Shocking Pharmacology

The primarch was still young, but physically, he had absolutely nothing to do with a child. Only his mind was still that of one.

The humanoid tank, taller than Qin Xa, rampaged across the Red Sand.

The remaining Servant Knights were fairly clever. Rather than gathering together and fleeing in a panic, they scattered.

But that method of escape was not very effective, because Angron could easily catch up to them. He could even run several times faster than a horse, then casually punch the knight riding it.

Angron would even deliberately block the Servant Knights' path, allowing their warhorses to crash into him before lifting horse and rider together and smashing them brutally into the ground.

The other Gladiators quickly caught up and hacked apart the people Angron had thrown down.

Their weapons were not particularly effective. They first had to strip away the armor, then slash the enhanced bodies beneath it over and over.

Shouts of battle filled the Arena.

Everyone in the Arena stands turned their intangible excitement and admiration into tangible cries. The roaring cheers shook the Arena itself; people standing on the ground could feel the vibrations carried by the sound.

Amid the overwhelming cheers, the battle continued.

"Let me go..."

Qin Xa walked toward a lone Servant Knight and heard the pitiful plea escape from him.

"I'm not a noble. I'm just a slave to those noble children. They thought I was useful, so they let me participate in the Arena..."

"I'm not a Gladiator or a noble. I have no grudge against you..."

Listening to his repeated pleas, Qin Xa stopped and looked down at the Servant Knight, whose horse had vanished somewhere.

"Tell me, how many people have you killed?" Qin Xa asked.

"Not many... just some lowly... some ordinary people," the knight replied, trembling.

"I can tell you are actually proud of being a slave, because you are not one of the so-called slaves from the Arena like us. You share in your masters' glory." Qin Xa slowly approached the knight, his voice suddenly turning icy. "Don't come to Nuceria in your next life. This place is hell."

With that, under the knight's terrified gaze, Qin Xa reached out and lightly touched his forehead.

Frost spread as a psychic blast erupted from Qin Xa's fingertip.

The knight whose forehead had been touched was torn to pieces by the force bursting outward from within his own body.

And just as blood mixed with fragments was about to splatter Qin Xa, an invisible barrier stopped it in midair. When the barrier vanished, the blood fell to the ground and swiftly froze.

"They're all dead!" Kleist ran over and reported to Qin Xa.

Qin Xa swept his gaze across the field. Apart from the Gladiators, not a single Servant Knight with intact limbs remained on the Red Sand. The four Golden Armor Knights from earlier lay there like discarded trash no one cared about.

"You performed very well, Gladiators." Maggot Eye descended from the air, its transmitted voice trembling slightly. The host on the other end was clearly afraid of something. "Very well, but stop while you are ahead. The battle is over."

"Stop while we're ahead?" Qin Xa grabbed Maggot Eye with one hand and pulled it before him. "How are we supposed to stop when everyone's dead?"

"It's not that easy for them all to die." Maggot Eye swayed twice.

Then Qin Xa heard a noise and turned toward it.

The ancient golden armor had been functioning all along; the situation had simply been too chaotic for anyone to notice.

Earlier, when the heads inside the golden armor had been twisted around, all sorts of devices extending from within the armor had immediately pierced their wearers from head to toe like sieves. Dense cables and mechanisms linked their flesh to the armor like human nerves and biological structures, and the physiological functions and neural structures destroyed by their necks being twisted one hundred and eighty degrees were instantly replaced by the armor.

Thus, the wearers had not suffered brain death, but they would never again be able to remove the armor. They had already fused with the ancient armor.

Now, a protrusion on the back of one Golden Armor Knight opened, revealing a vial of medicine. A tentacle extended from within the golden armor, curled around the vial, and inserted it into its wearer's neck, which had been turned one hundred and eighty degrees around.

After a series of rustling, bone-crushing sounds, the Golden Armor Knight—restored to normal only in appearance by the medicine—rose like a zombie. He was not controlling his own body; he controlled the armor's structure through neural signals, and the armor controlled his body in turn.

"I... I..." The Golden Armor Knight seemed dazed. He looked around and saw corpses scattered everywhere.

The Gladiators immediately became wary, thinking he was about to seek revenge.

But then the Golden Armor Knight burst into sobs, amplified many times over by the speakers built into his armor until they were deafening. "I want to go home! I'm not fighting in this damned Arena anymore! I want to go home!"

The other Golden Armor Knights rose one after another as well.

"That works?" Qin Xa had not been able to dismantle and study the armor up close, so he assumed it was the medicine at work.

He truly had not expected these people to possess medicine capable of restoring necks twisted one hundred and eighty degrees.

Nuceria's pharmacology was genuinely astonishing.

And after Qin Xa truly learned what the golden armor was in the future, he would find not only Nuceria's pharmacology astonishing, but every ancient technological legacy related to biology utterly astounding.

"The Arena has its own rules." Maggot Eye floated before the Golden Armor Knights. "Whether you live or die depends on whether the audience is satisfied with the battle performance you provided."

"I'm from the fucking Tark Family! My word is law on Nuceria! You little dwarf hiding behind a steel Drone, call the Security Automata here to protect me and my brothers! You damned pig-dog!" The Golden Armor Knight was on the verge of collapse as he roared.

Maggot Eye gave him an answer that instantly calmed him down.

"The words of the Tark Family are the law of Nuceria."

"But within your family, do your words carry more weight than those of your clan leader uncle?"

At the mention of the word uncle, all the Golden Armor Knights instantly lowered their heads, clearly filled with fear.

"Vote, audience." Maggot Eye flew toward the stands.

The nobles among the audience, as well as those who had purchased premium Arena-viewing tickets, could vote to decide a Gladiator's life or death.

The first people to stand appeared to be the Golden Armor Knights' parents.

The noble couple of the Tarko Family looked proud of their children and had come personally to watch the battle. They had simply not expected matters to develop to this point, and tear tracks marked both their faces.

When it came time to vote, they stood without hesitation, raising the gleaming Knight Silhouette Crest of the Tark Family. At the same time, they raised their other hands with their thumbs pointing upward.

"Damned bastards." Qin Xa cursed, sweeping his gaze over the other Gladiators.

Angron did not understand what was happening.

The Gladiators said nothing and waited quietly. They had clearly grown accustomed to being controlled by others—not only their Destiny, but their victories as well.

"What are they doing?" the primarch asked those around him.

"Voting," Oeno answered. "In the Arena, the ones who truly decide life and death are not us and the weapons in our hands, nor are they our opponents. It is these spectators. If they like you, even if you are chopped into fragments, they can vote to have you undergo massive bodily reconstruction and bring you back to life."

"And we're just going to watch?" Angron's sword-like brows drew together. "This is our victory. How can we let them vote on it?"

Oeno clearly agreed with Angron's question. He also did not believe that a victory belonging to the Gladiators should be decided by the audience.

But initiating a vote was Maggot Eye's right, and voting was the audience's right.

The Gladiators had no choice but to bow their heads beneath another's roof.