Silence.

Thud Thud

Clang

Creeeak

The monster's heavy footsteps broke the silence inside the arena.

The creaking of the Undead rotten joints was a sinister and sad melody.

And then Helial saw it.

He felt his body invaded by an electric shock and was nailed to the ground by pure terror.

His fearsome opponent was there in front of him and was coming forward with his imposing figure. It was not a heroically monstrous creature, such as a Devil or Demon.

He was not as evil and devious as Helial's brother or as some monstrosity from Hell, either.

What the Goblins now faced could only be defined with one word.

Abomination.

Leading the ranks of Undead and Troll was a six-meter tall creature, ghastly white and with a giant and deformed face.

His eyes popped out of the eye cavities, a revolting sight to watch. The irises filled the eyes and one was white, the other black. With each step they swung dangerously, threatening to detach themselves once and for all from the bundle of nerves that kept them attached to what only with much imagination could be called a head.

A double row of sharp teeth filled its mouth. It was as if there were a further row of sharp canines in place of the gums. Each of them shone gloomily in the blinding light of the sun and seemed ready to tear the flesh of its victims, neatly lined up in front of him.

Its body had nothing that could resemble skin.

Muscles and tendons were exposed to the air and to the paralyzed gaze of the Goblins.

When it opened its mouth to speak, what came out was a screech, similar to nails on a blackboard: "£% (" @ #."

“The Prince of Darkness ", whispered Helial.

His appearance was completely different from how he had imagined it, and saying his name had served him to convince himself that it was not a dream.

Helial shrugged off the chill that had gripped his bowels and immediately activated Perception.

Skill Activated:

Perception

Cost of Ability augmented 5x.

Skill boosted beyond its limit.

Thanks to Perception, Helial was able to see the Mana inside the bodies of those monsters.

All that Mana.

Waves of Mana ran over the young man's Perception.

It would have been an unequal fight, the Goblins could never win against the Undead. Their forces were too unbalanced.

How could they ever win if it wasn't an even battle at all?

"Damn."

Two Undead came forward. Their heads were strewn with sparse black hair, greasy and messy, like that of an abandoned old rag doll. Judging by their appearance, they must have been women a long time ago.

They took their hands and, between laughter that made the skin crawl, began to walk in circles. They began to hum a childish song with shrill voices, freezing the blood of all the Goblins.

"Ring a-ring o' roses

A basket full of bodies

Ashes to ashes

We're called by a spell

And you will burn in Hell!

The Ghosts in the enemy ranks immediately unsheathed two blades each, completely white and drenched in purple liquid. A drop of that strange liquid fell on the sand; a thick cloud of poisonous vapours rose into the air and took Helial's nostrils off guard, and he found it difficult not to cough.

"Don't breathe the vapours!" Helial yelled at the Goblins.

Looking at the ground, Helial realized that, instead of the sand, there was now a hole, the size of the fallen drop. It was deep enough, a few grains of sand penetrated inside. The boy was quite sure that, before that moment, the floor was whole and without any imperfections.

"Poison," murmured Snowflake. Helial nodded.

Cesar and Auras immediately looked around.

There was something wrong with the Auras of the Prince of Darkness and his subordinates.

Although at the moment the Formation inside the Colosseum let only the warriors at the Third Phase and not higher to enter, something was out of place.

Both Orma's Immortals had a dark foreboding. The bones of the old King suggested that things were going to be really difficult that day.

As far as he knew, that could have been the last day of Orma on the face of the planet.

Their eyes settled on the two Undead and Troll Immortals, who had just arrived in the stands.

Kari's empty, flame-filled bulbs seemed to give off a cold arrogance, from their comfortable place in the lar of his body. The contempt for his Goblin opponents Goblin was palpable. But not only that, there was also a boldness and security impossible to mask.

Lostro sat quietly, without showing any particular emotion.

The two Immortals of Orma moved their gaze slightly beyond their shoulders.

There, twenty black figures were levitating in mid-air, without emitting the least amount of energy from their bodies. It was as if their Meridians were perfectly sealed and did not allow Heaven or Earth to regain their energy.

Cesar felt blood freeze in his veins.

"Twenty," Cesar counted, "twenty Immortals..." His tone had suddenly been deprived of every drop of strength left in his massive greenish body.

If the King was facing the two Immortals, comfortably seated in front of him in the stands, his disciple had to deal with the monster who faced him in the arena of the Colosseum.

The monster's white skin reflected light and at the same time gave off a freezing deadly cold.

"It's not just an Undead," said Helial, with a lump in his throat.

Snowflake had an illumination and exclaimed: "It's a fucking Revenant, SHIT!"

SHIT!

They were really in trouble.

The Revenants were a unique species, even among the Undead.

As a rule, when a Lich or Necromancer resurrected a body, it automatically lost all its old memories. No Class, not even the most terrifying one, had memories from their previous life.

The strength of the undead generally depended on his body's future and actual potential. The greater it was, the more the Undead could become stronger.

Only in very rare cases, by paying prices beyond the reach of any normal Empire, could one try to bring a particularly talented and young individual back to life.

Taking on an extremely high price, there was a small chance that the abomination generated would be brought back to life with almost all the memories of his human life.

But it would not be able to speak, not like the living, at least.

The Abominations thus born were no longer worthy to pronounce words and sounds having meaning for the living.

To bring such a creature back to life, the price to pay was a sacrifice of millions of victims.

Millions.

Helial twirled in his head the word that had so often left him amazed in the books of the Royal Library.

Making a quick estimate, considering the peripheral villages, perhaps, in all Orma, there were at most six or seven millions of Goblins. Therefore, to try to bring a single living thing back to life, a city the size of Orma would have had to be razed to the ground, without even sparing its foundations.

Of two things Helial was sure: that they were screwed and that he had expected everything, except to see such a monster.

Judging from the title of Prince of Darkness, Helial had expected to find himself in front of a kind of hero, with at most a few pieces of rotten meat on him. Up to now his opponents had all had something heroic about them.

But this...

This was just an abomination.

Looking at it again, Helial suddenly felt like throwing up on the ground, but resisted the urge.

Behind him, a dozen Goblins had already given up and were regurgitating all that remained in their stomachs in the arena. This was the effect of fear.

His men were terrified.

The boy tried to look up, but the barrier above the Colosseum obstructed his view.

If no one had rushed into the arena yet, it meant that even outside the situation had to be much more problematic than expected.

Lumia approached Helial, leaving the others to cover the sides of the formation.

The Goblins were now closed in a testudo, but Helial had already ordered Frankenstein to pull out the Formations.

It would have been really difficult to get out of there alive this time.

Helial began to curse himself for his impatience. Here they are, the first signs of remorse for his choice. Had he not accepted Iblis' offer, he would have been able to reach the Late stage of the Third Phase and could still use Curse of the Demon and Flame of the Qilin. It would have been easier.

But without his weapon and without the Flame of the Qilin, the biggest deterrent against the Undead, the situation was truly desperate.

Suddenly, Helial saw some figures flying in the sky, just before the barrier finished closing over his head: Big, Crispio, Roxy and all the big shots of Orma were already in the air, at the strategic points to control the Formations. Aure had already activated all the Formations in Orma, ready to hurl their power against the enemies of the Capital. Were things going so badly?

"How could you bring twenty Immortals?!" Cesar yelled.

Helial heard his words and his heart tightened in his chest; he looked at the figures dressed in black and counted them. They were twenty, but he could not perceive their power. From what Cesar had said, they had to be Immortals and, if they weren't, they had to be powerful enough to hide their Aura.

Judging by their bearing, none of them except the leader was as strong as Cesar. However, the numbers were significant: twenty-two Immortals between Undead and Trolls, only two among the Goblins.

The barrier closed over the heads of the warriors, now trapped in the Colosseum. Now, seeing outside would have been impossible.

Kari snapped his skeletal fingers and an armchair of wrinkled, rotten velvet appeared beneath him. Above it, two huge bats with torn and skeletal wings looked at the enemies of the Undead King.

Both monsters were in the Tenth Phase. Cesar knew that, for any Immortal, they would be enemies not easy to be ridden of.

At that point, the Goblin King looked around.

"Today you will all die", were the first words that Kari pronounced after setting foot in the Colosseum.

The Undead had often fantasized about this moment and could finally speak with pride and satisfaction.

He had managed to manipulate Aure in order to distract Cesar, to make him believe that he was the real threat.

But an organization, much larger than any colossus Cesar could afford to offend, had moved the threads of conflict all this time.

Taken from an unprecedented ecstasy, the Undead King was on the verge of what might have been called an orgasm, if only he hadn't been dead.

His rotten flesh had suddenly regained a strange sensitivity, while discharges of pleasure flooded his being relentlessly.

This would be his revenge against the hated Goblin people.

"But first let's see how the Human will be torn to pieces."