The Storm King

“My order stands! Bring death to the defeated!” Octavius roared, further stunning the already shocked crowd.

Leon immediately released his magic senses to keep an eye on Antonius Agrippa while his eyes stared at Trajan. He sought further instruction from his Prince, but he wasn’t going to do so at the cost of giving the gladiator an opening.

Trajan, however, stared at Octavius in disbelief. The elder Prince had no idea what to do now, as Octavius was, in fact, higher ranked than he was, even if the high officials deferred to Trajan more.

But August wasn’t going to take this lying down. He immediately rose from his seat and shouted, “That is an illegal order! There is to be no blood spilled in this arena!”

Leon grimaced at the sight of the Princes disagreeing so publicly, and his expression was mirrored in thousands of faces around the arena. Most of the spectators were commoners without a shred of magical power, and since King Julius had reigned for more than eighty years, they had never known a time when the Kingdom hadn’t been directed by a single will. The sight of their Princes at odds with each other was terrifying at an almost existential level, to the point that the arena was dead silent.

“Isn’t this interesting?” Antonius Agrippa said to Leon with a tone so smug that Leon almost attacked him right then and there. “It seems our leaders aren’t on the same page. What a shame. Well, anyway, I have been given a Royal command to slay that man behind you, Sir, but in the interest of common courtesy, I’ll grant you time enough to get out of my way…”

Leon glared at the gladiator and didn’t say a word. He carefully began to retract his killing intent—Antonius Agrippa had already managed to use his fifth-tier magic to throw off the effects of Leon’s killing intent, so there wasn’t much need for him to keep projecting it. Besides, Leon was already strategizing how to put the golden gladiator down if he were to make a move, and he had a few time-tested opening plays in mind.

Up in the Royal box, Trajan finally decided that he was done playing politics and saving face for his nephews. He stepped forward, grabbed Octavius by the shoulder, and hurled him back into the seats, much to the Second Prince’s surprise. Trajan then glared at August, and the Fourth Prince got the idea and sat down next to his brother.

Turning back to the arena, Trajan saw Antonius Agrippa taking an aggressive stance, and recognizing that if the gladiator was going to go this far even after hearing August’s order to stop, then Agrippa wasn’t going to listen to him. Regardless, he had no illusions about what the result would be of the sports fighter challenging Leon.

“Sir Leon,” Trajan shouted, “do what you must, but Antonius Agrippa is not to lay a finger on that man behind you!”

That was all Leon needed to hear. He blocked out just about everything else, so he didn’t notice the glass cover of the Royal box closing as Trajan turned back around to face the Princes, he didn’t see Elise, Valeria, Asiya, and Alix watching with expressions of mixed horror, disbelief, and excitement, all he saw was the gladiator in front of him.

In that moment, nothing else mattered except Antonius Agrippa and how to defeat him.

Calling upon his magic, Leon prepared himself for battle. However, right before he began, he whispered to the black-armored gladiator behind him, “Make for the exit.”

The black-armored gladiator was about to say something about how he’d assist Leon, but before he got the words out Leon’s killing intent exploded out of him once again, taking Antonius Agrippa completely by surprise. Leon’s killing intent had been retracted slowly enough that the gladiator hadn’t realized it, and so quickly got used to not being under that kind of pressure. As before, Leon’s killing intent hit him like a brick wall, and he instantly froze in primal terror.

Leon charged, ignoring the bewildered stares of the crowd. Many people had risen to their feet and started heading for the exits after everything that had just gone down, but most people were still in their seats, watching in horrified fascination.

Lightning surged through Leon’s veins, raising his speed to the point that Antonius Agrippa didn’t even see Leon approach. That lightning then flowed into Leon’s left arm, where he began to form a golden lightning spear that he intended to slam into Agrippa’s torso, but just as that magic flowed past his shoulder, he was instantly wracked with pain. It wasn’t enough for Leon to stop what he was doing, but it was certainly enough to slow him down for a moment.

Still, with lightning coursing through the rest of his body, that moment wasn’t enough for Leon to miss Agrippa. He lunged forward with the lightning spear, stabbing at the golden gladiator’s breastplate. The armor was well-enchanted, but Antonius Agrippa was tossed back like a leaf in the wind.

But then, the gladiator pushed himself up from the sand without missing a beat. He had armor, and Leon didn’t. He could already see himself winning the battle for that reason alone.

Leon, in contrast to his usual fighting style, assumed a more defensive posture, brandishing his sword in front of him while he quietly tried to use his magic to dull the pain in his left shoulder. Unfortunately, that only aggravated his pain, so he quickly stopped.

‘I guess I’m just going to have to fight through it…’ Leon bitterly thought. However, he never once regretted agreeing to Elise’s proposal to use her Meligaent’s Obsession to regenerate his arm, for even with the pain, having the arm was better than not.

“That was pathetic,” Antonius Agrippa said with a tone of disappointment. “I thought that since you were a knight, you would bring more power to the table. Unfortunately, you’re just a boy, aren’t you? Not yet a man!”

Antonius Agrippa lunged forward, his light magic carrying him right to Leon, and the gladiator thrust toward the knight’s chest, aiming for his heart. However, Leon wasn’t so slow that such a simple and direct attack could threaten him, and he twisted his body out of the way, letting the gladiator’s blade taste nothing but air.

Leon continued his momentum, spinning away from the gladiator before sending a slash straight toward the back of Agrippa’s knee, his family’s sword lit up with golden lightning. Agrippa managed to lift his leg and avoid a severe injury, but Leon just continued his assault, raining blow after blow upon the gladiator that Agrippa could barely stand against, even with his armor—Leon had switched back to his usual hyper-aggressive style.

Agrippa was a gladiator, a sports fighter, and he wasn’t used to fighting the kind of battle that Leon was. Leon struck with purpose, aiming to kill, or failing that, to injure or to maim. There was no hesitation in his blade. Agrippa, on the other hand, fought for entertainment, and as such was used to taking a more casual approach to battle. Oftentimes, gladiators would only exchange two or three blows before separating to trade insults and play to the crowd. Because of this, Agrippa lost the initiative.

As he pressed against the gladiator, Leon conjured another lightning bolt in his left hand. His shoulder again flared up in pain, but Leon ignored it and brought the bolt into being anyway. Just as Agrippa blocked another sword slash, Leon widened his stance and slammed the bolt into the ground. He already knew that Agrippa’s armor was too strong to be penetrated by his blade directly, and it could resist a direct hit with his lightning bolts, so he decided to go for an area-of-effect attack instead, hoping to cause some damage to the gladiator’s head or other exposed body parts.

As soon as the bolt was driven into the sand, the two fighters were enveloped in a sheet of lightning. Hundreds of golden arcs of electricity dancing between them, melting the sand beneath their feet. Leon, of course, was unharmed, but the same couldn’t be said for Agrippa. Lightning surged through the air and scorched his perfect, perpetually-smiling face, burning the skin and drawing blood. More lightning ran through the ground and up through his legs, though his armor prevented any noticeable damage on that front. But that armor couldn’t protect Antonius Agrippa everywhere, and a few small arcs of lightning forked into the gladiator through his joints, where there were gaps in the golden metal plates.

What was more, the thunder that accompanied Leon’s lightning resounded in Antonius Agrippa’s ears, deafening him for the time being and putting him off-balance.

But Leon wasn’t done. It was in his nature to not stop once he got going until his enemy was defeated, and despite Antonius Agrippa’s mounting injuries, the man was still on his feet.

Leon, realizing that he wouldn’t be able to use much more magic using his left arm without pain, passed his sword from his right hand to his left, freeing his right for blasts of magic. He was still competent enough in his swordplay to use his left hand, though he preferred using his right.

Calling upon his magic once again, Leon swiped aside Antonius Agrippa’s sword with his own, then let loose with a huge gout of flame with his right hand, enveloping the gladiator in magical fire. Since Agrippa’s armor seemed to be protecting him fairly well against lightning, Leon tried using the other element in which he was well-practiced enough to use in combat.

The fire worked like a charm, or at least, much more effectively than Leon’s lightning did. Agrippa’s golden hair caught alight, his armor was scorched and blackened, and the intense heat from the flame caused the gladiator to instinctively drop his blade and cover his face. His clothes underneath his armor began to burn, and the heat built up in the metal plates, making Agrippa feel like he was being cooked within his own armor.

Antonius Agrippa desperately tried to defend himself enough to retake the initiative, but Leon gave him no openings that he was skillful enough to exploit. Leon made this a real fight, and Agrippa wasn’t prepared for it.

“I sur-“ he began but was cut off. After realizing that he could very well die before the entire arena the gladiator tried to get Leon to stop—he hadn’t been paid enough by Octavius to endure this kind of beating—but the young knight didn’t even let him get the words out before closing with Antonius Agrippa and slamming his shoulder into his armored foe.

Even with all of his armor and the padding and clothes beneath, Antonius Agrippa felt that impact. He was lifted off his feet with a huge dent in his breastplate, then tossed to the ground, his back hitting the sand hard enough to force all of the air out of his lungs.

Completely stunned, the gladiator was unable to stop Leon from kicking the sword he dropped earlier and sending it flying across the arena. In a last-ditch attempt to salvage his dignity and prevent further injury, Antonius Agrippa finally called upon his own magic, and his eyes began to glow with golden light.

But Antonius Agrippa was slow, his habit of using flashy and inefficient moves coming back to bite him when Leon sank his sword into his lightly-armored armpit before he could conjure a single mote of light magic, the gambeson beneath his armor doing little to stop the aged and venerable blade.

Antonius Agrippa let loose with a blood-curdling scream, and his right arm went slack. Leon had cut the nerves running through his shoulder, nearly severing the arm completely. The gladiator’s blood and mana spilled into the sand, and Antonius Agrippa ceased to move. At this point, it was obvious to even those most inexperienced in combat within the arena that the gladiator couldn’t win. He’d been beaten so completely that he half hoped Leon would finish the job right there and end his humiliation.

Instead, seeing the defeat in the gladiator’s eyes and unwilling to kill before the entire arena, Leon stepped back and waited for further instructions from the Royal box. However, the Royal box remained closed and he could feel almost every set of eyes in the stands upon him.

Every second that he stood there in the sands felt like a lifetime. The weight of tens of thousands of eyes was upon him, the din of thousands of people finally finding their voices and whispering to each other about what all they had just witnessed pressing upon his ears, and nowhere could he look without feeling awkward and self-conscious. This would be the talk of the town as soon as the arena was emptied, assuming it wasn’t already, and Leon regretted ever coming back to the capital with every fiber of his being.

‘Come on…’ he bitterly thought, wanting Trajan to show himself and take charge so that Leon could get out of the spotlight as soon as he could.

“I surrender…” Antonius Agrippa finally groaned, but he was injured enough that Leon barely spared him a single thought, only paying him enough mind to be sure the gladiator wouldn’t try to get up off the sand and continue the fight.

Another minute passed, every excruciating second of which Leon wanted to vanish. He desperately hoped that by the time he got back to Elise’s estate his ring of invisibility would finally be repaired and waiting for him—had he still had it, he would’ve used it already regardless of the consequences of showing it off to the entire city. During these seconds, a team of healers rushed out onto the sand and sprinted for Antonius Agrippa, their arms filled with healing spells. They were always waiting in the wings just in case there were any serious injuries during the games, though since most of the participants were mages, it took quite the emergency for them to act.

As he watched the healers quickly prevent Antonius Agrippa from bleeding out and carry him out of the arena, Leon ran out of patience. He made for the exit, intending to make his way back to the Royal box the long way instead of waiting where everyone could see him.

It wasn’t until Leon disappeared from view that the arena started to regain a sense of normalcy. The last fight had been fought, and then some. The people were now quite willing to get out of the arena as fast as they could, and the air was filled with nothing but voices discussing everything that had just happened. Once everyone started talking in earnest again rather than simply whispering amongst themselves, the arena regained the lively atmosphere it had had before the final match.

Despite all of this, though, there was no movement from Elise’s box; all five ladies who were still within made no moves to leave.

Similarly, in Justin’s box, Justin Isynos didn’t get up from his seat. Instead, he sat back, his eyes unfocused as he tried to process everything he had just seen, particularly Leon’s lightning. It wasn’t silver-blue, but Justin just felt that it was similar to the power of House Raime that he had witnessed and fought against when he killed Kyros Raime. The stout man who had accompanied him to the games, however, had left long ago. Justin wanted to know everything about Leon, and the stout man was going to do his best to deliver.