him. The tide split around the blade whenever it struck, diverted left and right as though colliding with an invisible reef.
The third was the strangest.
He simply stood still.
The purple tide veered away from him on its own, curving around his body as if some unseen treasure or authority forbade it from drawing near.
The three of them were not hiding.
They were waiting.
And their gazes had already settled on Hodell.
A silent killing intent spread across the storm dark battlefield.
Hodell looked at them through the mask of White Crow.
At last, a genuine smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
Now things were getting interesting.
.....
[If you don't want to wait for the next update, read 50 chapters ahead on P@treon.]
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