Leonidas descended through a cloud of dust and debris, and his eyes narrowed in focus as he fell. A jutting piece of metal that had served as support for the destroyed floor of the arena came within reach, and Leonidas lunged for it, fingers brushing the steel in an effort to grab hold. He managed to snag it by the grace of the System, and ameliorated his fall with a rapid, angled slide of steel-scraping-steel down toward the truncated end of the shattered beam.

  His grip came free just near the end of the beam—blood-slick gauntlets betraying him—and a curse spilled out between gritted teeth as he twisted mid-air, not expecting the early dismount. With his Psi down to a flicker, he realized almost immediately that couldn’t conjure a shield or force to catch himself. He’d burned through his energy, leaving him with nothing but stamina, swordsmanship, and the rage of his [Cataclysm Core].

  It would have to be enough.

  The Hydra’s thrashing bulk loomed below, a tangle of scales and fury half-pinned by rubble, and flailing to free itself even then.

  Leonidas angled his fall as best he could as he descended, tucking his sword arm tight and aiming for one of its writhing necks. The air screamed past him, and he slammed into the serpentine length of its fifth head with a crunch—his boots smashing into the scales with enough force to slam the head down against the rock.

  Bioluminescent blood sprayed into the air alongside debris.

  Pain lanced through his ankles, but the Hydra’s screech of outrage drowned out his own grunt. Its flesh, inhospitable as it was, gave just enough to cushion the impact, and Leonidas wasted no time in forcing himself into action.

  His Core blazed to life within him, furious with intensity, and he channelled its power into his blade with every iota of his Willpower. [Psionic Swordforce] was completely outside the realm of consideration, especially since his [Psionic Focus] would be critical for him to stay alive—but his [Archon’s Psiblade] was bound to him, and that meant it was bound to his Core, as well.

  It had handled the power of his mana before.

  He had trained it to do so with Ceruviel, but with sporadic success.

  The gems inlaid to the weapon lit up cardinal red, and destructive flames ignited around its blade, and he was shocked at the sudden flood of mana that left him when they did.

  He didn’t have time to assess it, though, because the Hydra had very much taken notice. The sixth head struck at him at the same time as the third, while the seventh, first, second, and fourth were still attempting to pull themselves free of the immense amount of rubble restricting their movement.

  “Small mercies!” Leonidas growled while scuttling out of the attacking heads’ line of assault. His body groaned in process at his movement, given the fact he had fallen over a dozen feet, but he forced himself to ignore it—and focus instead entirely on staying alive. His only option was to win, and to use the subsequent level up to survive the encounter.

  The Arena fights were to the death, after all.

  That meant giving up only ended one way.

  The heads he mentally labelled ‘Six’ and ‘Three’ slammed into the rubble when he moved, and Leonidas used the cloud of dust to dart away from their line of sight, focusing instead on ‘Five’—the head he had crushed into the ground with his drop. Leonidas lifted his psiblade and rushed toward it, fully and acutely aware of the fact that ‘Six’ and ‘Three’ would take note of his flaming sword any second.

  ‘Five’ turned one of its malicious golden eyes toward him at the last second, and the Hydra’s head unleashed a shriek of rage and fear that resonated through Leonidas’ [Psionic Focus]. Its jaws parted, and its massive teeth bubbled with caustic green smoke as it prepared some sort of breath attack.

  He did not give the Hydra that chance.

  Leonidas activated [Chivalric Charge] and tackled ‘Five’ directly behind its head, slamming his armored shoulder into its serpentine mass and creating a bone-chilling snap sound as he impacted. The Hydra’s head spasmed along its length, and Leonidas felt something in his shoulder scream in pain after his charge ended.

  Heedless of the pain—Ceruviel had thoroughly conditioned his new body against being hindered by it easily—singing in his shoulder, and perhaps across his entire collarbone; Leonidas scrambled to where the dog-sized head of the Hydra lay dazed upon the rubble and lifted his psiblade at the same time as he heard enraged snarls from the other heads.

  Without letting doubt stay his hand, he lifted his sword and—with a full application of his Strength and Agility Attributes—spoke through bloodied teeth beneath his helmet while flooding mana into his blade.

  “Sixth Sword Art: Pierce the Mountain!”

  Leonidas slammed the sword home into the Hydra’s disoriented eye.

  Viscous neon-green and crimson blood sprayed across him, and Leonidas was thankful for his helmet at that moment. Moreover, he noticed something else: his mana and stamina took hits to their remaining pools from his attack… but not without benefit.

  The Hydra’s head blistered from where his sword had been impaled, and began to bubble—its eye sockets vomiting scarlet fire and lightning as its scales blackened and bleached, and eventually began to fester with spreading veins of magma not unlike the now-permanent wound to its shoulder.

  The Hydra’s head spasmed one final time, and then went still.

  Leonidas tore out his blade with a victorious snarl.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

  At the same time, all six remaining heads shrieked in rage and pain.

  But Leonidas felt something else through his [Psionic Focus].

  Fear.

  Leonidas grinned to himself savagely, at the same moment as his spatial awareness roared at him to move.

  “Ah,” he said with a glance above him, “shit.”

  ‘Six’ smashed into him like a falling tree, and Leonidas was slapped away from the inert corpse of ‘Five’ like an armored ragdoll. His [Archon’s Warplate] absorbed the majority of the impact, and it seemed that the other head was more desperate than anything else in its strike, which mitigated some of the damage.

  But only some.

  Leonidas didn’t need to consult his flashing health bar to know something inside of him had been compromised, and he didn’t need to look at his body to know he was bleeding. He could feel a difference in his breathing, and he could taste iron on his tongue and in his throat. The blow had failed to take him out of the fight, but it had put him onto the path.

  Now, he was on a timer.

  The positive was that he’d held onto his weapon.

  The negative was that he couldn’t use it if he was unconscious.

  Leonidas grit his teeth and refocused on the heads that were still pinned, and while not defenseless, far more vulnerable than both ‘Six’ and ‘Three’. In situations like his current, there was no good option—only the best of worst, and it was either those or die. He certainly knew which ones he favored.

  “Defeat in detail,” he mumbled to himself, and suppressed a wheezing cough. “You and me, fucko.”

  A wet laugh left his lips, and he lifted his [Archon’s Psiblade] in preparation.

  “Round three, asshole.”

  Leonidas glanced at his stamina reserves, and then threw himself forward in a charge. His stamina was the only attribute he had which regenerated fast enough in combat to matter in the short term, and it was that very regeneration he was relying on. His eyes sought his target, and thanks to the blow from ‘Six’, he realized he was imminently closer to ‘One’ than he was to any other head.

  That worked for him.

  Leonidas crossed the intervening distance between him and the Hydra with speed and fury, and when ‘Three’ turned toward him, he tapped into his stamina while his eyes found the writhing silhouette of ‘One’ within the debris and mess. He didn’t trigger [Chivalric Charge], but instead held his stamina right on the edge—trusting his [Psionic Focus] to give him the timing.

  Pain, fury, fear, and adrenaline surged through him and Leonidas felt his mana reserves fall further as he continued to burn through them. He had no choice. If he risked activating and deactivating the ‘cloak’ of mana on his blade, he’d lose his power even faster. He was already down to the halfway mark, and it would only continue to drop.

  Another reason to end things swiftly, as if he needed more incentive.

  ‘Three’ snarled its warning as Leonidas approached, and he ignored the hissing and spitting creature, instead keeping his eyes locked on ‘One’. The head, which he saw was firmly half-buried beneath a full chunk of the arena floor that had fallen down smack-bang in the middle of the head’s neck, twisted as best it could toward him in fury and fear.

  At the same time, ‘Three’ opened its mouth and began gathering the same poisonous smog as ‘Five’ had, though Leonidas knew this attack was far more likely to succeed. At least, it was in theory. He had a plan for that, as well.

  Moments later, while he was still about twenty yards from ‘One’, ‘Three’ unleashed its corrosive breath.

  In response, Leonidas continued to run.

  One heartbeat.

  The smog rolled toward him in a concentrated cone.

  Two heartbeats.

  The smog was thick with cloying poison, and he could feel his nose burning just from the effect it had on the air without being on top of him.

  Three heartbeats.

  Poison and corrosive power sizzled its way over the masonry, and Leonidas heard enchanted rock crumble and audibly fracture as the poison consumed it. His teeth gritted to steel his resolve, and he waited until he was right on the very edge of the smog cloud—when his eyes watered, and he felt his face growing hot from mere proximity.

  That was when he released his built up stamina.

  [Chivalric Charge] went off with enough force to rocket him away from the smog at a velocity that blasted the attack sideways from the air displacement. As he moved, Leonidas raised his sword and spoke with bloodied lips.

  “First Sword Art,” he snarled while closing with ‘One’, “Requiem of the Tempest!”

  The [Archon’s Psiblade] punched into the pinned head not at its top, but right where its upper half exited the rubble keeping it in place.

  The softer tissue of the neck cushioned Leonidas’ impact, somewhat, at the same time as his sword slammed it sideways and into the pinned body of ‘Two’. He had deliberately chosen a part of the head that he knew was more weighty, and closer to the second neck.

  Necks were not as agile as the head-proper, after all. They couldn’t dodge.

  Leonidas growled as his motion was arrested, and wasted no time.

  His [Cataclysm Core] ejected another surge of mana, and unlike ‘Five’, ‘One’ was not already braindead from an unforeseen lobotomy. The Hydra’s first head screamed in agony, letting out a wail so horrifying that Leonidas felt his blood run cold and chills roll down his spine. At the same time, the flesh and scales under his sword blistered and boiled, and nauseating smoke wafted from the fleshy mass.

  Leonidas tried not to gag, and tore his blade out of ‘One’.

  ‘Three’ chose that moment to strike, and instead of letting it, Leonidas trusted his blaring imagined klaxons from [Psionic Focus] and dived out of the way.

  ‘Three’ smashed head-first into stone and snarled in fury, shaking itself to clear the immediate disorientation. Leonidas took the opportunity to turn back to ‘One’, and then froze.

  Not only were the scales and flesh rotting from his mana as before, but something else—which the blow from ‘Six’ had previously robbed him from witnessing—was occurring: the entire neck was dissolving where he had stabbed it. Sinew, boiled and sludged blood, and rapidly necrotizing flesh sloughed away even after he removed his head, and Leonidas turned toward ‘One’ at the same time as the head’s screaming gurgled out, and its upper quarter of neck simply fell off.

  For a moment panic filled him, and he looked toward where the stump was in preparation for three more hideous skulls to explode outward, or for some equally dramatic regeneration ritual or regrowth ritual to occur.

  Nothing did, and the remaining five heads shrieked the same way they did when ‘Five’ had been impaled.

  Despite himself, Leonidas laughed.

  It was a mad, desperate laugh, but laugh he did.

  “Fuck,” he said while pushing himself to his feet, “I should have called myself Hercules.”

  Another ragged laugh tore from his lips, and he felt his lung heaving for function.

  “Two down,” he said while eyeing ‘Two’ and ‘Three’. “Five more to go.”

  Leonidas charged once more.