Lord of Annihilation

Chapter 27: The Audience

In a certain safe room, filled with many screens, a loud bustle and hurried movement could be seen. People were shuttling back and forth with great urgency.

"Damn it! Another 3 cameras are down.", one man looking into a monitor spoke up.

"Wait no! We just lost the entire east sector. We no longer have visual on targets" another hurriedly spoke up.

On the large monitor that was in front of the room, 1/4th of the screen was blank. A screen saying 'Unresponsive' was seen.

One man was standing on a higher platform. He was quite short and had a round body, clearly overweight. His face was looking pale and his forehead was lined with innumerable sweat drops.

He was holding the metal railings tightly. His grip was so tight that one could see his bluish green nerves popping.

He looked down onto the people who were running around like headless chickens and bellowed,"Does anyone know what's happening?!!"

This man was the Floor Manager for The Pit. It was high position whose duty was to ensure, that each round was interesting and fun to watch. He controlled the flow of events in each round to a certain extent to cater to the audience.

Today was supposed to be another normal day, alas this happened.

A man wearing glasses, standing in the the bottom floor looked up and replied.

"We aren't sure Leader. We think it might be a contestant doing this.", he spoke hesitantly.

"How can a human move that fast?!". the leader asked in rage. This was the most absurd explanation he had heard.

"Another 4 cameras went down." a nervous voice shouted.

Hearing this Leader's face paled even further. "All of you, work faster to know what's happening.", he screamed, his voice was shaking slightly.

He wasn't afraid of the participants inside nor of the losses caused by the destroyed cameras. What scared him was the reaction of the viewers.

'If I handle this poorly, my life is finished.' , he thought to himself.

Running a business like The Pit wasn't an easy task. Without sufficient strength and backing, one wouldn't be able to run such a business in any of the alliance territories, let alone in it's HQ city. After all he was basically having people kill each other.

Thankfully there were many people who had sick tastes and weird fetishes among the influential families. This allowed him to run such a business without any troubles. As long as he kept them satisfied, he could continuously rake money in.

Yet, this delicate balance was smashed apart by an unknown entity. As he was nervously pondering on how to deal with the 'audience'. A nervous looking man neared the leader.

"Le-leader.", he spoke, his voice tinged with fear.

"WHAT?!", the leader bellowed out.

"Th-the guests want you to meet them.", he quickly spoke.

The leader staggered for a second and thought to himself, 'I'm finished'.

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Walking up a staircase the leader, stood in front of a massive double door. Reaching his hand to open it he hesitated and pulled back his hands. This happened for 5 more times before he finally took a deep breath.

Gathering his courage, he pushed open the massive doors and strode inside.

An opulent hall filled with many floating platforms filled his view. A faint fragrance spread through the area. Anyone taking a whiff would feel their body involuntarily relaxing. Bright red carpets made of fur, covered the entire ground.

The hall was shaped like a hemispherical dome and a bright blue skyline decorated the ceiling. If not for the fact that they were led underground, one would think they were still in the surface. The realism-imitator did a fantastic imitation job at perfectly replicating the skyline.

The second the leader stepped into the room, dozens of gazes were focused on him.

Trying not to sound afraid, he asked the 'audience' in a hoarse voice,"May I know, why I was called here?"

One voice chuckled and replied,"Why? I believe looking at the screen could tell you why.", saying so he pointed at the screen that was at the centre of the room. The holographic floating screen showed various participants struggling and fighting for their lives. This would have been fine except, a whole 1/4th of the screen was dark.

"May I know what happened to the participants there?". continued the man.

"Thi-this.." the leader paused and continued," Some contestant is going around and destroying all the cameras. We don't know who or why he is doing this."

Another voice interjected, "Why not just go in there and kill him?"

"I have already sent a armed team to go and investigate the issue. If there is any problem they should resolve it.", the leader calmly replied.

Just as he finished speaking a set of hurried footsteps was heard behind him. Turning back he saw an assistant to his running over to him with a pale face.

Seeing this the leader got a very bad feeling.

"Leader!!, The-the team we sent. A-al-all o-of the-m died!", the assistant gasping for air hurriedly explained.

"WHAT?!" the leader was completely shocked.

"Bu-but I sent 20 people!! All of them were armed with plasma weapons!", he couldn't believe this was happening.

The assistant who had stabilized his breaths to a certain extent explained in a nervous voice," From what we know it's a contestant in the form of a young boy. They made contact with him and tried to eliminate him. Next thing we know all of our men started dying in his hands one by one."

"Wait a young boy, you said!", a voice exclaimed from the audience.

"Yes! Black hair, red eyes. He had a crazed look on his face. This is the image we received.", saying so the assistant projected an image from his watch.

The scene of the young boy slaughtering the armed members was played out. He made simple moves every time and was overwhelmingly fast. So fast that even the people watching him in 2x slowed could not properly see him moving. He only made two attacks each time.

One hand pierced the skull and the other cut the head. He was only using his hands!

One has to remember that the human skull was quite strong by itself, not to mention all these men were wearing protective gear for their heads.

The man who had asked this question immediately stood up. Next to him 3 more people similarly stood up with a shocked expression. "Impossible!" they blurted out together.

Seeing this odd reaction from one of his patrons, the leader asked him, "Do you know who this person is, Sir?"

The man nodded his head and then shook it, not quite sure how to explain, he slowly spoke up, "I was contracted to capture him and put him in The Pit. Although that boy was skilled and killed 2 of my men during capture, he shouldn't be this skilled! Who can go against a group of men armee with plasma rifles and blades and kill all of them without getting a scratch."

The leader was shocked at this response and asked."May I ask Sir, who this boy is?"

The man thought for a second and immediately said, "He's a student from the Academy."

"His name should be....", he thought for a second before blurting it out.

"Lucius!"

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