My Dragon King System-Chapter 390: First Blood (Bonus)

The crowd erupted into murmurs.

In the Dragonhold section, Oberon’s eyes narrowed. He turned to his champions and nodded.

In the Elandria section, Queen Arnarra stood up and turned to her daughters.

"Prepare yourselves," she said.

The two kingdoms rose and began making their way toward the arena floor.

The first battle of Stage Two was about to begin.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

—

The gates of the colosseum opened, and the champions stepped onto the arena floor.

From the Dragonhold side, Kayden walked forward first, with white lightning streaking around his body.

His expression looked focused. Rin and Lysandra followed right behind.

From the Elandria side, Queen Arnarra stepped forward. She had light-green hair tied back, and carried a staff. Beside her walked two of her daughters, both elven mages with sharp eyes and poised stances.

The crowd murmured as the six champions took their positions across from each other.

At the highest point of the colosseum, Adam raised his hand, then lowered it, and a lesser god standing at the edge of the arena floor raised his.

"Begin!"

The moment the word left his mouth, Arnarra moved.

Her staff struck the ground, and the stone beneath her feet split open. From the cracks, massive wooden spikes erupted and shot toward Lysandra with terrifying speed.

Lysandra’s eyes widened. She raised her hand and whispered, "Repel."

A wave of gravitational force pushed outward from her body, deflecting the first spike. But another followed immediately, then another. The spikes came in rapid succession, each one larger and faster than the last. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝔀𝓮𝒃𝙣𝓸𝒗𝒆𝒍.𝙘𝒐𝒎

Lysandra was forced to dodge. She flew to the side, then backward, then raised her hand again to push another spike away with gravity.

But Arnarra didn’t stop. She raised her staff, and more spikes erupted from the ground, curving through the air to chase after Lysandra from multiple angles.

Lysandra gritted her teeth as she couldn’t find an opening to attack. Every second was spent defending, dodging, or deflecting.

Arnarra’s strategy was to keep Lysandra on the defensive. Don’t let her cast or give her a moment to breathe.

Because if Lysandra got a clean shot, her gravity magic would be nearly impossible to counter.

——

From the elevated section where the gods sat, Laela watched Arnarra with narrowed eyes.

The wood magic Arnarra wielded looked familiar. Too familiar.

It had the same structure and same natural growth patterns as Laela’s own plant magic.

"Hm..." she muttered.

——

On the arena floor, Kayden had already moved.

White lightning erupted around his body, and his hair stood on end as the electricity coursed through him.

His form blurred, and he shot forward, aiming straight for the nearest of Arnarra’s daughters.

He was fast. Faster than most people could track, but the moment he stepped within a certain range, everything changed.

The world around him vanished.

He was no longer in the colosseum but he was suddenly falling through an endless abyss of darkness. The ground was gone. The sky was gone, and there was nothing but the sensation of falling, over and over, with no end in sight.

Kayden’s eyes widened, and his body reacted on instinct. He reached out, trying to grab onto something, anything, but there was nothing there.

Then he hit the ground.

Not the real ground, but his mind told him he had, and his body responded as he collapsed onto the arena floor.

From the Dragonhold section, Oberon rose to his feet. "What—"

His voice was drowned out by the gasps from the crowd.

Kayden, one of Dragonhold’s strongest, had been taken down without even landing a hit.

The daughter of Arnarra responsible for the illusion was a few meters away, and had her staff raised.

Her magic mostly bothered on creating very strong illusions, and this one she had just used deceived all five senses at once. Sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, all of it could be manipulated.

She had trapped Kayden in an illusion of endless falling, and his mind had done the rest.

A faint smile appeared on her lips. "One down."

—

Meanwhile, Rin had raised her hand toward the sky.

"Steel Magic: Rain of Lances."

Dozens of steel lances materialized in the air above the Elandria champions. They hovered for a moment, glowing with silver light, then shot downward in a deadly rain.

But the second daughter reacted immediately. She slammed her staff into the ground, and a translucent barrier formed overhead.

The lances struck the barrier and bounced off harmlessly, scattering across the arena floor.

Rin gritted her teeth as she tried again, summoning more lances, but the barrier held.

And for a moment, it looked like Elandria was winning.

—

Then suddenly, Kayden opened his eyes with white lightning crackled in his pupils. He pushed himself to his feet, and the illusion shattered.

The daughter who had cast it gasped in shocked and widened eyes. "How—"

The problem with casting that illusion on him was this; In his Godspeed Lightning state, the electricity coursing through his body heightened his brain activity to extreme levels. His synapses fired faster, and his neurons processed information at speeds far beyond human capability.

And when the illusion tried to override his senses, the constant electrical stimulation in his brain created interference.

And as such, the illusion couldn’t maintain a stable grip because his mind was resetting itself too quickly. It was like trying to trap lightning in a bottle. The moment it seemed caught, it surged and broke free.

Kayden’s form dissolved into raw lightning as he became a streak of white light that shot across the arena floor.

The daughter maintaining the illusion barely had time to react before he passed through her. Then he passed through the second daughter, then he passed through Arnarra herself.

All three of them were struck in the same instant and the sheer force of the lightning knocked them backward. The two daughters collapsed to the ground, their bodies stunned and unable to move.

Their defense had been broken.

With the opening granted, the steel lances Rin still had progress shot downward with no barrier to stop them.

And the lances struck the two daughters directly who then vanished in flashes of light.