Reincarnated with a lucky draw system

Chapter 454: APPROACHING END

Down on the battlefield, Aaron had finished resting.

He opened his eyes slowly.

The lazy pretense fell away in an instant, replaced by cold, focused intent.

"Alright. You all. It’s time to call it a day," Aaron informed the encircled participants, voice carrying effortlessly across the isolated spaces.

The participants stared back at him.

No fire remained in their eyes.

No defiance.

Only exhaustion, dread, and the desperate wish to be done with this nightmare.

The tournament had long ceased to matter.

All they wanted now was escape, from him.

None of them could stomach another second of Aaron’s brutal, casual cruelty.

"Worry not," Aaron said, his voice dropping into a low, chilling register that seemed to suck warmth from the air. "I plan to end everything now."

Darkness began to creep from his feet.

It started as thin tendrils, coiling upward like living smoke.

The shadows felt wrong, cold, oily, alive.

They wrapped around his legs, his torso, his arms, moving with deliberate, almost affectionate slowness.

The darkness thickened, hardened, reshaped itself into a perfectly tailored cloak that clung to him like a second skin.

Black fabric shimmered with faint, unnatural sheen, edges fraying into wisps that seemed to reach hungrily toward the light.

"Now, it’s time for you all to call it a day," Aaron said calmly.

He released the space isolation with a casual flick of will.

The invisible barriers shattered silently.

The participants staggered as freedom returned, only to realize it was no freedom at all.

Shadows poured from Aaron in thick, writhing waves.

They moved like living parasites, stretching across the ground with unnatural speed.

Black tendrils slithered over scorched earth, curling around ankles, brushing against legs, climbing higher.

The darkness pulsed faintly, as though breathing.

"What the hell is all this?!" one participant screamed, voice cracking with raw terror.

He stared in horror as the shadow approached him, slow, deliberate, spreading like growing mold across stone.

The tendrils glistened wetly, cold to the touch even from a distance.

Every participant felt it: the instinctive, primal revulsion. Spines crawled. Stomachs twisted.

Hearts hammered against ribs.

The shadows kept coming, relentless and patient, creeping toward them like a tide of midnight ink.

The shadows kept coming, relentless and patient, creeping toward them like a tide of midnight ink that had somehow learned hunger.

A dragon, prideful, scales still steaming from earlier failed breaths, could bear the sight no longer.

He reared back with a guttural roar that shook loose pebbles from nearby rubble.

His jaws parted to their fullest extent, throat glowing like an active forge as he summoned every last reserve of primal fire within his massive frame.

With a bellow that rattled teeth and eardrums alike, he unleashed a dragon’s breath of apocalyptic intensity.

The flames exploded outward in a blinding, white-hot river, core searing enough to melt stone, edges fringed with black corrosive smoke that promised instant incineration.

The torrent roared straight toward the advancing shadows, determined to reduce them to ash and nothingness.

But insanely, impossibly, the attack did nothing.

The dragonfire passed directly through the darkness without resistance, without friction, without even a hiss of steam.

Flames raged onward, gouging deep molten trenches into the earth far beyond, yet the shadows remained pristine, untouched, almost mocking in their stillness.

It felt as though the fire and the darkness existed in entirely separate dimensions, two realities that refused to intersect no matter how violently one tried to force the collision.

"What the hell is going on?" the dragon roared, voice cracking open with the first raw edge of genuine panic.

His golden eyes, usually so imperious, widened, pupils shrinking to slits.

He refused to accept it.

Drawing an even deeper breath that made his ribs creak audibly, he unleashed a second attack, hotter, denser, more desperate.

The air itself ignited around the blast; heat mirages warped the battlefield into a shimmering hellscape.

Embers the size of fists rained down like falling comets.

Still, the shadows glided forward undisturbed, serene, inevitable.

Each failed breath carved deeper grooves of humiliation into his ancient pride.

His wings began to tremble uncontrollably.

His tail lashed in futile arcs, cracking stone.

Panic, real, animal panic, finally bloomed in full behind those once-proud eyes.

The shadows reached every participant’s legs at once.

Cold, slick tendrils wrapped around ankles first, slow enough to let the victim feel every inch of contact.

Then they climbed calves in deliberate spirals, brushing against skin like wet silk that somehow carried the temperature of deep winter graves.

Muscles locked against their will; joints seized.

Screams tore from throats in ragged, overlapping waves as hands clawed desperately at the darkness.

Fingers passed straight through the substance yet still registered pressure, tightening, squeezing, claiming.

The more they thrashed, the tighter the grip became.

The more they begged or cursed or prayed, the more they understood the absolute futility of every motion.

One by one the shadows enveloped them completely.

Thick, suffocating layers coiled upward, over knees, hips, chests, shoulders, mummifying each body in glossy black wrappings that resembled ancient funerary bindings preserved in liquid tar.

Arms pinned helplessly to sides. Mouths sealed shut mid-scream.

Eyes remained wide open behind the translucent shroud, pupils dilated in frozen, animal terror.

Shallow, panicked breaths fogged the inner surface for a few final seconds before even that stopped.

Aaron stood motionless at the center of the carnage, head tilted slightly back, lips parted in quiet rapture.

He inhaled slowly, deeply, drawing their fear into himself like a connoisseur savoring an exquisite vintage.

The terror flooded his senses in waves: sharp metallic tang of adrenaline-soaked sweat, electric jolt of racing hearts stuttering toward failure, sour bite of bladder-release humiliation, the coppery aftertaste of final prayers snuffed out.

Each stolen pulse of dread made his mystic eyes glow a fraction brighter, veins faintly darkening beneath pale skin as ecstasy rippled through him.

After the last tremor of life faded from the mummified forms, he snapped his fingers.

The sound was small.

Casual.

Almost polite.

Every cocooned body jerked once, spine arching in a final, silent convulsion, then went utterly limp.

Life extinguished with the simplicity of a single, bored thought.

Corpses slumped to the scorched ground in eerie unison, still perfectly preserved in their shadow shrouds like grotesque trophies.

"Now. Let’s get the actual party started," Aaron murmured, a slow, satisfied smile curving his lips.

His mystic eyes stared unfocused into empty air, seemingly gazing at nothing in particular.

In truth, they were locked with laser precision on the distant Sovereigns perched in their thrones beyond mortal sight.