You Already Won

The ritual began.

Ashantiana couldn't remember the first motion.

Maybe it was Ser Dolen drawing a line in the dirt.

Maybe it was the others standing in a circle.

Maybe it was the silence—so total, so unnatural—that it swallowed the air like the world had exhaled its last breath.

It was a blur to her.

Colors bled into each other. Shapes melted. Sound pulled away like it was afraid to stay.

And maybe—just maybe—Ser planned it that way.

Because if she had been allowed to think, if she'd had a second longer to scream, she might've stopped it.

But it was already happening.

Circles etched in Ryun, glowing lines drawn in ash and old blood.

The last survivors—the final few—stood calmly within their marks.

Their eyes were clear.

Their hearts resolute.

No goodbyes. No final words. Not one tear.

Because this was no longer about sadness.

This was about meaning.

Ashantiana moved without thinking. Her feet placed themselves at the center, like the ground knew her before she did. The energy crackled around her, ancient and heavy.

She participated.

Because whether it was right or wrong—whether it was mercy or madness—this was their wish.

And she would carry it.

She would become its consequence.

She would become their weapon.

The Ryun around them rose like mist. Pale blue at first. Then deep purple. Then black—a shadow that shimmered like memory.

One by one, the survivors offered themselves.

Not in agony.

In willingness.

Each soul burned into light and poured toward her, like sparks drawn to a furnace. Ashantiana's body seized, her blood screamed, her bones glowed.

She cracked—but didn't break.

Her armor buckled and reformed. Her veins lit with silver fire. The ground beneath her split and healed in a rhythm that wasn't hers—but now belonged to her.

Power flooded in.

Not wild. Not chaotic.

Focused. Purposeful.

Their memories. Their pride. Their pain.

All hers now.

When it ended, the circle was empty.

Only ash remained. Ser Dolen's armor rested atop it. His spear planted like a marker.

And in the center, Ashantiana stood.

Not shaking.

Not weeping.

Her eyes were different now—deeper. Her body radiated a force that bent the air around her.

She was no longer just a warrior. She was now a strength comparable to a ranker.

Ascended through love, grief, and fury.

The beginning of the end, carved in quiet.

She didn't hesitate.

Her hand wrapped around the old spear next to the armor, and the moment her fingers clenched—

It changed.

Ryun surged from her body and flooded the weapon like a dam burst. The spear hissed, then groaned—twisting, bending, growing. Metal layered over itself in jagged spirals, the shaft extending until it rivaled a pike, the head a brutal fang of forged lightning and storm-bound fury.

A weapon fit not for war—but for annihilation.

Ashantiana leapt into the sky, her ascent tearing cracks into the air itself.

Once high enough, she hovered—a silhouette against three suns and falling ash.

Then she released it: a pulse of blackened Ryun that rippled across the landscape like a sonar scream.

It found them.

First ping: a group of twenty—hiding in an abandoned temple.

She moved faster than thought.

Slaughtered.

Her spear carved through torsos like paper, limbs spun into the air, and the last survivor saw only white light before his skull collapsed.

Second ping: twelve clustered on a floating ruin, attempting to barter gems.

She descended like a god's punishment.

Slaughtered.

Their screams were cut short by crushing gravity and Ryun-cloaked slashes that curved midair. Her hand punched through a shield user's spine. One tried to fly away—his wings burned off by a glare.

Third ping: a pack of elite contestants—around ranker-tier.

She landed among them with a thunderclap.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

Slaughtered.

No speeches. No introductions. Her spear spun in elegant arcs of pragmatic devastation. One tried to reason with her—his mouth filled with blood before the sentence finished. Another summoned a mountain to crush her—

She caught it. Crushed that instead.

Then… she saw them.

The towers.

Alien constructs of otherworldly architecture, humming with divine symbols and recursive logic. They loomed like gods' teeth—tall, cruel, unnatural.

A reminder of who ruled this world.

Who turned her people into entertainment.

Ashantiana's eye twitched.

She lifted her spear—no, not a spear now. A conceptual vector of wrath. Ryun blazed around it in rings, reality bending inward as her aura surged. She crouched in the sky, the wind screaming past her as she poured everything into the throw.

Then—

She hurled it.

The world held its breath.

The spear howled across the sky, igniting the air, trailing spirals of dark flame and thunderous streaks of red light. It bent space, the trail behind it writhing like torn fabric, and with a final twist—

It struck the tower.

A second of silence.

Then—

KAAAA—BOOM.

The tower detonated in a glorious cascade of inverted light. A ring of molten Ryun erupted outward, flipping terrain, uprooting stone, launching debris into orbit.

Floating islands shattered.

Chunks of obsidian rained down, glinting like dying stars.

And in the sky above the smoking ruin, stood Ashantiana— eyes burning.

A curse returned to the sender.

The land screamed.

From the charred crater where the tower once stood, the ground convulsed, ripping apart like something ancient had stirred from below. Tremors shot out in all directions—cracking roads, folding stone, and sending shockwaves through the ash-thickened air.

Then came the hands.

Massive, earthen, sculpted from the very terrain—each one the size of a cathedral, knuckles formed from obsidian and magma veins running like arteries through the palms. They burst upward, five in total, stretching for Ashantiana like the world itself was trying to drag her down.

She didn't flinch.

With a twist of her wrist, she spun her spear, Ryun bleeding from it in rippling black rings. Her aura—dense, acidic, impossible to breathe through—exploded outward in a spiral.

The hands met the rings—

BOOM.

Each one detonated midair, splintering into shards of volcanic glass and crumbling stone. The shockwaves alone blew away a section of the clouds.

From the smoke… a platform rose.

A slab of earth lifted on a column, standing firm even as the terrain shook around it. Atop the platform stood a man—but not a man.

Zog.

His grey skin steamed—slick with gore and molten sweat—each vein bulging like it was cut from coiled stone. His white hair—tufted and sharp—blew wildly as he ascended up. His eyes were brown, but those unnatural violet pupils glowed like cursed relics.

Ashantiana came surging.

A wave of black Ryun crackled around her like broken lightning in slow motion—liquid, humming, oily in texture but star-bright in density. It coiled around her spear, which pulsed and bent unnaturally, growing larger, heavier, sharper with her hatred. She had no wings but left streaks in the sky, her aura disrupting everything it passed.

Once, she bent the winds and the earth with precision.

Now she commanded bitterness made manifest—Ryun so corrupted it blurred light and made matter weep.

She didn't scream. She didn't curse.

She just appeared.

Zog slammed his foot down, and the terrain rose like a fortress—sharp plates of quartz and iron-rich bedrock folding into a spiraling shield wall. His hands danced in deliberate, practiced circles, hands trancing trails in the air, each movement pulling tectonic force into form.

Ashantiana didn't care.

She hurled herself through his formation like a black comet, obliterating the stone spirals mid-spin. The wind from her charge alone flattened trees half a mile away.

Zog leapt—his body unnaturally agile for his size, the ground following his path like a second skin. Boulders floated midair then launched like warheads. Jagged pillars tried to trap her aura, to ground her rage.

It didn't work.

She carved through it all—her spear screaming through the air like it was alive, black Ryun twisting into razor tornadoes that flayed the constructs.

Zog landed on a rising cliff and roared—

She answered only by slamming into the cliff, spear-first.

The rock cracked, then shattered under the pressure.

Zog growled and spun midair. With both hands he formed a sigil of tectonic force and pounded it into the earth, causing spikes to erupt around him—an earthen lotus of jagged death.

Ashantiana twirled her spear once—

Void Spiral: Impalement Bloom.

The black Ryun detached from her weapon mid-spin and duplicated, forming a halo of spears above her like a predator's crown. Each one spun with unnatural force and then rained down like guided missiles, piercing the earth lotus clean through, one spike at a time.

Zog's eyes widened.

Before he could reform the terrain, she appeared again—no warning, just speed and silence.

She grabbed his stone-jawed face, black Ryun hissing where her fingers met his skin.

Zog raised a hand in defense, but she didn't wait.

With a brutal wrench, she ripped off his jaw, black tendrils shredding through the tough hide like molten steel through flesh.

CRACK.

His scream was a choked gurgle, blood and stone dust flooding from his throat.

She tossed the jaw like garbage—sent it skidding across the broken plains. And then laughed—a harsh, guttural sound. The sound of something freed.

Freed from purpose. Freed from rules. Freed from mercy.

Zog writhed, trying to reform his jaw, but her Ryun was so vile—so corrupted, so twisted by ritual and rage—it ate at the very concept of healing. It wasn't just Ryun anymore. It was nearly Sryun. The kind that left stains on memory. The kind that tasted like guilt and ruin.

And she wasn't done.

She pounced, driving both knees into his chest. The earth beneath them cratered again, layers of rock snapping like twigs.

Then the beating began.

Punch.

His cheekbone shattered.

Punch.

His left eye collapsed.

CRACK. SPLAT.

Her knuckles were caked in gore and shards of stone. But she didn't stop.

SPLAT. SPLAT. SPLAT.

Zog's stone-like body buckled and folded inward like wet paper.

PUNCH. CRUNCH. SNAP.

The soil around them churned. Animals in nearby forests fled. The air warped, saturated with that black vile energy.

SPLAT.

Just the rhythm.

A thunderous, flesh-meets-earth metronome of hate.

Punch. Crunch. Crunch. Snap.

By the time she'd driven them dozens of meters into the ground, her fists were no longer striking a body—they were sculpting absence. Pulverizing flesh, pulverizing meaning. Until he wasn't recognizable. Wasn't a Wu'Tuken. Wasn't anything at all.

And yet, behind the destruction, a whisper of truth:

Zog had called for help.

He'd invoked his god within the tower. Begged for strength. For purpose. For intervention.

But nothing came.

He never knew why.

Unknown to him, his god had already passed on—she didn't leave with the Vari. Instead she was ripped from her pedestal when the Vari Family stormed through her domain. Not out of hatred, but as a message. A message meant for Holgelic.

That goddess hadn't lasted long after.

Holgelic replied, in its own way. Supreme families playing games with old scores.

But Zog?

He never saw any of it.

He died, buried in his own crater, bleeding and broken, not by fate, but by a force too small to be noticed by the ones who supposedly ruled all.

He died feeling like he failed a goddess.

Not knowing she had failed him first.

And Ashantiana stood over the remains.

Eyes blank.

Chest heaving.

Hands dripping.

She smiled.

Not out of joy. Not even satisfaction. But because this? This was fitting. This was how she would defy the gods. An itch. A curse. A reminder that their rule was not absolute.

Whatever it took.

She shot back into the skies like a bolt of wrath.

A black streak tearing the clouds apart, she called the spear back to her grasp, her Ryun-tainted spear glowing — Heavy. All-consuming.

The next tower was kilometers away.

It didn't matter.

She reached it. Tore it down.

Then another.

And another.

And when she carved through the fourth, her body a blur of violence and hunger, she felt them.

A group, moving with caution and direction.

Contestants. High-level. Confident. Too well-organized for scavengers.

Coming toward the now-demolished tower, likely expecting sanctuary, they would receive none.

She landed with the grace of a meteor—ground shattering, trees folding inward, pressure collapsing the air.

The group turned. Just in time to see the smoke clear.

A woman stood before them, cloaked in black Ryun aura, face pale and blood-flecked, eyes empty, teeth clenched.

Her spear hummed—twisting with bitterness, warped by sacrifice.

The weapon itself looked unstable, almost as if reality refused to hold it.

Alesha reacted instantly, shoving herself behind Roderkeject with a flicker of charm-imbued reflexes.

Two of her strongest—the same men who had subscribed after the gangbang—stepped forward, bravado on their lips, aura flaring.

She chose them because they were strong.

But strength?

Strength was relative.

Their power was immense… for someone like Alesha.

Ashantiana appeared between them.

Just a shimmer.

Then—

Spear through the first's chest, out his back, before he could react.

She tore it out in a single spin. The second raised his arms to block—

Too late.

Her foot shattered his knee.

Her fist collapsed his throat.

He went down choking.

He wouldn't get back up.

They'd lasted 2.7 seconds.

She didn't even stop moving.

By the time Alesha screamed, she was already mid-lunge—the spear whistling with a sound that could only be described as laughter in a nightmare.