Mayne’s gaze swept over me first, then landed on Ameno Yotsuba.
For a split second her eyes tightened, as if pricked by a needle—the change was so subtle it could have been missed, but I caught it anyway.
Her expression shifted the exact moment she read the string of letters floating above his head.
DEATH LORD.
The name looked blood-soaked, red edging into purple, barging into the already disastrous fight between me and Mayne like someone had slapped a death notice right in the middle of the racetrack.
Does Mayne recognize that ID?
The rest of the arena was filled with confusion and uproar.
The spectator stands had been tossed into a riddle; even Niya-chan was frantically contacting the technical team backstage, her voice carrying more “who the hell let this in here” than excitement.
No one reacted like they had recognized an old acquaintance from that ID.
In other words—the President’s reaction looked more like “she knows” than “everyone knows.”
“DEATH LORD,” Mayne finally spoke. Her voice kept the cool, righteous tone that came with being a knight.
“This is Blue Sea Academy’s BHAO KNOCKOUT arena. Forcibly entering from outside already violates the rules. I can report you to THE EARTH RING and request your account be terminated.”
“Oh?”
Ameno Yotsuba tilted his head slightly, as if double-checking he had heard correctly.
“DEATH LORD has always been a ‘dead account.’ Feel free to try reporting it.”
I nearly choked on his words.
Dead account?
What did that mean—had Ameno Yotsuba completely retired before?
Or had this account been banned and deleted, so it technically shouldn’t even exist anymore?
…Still, what the hell was up with Ameno Yotsuba?
He had barged into Blue Sea Academy’s match without hesitation and was now casually airing what sounded like a shady past.
His attitude practically screamed: This is who I am—come at me if you’ve got the guts.
What was even scarier was that I somehow felt a little refreshed by it.
This was probably the self-respect of the weak: I couldn’t act arrogant myself, so watching someone else do it served as a substitute.
Truly healthy enough to make a person want to cry.
Mayne lifted her chin and declared in a solemn tone, “Do you think you’re here to deliver justice?”
The corners of her mouth curved in an extremely faint arc.
It didn’t look like a smile; it looked more like the back of a blade bending under pressure.
“DEATH LORD! You’re just another person who wants to conquer BHAO—”
“Don’t lump me in with you.”
Ameno Yotsuba cut her off.
His tone was neither hurried nor slow, yet it sliced through her sentence like a precise knife.
“I’m only here because you touched someone who belongs to me.”
My heart slammed against my ribs.
Don’t get the wrong idea—this was definitely not a “romantic flutter.” My first reaction to that line wasn’t moved; it was alarm: Crap, trouble’s here. Because “someone who belongs to me” sounded protective on the surface, but it felt more like staking a claim.
And I really hated it when people made declarations on my behalf.
The irony was that, in this situation, I didn’t even have the breathing room to argue back.
Mayne’s eyes instantly turned icy.
She gripped her lance tighter and glanced sideways at the Death Frost Dragon still clamping down on the weapon.
“Let go,” Mayne ordered the dragon in a low voice, the tone of someone used to commanding subordinates.
“My match with Yoruichi isn’t over yet.”
The dragon, of course, ignored her. It simply let out a deep draconic growl.
Its frost breath sprayed out like white mist, instantly forming new frost patterns on the lance—cold enough to mock her authority.
Ameno Yotsuba raised one hand and gave a light backward flick.
The motion was small, but it released some kind of signal.
The undead legion remained standing at attention. Death Knights did not raise their weapons. Death Mages did not begin chanting.
Yet the air grew heavier precisely because of that. The pressure of “not yet activated” was more suffocating than an actual charge—as if every undead soldier was waiting for their king to speak, like an audience waiting for the opening of a show that was guaranteed to be spectacular.
“I won’t use the undead legion to fight you,” Ameno Yotsuba said, as if he had read Mayne’s thoughts. His voice was light.
“Because that would be unfair.”
Mayne’s pupils contracted slightly.
I suddenly realized: this wasn’t politeness—it was provocation.
The sentence might as well have been written across Mayne’s face: I don’t even need to use my main force to beat you.
The next second Ameno Yotsuba leaped down from the dragon’s back.
The black shadow fell from above, yet the impact was shed naturally before it touched the ground.
His toes brushed the surface and he landed firmly in the center of the racetrack.
Only when he stood straight did the full details of DEATH LORD truly register.
He wore near-pure-black heavy armor so dark it seemed to reject light itself.
The surface wasn’t smooth; it had a bone-like texture, like stone carvings worn uneven by time inside an ancient tomb.
The shoulder guards rose high and sharp, like two black wings spread upward—except they had none of a feather’s lightness, only the weight of iron and death.
The helmet covered his face completely, leaving only a narrow slit for vision.
Inside that slit there were no “eyes,” only a deep red glow, like blood burning in the dark.
In his hand he held a sword.
The blade looked like the night itself had been compressed into metal.
Black mist constantly drifted from the outer edges, like smoke or a breathing curse.
Even stranger was the center of the blade—it seemed filled with a red “blood groove,” the vivid crimson flowing slowly through the black as if it had a pulse of its own.
I swallowed hard.
Damn… that armament looks expensive as hell.
Of course, I wasn’t joking. In BHAO’s armament system, the more exaggerated the visual effect, the higher the price tag—either built with an insane number of points, dropped from a high-risk boss, or… obtained through less-than-normal means.
For DEATH LORD, “flashy” seemed to be the default, as if even his existence came with a built-in brag.
Mayne finally yanked her lance free. The instant the dragon released its claws, she slid back half a step.
Ice shattered with a crisp crack.
Her warhorse was nowhere to be seen, and the lingering afterglow of AVE MARIA still hung in the air like a ghost that refused to leave.
“Are you sure you want to fight me here?”
Mayne narrowed her eyes. Her voice was cold steel. “Do you know what that means?”
“Doesn’t matter what it means.” Ameno Yotsuba raised his sword, tip pointing at the ground. Black mist coiled along the blade.
“I’m only here to get back the dignity she deserves. That’s enough.”
Mayne gave a cold laugh and spun her lance. Runes lit up.
Silver-white light flowed like water along the spiral patterns—that was her Holy Enchantment.
In my head I reflexively added: Holy counters death—it was BHAO’s default attribute rule. In theory, Ameno Yotsuba held no advantage.
…Of course, theory only ever worked for normal people.
“Yoruichi.”
Mayne suddenly spoke.
Her voice was soft, yet it made me even more uncomfortable.
“Are you just going to stand behind him like that?”
I froze.
The words didn’t sound like a question.
They sounded more like displaced anger after losing balance.
She was treating me like a movable chess piece—or she had finally realized the pebble she had kicked away had been picked up by someone else, wiped clean, and slipped into their pocket.
I wanted to snap back “None of your business,” but I couldn’t open my mouth.
Just the two of them standing there was already crushing the air out of my lungs—this fight was no longer on a level I could interfere with.
Ameno Yotsuba didn’t even glance back at me. It seemed all he needed was confirmation that I was indeed standing behind him.
“Let’s begin,” he told Mayne.
Only then did Niya-chan seem to remember how to breathe and resume her job as host.
“Oh my god! The DEATH LORD who suddenly barged into the BHAO KNOCKOUT Reward Match—his tier is… 14! Only one tier below President Mayne, who is a KING!”
“Keep in mind, according to BHAO rules, when a Tier 14 player challenges a Tier 15 KING—if they defeat the KING, they gain the right to become a KING themselves. Of course… that still depends on the system’s judgment. With an illegal entry like this, does it even count?”
Niya-chan grew more excited the more she spoke, her tone clearly saying “I live for this kind of chaos.”
At that moment Kiyama Yune snatched the microphone from her and answered the question herself.
“It doesn’t count. This is still officially the Witch versus the Knight. We have seven minutes left on our intrusion—DEATH LORD, make it quick.”
Hearing Yune’s words, Ameno Yotsuba’s black helmet nodded in her direction, as if accepting a countdown.
Mayne seized the brief opening and moved first.
The instant her lance thrust forward, I couldn’t even follow the motion.
I only saw a silver-white line tear through the air, screaming with spiral airflow.
It wasn’t an ordinary stab—it was a trajectory she wrote with her “lance,” using the wind itself as propulsion.
Clang—!
Ameno Yotsuba raised his sword to block.
The moment black blade met silver lance, sparks exploded—not the warm light of flames, but cold-colored shattered stars.
Black mist and white light tore at each other, like two incompatible laws fighting for the same breath of air.
Mayne’s second strike followed immediately.
The lance tip angled sharply toward Ameno Yotsuba’s side in an extremely tricky arc—a fluid change of move that looked less like a game and more like actual killing technique.
But Ameno Yotsuba simply shifted sideways.
The movement was terrifyingly small, as if he had known exactly where the lance tip would pass.
I suddenly remembered what Ameno Yotsuba had once told me—about how top-tier “king-level” players could defeat opponents without relying on skills, using nothing but the character model itself.
So it hadn’t been an exaggeration.
Looked like I had still underestimated BHAO. Or maybe it wasn’t the game’s fault; maybe it was my own delusion of thinking I was the protagonist.
Mayne swept her lance horizontally, raising a ring of white air waves.
Ameno Yotsuba’s sword pressed down, cutting into the inner side of the lance shaft at extremely close range.
There were no flashy special effects on that strike, yet I saw Mayne’s lance forced off course, its trajectory brutally interrupted.
Clang—
The metallic clash made the entire spectator stands suck in a collective breath.
Ameno Yotsuba had said he used to be a king. That meant he had once reached Tier 15.
He had simply dropped back to Tier 14 for some unknown reason and lost his KING status.
This fight had never been “intruder versus president.”
At its core—it was king versus king.
“You…”
Mayne’s voice finally wavered.
Her THE JUSTICE TRIAL was apparently still on cooldown and couldn’t rewrite the outcome with causality.
She could only rely on pure lance technique to save herself.
So she chose to retreat.
But Ameno Yotsuba gave her no space to retreat.
He took one step forward.
The step itself looked ordinary, without any acceleration skill effects.
Yet his speed exploded within that single motion—like he had compressed all his power into the smallest movement and then released it instantly.
The black sword thrust forward, closing in on Mayne’s lance.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
Three metallic collisions almost merged into one.
Mayne’s lance work was extremely strong—even while retreating, she still managed to block every strike cleanly.
Her silver hair whipped in the wind like a sacred banner.
I watched from the side, sweat unconsciously forming in my palms.
Mayne suddenly flicked her lance upward. The tip pointed skyward as white light gathered.
She looked like she was about to activate a skill—maybe SPIRAL LIGHT PIKE, maybe something else.
But Ameno Yotsuba didn’t give her time to cast.
He raised his hand and swung—a very short slash.
The black sword cut horizontally through the air. Black mist scattered like torn silk.
The blade never touched Mayne, yet it carved a “pressure line” right in front of her.
Mayne’s lance momentum was forced to stop.
She gritted her teeth and forcibly turned the buildup into a spinning defense.
The lance drew a circular arc, forming a white-light shield that barely created distance.
Ameno Yotsuba finally spoke. His voice came from inside the black armor, low and clear.
“Your lance technique is decent.”
Mayne shot back coldly, “I don’t need your evaluation.”
“Unfortunately.” Ameno Yotsuba’s black sword trembled slightly; red blood-light pulsed once in the groove.
“You’ve grown too used to letting skills correct the result.”
Mayne’s movement stuttered.
The stutter was tiny, but for Ameno Yotsuba it was more than enough.
He stepped in. The black sword pressed down in a diagonal cut.
Mayne raised her lance to block, but the weight of that single sword strike was nothing a “human” should have been able to produce.
She was forced into a half-kneel.
The lance shaft vibrated until her palms went numb, and her knee armor scraped against the ground with a harsh screech.
The spectator stands let out a collective gasp.
Niya-chan’s commentary sounded like it had been stuffed in her throat before she finally squeezed out:
“Th-this… is this pure stat suppression? No… it’s not! He hasn’t used a single skill! Th-this is real swordsmanship!”
Hearing that, a very real sense of helplessness washed over me.
So all the “repetitive movements” I practiced so desperately were still just warm-ups in front of a true veteran.
The only reason I had managed to hit Mayne earlier was probably because I had taken her by surprise with an assassination opening.
She had never actually shown me her full strength.
Mayne suddenly retreated, finally creating distance.
Her HP bar began to drop.
Black mist still drifted from the edges of Ameno Yotsuba’s sword, but what was more terrifying was that his own HP bar had barely moved.
It wasn’t that he hadn’t been hit. The damage had simply been erased the instant it landed.
Extremely strong regeneration—like the “continuous rebirth” trait of the undead.
Mayne had clearly noticed too. For the first time, impatience appeared in her eyes.
“What exactly are you?” she asked in a low voice.
“A king.” Ameno Yotsuba’s answer was simple. “Or rather, BHAO’s true king.”
The moment his words fell, the watching undead legion raised their weapons in unison and then slammed the butts of those weapons against the ground with perfect synchronization.
Boom—!
The sound was like a collective strike that made the entire racetrack tremble.
It wasn’t an attack—it was a ritual. As if the undead were planting their king’s war banner.
Mayne raised her lance tip once more. White light gathered.
She gritted her teeth, as if ready to stake everything on one final gamble.
But Ameno Yotsuba simply walked forward.
One step. Two steps.
Like the Grim Reaper approaching the judgment seat.
Mayne finally activated her skill. White light exploded. The lance carried a holy shockwave. Yet Ameno Yotsuba did not dodge.
He walked straight into it.
The black sword pierced the white light, splitting holiness apart.
Black mist churned inside the radiance, and the red blood-light seemed to devour the glow.
Crack—
I heard something shatter.
It wasn’t armor. It wasn’t the weapon. It was “momentum.”
Mayne’s momentum shattered. Her lance force was pushed back into her body. She staggered backward, losing balance.
Ameno Yotsuba’s sword followed upward, slicing open the lance shaft and closing in on her throat.
In that instant Mayne’s eyes widened.
She finally realized that even though they were both KINGS, she and DEATH LORD were not on the same level at all.
“It’s over,” Ameno Yotsuba said.
The black sword flashed.
No extra movements—just a clean sweep of the blade.
AVE MARIA’s duration had long since ended. What remained now was reality—cold, merciless, and non-negotiable.
Mayne’s HP bar plunged like an invisible hand had shoved it into the abyss.
She stumbled backward, using her lance as a crutch to keep from falling.
Her body was trembling.
She gritted her teeth and tried to raise the lance again.
But Ameno Yotsuba was already standing in front of her.
The red light leaking through the visor slit told her: You can keep going, but it will only get uglier.
Mayne finally stopped.
Her lips moved as if she wanted to say something.
And at that exact moment I finally realized the even more terrifying truth: from beginning to end, Ameno Yotsuba had never once used his legion.
Death Knights, death mages, thousands of undead… they had all been nothing but background.
Like an entire kingdom standing behind its monarch, quietly reminding you: Even if you somehow defeat the king, you will never defeat his realm.
I stood there, suddenly finding it a little hard to breathe.
Mayne’s lance tip drooped. Her voice was soft, yet forced out through clenched teeth:
“What exactly… do you want here?”
Ameno Yotsuba slowly lowered his black sword. Black mist still drifted from the blade, and the red blood-light continued to pulse.
He did not answer immediately.
Instead he turned his head slightly and, for the first time, looked at me.
My chest tightened.
Because in a confrontation between KINGS, even a single glance felt like being called out by name.
“What I want is very simple,” he finally said. His voice was eerily calm. “End this farce.”
Then he raised the tip of his sword, as if making a vow to the entire arena.
“All of you remember this—Yae Yoruichi, the Witch. Bully her, and you anger me, DEATH LORD. I will lead my undead legion, trample your territories, stand guard over your corpses, and slaughter every last one of you back down to Tier 0.”