"All that dodging, and I still got you."
Ezekiel didn't respond. He simply stood in silence, eyes locked onto Clyde with a cold, steady gaze.
Clyde stepped forward, raising his voice so the entire arena could hear him.
"You annoying insect. Why won't you just accept your fate and die already?"
He sneered, venom dripping from every word.
"The woman who gave birth to scum like you should've died before she had the chance. People like you are a disease."
He didn't fully grasp the weight of what he was saying. The cruelty. The filth he was spitting.
But Ezekiel did.
The once-calm expression on his face began to change.
His eyes darkened.
His aura shifted.
How could he...
Ezekiel had fought with everything he had to protect what little remained in his life, his only family. And now Clyde had just slaughtered her with words.
"Take it back."
The voice came, quiet at first.
"Take those words back."
Clyde blinked.
He hadn't expected Ezekiel to speak.
Then he laughed.
"Oh, would you look at that. Don't tell me you're a mama's boy. Can't live without your precious little mommy, huh?"
He threw his head back and laughed harder.
But the laughter didn't last.
Because in the next breath, Ezekiel moved.
The air shifted.
A strange, suffocating pressure poured out from his body. Even the most hardened hunters in the audience felt a chill run down their spines.
Then they saw it.
A ripple in space opened behind him, like reality itself had been sliced apart.
And from that rift, he pulled it out.
A weapon cloaked in black mist. Long, curved, and forged from obsidian metal etched with runes that pulsed like a heartbeat.
A death scythe.
The temperature dropped. The wind seemed to stop. It felt like the world itself had fallen silent.
Even Clyde took an unconscious step back.
"W-What the hell is that...?"
Ezekiel's voice finally broke through the silence.
"You can insult me all you want. Beat me, cut me, even try to kill me."
His eyes rose to meet Clyde's. They were cold and merciless.
"But don't you dare speak about my family."
The scythe hit the ground with a heavy thud. Black mist surged outward, tendrils snaking across the floor like living shadows. The aura surrounding him was no longer human. It was something else. Something terrifying.
The audience didn't cheer.
They stand frozen in silence. Some trembled. Others clutched the edges of their seats. Even the instructors stood ready to intervene.
Ezekiel's violet eyes glowed. He wasn't looking at an opponent. He was staring at a man marked for judgment.
It felt like staring into death itself. The reaper of souls, come to take a life. That was the image everyone saw in him now.
And then Ezekiel attacked.
He vanished.
No blur. No flash. He was simply... gone.
Then--
CRACK!
Clyde was slammed across the arena by the shaft of the scythe. He crashed into the wall, coughing up blood.
Before he could recover, Ezekiel was in front of him again.
Another strike, this time to the ribs.
A sickening snap echoed through the coliseum as Clyde was lifted off the ground and hurled into the air like a broken doll.
"Get up,"
Ezekiel growled, walking toward him with slow, measured steps.
Clyde tried. He staggered upright, eyes wide in disbelief.
"You're not better than me!"
he screamed, swinging wildly.
Ezekiel caught the blade of Durandal with his scythe.
Steel screeched and sparks burst.
Then Ezekiel drove his foot into Clyde's gut, folding him in half.
Clyde collapsed to the floor.
The scythe rose again, now glowing with that suffocating, deathly mist.
Ezekiel brought it down with terrifying force.
BOOM!
The arena floor cracked. Dust and debris exploded into the air. Clyde's scream was drowned beneath the sound of destruction.
When the dust settled, Clyde lay in a shattered crater. His armor was broken, body bloodied, consciousness barely clinging.
Silence fell.
No one dared to move.
No one dared to cheer.
They hadn't witnessed a duel.
It felt like an execution.
And at the center stood Ezekiel Solace, his death scythe resting on his shoulder, blood streaking his cheek.
The boy who didn't flinch.
The boy who looked like he had come straight out of hell to tear the world apart.
A true villain from the nightmares of fiction, standing right in front of them, real and terrifying.
Maybe that was where it all began. The start of his cursed reputation. The first glimpse the world had of the so-called monster that would stain the upper ranks of hunter society.
And here Clyde also played a part in making it worse.
After the duel, Clyde was left barely alive. If the healers hadn't reached him in time, he would have died right there on the arena floor. His body was broken, mangled. The injuries left him bedridden for months, and his prestigious family spent a fortune just to rebuild what was left of him. But instead of facing the shame of defeat, Clyde rewrote the story. He turned it into a tale of cruelty. A lie that painted Ezekiel as a savage beast.
He whispered poison into the ears of anyone who would listen. Rumors turned into facts. Lies became gospel. Clyde dug into Ezekiel's past, warped the truth, and spread filth until society wanted nothing to do with him.
And Ezekiel? He stayed quiet.
He made it into the Palladium Guild, but it was just another trap in disguise. They tricked him with a contract that bound him for years and gave him almost nothing in return. Only ten percent of the loot he earned from raids and subjugations. The rest, stolen under the name of formality. Exploitation hidden behind smiles.
He was a slave with no chains. And still, he endured. Took more jobs. Bled more than the rest. Entered gate after gate until his body could barely stand. All of it just to survive. Just to scrape together enough to keep going.
Maybe cheating was a talent that ran in Clyde's family.
Years passed, and the feud between them only grew darker. Clyde remained stuck at the same rank while Ezekiel climbed higher. When Ezekiel awakened as an S-rank, something inside Clyde snapped. His pride curdled into hatred. His envy became obsession. He dedicated himself to tearing Ezekiel down by any means necessary.
The failed gate incident at Viola's university was no accident.
Clyde deliberately fed the party the wrong time and address, knowing Ezekiel would miss it. The others played along. They were leeches desperate to cling to someone with influence, and they didn't want Ezekiel stealing their credit. They thought they could clear the gate without him.
They were wrong.
The monsters overwhelmed them. They all died and the breach spilled into the world. Another disaster. Another chance to point fingers.
And they pointed them at Ezekiel.
No one asked what really happened. No one wanted to hear the truth. They just blamed him like they always did. To them, he was a shadow they could not trust. A menace they feared more than the monsters he fought.
People lied to him. Used him. Betrayed him. And when he finally stopped reaching out, they called him cold. They called him heartless.
They made him this way.
And somewhere along the way, Ezekiel stopped believing that anyone would ever truly stand beside him. He stopped thinking there was a place for him in this world.
Until he read that letter...