Chương 58: 58：How to Piss Off an Entire Arena

"Alright," Renn nodded. There was no hesitation, no attempt to bargain.

"As long as you can give me the chance to taste the thrill of severing an orc's head again, my life belongs to you, My Lord." Just as the two sealed their verbal pact— CLANG! The outermost door of the iron cell block was violently kicked open. Torches flared to life. Six Black Iron Orc jailers marched in briskly, wielding leather whips barbed with refined steel.

"Get up on your feet! You rotting, fat pigs!" CRACK! A whip struck the iron bars with vicious force, sending a shower of sparks into the air.

"The stands outside are already packed with our betters, and the show is about to start! Drag all the captives from Cell Block C up to the pits!" One orc jailer deftly produced a key and undid the heavy lock. With a flick of his wrist, his long whip coiled around the bone-piercing chains binding Renn, violently yanking them from their shackles. The agonizing pain of pulling at his very bones drew a muffled grunt from the monk, but through sheer willpower, he refused to cry out.

Two other orcs lashed their whips at the remaining, bewildered captives. Soren immediately hunched his shoulders, feigning absolute terror. Blending into the mass of weeping and screaming prisoners, he allowed himself to be herded outward like livestock. The damp, freezing underground corridor began to slope upward.

With every step toward the surface, the cacophony grew louder: the deafening roars of the crowd, the crude, roaring laughter of orcs, the clash of weaponry, and the sickening crunch of ferocious beasts gnawing on bone. At the end of the tunnel, faint sunlight bled through, illuminating an expanse of yellow sand caked in dried, blackened blood. The gaggle of captives was being marched straight into the dead center of the gladiator arena. The moment Soren's foot touched the final stone step— [Ding!] [Random Battlefield Quest Triggered!] [Quest Briefing: Ensure Renn's survival during this bloody gladiatorial bout and successfully lead him to break through the blockade of the Blood Arena.] [Quest Reward: Skill 【Discernment】 will be upgraded.] Harsh sunlight spilled across the blood-soaked sands of the arena. Soren narrowed his eyes against the glare. All around him, thousands of orcs packed into the towering stands erupted into a tsunami of bloodthirsty, deafening roars.

Yet, a faint smile touched Soren's lips. The massive, circular obsidian stands were crammed to the brim with a sea of green skin. The orcs savagely tore into bloody raw meat, hoisted ale kegs stained with slop, and violently beat their fists against the iron guardrails. At the dead center of the sands stood an Orc Centurion. He wore no armor; his bare upper torso looked as though it were carved from jagged granite, the bulging muscles slathered in coarse grey war paint.

As the drillmaster of this arena, he served as its sole judge and jury. Clang! Clang! Clang! With a casual kick, the Centurion sent three broken, heavily chipped longswords tumbling through the air. They stabbed into the sand right in front of the human captives. The deafening roar of the stands gradually died down to an expectant murmur. The Centurion sneered down at the trembling humans.

Speaking in crude, broken Common, he announced the rules for the opening act:"Three human maggots with swords," he growled, pointing a meaty finger at an unarmed Orc Recruit standing by his side.

"If you can stay standing against his fists, or even just scratch his skin... whoever lives gets a scrap of bone with meat on it today." Collective gasps of despair rippled through the captives. But the crushing weight of starvation and impending death finally shattered their remaining sanity. Three emaciated human men locked eyes, the cornered-beast ferocity flashing in their hollow gazes. They broke from the herd, snatched up the broken blades, and unleashed wretched, guttural screams.

They charged the unarmed Orc Recruit in a three-pronged formation. The Orc Recruit parted his lips into a grotesque grin, revealing rows of jagged tusks. He didn't take a single step back. The centermost human swung his blade wildly, burying it into the orc's collarbone. Thud. With a dull, sickening sound, the chipped sword lodged deep into the dense muscle tissue, completely stuck. The man's eyes widened in sheer horror. The Orc Recruit calmly raised his left hand and gripped the cold steel blade.

His thick fingers clamped down tightly. SNAP. The cheap iron shattered to pieces. Without missing a beat, that massive hand shot forward, clamping over the man's entire face like an iron vise. The pinky finger hooked under his jaw; the thumb gouged deep into his eye socket. The orc flexed his thick arm. CRUNCH. Under the terrifying force, the man's head twisted at a horrific, unnatural angle. His cervical vertebrae snapped like dry rot-wood.

Before the corpse even hit the ground, the two flanking prisoners thrust their swords forward. The Orc Recruit simply pivoted, his massive hands darting out to snatch both of their wrists. He wrenched them outward with brutal force. Over the men's agonizing shrieks, the sound of tearing ligaments and popping joints echoed across the sands as both their arms were forcefully dislocated.

Following the momentum, the orc raised a leg as thick as a tree trunk and delivered a devastating sweeping kick, instantly caving in both of their ribcages. Thud! Thud! Thud! Three rapidly cooling corpses hit the bloodstained sand. Their chests were utterly crushed, bloody froth bubbling from their lips. This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. It had only taken seconds. Disarming, snapping a neck, and shattering ribs in a brutal counter-kill.

It was executed with flawless, savage fluidity. The stands instantly erupted into a frenzy of deafening cheers. Exhilarated orcs hurled their gnawed-clean bones down into the arena as a twisted form of applause. The remaining human captives, any lingering spark of resistance snuffed out completely, collapsed to their knees as if their spines had been ripped out. All that remained were the pathetic sounds of their terrified sobbing.

"THESE ARE HUMANS!" The Orc Centurion bellowed, beating his massive chest until the sound echoed across the entire stadium.

"Bones more brittle than dry hay! Lowly garbage that isn't even fit to feed the war-hounds of our Blackstone Tribe!" Before the echoes of his insult could fade. The bald monk, Renn, his body covered in over a hundred terrifying scars, parted the sea of trembling captives and marched out onto the yellow sands. His back remained perfectly straight, his icy glare locked onto the Centurion standing just ten paces away. The Centurion's booming laughter abruptly died in his throat.

He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the dense network of blade scars across Renn's body and the gruesome puncture wounds through his collarbones. He spat in the sand.

"Oh? A monk." The Centurion sneered, looking at Renn as if he were already a corpse.

"Since you're so eager to feed the dire-crocs, fine. Go drag two more maggots out of the pile. I'll personally pick three of my elites to play with you." Renn didn't bother looking back. It was a suicide mission; no one from the frightened herd would dare step up, and he refused to lower himself to beg a bunch of pants-pissing cowards. Crunch. The subtle sound of boots shifting against the sand drifted from Renn's right side. A lone figure strode boldly out from the mass of cowering captives.

Covered head-to-toe in sour-smelling black grime, his clothes little more than shredded rags, Soren stepped up and took his place right beside Renn. From the corner of his eye, Renn glanced at the Lord of Greywater Village. Every instinct in the monk's body told him that this supposed Lord—the same man who confidently proclaimed he would slaughter his way through five hundred orcs—would be torn to absolute ribbons in a purely physical brawl.

"Step back," Renn hissed, keeping his voice so low only the two of them could hear.

"This is a contest of raw, brute strength. You might possess some tactical prowess on a battlefield, but in hand-to-hand combat? You won't survive a single sweeping kick from an orc." Rolling his stiff wrists, Renn added coldly, "Remember the promise you made in the death cell. Survive. Figure out a way to break me out later. Don't throw your life away here." Instead of retreating, Soren stood up straight. A staccato series of cracks echoed from his spine, sounding like popping beans.

Dropping the deliberate slouch he had used to disguise himself, his true height was revealed. A sudden, frigid aura seemed to roll off him, entirely washing away the pathetic image of a mud-caked slave. He completely ignored Renn's warning. Tilting his head up, his face still masked by the grime, the only thing visible were his eyes—a pair of pitch-black, freezing pupils that locked dead-on with the hulking beast of an orc ahead of them. Soren opened his mouth.

When he spoke, it was in flawless, guttural Orcish, his voice carrying far enough to ring out across half the arena.

"This is too boring. Just the two of us will do."

"Today, the two of us... will fight six of you." The Orc Warlords in the front rows, who actually understood the language, froze with their ale kegs halfway to their mouths. The Centurion's face instantly darkened. But before he could even process the audacity of this scrawny human, Soren dropped something far more explosive. Soren spoke at a languid, unhurried pace, yet every single syllable grated aggressively against the orcs' eardrums:"What? Are you afraid?"

"You bunch of green-skinned boars, you haven't even fully grown out your tusks. That physical strength you're all so immensely proud of? To me... it looks about as impressive as a Swamp Goblin in heat." Soren paused, a mocking sneer pulling at his lips.

"It's nothing but weak, flashy flailing. Your punches are barely fit to scratch an itch." Silence. A dead, suffocating silence fell over the arena. A split second later, the stands erupted like a powder keg introduced to an open flame! BOOM! A shockwave of sheer, absolute fury threatened to tear the very clouds from the sky. Thousands of orcs began to smash their fists against the iron railings in a crazed frenzy, their eyes turning bloodshot with uncontrollable rage.

In the strength-worshipping totemic faith of the orcs, claiming their physical might was weaker than a mating goblin was an insult ten million times more vicious than digging up their ancestors' graves.

"Good! Good! VERY GOOD!" The muscles in the Centurion's face spasmed violently, his knuckles popping as he clenched his massive fists.

"Deploy six Veterans!" From the shadows of the tunnels, six towering, iron-clad figures vaulted out onto the bloody sands.

"TEAR HIM APART ALIVE!" the Centurion bellowed, instantly slapping a heavy bounty on Soren's head: "Whoever crushes this arrogant human's skull with their bare hands—I swear it, I will reward you with ten slabs of dire-croc meat and instantly promote you to Shaman Guard!"