Chapter : 859
Lloyd ignored it all. The noise was a meaningless, distant roar, the buzzing of insignificant insects. He reached the center of the sand, his expression as calm and as serene as if he were walking through a quiet, sunlit garden. He looked at the weary, one-eyed knight, who had followed him out to officiate the match, his face now a mask of profound, almost paternal, pity.
“Son,” the knight said, his voice a low, gravelly sigh, his duty compelling him to make one last, futile attempt to save the man from himself. “Do you have any idea what you are doing? This is not a place for men like you. This is a place where heroes come to die. Go home. Heal your sick. Do not throw your life away for a moment of foolish pride.”
It was a genuine, heartfelt warning from a man who had seen too much death and had no wish to see another, so pointless and so unnecessary.
“My purpose is to heal, Sir Knight,” Lloyd replied, his voice a quiet, gentle murmur. “And the greatest sickness in this kingdom is not a fever or a plague. It is despair. Sometimes, the only cure for despair is a single, foolish act of hope.”
The simple, noble, and beautifully constructed line was a piece of pure, theatrical genius. It was the perfect statement for the saint, the martyr, the man who was sacrificing himself for a cause greater than himself.
The knight simply stared at him for a long moment, a look of profound, weary sadness in his one good eye. He had seen a thousand different kinds of courage and a thousand different kinds of folly. He was no longer sure which one he was looking at now. He sighed, a sound of utter defeat, and prepared to signal the gatekeepers.
Just then, a new commotion erupted from the tunnel leading back to the infirmary. A group of medics were escorting a bandaged, but now upright, figure. It was Gias the Valorous. Though his body was a wreck, he had refused to be confined to a bed. His warrior’s pride demanded he witness the fate of the remaining challengers.
As he emerged into the light, his pain-filled, hazy eyes settled on the sight of the simple, unarmed healer standing in the center of the arena. A flicker of angry, incredulous life returned to his gaze. He had heard the shouts, the rumors. He could not believe it was true.
“You!” he croaked, his voice a raw, broken rasp, yet it carried across the now-hushing arena. “The potion-mixer! You actually came! By all the gods, man, have you lost your mind?”
The other challengers, who had come to the edge of the tunnel to watch, fell silent. The words of the vanquished hero, the one man who had actually faced the beast and survived, carried a new and terrible weight.
“I am here to try, as you did, Sir Gias,” Lloyd replied, his voice filled with a quiet, respectful dignity.
Gias let out a harsh, bitter, and painful laugh. “Try? You are here to die, you fool! I saw that thing’s fire! I felt its power! It is a god of pure, elemental flame! Do you have a fire spirit, healer?”
The question was a direct, tactical challenge. Lloyd simply gave a calm, almost imperceptible nod.
Gias’s face, which had been a mask of pained disbelief, now twisted into one of pure, angry pity. “Then you are an even bigger fool than I thought! It is the height of arrogant stupidity! You do not fight a forest fire with a candle, you imbecile! You will be consumed in an instant! Your own power will be your funeral pyre!”
His words, a prophecy of doom delivered by the one man who truly knew the nature of the enemy, were a final, brutal confirmation for everyone who was listening. The doctor was not just a fool; he was a particular, special kind of fool, a man who was so ignorant of the true nature of power that he was about to commit the most elemental, and most predictable, of magical suicides.
The crowd, which had overheard the exchange, erupted in a new wave of jeers and scornful laughter. The Saint of Rizvan was not just a madman; he was an idiot.
Gias shook his head in bitter, angry disbelief and allowed the medics to lead him to a seat reserved for the fallen challengers, a living, broken testament to the folly of the man who was about to take the stage.
Chapter : 860
The one-eyed knight looked at Lloyd, his expression now completely devoid of pity, replaced by a kind of weary, clinical detachment. “His words are true, you know. To challenge a fire demon with a fire spirit of your own… it is a tactical absurdity of the highest order. The greater flame will always consume the lesser.”
“Then I must pray,” Lloyd replied with a small, serene smile, “that my flame is not the lesser.”
The knight simply shook his head, the last of his desire to save this man from his own stupidity completely gone. He raised his hand, signaling the gatekeepers and the herald.
“Very well, ‘Zayn’,” he said, his voice a flat, dead thing. “The stage is yours. Try not to make too much of a mess.”
He strode from the arena, leaving Lloyd alone on the vast expanse of sand. Lloyd gave a simple, respectful bow to the now-silent crowd, to the Royal Box, and to the fallen champion. He then turned to face the great iron gates, ignoring the crescendo of mockery, and began his long, solitary walk towards the blinding light, and the roaring fire, that awaited him.
The walk down the tunnel was a journey from one world to another. The cool, subterranean gloom of the waiting cells, with its smells of sweat and fear, slowly gave way to the hot, dry, and surprisingly clean air of the arena. The muffled, distant roar of the crowd grew louder with every step, the sound of seventy thousand voices, a single, unified beast of mockery and anticipation, a wave of pure, negative energy that seemed to press in on him from all sides.
A normal man would have been intimidated, his courage shriveling under the sheer, crushing weight of the crowd’s contempt. But Lloyd was not a normal man. He was a performer, and the roar of the crowd, whether in adulation or in scorn, was simply the overture to his performance. He welcomed it. He fed on it.
He emerged from the darkness of the tunnel and into the blinding, white-hot glare of the Zakarian sun. He paused for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust, a solitary, unassuming figure in his simple healer’s robes, standing at the edge of the vast, blood-soaked expanse of sand.
The moment he appeared, the roar of the crowd reached a new, feverish pitch. It was a sound of pure, unadulterated, and joyous derision. They jeered, they whistled, they threw discarded fruit peels and nutshells that fell harmlessly at his feet. They were a mob, and they had found their victim.
“Look! It’s the Saint of the Gutters!”
“He forgot his lucky leeches!”
“Ten silver says he starts weeping before the Demon even appears!”
Lloyd simply stood there, absorbing it all, his posture calm, his head held high. He slowly, deliberately, began to walk towards the center of the arena, his steps even and unhurried. He was not a warrior, striding to battle. He was a healer, walking to the bedside of a patient. The quiet, almost serene dignity of his movement was a stark, unnerving contrast to the baying of the crowd.
He reached the exact center of the arena and stopped. He looked up at the vast, tiered stands, at the sea of mocking, jeering faces. He saw them not as individuals, but as a single, predictable entity, a beast whose emotions he was about to play upon like a master musician playing a lute.
He then turned his gaze to the Royal Box. He could just make out a figures seated within: the veiled princess, her form a splash of serene, sky-blue. He knew that her eyes, the only eyes in this entire arena that truly mattered, were fixed upon him.
He gave a slow, respectful bow, first to the Princess, and then to the grand, empty expanse of the arena itself, a gesture of a humble man paying his respects to a power far greater than himself.
And then, he waited.
A deep, groaning, and now terrifyingly familiar sound echoed through the coliseum as the massive, iron-wrought gates at the far end of the arena were once again winched open, revealing the black, hungry maw of the Demon’s den.
The crowd’s jeering slowly died away, replaced by a new, more primal, and more exciting sound: a low, humming, and deeply fearful anticipation. The comedy was over. The tragedy was about to begin.
The wave of pure, incandescent heat washed out of the tunnel. The deep, guttural roar, the sound of a living volcano, shook the very foundations of the arena. And the Jahl, the Demon, Ifrit, flowed out onto the sand.