r/ApocalypseOfOurGods

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Chapter 5: Devourer of Skies

The echo of Flamma's voice still vibrated against the Coliseum walls, but the silence that followed was heavier than any scream. The gladiator exhaled, and in that mist escaping his lips, the last trace of the scared boy from the Alban Hills vanished.

In front of him, the figure of Kamiizumi Nobutsuna remained like an ancient tree in the middle of a storm.

Flamma did something no one expected. He straightened his back, struck his chest once with his right fist over his heart —the salute of the legions— and then performed a deep, slow bow, heavy with solemn weight. The young man who at the beginning called him "old man" with contempt had just recognized that he was facing a mountain that could only be climbed with blood.

— Kamiizumi Ise-no-Kami... —Flamma's voice was now a tempered steel blade—. Thank you. Thank you for reminding me who I am. But my "why" does not allow me to die here.

Flamma began to retreat. One, two... five steps. The distance was unusual; for a gladius user, moving so far away was giving up the advantage. But the air around Flamma began to vibrate. Nike's drones emitted warning beeps: the atmospheric pressure in the center of the arena was collapsing.

— This technique...! —rugió Flamma, and in that moment, the audience fell silent before the Roman’s physical transformation.

His legs, forged in the Alban Hills and hardened by a thousand combats, began to increase in size, the muscles swelling until they strained the leather of his greaves to the breaking point. The veins in his thighs and neck stood out like roots of an ancient tree, pulsing with an uncontrolled fury that threatened to explode his own skin. The internal pressure was so massive that his eyes went completely white, erasing any trace of humanity to leave only the pure instinct of a predator.

— I forged it in the mud of survival and polished it in the blood of the arena! —the air around him spun in an invisible whirlpool—. This time, there will be no space in this arena that does not belong to me! There will be no place where you can hide!

Flamma crouched, becoming a spring of flesh and bone charged with seismic power.

— ¡¡DEVOURER OF SKIES!! —gritó, and the black marble beneath his feet did not just crack, but exploded into pieces, projecting stone shrapnel in all directions as the Lion of Rome launched into the attack at a speed that defied the laws of physics.

The sonic blast of Flamma’s start was so powerful that the spectators in the front rows felt their ears bleed. Nobutsuna had no time to retreat; the space no longer belonged to him.

First Strike: The Hammer of Rome. Flamma did not use the edge; he used the mass. He impacted with the reinforced edge of his scutum directly into Nobutsuna’s solar plexus. It wasn’t a push; it was a train wreck. The air left the samurai's lungs in a dull blast, and Nobutsuna was thrown backward, his feet dragging across the marble as he spat a mouthful of crimson blood that stained the ground in a violent trail.

Second Strike: The Tear Without letting Nobutsuna recover from the impact, Flamma rotated on his axis with superhuman strength. The gladius, imbued by the pressure of the Devourer of Skies, traced an ascending diagonal slash. The steel penetrated deeply, tearing muscle and bone. The cut was devastating, opening the samurai's chest from the hip to the opposite shoulder.

Third Strike:  Taking advantage of the inertia, Flamma returned with a descending backhand sword strike, crossing the first slash to form a bloody "X" that exploded in a fountain of bright red. The residual air pressure of that last impact was so sharp that, at the end of the movement, a thread of cutting wind rose up Nobutsuna's face, opening a vertical wound on his forehead that began to bathe his eyes in blood.

The most terrifying thing was not the attack, but the samurai's reaction.

Even while receiving the cuts, while his chest was being torn apart and his forehead opened, Nobutsuna maintained a nervous tic in his left hand. His head tilted unnaturally, with rhythmic spasms, as if his body were suffering a short circuit of pure pleasure. There was no pain on his face, only that strange and disturbing "weirdness."

In the divine stands, Ares dropped his cup, letting the wine spill onto his robe without caring. His eyes shone with a maniacal admiration.

— Look at him, uncle! —gritó Ares, with his voice cracking with emotion—. That is the color! That is the glow that only humans can emit when they are about to become extinct! Flamma is not fighting a samurai, he is reclaiming his right to exist with every drop of blood he tears away! It is... it is glorious!

Hades, in silence, leaned in even further. His gaze was not on Flamma, but on Nobutsuna’s tics. He knew that something inside the samurai had broken... or perhaps, had finally awakened.

Flamma finished his execution, landing heavily. His lungs burned as if he had swallowed embers, and sweat mixed with the blood from his reopened wounds. He was exhausted but satisfied: he had made the Sword Saint bleed.

Or so he thought…..

Suddenly, the world went silent. Flamma felt an unnatural cold on the back of his neck. Without warning, his vision rotated violently. He saw the marble floor approaching at full speed... he saw his own decapitated body, standing, dripping blood like a broken fountain. His head rolled across the arena, stopping in front of a spectator's caligae. A second later, he felt his arms and legs being sliced into invisible sheets, reducing him to a trunk of inert meat on the ground.

— ¡¡GAAAAAHHHH!! —Flamma let out a harrowing scream that chilled the blood of the gods.

He brought his hands to his neck in desperation, squeezing the skin, looking for a wound that wasn't there. His fingers trembled violently, and his eyes, previously white from the technique, were now dilated by a primal terror.

— What... what the hell was that? —jadeó, with his heart hammering against his ribs as if it wanted to escape—. What... what kind of trick...?

He looked around, disoriented, until his sight locked onto Nobutsuna. The samurai was still there, with the "X" bleeding on his chest and the gash on his forehead, but his aura had changed. Flamma felt a weight in his soul that he never experienced in the Subura or the Coliseum of Rome.

— I'm dead... —susurró Flamma for himself, with his voice broken—

At that moment, the silence was broken by a loud, crazed laughter. Kamiizumi Nobutsuna began to laugh, a laugh that ascended into a scream of pure euphoria. It was a deranged grimace, wide and devoid of all sanity, showing his teeth stained red by the blood coming down from his forehead. His eyes, previously dull from the boredom of centuries, now vibrated with a sickly light, a spark of euphoria that only appears when someone finds the meaning of their existence on the edge of the abyss.

— ¡¡ Not bad… kid !! —murmuró Nobutsuna. His voice was no longer that of a peaceful old man; it sounded like metal being sharpened against a rough stone—. ¡¡ IT HAS BEEN SO LONG SINCE THE WORLD OFFERED ME THIS PAIN... THIS DELICIOUS REMINDER THAT I AM ALIVE !!

Nobutsuna brought his right hand to the hilt. For the first time in the entire round, the sound of steel sliding out of the wood resonated like thunder in the Purgatory. The blade of his katana shone with a ghostly silver glow as he pointed it directly at Flamma's face.

In the Roman's eyes, the katana disappeared. It was no longer a sword; it was the scythe of Death, a colossal shadow looming over him, ready to claim his soul. A nervous smile, almost a spasm of shared madness, took over Flamma's face.

— Be a sacrifice for me legend,  Flamma-chan... —sentenció Nobutsuna with a disturbing smile that distorted his face.

The bloodlust emanating from the Sword Saint became solid, flooding every corner of the arena, suffocating even the screams of the crowd. The hunter had finally drawn his blade.