"Ladies and gentlemen, commoners and nobles alike," the shrill voice of the Eye of the Maggot echoed across the gladiatorial arena. As its piercing words fell, the heavy prison gates thundered open, and the sharp sound of chains snapping rang out from the darkness beyond. "I proudly present to you, direct from the deepest dungeons, Irkenis and Tulgidon!"
The stands erupted in a roar like an avalanche, the frenzied crowd seething like boiling magma.
Angron narrowed his eyes. The entire arena trembled beneath the stomping and shouting of the hysterical spectators.
When his gaze turned toward the open gates, two towering figures emerged slowly from the dark. Each step they took made the ground quiver. Moonlight outlined the wild, corded muscles of their beast-like bodies; chains clinked against their thick necks.
They were beastmen.
Thousands of years ago, a civil war that tore civilization apart erupted on Nuceria, a war of ideology and blood.
When the dust settled centuries later, the Pureblood Faction wore the victor's crown.
Their bloodlines became those of the High Knights who now ruled the world, engraving their dominion into every inch of soil.
The Beast Faction's defeat turned their blood into a curse, forever exiled beyond the light of civilization.
As descendants of the vanquished, beastmen cowered in the wastelands, licking unhealed wounds with rough tongues. Gladiators were chained to the bloodstained sands, forced to perform the dance of death again and again, just to win a cheer or a morsel of pity from the knights in the stands.
To the High Knights, every gladiator was a potential beastman.
Their favorite spectacle was to lock beastmen and gladiators together in the same blood-soaked pit, watching them tear each other apart, beasts fighting beasts.
They would sip wine gracefully in their palaces and toast to every gory wound.
That was their idea of glory: to let the descendants of the defeated entertain the victors with their deaths.
"RAAAHHH!"
In the center of the arena, the two giants roared, the sound so deep it silenced even the maddest of cheers.
Even among beastmen, they were giants, nearly three meters tall, dwarfing the six-month-old Angron.
His growth hadn't met his father's expectations; his body was only that of a sixteen-year-old boy.
They wore malformed black iron armor covered in spikes; each spike hung with strips of dried human skin fluttering like banners. Rusted chains coiled around their waists, strung with skulls bleached white in the sun.
One wielded two power axes taller than a man; the other swung a chain-hammer attached to his left arm, its spiked head whistling through the air in deadly arcs.
But most horrifying of all were the steel cables trailing from the backs of their helmets,
The Butcher's Nails.
Just as Silvervine implants were made for the highborn knights, the Butcher's Nails were crafted for Nuceria's slave-gladiators.
The cables burrowed through the skull into the brain, erasing compassion, pity, fear, hesitation, every emotion that could hinder slaughter, leaving only rage, magnified endlessly until the victim became a creature driven solely by bloodlust.
Their roar made other gladiators tremble, but in Angron's eyes flickered a subtle sadness.
He heard not only their animal screams, but also the tortured cries of souls in agony.
"Your pain… your fury… I know it all," Angron whispered, pity softening his gaze. "I will free you. No one will ever again bear the Butcher's Nails. That is my vow."
"RAAAHH!"
But the Nails had long since devoured what remained of their humanity.
His words were pebbles cast into a bottomless abyss, fading without a ripple in their chaotic minds.
With inhuman howls, the two monsters charged like runaway trains. This was no warrior's duel, only pure, instinctive slaughter. Their twisted hunger sought Angron's blood to appease their endless rage.
"Poor Angron, let us pray for him!" cackled the Eye of the Maggot, relishing every moment of the carnage.
The Butcher's Nails unleashed the beastmen's full savagery. These altered killing machines could tear apart any foe. Even highborn knights would not face them head-on.
And they wielded the deadliest weapons known to this world. One accidental brush with those power axes, and Angron's flesh would disintegrate in a molecular field.
The announcer's hatred burned. Angron had made Claudia a fortune from these fights, and he wanted only one thing now: Angron's death.
"Kill him! Kill him!" he shrieked from his palace.
"Master!" Guards' hurried footsteps and panting came from outside.
"Get out! Can't you see I'm admiring this perfect masterpiece of slaughter?"
…...
Clang!
As the twin monsters struck, Angron dropped his axe, letting it fall into the red sand.
The audience gasped. They had seen many deaths, but never someone laying down his weapon before the blow.
The beastmen's towering shadows swallowed him whole.
In brute strength, even Angron couldn't match those dominated by the Butcher's Nails. His growth was too slow, his body not yet ready for its own potential.
Yet in that moment, he displayed breathtaking combat intuition.
The humming power axes sliced air, the whirring chain-hammer shrieked past, but every strike missed by a hair's breadth.
He wasn't dodging in panic, but with the poise of foresight, each motion exact, each near miss deliberate.
Like a storm petrel gliding through a hurricane, Angron danced along the edge of death.
He wasn't toying with them; he was buying time, waiting for the fleeting moment.
"Stop this!"
At the critical instant, Angron leaped high, his palm gently pressing against a beastman's skull where the neural cables converged.
Time froze.
The raging giant suddenly stiffened, and clarity flickered for a heartbeat in its blood-red eyes.
The axe halted mid-swing. Then, with a roar, it turned and cleaved its companion's hammer apart in a shower of sparks.
But Angron wasn't here to watch them tear each other apart. He vaulted to the second beastman, pressing his hand against its burning forehead.
"Kneel," Angron murmured, not a command, but a guide for the suffering.
Both mountain-like creatures dropped to their knees, dust exploding around them. Angron landed lightly, hands on their bowed heads.
The Nails still squirmed, but their murderous fury ebbed like a receding tide.
This was no mind control; it was resonance of the soul.
Angron closed his eyes, pain furrowing his brow. His consciousness tossed like a tiny boat on the stormy sea of rage inside the Nails. Each nerve poured boiling hatred into his veins, every memory of torment clawing at his soul.
His handsome face twisted; veins bulged, lips quivered. His fangs pierced his lip, and blood dripped down his chin, blooming darkly on the red sand.
"So this… is your pain. It really hurts."
He smiled faintly through the blood.
The beastmen's faces softened, their rigid muscles eased. They lowered their heads, rough foreheads nuzzling his palms like lost beasts finding home.
Low sobs rose, not the roars of battle, but fragile, primal cries, the first breaths of souls freed after endless imprisonment.
The arena fell silent. Then the cheers erupted like a volcano.
"ANGRON! ANGRON! ANGRON!"
No one understood what he'd done, nor cared. They only knew it was a miracle, even highborn knights feared these beasts, yet he had tamed them, made them human again.
"Victory is yours, Angron!" the Eye of the Maggot shrieked, unable to contain its excitement. "Now, take your sword! Cut off their heads! Bathe your glory in their blood!"
"No."
Angron's voice wasn't loud, but it cut through the uproar like a blade.
"Angron! We're here!"
From above, a girl's cheerful voice rang out. Everyone looked up.
Clest rode her two-meter-long anti-gravity lance, humming a tune. Behind her sat Mira, levitating a struggling fat man with her psychic power.
"Let him go!"
Dozens of Eyes of the Maggot swarmed to intercept, but Mira simply clenched her fist, and the drones crumpled as though crushed by an invisible giant's hand, bursting into sparks and twisted metal raining down in smoking craters.
Boom!
As the lance skimmed low, Mira released her psychic hold, the fat man dropped like a meteor, slamming into the red sand and leaving a deep crater.
The pig of a man rolled over, meeting the beastmen's eyes, and screamed in terror.
"Get them away! You filthy peasants! Do you know who I am? I'm a High Knight! I'll have you all killed, your whole families killed!"
"See clearly," Angron thundered. The beastman seized the trembling knight by the neck, lifting him high.
Sunlight glinted off the gem on his ear, casting a grotesque shadow on the sand.
"This is what has enslaved the people of Desh'ea for millennia!"
The arena froze. Every spectator recognized the voice; it was the announcer, the arena's master himself.
Necks craned forward. Faces froze between shock and disbelief.
The exalted ruler of Desh'ea, the one hidden behind the Eyes of the Maggot, was nothing but a trembling, piss-soaked fat pig!
"They were never noble, and we were never lowly! Their ugliness surpasses ours a thousandfold!"
"The rulers of Desh'ea hold power not because of blood or strength, but because we never awakened! True power has always belonged to the people!"
"The day of awakening has come, my brothers and sisters!"
"RAAAHHH!"
The beastman roared, hoisting the fat knight. His iron hands gripped the man's legs,
With a sickening crack and a scream, the bloated body was torn clean in half.
"Rise up! Grip your blades and your fury!"
"Strike! Let the nobles' estates rot and their factories fall silent!"
"Roar! Let their palaces crumble and their thrones tremble!"
"The land of Desh'ea belongs to its sweating workers, and so does power!"
Angron's roar echoed through the arena as hundreds of guards poured in, silver tendrils whipping behind them.
The beastmen tore free from his hands, ready to die. They no longer feared death, only dishonor.
"For freedom!" they rasped, before their clarity vanished into rage.
Boom!
Dozens of guards flew like rag dolls. The power axes and chain-hammers reaped through them in a storm of blood. Silver tendrils coiled around their limbs, but burst apart under brute force.
From all directions came mechanized sentinels. Mira clenched her fist.
Instantly, every machine seized, circuits bursting, collapsing into heaps of smoking scrap.
When the beastmen tore apart the knight, the crowd was silent.
When Angron cried for revolt, the crowd was silent.
When guards were slaughtered, the crowd was silent.
Silence. Silence. Silence.
The common folk had been crushed for too long.
They didn't lack courage; they lacked a leader.
The masses are weak because they follow whoever wins.
The masses are strong because whoever they follow wins.
So they sat there, not fleeing, not fearing. Still spectators, watching the spark of revolution.
But the balance in their hearts had shifted. They were waiting for one person.
Someone to raise their arm and shout. Someone to follow blindly.
That someone was not Angron.
Angron lit the spark, united the gladiators, slew the oppressors, but he was still not one of them.
He was too mighty, too grand, so grand he felt unreal.
They feared it was all a dream.
What they needed wasn't a hero. It was a human, ordinary, fragile, real.
Because if one stands up, then countless others will follow.
A small figure suddenly broke free of his father's grasp, leapt over the railing like a squirrel. He stood on the blood-soaked fence, tattered clothes fluttering in the hot wind. His young voice cut through the silence like a sword:
"ANGRON! For freedom!"
The shout echoed beneath the dome, striking the hearts of all who heard it.
At first, it was just a spark, faint but defiant.
Then came a second voice, a third, a fourth… ripples spreading until a tidal wave of sound filled the air.
"FOR FREEDOM!" roared tens of thousands of hoarse throats.
A rare smile tugged at Angron's lips. He hadn't used his power; he couldn't.
He had to prove this path's purity with blood and scars.
Only when the people followed him not out of fear, but from their own will, would he be worthy to unleash that cursed power within.
As the chants thundered, Angron slowly raised his fist, a banner gleaming with the light of freedom.
"For freedom, rise up, my brothers!"
.....
If you enjoy the story, my p@treon is 30 chapters ahead.
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