Chapter 527 - Day MMCXXII, Part III

He climbed his way to the arena. He looked the same as I remembered him, long black, knitted sweater, open in the front, an old, white T-shirt with holes in it, black shorts, slippers, and obviously sunglasses. But this time he had a constant smirk present on his face. It was like another accessory.

- Good afternoon - he said to me when he finally stopped in front of my face, completely ignoring the audience, and the music finally was cut off.

There were a dozen steps between us, but It felt very close.

- Hi - I replied.

- You saw what I can do, and I know what you can do - he continued. - I know about your army of shadows. How about we check whose army is stronger?

I shrugged my shoulders, which made his smile even bigger, and he showed the fangs..

- I will need some more space, so how about we both move a bit further back? - he asked.

I sighed and walked several steps towards the stairs leading to my part of the bunker. When we finally were standing in our new positions, Gavriil spread his arms wide releasing quite a bit of mana. This time he didn't use the petty tricks with sand to cover what he was doing, but still manipulated it as he was casting the spell, to form circles on the ground made out of runes and symbols.

All that power was poured into them, and they shined with a faint blue light just before the coffins, hundreds of them, appeared on the ground. All standing in a similar manner, but there was a bit of a difference between them. Some had chains wrapped around, some symbols engraved on the lids, a few mix of that, and a couple of even small paper talismans hanging all around on red threads on top of everything else.

I immediately thought that those were containing the strongest people.

Semenov waved his hand again, and the lids fell off, revealing different people, some armed, some not, but all definitely dead. They took one step forward in the same moment, like well-trained soldiers under their commander's order.

- Now your turn! - he shouted to me.

My seal was off, so I didn't really need anything else, I could begin right away, but since he was giving me the time it felt wrong to not use it for flexing proposes.

"I dedicate this to my man, Vikram", I thought to myself.

I closed my eyes, rose my head, and opened them to look at the sky. I started by activating 'Eyes of the Void' as the cameras from drones were focused on me. Then I finally used the 'Shadow fusion'. I could feel the essence spreading through my body. My veins and hair became black, my skin became grey, and the lips dark.

It was finally the moment to use the other skills.

I released a cloud of void essence from my body, just as the swirling wall of blackness appeared on the horizon, above the walls of the arena, partially blocking the light. The smoke started to come out of the ground.

Then they showed themselves. They crawled from under the sand in hundreds. My loyal servants, the regular shadows.

They assembled in regular rows and columns like an army would. Hundreds, so there was quite tight there.

Gavriil was surprised because he expected champions to show up since that was what I showed him on the first day of the tournament.

- Impressive! - he yelled to me. - But I thought you would show the bigger ones. You think the small minions can deal with my army?!

I didn't answer, I just made my troops charge, while I glanced at the audience on the big screens. Everybody was watching with their mouths open in complete silence, with their eyes glued to what was shown to them.

My minions got smashed. They were like bugs running into flames, bursting into smoke under the blades of the undead, but I wasn't concerned by that. I kept summoning them in an endless stream. They would crawl out of the ground, and run, even on all fours, like mindless puppets focused on one thing. Destroying the enemy.

- I'm disappointed! - yelled Gavriil. - I thought you could do more after this display.

He showed the wall of darkness on the horizon, twisting in unstoppable motion. This made me switch from the regular shadows to champions, but only for a moment, as I decided to pull out the fiends.

They crawled from the ground, with fury, and immediately charged, growling with fury, clashing with the first lines of his troops. Some died in that attack, but a couple knocked down the dead bodies, and just ripped them to shreds. The body parts were flying out of the cloud of smoke that covered the space in which they fought.

- Now, that's more like what I heard about you! - shouted Gavriil. - This fight is going to be fun.

At first, I wasn't going to do this, concerned about the people hidden in underground bunkers, because I was unsure if the construction would be able to withstand it, but then I thought: "Fuck it", and decided to show one of them publicly. The moloch.

I could see it clearly despite the dimmed light, a mountain of sand that rose up on the horizon, falling down from a humongous, black hand that reached the sky and started falling to the ground. With the corned of my eye, I saw masses in shock, covering their open mouth, and with eyes popping out of their sockets, as they saw it too.

The hand hit the ground, causing a small earthquake, and the fingers dug into the sand. The beast started climbing its way to the surface. Which made Gavriil turned around, and see what was going on outside the arena. He missed it, and couldn't see a thing, since the wall was blocking his view.

But he kept watching and eventually saw a literal mountain of sand emerging in the desert.