After a full day of rest, Dirga's body moved like a machine reborn. No lingering aches. No hesitation in his muscles. His mind felt sharper, as if even fatigue had bowed to his will.
He stood at the edge of his room, staring at the clock.
05:10 PM.
Right on cue.
Snap.
Sasa flicked his fingers, and the world unraveled.
Light distorted, and with a flash of crimson static, Dirga was pulled back into the training arena — a place soaked in blood, memory, and pain. The skies were still the same, swirling like a storm caught between reality and a fever dream. The stone floor still bore the scars of his last battles.
It was the eighth day of hell.
No time to breathe.
A sharp buzz sliced through the air.
Dirga's eyes narrowed. He didn't even have to look. He could feel them now.
Six mosquitoes. One for each day passed — their camouflage more refined, their movements more erratic.
Before they could strike, Dirga raised his hand.
The Crimson Core pulsed in the air beside him, responding to his thoughts like a faithful hound. It split, shimmered — and formed into ten blood-red needles, each vibrating with deadly precision.
SWIKK—SHIK—TUK—TUKTUK—
One by one, the needles skewered the mosquitoes mid-flight, exploding them in silent pops of ichor and ash.
Dirga sighed, dragging a palm down his face. "Really? We just got here."
He looked up at Sasa, who hovered above him in his usual floating posture — legs crossed, sipping from a floating coconut with a tiny devil umbrella.
Sasa shrugged with a clueless smile and threw his hands up. "Hey, I don't make the rules. I just enjoy them."
Dirga didn't respond. He was already cracking his neck, rolling his shoulders, the tension bleeding from his frame like a boxer stepping back into the ring.
Sasa twirled mid-air and pointed at the obsidian gate standing tall at the end of the arena.
"Alrighty! This round, your milestone is match 149. Beat 149, get another boss fight. And maybe I'll let you pet one of my rarer beasts this time."
Snap.
With that, he vanished — leaving only his echo and the grin hanging in the air.
The obsidian gate shuddered.
Crimson mist poured from the seams.
Dirga smirked and muttered under his breath, "Let's see what hell looks like today."
The gate cracked open with a thunderclap.
The day of carnage had begun.
…
The second round.
No warm-up. No easing in. Only war.
Monsters spilled from the portals one after another — claws, fangs, screeches, fire. It was a dance of blood and steel, and Dirga was always in the middle of it.
But something was different now.
After that one-day rest — that blessed window of stillness — his body had changed. Not just healed.
Evolved.
His muscles felt denser, more efficient. His mind clearer. Reflexes sharper. The Crimson Core responded faster, more fluidly, adapting without delay to his thoughts. Even the pain, the fatigue — it came slower now. Delayed. Suppressed.
Is this what Sasa wanted all along? he wondered, cleaving through a twin-headed lizard with a spinning spear.
In the first round, Dirga made it through 50 matches before needing rest.
In this second round, he pushed to 88.
A leap of 38 fights deeper into madness.
And each match was harder than the last. The beasts grew more cunning, more monstrous — some radiated elemental energy, others wielded cursed weapons. Some didn't die the first time. Or the second.
But Dirga kept going.
His fists. His blades. His will.
He fought like a storm given form.
The mosquitoes never stopped either. Each day meant another added to the swarm. Now on day eight, eight mosquitoes moved in silence through the air, their camouflage almost perfect. Dirga's senses caught most of them — a flicker in the air, a breath out of place — but not always.
When he couldn't react fast enough, he let them bite.
The pain? Agonizing. The venom burned like fire laced with acid. But better that than taking a sword to the ribs while dodging a strike.
He had to choose his suffering.
And Sasa — that smirking, floating bastard — always watched with a cup of glowing juice in hand, pretending to sip, pretending not to laugh.
Finally, after defeating match 149, Dirga dropped to one knee.
Blood dripped from his arm. His breathing was shallow. His entire torso ached from a strike that nearly snapped his ribs.
He looked up toward the sky. "Rest. I'm cashing in."
Sasa materialized upside-down, spinning like a lazy coin. "As you wish, my patron~" he sang.
The portal sealed.
And the world was quiet once more.
But not for long.
Match 150.
The portal thundered open like a crack in reality — darker, deeper than the others.
What stepped through wasn't just a beast.
It was a nightmare given regal form.
A Dullahan — its decapitated head tucked under one arm, glowing eyes burning from the severed skull. In its other hand, a long obsidian lance, the shaft twisted like black bone.
And beneath it…
Its horse.
No ordinary steed. It was a towering skeletal beast wrapped in strips of decaying flesh and hell-forged armor. Its hooves left burn marks on the ground, and its mane flowed like smoke.
Blue flames burned in both of their eye sockets.
But they were not two beings.
They were one.
The Dullahan and mount had fused, sharing one soul — one monstrous, cursed entity.
Fast.
That was Dirga's first thought.
The thing moved like a blur, the lance nearly skewering him from thirty meters in seconds.
He barely dodged.
He needed space. Time.
Dirga snapped his hand — and gravity warped.
He tried to pull the creature down… but its weight was monstrous. He had to amplify his pull to full force, grounding it — barely.
Still too fast.
Still too heavy.
So he adapted.
He triggered gravity in pulses — on and off — throwing the Dullahan's balance into chaos.
Every time the beast lunged, the floor pulled it, then released — making it stumble forward or misjudge its momentum.
Dirga fought with a longsword form, matching the Dullahan's reach, sometimes swapping briefly to a shield to absorb crushing blows.
No time for hand-to-hand here.
Too dangerous.
The Dullahan's lance hissed with dark enchantments, leaving scorching trails of blue light in the air. Each strike could end him in one clean blow.
But Dirga held on — matching rhythm with disruption.
On. Off. Pull. Cut. Shield. Step. Switch.
Until finally — a gap.
One blink.
And Dirga didn't miss it.
He shifted the Crimson Core into a spear, drove it upward under the creature's ribcage — and pulled the beast down with gravity into the strike.
CRACK—THUNK.
The spear pierced through bone and metal and flame.
The fusion broke.
The Dullahan's head rolled from its hand.
The light in the beast's eyes died out.
And Dirga collapsed to one knee.
Breathing like he'd just come out of a war.
Again.