Stop Playing These Damn Games

"Ugh... cough, cough!"

As the dust slowly settled, Sparta lay half-reclined at the center of the massive crater, supporting himself with his left hand on the ground while his right rested on his knee as he struggled to breathe.

He no longer had his previous handsome appearance. Bruises covered the corners of his mouth, cheeks, and eyelids, and his entire face was badly swollen.

Blood trickled down from his temple, staining half his swollen face crimson.

He felt as though his entire body was about to fall apart. Every movement brought searing pain.

Sparta opened one swollen eye and looked ahead, toward where Rock Giant and Jayce were fighting.

Jayce was caught in Rock Giant's palm, then violently smashed into the ground.

"Boom!!"

Even in his enraged state, Jayce seemed utterly fragile before Rock Giant's absolute strength, completely unable to fight back.

"Arghhh!"

Seeing his superior at a disadvantage, Sparta roared through the pain and forced himself to his feet from the center of the crater.

The instant he stood up, his legs staggered, and he nearly collapsed again.

He clenched his teeth and pressed his right hand to his chest. The pain there was unbearable.

"Sir! I'm coming to help!"

Sparta rejoined the battle.

Jayce spat out a mouthful of bloody foam and stared at the giant before saying without looking back:

"You can still stand? Good... that's what a soldier of Jayce should be."

Rock Giant stopped attacking. Its stone fist remained raised high as it stood motionless, staring at Sparta.

It seemed unable to understand why a creature as small as an ant could stand back up again.

"You want to kill me? You're twenty thousand years too early."

Sparta clenched his fists and assumed a Viltrumite fighting stance.

As though it had sensed the mockery, Rock Giant let out an enraged roar and threw its fist at Sparta, launching the first attack.

Sparta and Jayce moved at the same time, dodging to opposite sides.

When its attack missed, Rock Giant swept out with its other arm, stirring up a violent gale.

The wind howled as Sparta spun through the air to evade it. Enduring the pain wracking his body, he shot straight toward the giant's face.

Jayce appeared behind Rock Giant without anything blocking his path and threw a full-force punch at the back of its neck.

More shattered rocks fell to the ground. The giant staggered forward, and Sparta's attack immediately followed.

His fist cut through the air and slammed into the giant's cheek.

The giant's already unstable body completely lost its balance, toppling sideways with a thunderous crash.

Dust swallowed its enormous body, with some of it scattering over Sparta and Jayce.

The giant tried to rise from the ground, but how could Sparta give it that chance?

He rushed forward and followed up with another punch to its face. A red crystal shattered, and its massive half-raised body collapsed again.

It stretched both arms out and swept them across the ground. Neither of them dared take the blow head-on, and they quickly retreated.

The giant seized the chance to rise from the ground again.

Sparta and Jayce exchanged a look, then charged forward together without a word.

The two Viltrumites slammed into the giant's chest. Cracks spread outward, and a boulder several meters wide fell from its torso.

The giant was knocked backward for hundreds of meters.

The next second, their attacks struck again, and the cracks across its chest spread even further.

Jayce was caught during the recovery from his dodge, and Rock Giant grabbed him in its palm.

He struggled within the dark, cramped hand, but the space inside grew tighter and tighter.

His bones creaked under unbearable pressure. Blood spilled from the corner of Jayce's mouth, and his skin tore from the crushing force.

Sparta rushed to save him, attacking the giant's wrist again and again.

No matter how he struck it, the hand refused to loosen. At last, a pool of blood flowed from Rock Giant's palm.

"Let him go!!"

Sparta roared and drove a heavy punch into the giant's wrist joint.

Cracks spread through Rock Giant's wrist under Sparta's full-force blow, and its tightly clenched hand finally loosened.

Jayce was covered in blood. His arms hung limply at his sides, multiple bones throughout his body had been broken, and he looked barely alive.

He fell helplessly through the air. Sparta dived forward and caught his limp body in his arms.

Jayce struggled to open his eyes and looked at Sparta's swollen, distorted face.

"Go. You can't beat it alone. Run as far away as you can."

Then he coughed up a huge mouthful of blood mixed with fragments of internal organs, and his gaze gradually lost focus.

Looking at his superior, who had only one breath left, Sparta felt no anger at all.

He was incredibly calm now.

After placing Jayce somewhere relatively safe, Sparta flew back with an expressionless face.

Run? Run my ass!

Today, he was going to tear this Rock Giant apart no matter what.

Sparta hovered in midair, his focused gaze fixed on Rock Giant.

And it was still roaring and taunting him.

Sparta vanished from where he stood. In less than a second, he crossed tens of thousands of meters and appeared before the giant's chest.

His right fist blasted toward the giant's chest at supersonic speed.

The web-like cracks already covering its chest completely shattered at that moment.

Massive chunks of rock fell from its torso. Its chest collapsed into a huge cavity, and nearly half its body was blown apart by that punch.

The giant's roar came to an abrupt stop. It flew through the air in an arc, and before it could land, Sparta was already on it.

He clasped both hands into a hammer and dived from ten thousand meters in the sky, brutally smashing the giant's battered body into the ground.

Sparta swooped down and hovered above the giant's head.

"Dead?"

Seeing that it was not moving, Sparta's taut nerves began to relax. But the next second, the giant suddenly swung out a hand and knocked him to the ground.

The giant slowly stood up. Its three remaining red crystals were still glowing.

"Stop playing these damn games!"

Suddenly, Sparta's furious roar rang out from the dust.

Before the dust could settle, he shot out from within it and punched the giant in the face again and again.

The giant was driven back for a time, unable to retaliate.

"One of us is dying today!"

Sparta suddenly changed his attack. He concentrated all the strength in his body into one point and drove an uppercut into the giant's jaw.

Half of Rock Giant's head vanished from the blow, and its enormous body streaked upward into the sky like a beam of light.

Sparta's arm was undoubtedly broken, held together only by skin, with all five fingers twisted in different directions.

He looked up at the sky, then flew upward as well, continuing the pursuit.

The scene shifted.

Rock Giant's body broke through the clouds, flew into space, and fell onto the natural satellite of the planet below.

Its body was wrapped in flames before it finally crashed onto the satellite's surface like a meteor from beyond the heavens.

Flames soared into the sky, and a mushroom cloud floated overhead. Everything within a hundred kilometers was destroyed.

Sparta descended from the sky and planted one foot on the giant's chest.

Its chest had been pierced through, yet it still showed signs of life.