Chapter 174: Act II, Scene VIII: The Bloody Curtain
Red beams shot across the arena like falling sparks.
Above them, the sky looked like a giant mirror, bending and showing every move over and over again.
The tall stone walls around the arena were cracked and scorched from stray shots. The floor was broken glass, blackened and sharp where beams had hit.
There was no fire. No crowd. Just glowing red light and thin threads shining in the dark.
In the middle of this war, two fighters faced off.
Kardrax stood loose and grinning. The cuts across his arms bled slowly, trails of glowing red dripping to the ground, but his grin only widened with each new wound.
His blue hair whipped in the wind, and his glowing red eyes shimmered with a predator's hunger.
Akedios stood opposite, straight-backed and still. His hands barely moved. Threads coiled from his fingertips like silk from a spider's gut, thin, invisible unless they shimmered with reflected light. His face, in opposite to Kardrax, was calm.
He sighed.
"You're really going to make me try, aren't you? Ugh..."
Another thread lashed out.
Kardrax turned slightly. A beam of red light snapped from his finger, precise as a scalpel. The thread vanished, cleanly severed. Akedios blinked.
Then Kardrax laughed.
"If your threads are meant to tear me apart, demon... then hurry up. My patience won't last forever, and I'm getting bored."
Akedios let out another long sigh. He shifted slightly, lowering one arm without thinking. And then...
Pain.
It exploded under his arm like fire lancing through bone. His muscles tensed. He groaned quietly, and winced.
Kardrax saw it. Grinned.
"Oho, careful. You're still not out of the gutter."
Akedios glanced down. The wound he had received was still open, bleeding. But the blood dripping had a strange crimson hue.
Demons don't bleed red. This wasn't normal.
He studied the slow drip from his side. The color was wrong. Too bright, burning around the edges.
"What kind of attack was that…?" he muttered.
The wound hadn't closed. That never happened. Even mortal blades wouldn't have this kind of permanence. This was something else.
A scream of heat split the air.
Kardrax fired another beam, a narrow streak of red lightning aimed at Akedios's chest. He barely moved, flicking a single finger.
A curtain of threads rose and absorbed the blast.
But it shuddered. The threads trembled like they were alive, sizzling at the edges.
Akedios narrowed his eyes. His threads could block magic, but this... this wasn't just energy.
Another red needle lanced through the air, aimed at his leg. Then another. Kardrax moved like a machine, deliberate and deranged.
Each strike wasn't random. They came in a rhythm. One at the thigh. One at the shoulder. One at the side of the neck.
Each one meant something.
Akedios dodged most, parried others. But some landed. There was just too many.
The bleeding worsened.
The red wasn't just on the outside now. He felt heat behind his eyes. Tightness in his lungs.
He breathed sharply.
Poison? Magic? Disease?
No. This wasn't that simple. The pain had something. A presence. Like countless living being working in his blood.
Akedios let threads erupt in every direction, creating a dome of silk that twisted and danced. He moved his hand slightly, and the web bent to his will, hunting Kardrax.
But Kardrax didn't run.
He walked forward.
Straight lines. Precise counters.
Each movement of his hand unleashed a red spark. Each spark split a thread. Some hit the dome, others aimed for joints.
"One more beam, and your blood will boil," he said, voice low and mocking. "Two more, and you'll start screaming. Shall we see what three does?"
Akedios twitched.
"Honestly, I wish you'd be stronger. Then I wouldn't have to be here."
Another sigh. Then a dozen threads launched forward, spinning like drills.
Kardrax didn't block them.
He let them pierce him.
His body jerked back from the force, blood spilling down his arms and legs. But instead of falling, he raised both arms, hands open like a performer greeting the crowd.
The blood spilling from his wounds shimmered. Then shifted.
Akedios blinked.
The crimson drops didn't fall. They floated, forming a mist around Kardrax's body, curling upward in slow, elegant spirals.
A heartbeat passed.
Then the mist exploded.
A storm of red beams fired from every direction, dozens, maybe hundreds, each one like a burning needle of death.
They shot outward in a sweeping arc, turning the air into a crimson storm.
Akedios reacted fast, summoning a wall of threads, layers thick, woven like armor.
But it wasn't enough.
The beams tore through. Each one found a gap, a weakness, or punched straight through the silk like it was paper.
His limbs jerked with every impact. His torso buckled under the hits. His legs gave out. Threads fell limp around him.
He was being ripped apart.
But even through the pain, Akedios only thought about Kardrax.
He wasn't just attacking.
He was fighting with his own blood and smiling.
Akedios was a demon, but this man was a monster.
The storm ended with a hiss, the red beams vanishing into a thick red mist hanging in the air.
Kardrax stood tall in the center of it, his arms still raised. Blood dripped from his own body, but his smile never faded. He whistled quietly as the mist began to clear.
"My... Just looks at you..."
The red fog thinned, revealing Akedios.
He was still on his feet, somehow, but barely. His body shook from head to toe.
Dozens of tiny, searing wounds covered him, each one pulsing with heat.
Blood was running from his arms, chest, and face. It wasn't demon blood anymore, too red, too bright, glowing faintly like something burning from inside.
Every cut felt sharp, electric, endless. But there weren't just a few. There were hundreds. Thousands.
Akedios staggered, blinking blood from his eyes.
The world had gone red. Not from light. Not from magic. From inside him.
He looked down at his hands, saw his own veins glowing faintly beneath the skin. This horrible crimson light pulsed there like a second heartbeat.
The threads around him twitched, then unraveled.
"No…" he breathed. "This isn't mine."
He touched the blood pooling at his side, that terrible red blood.
It shimmered.
His body jolted, not from pain, but recognition of an aura pulsing from it.
It was foreign.
Not just poison, not magic. A presence.
Kardrax's.
His aura wasn't just on the attacks. It was inside him.
The realization hit like a trucj. His power, the countless threads he wove with instinct and thought, no longer obeyed. They flickered and failed like disconnected nerves.
He looked up, more shocked than angry.
"You injected your blood into me?"
Across the battlefield, Kardrax tilted his head.
His smile was slow and sharp.
"That's a sexy way to say it," he said. "I'm an honest man, I love people's inside."
Akedios stumbled back. His limbs no longer answered. They trembled, betrayed.
"You... lunatic. That's suicidal... you'll die from this technique...!"
Kardrax laughed. Not mockingly, but with pure joy.
"I might! Isn't that exciting?"
His grin widened.
"But you're going to die first. And flamboyantly. One more beam, and you'll see hell. Or you can wait two more minutes, and you'll feel it. Your choice"
Akedios choked, then his eyes widened.
The blood within him boiled.
Lines of burning red traced his arms, lighting beneath the skin like molten scars. His eyes bulged, mouth open, a hoarse scream rattling in his throat.
He reached out instinctively, not for Kardrax, not for safety, but for anything that still obeyed.
Kardrax only chuckled.
"Ah? Sorry. I was never good at math, never planned to live long enough to get good at anything. Might've been 2 seconds instead."
Akedios' mouth parted as if to speak, but only a strangled gasp escaped.
His fingers twitched. Threads materialized, then died, limp and useless. One by one, they dropped.
His legs gave out next.
The pain was endless, blooming inside him like fire in the blood. His skin felt like it was blistering from within. His throat gurgled on red.
Then, finally, the last thread fell..
Kardrax stepped past him, slowly.
"Well, I suppose I'm done here. I won't kill you. What would be the point? This lasts much longer."
He didn't look back.
"Enjoy every second of it."
He vanished into the red mist.
A psychic scream tore through the dreamspace, a deep, raw shock that pulsed like a wound across every mirrored plane.
The pain wasn't just felt. It was shared.
First, Hypnos stopped walking, his serene gaze twitching. Morpheus, locked in his own illusion war, froze for half a second, eyes going wide.
Then the others.
Across the Slumbering King's domain, generals and high demons alike felt the ripple. The agony of a General.
And in a white space, something opened a single eye.