The voice echoed once more, as though from within Lucian's own blood.
"A hidden condition—[First Blood]—has been met. The Blood Curse: [Undying Hunger] has been activated."
"Heritage of Slumber acknowledged. Curse-laden bloodline recognized. Understanding… unlocked."
And just like before, Lucian immediately understood the curse.
[Undying Hunger]: Upon activation, this curse renders all food consumed for the next 24 hours into tasteless ash the moment it touches the cursed one's tongue. No nourishment shall pass their lips, no comfort shall ease their gut.
And yet—for a fleeting five minutes—they are liberated. Hunger ceases its gnawing. Exhaustion lifts like fog in sunlight. In those brief moments, they cannot die from hunger, no matter how starved they may be.
A smirk flickered across Lucian's blood-spattered lips.
'Not a bad trade-off for a curse.'
He slowly crouched low in the warm gore of the brute he had just mauled to death. He reached and grabbed the hilt of a short sword still locked in the grip of the dead tribesman—steel blade, bone handle, leather-wrapped grip darkened with the blood of the innocent. As he rose, long strands of black blood-soaked hair slid across his chiseled face, veiling eyes that burned with murderous intent. The silence around him thundered, louder than any war drum.
The second Drax tribesman, still trembling, stumbled further backward into the ranks of his kin. Their jeers had died, replaced with uncertain terror. Even the giant, a monster of blood and brawn, weary, sensing a shift in fate.
"He's… still alive," Anne whispered, voice trembling, eyes wild with a twisted mix of fear and awe. A manic grin played on her lips–caught between horror and thrill. Beside her, the ginger stood paralyzed, disbelief carved into his face like a mask.
Lucian began to walk—slow—toward the line of Drax warriors. Mid-stride, he paused, stooping only to claim another short sword dropped from the hand of the trembling warrior. Now with twin blades in hand, his stride never faltered, never broke rhythm. The path was clear leading straight to the Titan.
The giant let out a thunderous roar; axe raised–blade pointed at Lucian–a declaration that he did not fear him...
----
This time, he didn't wait.
The monster charged– feet pounding like drumbeats of death. Anne gasped–, her heart stilled. The ginger turned his face away, unable to watch what he thought was sure would be Lucian's end.
But Lucian didn't charge. He stood still.
He waited.
And as the axe came down—a slash wide enough to split a man in two—Lucian sidestepped.
The sheer force of the swing tore through the air itself, sending a shockwave that flared Lucian's cloak and whipped back the veil of his bloodied hair.
Now the giant saw his eyes.
Menacing. Fearless. Endless yet calm.
The beast howled and swung again—the same blow that shattered Lucian's ribs before.
'The same move won't work again.' This time Lucian was ready. Body healed–mind clear and fear a distant memory.
His blades flashed with lightning speed, moving faster than the eye could follow. One met the descending axe, steel shrieking as they parried. The second blade slipped beneath angling up to catch and redirected the arc.
The colossal weapon twisted mid-arc, its momentum unbroken—and kept going—sailing straight into the crowd behind the giant.
Whoosh!
Dozens of tribesmen fell before they could scream, heads and torsos severed in an instant. Blood sprayed skyward and rained down, painting Lucian's pale skin and garb in droplets of death.
He inhaled, slow and steady.
The giant snarled, rage boiling behind his eyes. His knuckles whitened on the haft of his axe. Then—
Then nothing. Lucian vanished.
To Anne and the spectators, it was as if both warriors blinked out of existence–snatched from reality like a whirlwind of steel and shadow... Sparks flared in erratic bursts across the battlefield, like lightning dancing across a stormy sky–metal kissing metal in a violent waltz. Only the ringing of blades and the glint of steel marked the movements of their deadly dance.
The giant, banking on raw primal strength, brought his full weight down on Lucian, lifting him from the ground in a clash of steel.
But Lucian didn't panic.
Suspended in the air, the cursed warrior twisted his torso with inhuman grace, momentum coiling through his body like a spring—then unleashed a devastating spinning kick that landed between the giant's shoulder and neck.
Crack.
The sound of the impact rang out like a gong, causing the mountain of a man to buckle at the waist, knees almost folding beneath him.
Lucian landed lightly, blades gleaming for a reckoning–poised, controlled.
The onlookers stood—or fell, some even frozen, jaws hung in disbelief. What they had just witnessed defied everything they understood of strength and power– and yet Lucian's gaze never shifted from the giant, for this wasn't victory.
This was only the prelude.
The giant's body, still hunched from Lucian's devastating kick, began to twitch. The sound of sinew stretching, of tendons snapping and reweaving, filled the air like the crackling of ancient trees. Bones popped. Joints realigned. He twitched, spasms rippled through his body like aftershocks—and then stillness.
He rose. Slowly. Silently– with stealth. Eyes closed, And with him came a presence.
The arena's air thickened into tar. The sky darkened as though the sun itself dared not witness what was to come. A maddening lust for blood surged out from the giant like a tidal wave—demonic, absolute. It wasn't rage. It was hunger and insanity. The very weight of his presence crushed down on all present like the pull of gravity.
Anne collapsed, a sharp cry tearing from her throat, its echoes shattering the stillness. Her fingers raked at the earth, desperate, as if she was trying to escape some unseen foe. Her body writhed, spasming violently. The ginger stumbled beside her, his knees buckling–his face was pale, soaked in sweat that trickled down his temples like a river–his breath shallow and erratic. He muttered words twisted into incoherent nonsense, as fear clung to him like a second skin.
Even the Drax tribesmen—all hardened warriors, proud and unyielding, buckled like fragile grass under the weight– forced to their knees in instinctive submission. Their war chants died, swallowed whole by the raw, primal silence of fear. They all bowed. All but one.
Lucian stood in the giant's presence, unmoved, his eyes fixed on the beast before him. The bloodlust that poured from the beast did not just oppress him– it called to him. It echoed in his bones, stirring something deep, something old.
In that instant, it was clear.
This giant—this beast, Somewhere in his veins ran the blood of Lucian's own kin. Cursed blood–the blood of Lucian's own lineage– slumbering blood calling to be set free. A dark, ancient connection, born of blood and vengeance, now awakened and hungry.
The giant opened his eyes.
They were pure white. Void of reason. Void of soul. Nothing there but the abyss. He grinned. A blood-soaked smile, stretching far too wide, as if the very act of grinning was a mockery to those who stood before him.
Suddenly without warning, he lunged.
In a blur of muscle and murder, the behemoth shot forward like a cannon of raw flesh and rage. Lucian managed to dart aside—barely, the wind of the axe's swing grazing his skin like the kiss of death. The axe tore through the air with a deafening roar – and behind him, a dozen tribesmen were reduced to a bloody mist, cleaved effortlessly like stalks of grain beneath a scythe.
But the giant didn't stop.
His frenzied swings painted the air red. Each missed blow, a massacre. Lucian danced between strikes, his body flowing like ink through water,--fluid and elusive. His blades flashed with chaos, cutting shallow precise wounds – tendons, joints, arteries –every pass a silent testament of his skill. The earth beneath him grew slick with the monster's blood, each step a stain.
Yet –still, he came. Seemingly unstoppable.
Driven mad by bloodlust, Lucian was no longer his only target; his tribe had now become a part of the sacrifice and yet not a single swing found its mark.
Unable to predict Lucian's weaving assaults, the giant slammed his axe into the ground with inhuman fury. The earth screamed beneath the blow—cracking, splitting the arena. A concussive shock wave rippled outward and created a cloud of crimson dust, blanketing the battlefield, and muffling the chaos.
The crowd was thrown like ragdolls caught. Rocks tore through the air at incredible speed, tearing flesh from bones. Drax warriors caught off guard, were helpless as the projectiles slammed into them, tearing their bodies apart in a brutal dance of death and destruction. They had no chance to react–they never saw the rocks coming, as if launched from siege with lethal precision, the sound of their impact a symphony of violence.
Lucian staggered—his rhythm broken.
That was all the giant needed.
In a blink, the axe was in the air—a mountain in motion. It carved through the dust, the cloud, the debris– through the very air, through sound itself...
Lucian's eyes widened.
There was no escape.
With every force of strength, he crossed his blades in front of his chest forming a desperate X – the last shred of his defense.
The impact came like the wrath of gods.
Steel screamed. Then snapped.
The axe tore through both swords like they were paper.
The crunch of splintering bones and the ripping of flesh echoed like a thunderclap throughout what was left of the circle. Those who still clung to life turned their heads toward the rising cloud of dust—but none could see the strike that caused it.
Then, like a shockwave, a violent gust of wind erupted from the haze, scattering dust and debris in every direction. Anne's eyes widened, her heart skipping a beat. But then there—emerging from the chaos like a demon reborn—was Lucian, still breathing, still moving, still deadly.
His movement was even faster now – his form, streaking low across the blood-soaked earth like a shadow born of vengeance. The giant turned, its milky white eyes locking onto Lucian's approach. He let loose a roar, then opened its massive arms wide, muscles bulging, and clapped its titanic hands together with a force that shook the very air—aiming to squash Lucian like an insect.
But the cursed warrior was already gone– his movement was something that the giant's fury could follow.
Lucian dropped into a slide, his body twisting just in time to slip between the giant's legs. The air screamed around him as he passed, and in a single heart-stopping moment, he brought his shattered blades—jagged, soaked with dark ichor—up in a deadly cross-slash. Steel met sinew. Metal met bone. The sound that followed was indescribable.
Both of the giant's ankles were split clean through.
The beast let out a scream that tore through the sky, a monstrous, primal cry of agony and confusion. It crumpled, its knees slamming into the earth with such force that the ground quaked beneath it. Blood sprayed from the stumps where its feet had once been, adding to the crimson pool that he had already created with the blood of his tribesmen. Its severed ankles remained upright -–grotesque pillars of flesh and bone —completely disconnected from the rest of its now collapsing form.
The giant gasped, panic flooding its entire being —chest heaving in ragged breaths. He blinked through the pain, trying to locate his enemy, but Lucian was already gone. Silence fell for a heartbeat, thick and suffocating. Then—pure instinct —animalistic and frantic—forced the giant's head to tilt upward.
There, descending from above like the wrath of the gods, was Lucian. His body twisted midair, spinning faster than the eye could follow, a human storm of steel and fury (Bayblade). His broken blades screamed as they cut through the air, the blood caked on them gleaming in the light like war paint.
And then—impact.
Lucian crashed down, upon the giant's skull with an explosive force. His blades tore through the beast's head, cleaving it from crown to collarbone, carving deep through brain, spine, and ribcage with terrifying precision... The giant's chest burst open in a grotesque blossom of gore, ribs snapping like brittle twigs, flesh peeling back in a visceral, brutal explosion of crimson.
The beast didn't even scream this time. It couldn't. It simply collapsed. Its massive form crumpled to the earth, a titanic corpse spilling its innards into the soil. Lucian landed atop the ruin, his body drenched in blood, his eyes burning with an unholy fire, a storm of rage and unrelenting fury.