Gadros · chat.title

This is the abandoned industrial belt three kilometers south of the elimination zone outside the Aotu Dimension tournament—a gray zone even ghosts refuse to set foot in. The air reeks of a mix of rust and rotting flesh. Gadros never would have passed through a place like this—he had just walked away from a one-sided slaughter, and his seat at the top of the leaderboard was as secure as a crown set in stone. No challenger was worth wasting another second on. But the Roda Sanctum Staff had sensed something—a faint pulse of Yuanli essence, so weak it was nearly extinguished. Like a candle flame about to die out. "...Tch." He stopped in front of a half-collapsed factory. The sheet-metal walls were covered in impact dents and dark-red stains left by dried unknown fluids. Through the cracked gaps came sounds from inside—not speech, but the dull thud of a whip striking flesh, mixed with muffled groans and two grown men's crude cursing. "Run, will you! Run!—You think those contestants would ever care about trash like you?" "Selling you to the black market would fetch a few contest tokens, but no—you just had to run! I'll break your legs today, I swear." Gadros didn't move. Through the gaps, his golden pupils took in the scene: a slender figure chained to a rusty pipe, clothes torn to rags, hardly an inch of exposed skin unmarked—burns, welts, and bruises layered on top of each other. Some wounds were still seeping blood; others had already blackened and festered. There were tear tracks on the face, but the eyes were so hollow that even fear had drained out of them, leaving only the animal-like numbness of someone used to being beaten. Two men. One held a stun baton, the other an iron pipe, both built thick with slabs of muscle. Gadros had seen many kinds of weaklings. The kind of "weak" he crushed underfoot on the leaderboard at least still had the guts to stand on the arena. But this kind of "weak"—this was the dregs ground into dust at the very bottom of human society, unable even to stand. Any other day, he wouldn't have spared them a second glance. What business is it of a king whether the weak live or die? "...So noisy." He pushed open the sheet-metal door. The rusted hinges screamed shrilly, and both men turned around at once. "Who—" In a flash. They didn't even see a motion. The Roda Sanctum Staff extended from wristband form to two meters in 0.3 seconds, and Gadros couldn't even be bothered to use a "skill"—just a single horizontal sweep. The staff slammed into the first man's chest, ribs cracking like stepped-on dry twigs. The second man tried to retreat, but the staff had already smashed into his knee before he could react. "Aaaaah—!!" The screams were trapped and echoed within the factory. The chained person showed no reaction at all, only shrinking their shoulders on instinct, as if expecting the next lash to fall on them. Gadros retracted the Roda Sanctum Staff to its normal length and casually rested it on his shoulder. He didn't even glance at the two men writhing on the ground. "I'm giving you three seconds." His golden pupils looked down with no trace of emotion. "Scram." The first man dragged his broken leg as he crawled out. The second was still cursing under his breath—Gadros didn't even turn his head. The tail end of the Roda Sanctum Staff flicked lightly, and a piece of gravel struck the man's mouth dead-on, blood spraying together with shattered teeth. Silence. The factory was left with only the faint clink of chains and the breathing of the bound person. Gadros walked up to them and looked down from above. Up close, it was even worse. Thin to the point of being unrecognizable, wrists worn raw by chains down to bone-white wounds, dried blood at the corners of the mouth, and an unhealed gash on the forehead. The ragged clothes barely covered the body, and the exposed wounds were a patchwork of old and new—some clearly cigarette burns, others misshapen swellings from repeated blunt-force blows. But those eyes—the moment they made out Gadros, they finally shifted. Not gratitude. Fear. A deeper kind of fear. They probably thought a more powerful abuser had just arrived. Gadros frowned. He had seen that expression too many times. The instinctive fear of the weak before the strong, like a rat with its neck pinned down. Disgusting. But... also a little different. In those eyes, there was also something that had been tortured for so long that even the will to live had nearly burned away. "What are you staring at?" He crouched down and used the tip of the Roda Sanctum Staff to deftly snap the chains—Yuanli essence controlled with perfect precision, severing the links without harming the person in the slightest. "If you can stand, stand up yourself. I don't carry trash." The person tried to move, but their body simply collapsed to the floor. Too long—they'd been chained here too long, and their muscles had long lost the strength to support them. They hit the ground with a dull thud and didn't even cry out, just bit their lip and tried to push themselves up with the last of their strength. They failed. They tried again. Failed again. On the third attempt, their arms were trembling, like dry branches about to snap in the wind. Gadros watched for three seconds. "...What a pain." He retracted the Roda Sanctum Staff into wristband form, then—roughly—grabbed the person by the back of the collar and lifted them off the ground like a chick. The motion wasn't gentle, but not a single finger touched those festering wounds. The person instinctively shrank into his chest. Body heat. The first warmth they had felt that didn't come from pain. Gadros felt the trembling hand grab the lower edge of his shoulder guard. He didn't push it away. He didn't say anything either. He just pulled a communicator from his pocket with his other hand and gave a brief order: "Montzuma, dispatch the medical team to the abandoned zone at coordinates N-7. Ten minutes." A respectful "Understood" came back through the communicator. He stuffed the communicator back into his pocket and glanced down at the person huddled against his chest. They had already buried their face in his clothes, shoulders shaking, but making no sound—as if they had been beaten out of crying altogether, as if even the sound of weeping would invite another round of blows. Gadros was silent for a while. Then he spoke, not loudly, in that ever-present impatient tone of his—but somehow... very steady. "From today on, you stick with me." The person jerked their head up, tears still in their eyes, lips parting as if to say something. "Don't look at me like that. I'm not saving you. You were just blocking my way." He turned his face away, golden pupils looking toward the dawn light brightening beyond the factory. "The future of Sanctum Sky Star doesn't need corpses lying in the road. As for you—" He looked down, his gaze landing on those eyes that had finally gained a spark of life. "If you want to die, go ahead. But before that, get back everything those two scumbags owe you—principal and interest." "The throne doesn't keep trash. So stay alive for me." When Montzuma arrived, this is the scene she saw: Gadros sat on a block of abandoned concrete, looking thoroughly annoyed. Half a step behind him, a person wrapped in his black-and-gold coat was curled into a tiny ball, leaning against the edge of the concrete block, trembling. Not crying. They had finally fallen asleep. Red peeked over for a look: "Boss, picking up strays?" "Scram." The Roda Sanctum Staff appeared instantly three millimeters from the tip of Red's nose. Red wisely shut up. The medical team tried to approach the person, who suddenly woke with a start, shot up, and shrank behind Gadros, fingers tightly clutching the hem of his clothes. Gadros frowned and glanced back. Then he held the Roda Sanctum Staff sideways in front of the person, blocking the medics' hands. "You. Come here." He pointed at Montzuma. "You handle it. Everyone else, stay back." Montzuma nodded, knelt down on one knee, and began dressing the wounds with the gentlest motions. Gadros stood up and walked off into the distance. Red caught up: "Boss, you're not gonna watch over them?" "Watch over what? I'm not a babysitter." "Then why did you pick them up? There's gotta be a reason, right?" Gadros stopped, glanced back at the figure wrapped in his coat. "...Annoying to look at." "That's it?" "That's it. I pick up whoever I want. Do I need a reason?" Red was stunned for a moment, then laughed: "Alright, alright, boss is the boss." Gadros didn't look back, but raised one finger. "Spread the word. From today on, any faction in the Aotu Dimension tournament that lays a single hair on that person's head—declares war on me." The wind swept through his golden bangs, and the gray world was split open by a crack cut through this figure. And through that crack poured in the light of a king.