The kill

The Doberman user hung lodged in the hole in the wire mesh, his limbs dangling, his head tilted to one side, his mouth still open. The blood on his canine teeth gleamed dark red under the lights. His chest rose and fell faintly. Once, twice, three times.

He was still alive.

A Zoan user's ability to withstand punishment truly far surpassed a human's. A fully charged strike of Colossal Consumption had exploded inside his mouth. Any ordinary ability user would have died long ago, but his body was still trying to heal itself. His ribs were slipping back into place, the bleeding in his internal organs was slowing, and his breathing was returning after having stopped.

He began to move.

His fingers moved first, then his wrists, then his arms. Bracing himself against the hole in the mesh, he pulled his body off the wires and dropped back to the ground. With his knees on the floor and his hands pressed against the iron plates, he slowly stood. His face was covered in blood, scraps of flesh hung from his canine teeth, and his eyes were unfocused, but he had stood up.

The corners of his mouth spread into a muddled smile. He wanted to say, "I'm not dead yet," but the instant he opened his mouth, blood surged from his throat and choked off every word.

Jack watched him.

Then he activated Ghost.

A system notification flashed at the edge of his vision, and the icon in his skill bar lit up. Jack's steps instantly became light. The fine sand beneath his shoes did not scatter under their pressure, and his body glided forward as though carried by the wind.

Movement speed increased by 30%. Ignore unit collision.

The Doberman user's pupils tracked Jack's movement, but his body could not keep up. His nerve signals needed three-tenths of a second to travel from his brain to his muscles, and in those three-tenths of a second, Jack had already moved more than two meters.

Jack appeared in front of the Doberman user.

He opened his right hand and clamped all five fingers onto the Doberman's upper jaw. His fingertips pressed into the junction between the soft tissue and hard palate, his steel-hardened knuckles piercing the mucous membrane and hooking around the edge of the upper jawbone. His left hand rose at the same time, its five fingers clamping onto the lower jaw. His fingertips pierced through from beneath and hooked around the edge of the jawbone.

The Doberman user's eyes finally focused. He stared at Jack's face, less than twenty centimeters from his own. He could see every fine line on Jack's face, every eyelash, every flare of his nostrils as he breathed.

A muffled whimper escaped his throat.

Jack exerted force with both hands at once. Under his steel-hardened grip, the upper and lower jawbones began to deform. Cracks appeared across the bone, widening and spreading outward from the points of pressure. The cracks in the upper jaw extended from the hard palate into the nasal cavity; those in the lower jaw ran from its base to the tooth sockets.

The Doberman user's mouth was forced open as far as it could go. The skin at its corners tore, and blood poured from the wounds. His tongue thrashed inside his mouth, and his canine teeth loosened in their sockets. One had already begun to wobble.

Jack kept applying force. The upper jaw split down the middle, the fracture running through the entire hard palate and dividing it in two. The lower jaw snapped at the joint in its center. Its left and right halves lost their connection, becoming two separate bones in Jack's hands.

The Doberman user's body began to convulse violently. His brain had already lost control of his body, and his spinal cord was sending signals on its own, making his muscles spasm, his limbs flail, and his tail twitch. But none of it could stop Jack's hands from continuing to close inward.

Jack drew a deep breath. The muscles in his arms tightened to their limit beneath his steel-hardened skin, and his veins bulged like twisted earthworms.

Then he tore the Doberman's head apart down the middle.

The Doberman user's body finally stopped convulsing. His limbs jerked upward one last time, his fingers spreading, his claws grasping once at empty air before falling back to the ground and going still. His tail drooped from its base and lay across the iron plates like a dead snake.

The stands were silent.

The gamblers' mouths hung open, but not one of them made a sound. Their eyes all held the same thing: fear. Not the fear of a sudden fright, but something deeper, welling up from the depths of instinct. They had seen something that should not exist. A man had torn a Zoan user's head apart with his bare hands. With two hands, as though tearing a sheet of paper.

Some began to vomit. Some slid off their chairs, their legs too weak to hold them up. Some crumpled their betting slips into balls, stuffed them into their mouths, and bit down and chewed, their eyes still fixed on the iron cage.

A system window lit up in the center of Jack's vision.

"Sacrifice complete. Lineage factor extracted: Zoan-type Dog-Dog Fruit, Doberman form."

"Heartsteel maximum +10. Current maximum: 50."

"Daily steel-hardening complete. Heartsteel stacks +1. Current stacks: 5/50."

"Random selection in progress..."

Another system panel popped up.

Option one

Category: Talent (rune)

Name: Lethal Tempo

Effect: 1.5 seconds after dealing damage to a champion, gain 40% attack speed and temporarily exceed the attack speed cap. Lasts 6 seconds. Attacking enemy champions refreshes the duration.

-Description: Suitable for basic-attack-reliant ADCs and some melee champions. Maintains high attack-speed damage output in late-game team fights.

---

Option two

Category: Equipment

Name: Zhonya's Hourglass

Effect: Grants ability power, armor, and ability haste. Active: Places the champion in stasis for 2.5 seconds, making them untargetable and unable to act. Cooldown: 30 days.

Description: A lifesaving essential for mages and AP assassins. Used to evade key abilities or buy time while waiting for teammates to provide support.

---

Option three

Category: Equipment

Name: Luden's Tempest

Effect: Grants ability power, mana, and ability haste. Passive: Ability damage builds charges. At maximum charges, the next instance of damage deals 100 + 10% ability power as bonus magic damage to the target and nearby enemies, consuming all charges.

Description: A classic burst item for mages, suited to champions with fast wave clear and frequent ability use. Its splash effect delivers considerable AOE damage in team fights.

---

None of these seem all that good. After some thought, Jack chose Zhonya's Hourglass anyway. Ability power was of little use; what he really wanted was its lifesaving ability.

Jack released his grip. The Doberman's head slipped from his hands, its two halves landing on the ground with dull thuds. Four bloody holes in his right arm were still oozing, and his left hand was coated in blood and brain tissue, with a small fragment of shattered skull still hanging from his fingertips. He wiped his hands on his trouser legs, rubbing off most of the sticky mess, but the blood had already seeped into the fabric's fibers. It would not wash out.

He turned and looked toward the private box on the second floor.

Bege sat on the sofa with his legs crossed, still holding his wineglass. His expression had not changed, and a smile still lingered at the corners of his mouth, but it was different now. It was not mockery, not contempt, not the composure of someone looking down from above. It was scrutiny, appraisal, the look of someone rapidly calculating value.

Jack spoke.

"I'm taking him."

Just a few words. His voice was not loud, but everyone in the arena heard him.

Bege set his wineglass on the table and tapped its rim twice with a finger. Then he stood and began to clap.

Clap, clap, clap.

The applause echoed through the silent fighting arena, each clap as distinct as a strike against the eardrum. His tempo was neither fast nor slow, his claps neither loud nor soft, as though he were attending a concert and offering precisely the right acknowledgment at the end of a movement.

The guards beside him joined in. The Arena Master froze for a second, then began clapping as well, but his applause was haphazard. The rhythm was wrong, and so was the force. A smile hung on his face, but it was stiff, the corners of his mouth trembling and the muscles around his eyes twitching.

Bege finished clapping and looked down at the Arena Master.

The Arena Master raised his head, the smile still on his face. His eyes asked a question: Did I do the right thing?

Bege bent down and leaned close to the Arena Master's ear. His lips moved, his voice so quiet that even the guards beside him could not hear. He spoke a single sentence, very short, no more than a few words.

The Arena Master's face went from white to gray.

His lips began to tremble. It was not nerves, not fear, but something deeper, a chill seeping out from his bones. He looked into Bege's eyes. There was no anger in them, no reproach, not even any emotion. But when those eyes looked at him, it was as though they were looking at someone already dead.

Bege straightened, adjusted the cuffs of his suit, and turned toward the stairs. His guards followed, their footsteps fading as they descended.

The Arena Master stood in the private box, his legs weak, holding the railing to keep from collapsing. He looked at Jack inside the iron cage, then at the head on the ground that had been torn in two, then at the Marine deserter huddled in the corner. His mind raced, but it could produce nothing useful.

He knew only one thing.

He was finished.

Jack bent down and picked up one of the Doberman's fallen canine teeth. It was thicker and blunter than the lynx's claw, its root still attached to a small, bloody piece of gum tissue. He closed his hand around it and walked toward the corner of the iron cage.

The Marine deserter cowered against the wire mesh, trembling all over. His eyes darted from the canine tooth in Jack's hand to the bloody holes in Jack's right arm, then to Jack's utterly expressionless face. His lips moved without making a sound, as though he were reciting some scripture.

Jack crouched in front of him.

"What's your name?"

The deserter's Adam's apple bobbed. "C... Colin."

Jack stood and turned toward the cage door. After two steps, he stopped without looking back.

"Colin, follow me."

The guard pulled the cage door open from outside. His hands shook so badly that it took three turns of the key in the lock to open it. Jack ducked out of the cage, blood dripping from his right arm onto the iron floor plates and leaving a broken trail behind him.