Starting out as a Dragon Slave-Chapter 99: Back Against the Wall

The gong’s deep vibrations still rippled through the heavy air, impregnating every dust particle suspended beneath the harsh torchlight. It was no longer just a sound it was the pulse of a monstrous, relentless heart, resonating down to the marrow of every fighter’s bones.

A deafening beat, immense, that seemed to liquefy the sand underfoot with every reverberation. The crowd, held in a suffocating silence, collectively held its breath a single, voracious entity hungry for horror and blood.

Mordred narrowed his eyes under his blue-plumed helmet, the cold steel pressing against his damp temples. In a fraction of a second, his gaze swept the arena, calculating, assessing. Death had entered the stage.

The Vhulks of R’daz...

They advanced in an unnatural silence. Their translucent bodies shimmered like crystallized smoke under the moonlight, diffracting the light into sickly, shifting prisms. Their floating glide gave the illusion of lazy sluggishness almost hypnotic.

But it was a cruel deception.

With a hiss like air escaping a gaping wound, one of them darted forward. A burst of speed so extreme it warped the air around it, creating visible waves of distortion.

Before the young gladiator in the front line could even raise his shield a desperate gesture doomed to failure a luminescent tentacle brushed against his shoulder.

Just a touch. A mere breath of phosphorescent light.

The young man froze instantly, locked in a grotesque posture, his eyes wide as if trying to flee from their sockets. His mouth opened for a scream that never came.

Then his entire body convulsed in a macabre dance.

A strangled, almost animal rasp escaped his split lips as his flesh visibly necrotized. Black veins, like rotting roots, burst beneath his skin, creating a living network of death. He crumpled like a rag doll, his shoulder and torso dissolving under a rising cloud of acrid, gray smoke.

The stench of burning acid assaulted them harsh, suffocating mingled with a far worse scent, the intimate, terrifying smell of human flesh decomposing in fast forward. Several fighters gagged, bitter bile rising in their throats, paralyzed by horror.

- "FALL BACK!" Kael roared, his voice ripping through the stunned silence that had followed the attack.

Panic overtook the human group like a black tide. Eyes widened, breaths came in frantic gasps, and raw adrenaline wiped away any semblance of discipline.

The line almost broke immediately they staggered, stumbled, collided into one another. Shields clashed with a clatter of metal, desperate curses filled the tainted air of the arena.

Another Vhulk slithered toward them, its tentacles sweeping in deadly arcs like electric whips woven from pure nightmare. Each sweep left a phosphorescent trail in the air, like the path of some malevolent firefly.

Mordred spotted a flash of blue a young gladiator’s plume touched by one of those luminous filaments. A blinding flash of light, a surge of pure energy

And the young man’s head exploded like an overripe fruit, showering his companions in a warm, viscous spray. Fragments of bone and brain matter pattered against the sand with a sickening hiss.

A physical wave of revulsion shook the humans, a visceral tide of pure terror. Grown men, hardened by years of fighting, now whimpered like lost children.

Kael’s granite-hewn voice roared again over the chaos:

- "NO CLOSE COMBAT! DON’T TOUCH THEM!"

He struck a fleeing man’s shoulder with the flat of his sword the crack of bone loud as a brutal reminder. The man staggered but stayed in formation, preferring pain to the terror of isolation.

- "EVASIVE FORMATION! FORM A CIRCLE, STAY MOBILE!" Kael barked, a vein pulsing violently on his sweat-slicked temple. "DODGE STAY ALIVE EACH SECOND COUNTS!"

His voice was that of a man clinging stubbornly to the thinnest shred of hope.

Mordred, meanwhile, had not moved.

Beneath the plumed helm, his face remained a mask of marble, utterly still. Only his eyes betrayed the rapid, cold calculations flowing through his mind. Staying within the group’s cohesion, he subtly drifted to the right, his movements as fluid as water slipping through grasping fingers. His steps, precise and controlled, avoided the sizzling patches of acid eating away at the ground.

His goal was clear: reach the old man.

The "Dancer."

The man who moved through the mortal tentacles with a grace that defied his age, every motion precise, minimalistic almost prophetic. A white-haired figure whose deeply carved wrinkles spoke of countless battles, yet whose body retained a youth forgotten by all but his own muscles.

Meanwhile, the enemy tentacles struck at regular intervals, slashing the air with hissing arcs of death. Each impact sent out electric blue flashes, casting gigantic, twisting shadows across the arena walls. Faces, caught in that brief apocalyptic glow, looked like the faces of the dead already.

Acid hissed as it ate into the sand, releasing clouds of toxic mist that burned eyes and lungs, adding another layer of chaos.

The humans staggered backward, scattering in ragged movements, dancing a precarious line between survival and certain death. Their hoarse breaths filled the air, punctuated by stifled sobs and muttered prayers in long-forgotten tongues.

Human attacks proved useless.

Kael, roaring a war cry that seemed to rise from some ancestral depth, hurled his heavy war axe at a Vhulk. The weapon spun through the air with the deadly precision of a veteran’s throw.

It hit the creature’s spongy mass with a sickening squelch

And disappeared, absorbed into the creature’s flesh like a stone vanishing into a bog. No blood. No reaction. Just a cosmic indifference that denied even the dignity of a fight.

- "They... they absorb everything..." whimpered a young fighter, his voice rising into a high, terrified pitch. He stumbled, slipping on the sand dampened by his own urine, his shame drowned in primal terror.

Kael snarled, tendons bulging at his neck:

- "THEN DON’T STRIKE! MOVE, DAMN IT! MOVE LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDS ON IT BECAUSE IT DOES!"

The human circle began to shift, rotating around the Vhulks, trying to build enough centrifugal force to confuse the monsters, to prevent them from singling out prey. It was a desperate choreography, where a single misstep spelled instant death.

Mordred, adjusting his rhythm to the rotation, finally closed in on the old man. The stench of fear animal, desperate contrasted sharply with the serene aura that radiated from the elder.

The old fighter showed no fear. No trembling. No hesitation. He flowed across the sand, light as a leaf, precise as a scalpel in a master surgeon’s hands. His narrowed eyes, sharp as a hawk’s, reduced the world around him to a game of angles and instinct.

Mordred matched his pace without a word, moving into sync, like two dancers who had always known each other’s steps.

Their eyes met briefly a fleeting, electric glance.

The old man didn’t speak.

But in those cold, winter-sky eyes, Mordred read something rare: acknowledgment. A flash of interest, like a predator recognizing another.

Mordred knew: trust wasn’t to be demanded. It had to be earned.

So he did what he did best he mirrored the elder. A silent homage more powerful than words. He adjusted his body to the minimalistic dance, dodging with barely perceptible shifts, wasting no strength, moving just enough that death would pass by with a breath’s width to spare.

A tentacle slammed down a few meters away, throwing up a deadly rain of acidic mist.

Mordred pivoted a simple shift of his hips, a rotation so efficient it looked effortless, avoiding death by mere inches.

The old man smiled a grim, fleeting smile carved from stone.

Acknowledgment.

"You are not like the others."

In the arena, the initial panic was slowly retreating, replaced by a macabre dance a grim waltz of survival where every step could mean death. The stands, once roaring with noise, had gradually fallen into that thick, sticky silence that comes with absolute attention. Even the dragon nobles, usually detached and aloof, leaned forward, their scaly heads lowered, their vertical pupils dilated with interest.

The sand beneath the fighters’ feet was now stained with steaming pools of acid, drawing a deadly map that had to be deciphered with every cautious step. The air was saturated with a bluish mist, making each breath a painful ordeal, as if thousands of tiny needles were piercing their lungs.

The survivors of the blue team numbered fewer than ten.

Kael, still pivoting at the center of the circle, his armor splattered with the blood of fallen comrades, barked out short, ragged orders, his voice hoarse from shouting:

— "No contact! Let them tire themselves out! Save your strength!"

But even he no longer believed his own words.Because the Vhulks showed no signs of fatigue.No hesitation.No weakness.They were relentless death machines, entities whose very nature defied human understanding.

The sand of the arena was slowly soaking in acid, blackening under the attacks of the Vhulks of R’daz like gangrene devouring a condemned limb. The constant hissing sounded like mocking whispers — you’re all going to die here.

The human circle, clumsy and laborious, was still spinning, but their energy was beginning to falter. Their legs were heavy as lead, their burning lungs demanded more air than the foul atmosphere could offer. Steps grew slower, reflexes dulled, breaths turned into ragged gasps — the death rattle before the final fall.

The circle, once wide, had tightened, forced inward by the invisible vice the monsters were weaving around them. A vice that was inexorably closing, inch by inch, second by second.

Because the Vhulks were not mere brutes.They were adapting their tactics with cold, calculating intelligence.

Slowly, methodically, they were reducing the humans’ maneuvering space, pushing the blue team toward one of the arena’s walls. Each assault no longer sought to kill immediately but to restrict escape, to corner them like cattle awaiting slaughter.

The roars of the crowd now distant through the veil of desperate concentration seemed to come from another world, one where life continued, indifferent to their fate.

Kael grunted, dripping sweat beneath his armor, each metal plate becoming a burning prison against his skin. Streams of sweat carved paths through the dust and dried blood on his face, dripping heavily onto the sand, which greedily drank it up.

His eyes, wild with mingled rage and fear, searched desperately for an escape among the pitiless walls closing in. Each heartbeat echoed in his temples like a countdown.

But there were no escapes left.No hope.

— "Form a shield wall!" he bellowed, his tone betraying even his own disbelief. "Shields up! Protect yourselves!"

His order was hollow, and he knew it.A defensive stance when no defense was possible.A simulacrum of strategy in the face of inevitable defeat.

The surviving gladiators, gasping for breath, obeyed with jerky movements, sometimes bumping into each other, inadvertently exposing their flanks. Their trembling muscles barely held their weapons; their fingers, locked in a death grip, turned pale as bone.

Mordred, silent as a blade in the night, remained beside the old man, observing with cold intensity. His face betrayed nothing, but his eyes recorded everything every detail, every movement, every weakness, whether human or monstrous.

Fear had stripped away all dignity from the men around him.

It had reduced some to trembling, urine-soaked wrecks. Others cursed, calling upon gods who had clearly abandoned them. And some simply clutched their weapons to their chests like children holding a toy during a storm.

Physical attacks had proven brutally ineffective.

Swords, axes, spears nothing seemed capable of inflicting even the slightest injury on the Vhulks. Every blow was swallowed by their strange mass, as if their flesh were a living tide, a sentient sludge that absorbed any intrusion without leaving a scar.

Magic? Almost nonexistent among the humans.

Among the slaves, few had ever received magical training. Those who had attempted meager spells early in the fight had paid dearly burned alive by their own backfiring efforts, their flesh igniting from within in shrieking agony.

Magical education was a luxury dragons never afforded their slaves. It would have been like sharpening the executioner’s blade.

And without training, without mastery, every spell was a death sentence an error that several had already paid for with their lives in the opening moments.

A sudden burst of light flared, blinding as a miniature sun.

A tentacle slashed through the air, shrieking like a taut cord snapping, striking a young man’s shield who had bravely attempted to block it.

Fatal mistake.

The impact exploded the metal in a shower of incandescent sparks, illuminating the youth’s face frozen in pure horror. The shield, liquefied instantly, oozed between his fingers like molten lead, devouring his flesh to the bone with a sickening sizzle.

The blast hurled him into a stone wall. The dull thud of his body was followed by the sickening crunch of broken bones. He did not rise. His eyes, still open, stared blankly at the starry sky above.

A primal scream tore itself from the surviving humans the cry of prey sensing the predator’s closing jaws.

Kael felt panic surge again among his men, an acidic tide threatening to sweep away the last tatters of discipline.

— "We... we can’t fall back any farther..." gasped a fighter, eyes bulging with terror, glancing frantically between the monsters and the cold stone wall at their backs.

— "We’re doomed!" whimpered another, tears cutting clear paths through the grime on his face.

Kael clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw trembled. Blood trickled from his bitten lip, but he seemed not to notice.

He looked briefly up at the starlit sky above the Coliseum — an instant of communion with the infinite before extinction.The stars gleamed, indifferent and cold, like the eyes of gods who had long abandoned this cruel world.

No rescue.No escape.

Only the packed stands and the dragon nobles, laughing at their slow agony, their scales gleaming like malevolent jewels under the torchlight. Their forked tongues tasted the air, savoring the aroma of human fear rising from the arena like a precious incense.

The Vhulks advanced methodically, encircling the humans pressed against the wall, hunters playing with prey before the kill. Their patience was obscene, deliberate — a cruelty beyond mere instinct.

Mordred did not sweat.There was no fear in his veins — only absolute concentration.

He watched.Every movement of the monsters.Every breath of the survivors.Every flaw in the deadly rhythm.

And most importantly, every move of the old man at his side — that dancer who seemed to read the secret language of the fight, anticipating what others could only suffer.

Even cornered, the old warrior remained as calm as a frozen lake. His squinted eyes never left the enemy, decoding every twitch, every hesitation.

Suddenly, a Vhulk lunged from the left flank. Fast. Precise. Deadly.

A gladiator barely more than a boy, the last traces of childhood still clinging to his features — made a desperate move: he threw a dagger in a perfect arc, driven by terror.

Useless.

The dagger vanished into the Vhulk’s mass as if into a black hole. No sound, no resistance just the utter denial of hope.

The tentacle struck a gentle brush, almost an intimate caress.A grotesque crack the sound of a life extinguished in an instant.

The boy collapsed, his flesh sloughing off his bones like rotten fruit falling from its pit. His frozen rictus of agony was the last trace of humanity in a rapidly decomposing corpse.

The human circle shrank tighter, survivors pressing into each other as if physical closeness could ward off the inevitable.

Kael roared, raising his battered sword high, a pitiful symbol of doomed resistance:

— "DON’T GIVE IN! HOLD THEIR LINE! SHIFT AWAY IF THEY APPROACH, KEEP TURNING!"

His voice still carried the authority of a leader, but his eyes betrayed the truth.

Because he knew.They all knew.

The wall at their backs sealed their fate as surely as a death sentence.The cold, indifferent stone would be the last thing many would feel before the acid tentacles claimed them.

There would be no more evasion.The next charge would be fatal.

Mordred, staring at the writhing mass of the Vhulks, felt his heartbeat slow — not from fear, but from total focus.

The world around him blurred, the noises muffled to a distant hum.Only the monsters remained — their movement, their rhythm — and an anomaly he had just detected.

He tilted his head slightly toward the old man, speaking low enough that only he could hear in the chaos of desperation:

— "You saw it too, didn’t you?" he murmured, lips barely parting.

The old man turned slightly, his profile sharp against the flickering torchlight. Their gazes locked — the silent recognition of two predators spotting the same opening.

A brief, almost imperceptible nod.

— "They strike..." the old warrior rasped, his voice rough as the shifting sand beneath their feet, "...but they leave a gap after every blow. A moment... when their defense falls."

Mordred gave a slight, grim smile a curve of the lips that never touched his eyes, cold, calculating, lethal.

In that smile lay a promise:The roles of predator and prey might yet be reversed tonight.