The chains had long since embedded themselves into the curve of his wrists, but Azeric no longer felt them.
He stood beneath the flickering lamplight like a relic chained for inspection, presented not as a warrior but as a possession. He who is not admired for strength but for his capacity to endure in silence, to suffer without protest, and to generate coin through pain.
The handlers had kept his body immaculate: no overgrown scars, no faded callouses, just gleaming muscle and the kind of bruises that suggested use without waste.
His breath was even, shallow by training, the rise and fall of his chest calculated not to draw attention.
A guard leaned against the frame of the prep chamber, wine on his breath and mockery in his tone.
He stepped closer, gripping his jaw with a force that bruised. "You know what you are, don't you? Useless muscle with a pulse. The nobles don't come for a fight—they come to watch a show. They pay to see you bleed and fail, not win. It's our job to keep you in one piece just long enough to make them feel like their coin wasn't wasted. You're a burden, not a fighter. And every time I look at you standing, I want to kill you."
Azeric did not answer. His eyes remained fixed on the far wall, trained not to react, but something coiled tight in his chest. Each word scraped across the inside of his skull like grit on steel.
This was nothing new—this guard always sought him out during prep, always when the sedatives were in his veins. Back then, Azeric couldn't move, couldn't fight back. The man would whisper filth, bruise him under the guise of inspection, grin as Azeric drifted in and out of drugged obedience.
But tonight, there was no haze in his blood. No chemical leash and only the fury stirred in his veins slow, precise and deliberate in its burn.
The guard slammed his boot into Azeric's gut, earning a grunt from Azeric. "Nothing but a breathing waste of coin. Vermin like you don't get to fight back.""
The guard laughed. But Azeric moved.
The moment the guard's hand came near his throat again, Azeric struck. His hands clamped down around the man's neck with no warning, no buildup, just raw force.
The man thrashed, knocking over the basin of scented oil. Azeric did not flinch. He did not blink. He watched the veins bulge, the face flush red, then violet. The breath rattled. The body sagged.
Another guard burst into the chamber, his voice sharp with panic.
"What the hell are you doing? Let go! You'll kill him!" he shouted, stumbling back at the sight of the slow execution already halfway done.
He lunged forward, trying to pry Azeric's hands free, his grip frantic, but it was too late. The first guard's eyes had rolled back, the last pulse fluttering beneath Azeric's thumb. His throat remained pinned between the gladiator's fingers until his body went slack. When Azeric finally released him, the corpse dropped soundlessly to the floor, blue and motionless.
And Azeric's expression never changed.
The handler cursed, his voice lost beneath the sudden uproar as more guards poured into the chamber. Footsteps hammered against stone like a stampede, and then came the fists.
They shoved Azeric backward, yanked him from the corpse, slammed him against the far wall with the sound of flesh against metal. A baton struck his ribs, another cracked against his shoulder.
Someone shouted to restrain him, another to check the body, and yet another cursed the mess he had made of their evening. Azeric dropped to his knees under the weight of them, forced into the blood-slicked floor, but his smile—small, sharp, invisible to all but himself—remained.
For the first time in years, the kill had not been survival. It was choice. His. And it felt good. Not clean. Not redemptive. Just real.
That guard had laughed while Azeric lay paralyzed under drugs, had carved bruises beneath the skin where no one could see. Now he was dead, and Azeric had delivered it with his own hands. That truth burned hotter than pain.
As they drove him into the ground, boots striking bone and batons landing without rhythm, someone shouted above the chaos—half disbelief, half rage. "What the hell happened? Did that scrap actually snap?"
A sharp ding echoed in his skull, mechanical and sterile, like a machine booting to life somewhere deep inside his brain. Then the words came. One by one, letters began to type themselves into the space directly in front of him across the air itself.
Azeric squinted, confused, wondering whether he was hallucinating or if his mind had finally fractured. But the text stayed fixed. It didn't shake. It didn't fade. Even as fists slammed into his ribs and boots crushed him to the ground, the message remained—steady, pulsing, watching.
SYSTEM INITIALIZING...
He blinked, disoriented, thinking perhaps it was a hallucination brought on by impact.
Emotional spike registered. Combat subroutines online.
Another blow caught his temple, and his head cracked against the floor, but the words didn't vanish.
Welcome Azeric. Synchronization at 6%.
He tried to move, but the guards pinned him harder. The text remained in front of his eyes—still typing, still bright—unaffected by the chaos around him. It didn't blink. It didn't glitch. It just hovered there, as if the system had been waiting all this time for him to finally want it.
And for the first time in years, the system stirred in full.
Kill confirmed. Emotional pleasure logged. Mission chain unlocked.