Lunar Legacy: Rise Of The Beastlord-Chapter 248: Executioner

Hercules panted heavily, hammer trembling in his grip. Sweat poured down his face. His arms shook. Blood ran from his lips... but he was grinning.

"Ha! I got him," he muttered in excitement. "That blow... no one could stand up after that. Not even him. I shattered his skull with the hammer. It’s over."

Back in the pavilion. Everyone watching felt it. That had been a killing blow. They all believed there was no way Jayden could get up from that. It was practically impossible.

Even Hercules believed it. He needed to. He stood there, waiting for Jayden’s avatar to dissipate in defeat. But it didn’t. Instead...

There was a sudden shift in atmosphere. A subtle chill. A sound... soft, steady. Breathing. Coming from the crater.

Hercules’ grin slowly faded. His eyes widened in disbelief as a calm, grounded footstep echoed across the arena with slow inevitability.

Jayden stood up. No shaking. No wavering. No stunned stumble. Just a clean rise, like he’d simply stood up from a nap. His head hung low, chin shadowed.

Hercules froze in shock. He couldn’t believe it. Jayden was perfectly fine. Totally unscathed.

The stream chat exploded.

-"No way! He’s... alive?!"

-"That swing was lethal! How did he survive it?"

-"This isn’t normal. Is he even human...?"

Jayden didn’t speak. He didn’t blink. He didn’t move. He just stood completely still, head bowed slightly... like a malfunctioning android waiting for reboot.

Hercules’ breathing quickened.

This was wrong.

Jayden should be down. Or groaning. Or holding his face. Something. Anything.

Not... this.

"Did that hit even deal any damage to him?"Hercules wondered, panic quietly blooming in his gut.

He swallowed hard, forcing bravado back into his posture. No... he wouldn’t let fear take over. He still had the hammer. His legendary artifact. His ace.

With a roar that shook the arena, Hercules ran, raising his colossal, rune-etched hammer high above his head to deliver the final, full-powered blow.

"Die!!!"

He brought the hammer down with everything he had left, aiming to smash Jayden’s skull in one final, definitive blow.

But Jayden didn’t move. He didn’t linch. He didn’t even raise his head. He just stood there, motionless.

The hammer descended like judgment, now merely inches from Jayden’s skull. But before it could land...

CLANG.

It stopped.

Not on a barrier.

Not on armor.

Not on terrain.

But in the grip of a single hand.

Jayden’s arm had lashed up like lightning, fingers wrapped around the metal head of the hammer, halting it dead in mid-air as steady as a god trapping a mortal’s weapon with absolute disdain.

A dead chill swallowed the arena. And all around the pavilion, viewers gasped in unison.

Hercules’ eyes bulged. A wave of cold dread washed through him like liquid nitrogen. He instinctively tried to wrench the hammer free, but the hammer refused to budge.

He looked down, absolutely dumbfounded. Jayden had single-handedly stopped a giant, legendary hammer, and terrifyingly, he wasn’t even straining. His posture remained relaxed, save for the iron grip on the weapon. His strength was inhuman.

Then, Jayden slowly lifted his face up.

Hercules’s breath hitched. Jayden’s eyes were no longer the dull amber of a calm human. They were glowing gold, an incandescent light pouring from his pupils.

His expression was terrifyingly dark, sharp, and intensely focused, like being who had descended past rage into a clean, sharpened instinct to destroy.

Hercules immediately felt a chill crawl up his spine, a primal fear he hadn’t felt since his rookie days. He was scared to death. His fingers twitched on the hammer handle, slipping slightly as his palms went slick with sweat.

He yanked desperately, trying to free his weapon. But just like before, it didn’t budge. He tried lifting it, pulling down, using every ounce of his massive strength, but Jayden’s grip was too strong.

Panicked, Hercules began grunting, using exponential force to free his trump card, but Jayden didn’t let go.

Instead, he simply pressed down, sinking his fingers into the crimson-rune-forged hammerhead like an unstoppable vice.

And then...

CRRRRKKK!

A fissure appeared across the hammer’s surface.

Hercules’ pupils shrank to pinpricks. He stared in mute horror. A legendary weapon forged from the hardest materials in the universe had just cracked under Jayden’s grip.

His mind raced in panic. "No... No, no, no—This isn’t possible! How can this be possible?!"

But all he got in response was another CRACK.

The fissure multiplied, spreading across the entire surface instantly, radiating outwards like a spiderweb, straining under the impossible pressure of Jayden’s grip. It continued to crack until, finally—

CRRRAAKK-BOOOM!

The entire head shattered. It didn’t explode in a metal shower, but rather dissolved into a blinding spray of blue light, dissipating into nothingness and leaving behind only the polished, brittle handle clutched in Hercules’s trembling hands.

Silence. Absolute, deafening silence fell over the arena.

The entire chat room, seconds before raging with comments, exploded into hysteria.

-"Holy Fuck!! He just broke a legendary hammer with his bare hands!"

-"He’s a demigod... he has to be. That’s the only explanation for what just happened."

-"Oh, man. Hercules is screwed for sure."

-"Finish Him!!"

Back in the arena, Hercules was shuddering, staring numbly at the headless haft of his weapon. His trump card had been shattered. He was now defenseless, his power dramatically diminished, and he was definitely going to lose. It was practically over for him.

He raised his head to Jayden, who was staring at him coldly and menacingly.

Hercules shivered violently. He knew he had lost this one. The only choice he had now, was to simply submit and forfeit... for his own good.

Jayden stepped forward once. The sound of his foot hitting the earth felt like doom.

Hercules dropped the handle with a clatter. His voice was weak, broken, pleading, "Wait... I—"

Jayden didn’t let him finish.

WHOOSH!

He blurred. Fast. Way too fast. And without warning...

BAAAMMM!!!

A punch slammed into Hercules’ gut before the plea even finished.

His mouth gaped silently as he folded over Jayden’s fist, the force caving into his abdomen and rocketing him backward, launching him like a ragdoll.

He flew across the arena like a cannonball, before crashing into a large, jagged boulder several meters away with a spine-cracking CRUNCH, coughing out a spray of blood.

He barely had time to register pain before a shadow swallowed his view.

Jayden was already in front of him, his golden eyes staring down on him like judgment itself.

Hercules managed a wet, trembling gasp. "W-Wa—"

Jayden’s hand snapped around his throat mid-sentence, yanking him up effortlessly, feet dangling above the cracked earth.

Before Hercules could even think, or plead...

Bam!

Jayden punched him once, a devastating strike to the jaw.

Bam! Bam! Bam!!

He punched him again. And again. And again.

His fists moved too fast to track, landing a brutal succession of ten strikes... blows that pulverized Hercules’s rune armor and sent sprays of shimmering, black blood into the air.

Then Jayden threw Hercules’s body across the clearing into another boulder.

CRACK.

Hercules hit the rock hard and coughed out a thick plume of blood, his avatar struggling to maintain its form.

Jayden was upon him again.

WHACK! BAM! BAM!

He slammed his fists down on Hercules’ skull mercilessly. Another ten times, the impacts so powerful they cracked the ground beneath Hercules’s flailing body.

There were no fancy moves.

No over-the-top martial flair.

Just brutality... clean, relentless, brutality.

Jayden’s fist rose and fell like a piston, almost rhythmically. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ𝓋𝑒𝑙.𝑐𝘰𝑚

Hit.

Hit.

Hit.

Hit.

Hercules’ avatar glitched from the sheer processing overload of internal trauma. His body convulsed, eyes rolling. He didn’t even scream anymore. He couldn’t. His voice was gone.

Then Jayden dropped him only to spin, grip his leg like a piece of trash, and fling him across the arena again, sending his limp body skipping across the dirt.

THUD!

Hercules hit the ground and coughed violently, completely battered, his life bar flashing critically red.

Jayden reappeared instantly, seizing his head and lifting him just enough off the cracked ground. And without giving him a chance to breathe, he began yet another round of brutal, merciless punches.

WHAM!! BAM! CRACK!

Blood splattered with every impact, painting the arena floor. Hercules practically saw his life flashing before his eyes.

This was no longer a fight. It was an execution.

Jayden could kill Hercules easily with one blow, but he held back, ensuring to deal only enough damage to hurt him badly, to terrorize him, but not to grant him the release of death. It was a form of torture, a cold, calculated, dismantling torment.

The pavilion viewers watched in horror. Chat erupted in terrified awe:

-"He’s... torturing him? Poor Hercules. Bro’s receiving the bashing of a lifetime."

-"Why does this feel illegal to watch?"

-"Orion is practically toying with him like a prey. I can’t watch... but I can’t look away either."

-"Orion isn’t fighting Hercules. He’s eradicating him."

After the nineteenth blow, a sickening, wet crunch, Hercules finally stirred, the pain overriding the shock. Blood streamed from his nose, mouth, ears. His body sagged uselessly.

Barely conscious, eyes full of tears, he finally spoke... blood spurting from his mouth and nose as he mustered the words:

""...p-please... no more... I beg you... j-just end it..." he pleaded desperately. He knew Jayden was deliberately torturing him, and he didn’t know how much more he could take before getting scarred for life.

Jayden paused, his golden eyes burning down into the cowering brute. Then, he released Hercules’s hair, causing him to fall onto his knees, blood dripping from every part of his face, his body twitching uncontrollably. He was already functionally dead.

Jayden’s eyes dimmed slightly, the intense gold receding, but his expression remained cold. He stared down at Hercules as if contemplating the most efficient way to kill him.

Then he spoke, his fist still clenched, blood dripping onto the shattered dirt.

"Remember... I warned you to reconsider this fight."

Then, with a swift, almost graceful motion, he moved his fist toward Hercules’s head. Mid-motion, his knuckleclaws burst out... long, obsidian blades extending outward as they approached his neck.

The blades went through Hercules’s neck and severed his head in one clean motion. It was a swift, smooth, and cinematic execution, like a scene pulled from a dark movie.

Hercules’s head fell with a hollow thud, and his avatar immediately dissipated into light, scattering across the arena before fading completely.

Jayden retracted his claws, the gore instantly dispersing as per the game’s safety settings, and remained standing over the empty space as the computer announced him victorious.

Back in the pavilion, the players were silent. No one spoke for a full five seconds. Not because they didn’t want to. But because they literally couldn’t process what they had just witnessed.

The match they watched wasn’t a fight. It was an extermination... an horror scene that sent deep shivers down their spines. It was just a game, but still, Jayden was terrifying.

-"What the hell was that?!"

-"That wasn’t a duel, guys. That was a public execution."

-"Orion broke Hercules and then...broke him. I’m very sure the big guy would be traumatized after this."

-"Yikes. I never want to queue when Orion is online."

-"He’s a monster... a beautiful, terrifying monster. One I never want to encounter in an arena. Amen."

Even the VIP section, where the two powerful elite players watched, remained frozen.

The girl in silver armor whispered to the man: "...Is he... like this in real life too?"

But the man didn’t answer. He was too stunned to speak.

Meanwhile, Jayden was back in his private lobby, receiving the usual flurry of reward notifications, experience boosts, and loot drops. He put them all aside with a dismissive gesture and let out a long, heavy exhale.

A small frown pulled at his lips. "Tch... I lost control back there," he muttered, running a hand through his hair. "I shouldn’t have taken the fight that far."

He sighed. "I really need to learn how to hold back when fighting humans. If it was a real life duel, I’d have killed him."

Jayden was worried, but he didn’t feel the slightest bit of guilt. Afterall, it was just a dumb game.

He cleared all his notifications and decided he needed a serious cooldown. He planned to log out immediately and maybe go home and soak in a bathtub.

But before he could initiate the log-out sequence, a new notification suddenly flashed in front of him, overriding the logout button.

[Valkyrie has invited you to a private arena]

[Do you accept?]

Jayden stared at the pale blue message for a long moment, the quiet tension in the small room contrasting sharply with the violence of the last few minutes.

He let out a weary sigh. "I accept."

Instantly, the world around him crumbled into fragmented code, and Jayden was transported away from the lobby, toward a challenge that promised to be much different, and perhaps, far more dangerous.