He didn't act during the day. Especially not when eyes were sharp and patrols close.
He waited.
The guards rotated in predictable patterns. Azeric didn't need to guess because he knew. He had been watching for years, memorizing every footstep, every cough, every guard who liked to take an extra lap or linger by the basin. Their routine had become a rhythm in his head, a mechanical chant he could recite with his eyes closed.
The moment one patrol turned the corner and the next had yet to appear wasn't luck. The lag between replacements was his opening. It was never more than six seconds. But six seconds was enough.
He moved when the sun dipped, when the drills had long ended and bodies dragged through routine cleanup. Gladiators were given buckets, rags, pointless tasks that made them feel useful before night swallowed them. Azeric offered to carry a crate of blunted training weapons toward the shed at the far end of the pit wall.
The guard nodded—barely glanced at him. His shift was ending. The other hadn't arrived.
Perfect.
Azeric turned the corner behind the storage wall, where the torchlight didn't reach. The shed sat ahead, but that wasn't where he was going.
Mirsa was already there. He was half-sitting near a cracked pillar, head down, breathing ragged. He'd taken a lash harder than most, and he hadn't stopped complaining since.
Azeric approached, slow and silent.
The blade he used was short—sharpened during meal breaks over stone, carved from a piece of broken plating he had found during cleanup duty. It was tucked beneath the rags he carried, hidden among the junk he was tasked to move.
He stepped behind the man.
One hand gripped Mirsa's mouth. The other drove the blade under the ribs, upward.
Mirsa tensed. A jerk. A half-choked gasp.
Then nothing.
Azeric eased him down, back slumping against the stone. Blood spread under the shadows. It looked like sweat in the dark.
He didn't linger. He slipped the weapon back under his belt and grabbed a rag from the crate, wiping his hands as he walked the rest of the way toward the shed.
The other guard arrived seconds later, muttering about being late.
Azeric nodded once, dropped the crate, and walked away.
The system buzzed.
SYSTEM UPDATE: UNSANCTIONED TERMINATION DETECTED
+3 Corruption
+1 Agility
[Silent Elimination] +4%
[Merciless Strike] +1%
Azeric crouched briefly near the pillar, pulling the blood-slick scrap of metal from Mirsa's body. He wiped it clean with a rag, methodical, and slid it back into the crate with the other junk. Just another scrap of training debris.
Then he walked to the mess hall.
He sat where he always did, near the corner wall not far from the barrels, elbows resting on his knees, waiting for the meal with a face that gave away nothing.
When the guards glanced at him, they saw what they expected: a tired gladiator. Just another body in the pit.
"You reek of blood."
The voice came from beside him—dry, cracked, and half-whispered. Azeric turned slightly.
An old man sat just two seats down. One of the pit's mad relics, Lagon. Skin like sun-dried leather, beard like wiry rope, eyes too sharp to match the slurred rhythm of his speech. He wasn't pulled into fights anymore—too old, too slow, too unpredictable. They called him the Crazy Old Man.
He would talked incessantly to himself, to ghosts or anyone who sat too close.
"It's fresh too," Lagon murmured, eyes gleaming.
Azeric didn't answer. But he watched the old man now, jaw tight. Something inside him stirred—alert, wary. This one might talk. He could ruin everything with a single sentence spoken too clearly but then again, they called him crazy and no one listens to a madman.
So Azeric let it go.
The old man chuckled, raspy and low. "Gladiators now... they're just murderers in chains. You have no flair and no honor. Just blood and silence. Wasn't like that before."
That caught Azeric's attention. His eyes narrowed slightly.
Then a metallic ding.
System Notice:
Fusion Protocol Available:
[Shadow Hand] + [Silent Elimination Node 1] → [Silent Trace]
Azeric stared at the system text, the words glowing like embers in the dark. I can make it into one skill, he thought.
But would it be better? He clenched his jaw slightly. Combining them meant losing the flexibility—but it also meant streamlining. Making his silence lethal. He didn't know what to do at first. His thoughts hesitated, uncertain if it would fracture something unseen or open a door he couldn't close. And then, quietly, uncertainly, he said yes in his mind. A flicker of doubt. But the system took it as confirmation.
FUSION COMPLETE
New Trait: [Silent Trace]
Fusion Result:
+40% movement suppression (dark/closed areas)
+15% crit chance on first strike (unseen)
Auto-detect: nearest threat (stealth mode)
Previous Traits Absorbed: [Shadow Hand], [Silent Elimination Node 1]
+1 Corruption
A faint ding followed, softer than before, but clear. Azeric didn't flinch. He only watched the floating text as the previous message began to fade.
THRESHOLD REACHED
Corruption: 15
Mutation Tier I Available
Awaiting user confirmation...
Azeric blinked slowly at the line, expression unreadable.
Sure, he thought. It's all the same. Whatever that means... it translates into power.
PROCESSING...
MUTATION PROTOCOL INITIATED
Vessel compliance confirmed. No resistance detected.
Tier I Mutation Unlocked: [Neural Restructuring]
Effect:
– Pain delay engaged
– Combat reflex enhancement calibrated
– Emotional dampening initialized
Installed Trait: [Emotional Null I]
Empathy suppressed. Remorse deprioritized. Conscience compression active.
Azeric stared at the lines as they floated, parsing each one slowly then...
Emotional dampening initialized.
And below it—Empathy and remorse deprioritized. Conscience compression active.
He sat still.
It sounded clinical and detached, like a machine flipping switches he didn't fully understand. Azeric had always thought he'd lost emotion a long time ago—burned out of him by violence and submission. He still felt like himself now. Or what counted as himself. This didn't feel like change. The system wasn't ripping anything out. It was just dulling the edges, suppressing the noise. Making him more efficient.
As the text faded, a clang sounded down the corridor. The food trays were finally handed out.
He didn't need to eat here. He had dried meat and grain stuffed in the corner of his cell. But after that stunt he needed to be seen.
He stayed where he was.
The old man was still beside him, still mutterring under his breath. Then, softly, he muttered, "May the divine god bless this place."
Azeric didn't look at him. He just muttered back, flatly, as he scooped his first bite, "There is no god."
The old man laughed—a sharp wheeze through his nose.
"Ah, but this was a place of god back then."
Azeric glanced at him, a slight crease forming between his brows. "What are you talking about?"
The old man lifted a bony arm and pointed toward the far end of the hall, where the stone wall curved inward slightly—worn, cracked, and mostly ignored. "There," he whispered. "See that circle in the wall? The edges are crumbling now, but it's still there. That's the sigil of the Divine One."
Azeric frowned. He squinted toward the spot. There was something there—a faint ring carved into the stone, lines branching out from it like dried roots or sun-bleached veins. He couldn't read the markings, but they didn't look like random damage.
"A training yard for paladins," the old man muttered. "Before it became what it is now. Before the arena. Before it was soaked in death and turned into a cage." Then his voice drifted, losing its thread. "You can still hear the prayers sometimes, if you kneel just right... but they scream too now. Heh... poor bastards, all of them..."
And just like that, he was gone again—his mind pulled back into fog.
Azeric looked back at the mark.
"A god..." he muttered under his breath.
He glanced around the hall—the filth, the rust, the blood still drying in the corners—and tried, for a moment, to imagine this place filled with knights instead of killers. He snorted.
"What god would let this happen?" he said, just loud enough to hear himself.
Then he shoved another bite of food into his mouth and kept eating.
Whatever that place had been, it wasn't sacred anymore.