[Third Person's POV]

[Location: Central Park, New York]

Dominic looked at the gaping hole in his shoulder, blood streaming out from where the spear tip had been buried only moments before. The crimson trail ran down his arm, soaking into the black fabric, hissing faintly where droplets struck Muramasa's cursed steel. Pain flared hot, sharp, but his lips twisted into that same crooked grin, more feral than wounded.

Artemis's bow lowered slightly, her silver eyes narrowing as she took in the sight. She had fought beside countless warriors, bled with them, watched them fall—but the way Dominic stood there, unbowed despite the gaping wound, was something else. It was not defiance born of stubborn pride—it was willpower weaponised, forged into an aura that wrapped around him like a crown.

The Champion of Ares steadied his breathing, bronze armour still sparking faintly where venom had seeped into the cracks. His crimson eyes flickered to—Zeraphira's, as he was still shaken by her sudden appearance. The memory of her grip on his throat lingered, a phantom ache radiating through divine flesh. For the first time in centuries, he felt something he had buried deep under discipline and oaths—hesitation.

Dominic saw it. His grin sharpened.

"You faltered," Dominic drawled, voice low but slicing through the chaos like a blade. "That's all it takes. One slip. One breath of doubt."

The Champion's jaw clenched. He spun his spear once, divine fire flaring along its shaft as though to burn away the venom still worming through him. His armour groaned, bronze plates knitting, but the corruption lingered like a shadow clinging to light.

While Dominic's Armament Core surged, but this time, instead of covering just his arms and Muramasa, it got extended to the wound. Bleeding stopped in an instant as a black carbon-like sheen crawled over the torn flesh, sealing the wound in a crude, almost brutal fashion. It wasn't healing—it was reinforcement, a binding of will and steel that forced his body to move as if nothing had happened. The air around Dominic thickened, his aura knotting tighter, darker, every heartbeat turning pain into fuel.

Artemis's eyes widened. She could feel it—the shift. Not regeneration, not divine blessing, but sheer refusal. He wasn't mending his body; he was shackling it to his will.

Dominic flexed his fingers once, Muramasa humming like a predator stirred by blood. His crimson gaze locked on the Champion. "Your spear pierced me. Congratulations." His grin widened, sharp and cruel. "Now it's my turn."

The Champion's stance tightened, spear lowered, eyes trained into a trance, looking for the rhythm he had lost. His breathing steadied, shoulders squared, every motion a drill burned into his bones from lifetimes of war. But even as he reset, the venom in his veins gnawed, and the oppressive weight of Dominic's will pressed heavier than any armour.

Dominic shifted forward—not rushing, not lunging, but walking. Each step cracked the earth as if his presence alone refused to allow balance. Muramasa angled low, black arcs crawling up the blade like serpents stretching toward prey. His grin was a line of sharpened madness, yet behind it burned clarity—cold, lethal, unshakable.

"You've fought armies, haven't you?" Dominic's tone was conversational, mocking in its calm. "Legions, hosts, endless tides of men and monsters. But you've never fought someone who isn't playing by the rules."

The Champion's fingers flexed on the spear shaft, divine light flickering at his command. His voice came like a vow carved in stone. "Rules? War has no rules. Only survival."

"Exactly," Dominic purred, before blurring forward.

The clash was thunder. Bronze fire and black venom collided midair, shockwaves splitting soil and hurling debris in wide arcs. The spear struck with perfect form, thrust aimed for Dominic's throat—yet Observation Grid lit pathways in his vision, red lines slicing reality into trajectories. He twisted, Muramasa meeting the strike at the last fraction of a heartbeat, redirecting its death into a spray of sparks.

The Champion spun with godlike fluidity, blade reversing for a downward cleave, but Dominic was already moving inside the arc. His grin flared, Muramasa carving across bronze with a shriek of steel on steel. The cursed blade bit, venom hissing into the seam of armour, Dominic's free hand slipped inside a space and yanked out...a chain.

Not just any chain. It rattled with an echo that didn't belong to this age, its links shimmering with a faint golden glint beneath the darkness, vibrating with a resonance that made the air tighten. Artemis's pupils contracted, her breath catching in her throat the moment her divine senses touched it.

"That chain again…" she whispered, voice thin, eyes wide. "That's—"

The Champion's face drained of composure. His stance faltered, if only for a heartbeat, but in that single heartbeat, Dominic's grin widened into something feral and triumphant.

[Item: Chains of Enkidu]

The links hissed as they coiled around Dominic's arm, almost alive, eager. When he snapped his wrist, they leapt, uncoiling in a whip-crack motion that defied physics. They streaked across the fractured battlefield like serpents of judgment, wrapping around the Champion's spear first—then his wrist, then his torso.

The divine bronze of his armour flared violently, fire surging in resistance. But the moment the chains touched, the divine flames guttered and died like candles drowned in water. The Champion's eyes went wide—his aura collapsed inward, smothered, silenced.

"Y-You… where did you—?!" His voice cracked, the disciplined thunder breaking under strain. He strained, muscles bulging, veins burning red beneath his skin. But every movement only tightened the grip of the chains, every struggle pulling him deeper into its binding law.

Dominic leaned forward, his wounded shoulder still blackened by Armament Core, his crimson eyes blazing. The chains tightened with a sound like the groaning of the earth itself.

"You wanted me to yield," Dominic whispered, voice thick with venom and amusement. "But look at you now. Tell me, Champion—how does it feel? To be dragged down… by the same world that created you?"

The Champion roared, divine fire surging once more—only to be smothered instantly by the Chains of Enkidu. His aura collapsed completely, leaving him trembling, knees buckling as the ground cracked beneath his weight.

Artemis's hand trembled around her bowstring. Of course, she knows, Dominic used this very chain on the Minotaur and killed it with Ares's projection inside it.

Dominic stepped closer, Muramasa dragging against the ground with a low, hungry scrape. His grin widened, predatory and sovereign.

"You called yourself War's hound," he said softly, the chains tightening like a noose. "But tonight… You kneel."

Just then—

Pop!

The curtain surrounding the central park, which was keeping the destruction at bay, snapped inward like a taut string breaking under invisible weight. The Zealots guarding the perimeter cried out, their enchantments sputtering and dissolving in a cascade of sparks and shattered sigils. For a heartbeat, Central Park's devastation was laid bare to the world above.

But just as a curtain was torn from outside, a new one was erected by Artemis. This one was much stronger than the one erected by Zealots.

"Who did that?" Artemis whispered as her trained eyes searched for the source.

A low, guttural laugh cut through the charged air before anyone could answer. The sound wasn't refined, measured, or disciplined—it was raw, untamed, a storm coiled into a throat. From the shadows between the splintered trees, a massive form emerged, striding into the shattered battlefield like a living tidal wave. The ground itself seemed to recoil with every step, small fissures cracking outward from where his boots struck, dust and debris puffing into the fractured air.

Barbaras the Red Claw—towering, crimson-scaled, and bristling with the latent aura of a berserker lord—loomed above the chaos. His eyes, twin coals burning with an obsessive fury, fixed on Dominic like a predator locked onto its chosen prey. The air around him rippled, vibrating with raw, uncontrolled strength that made the remnants of the Zealots' enchantments shiver violently.

"Finally…" his voice rumbled, deep enough to rattle ribs from several meters away, "Oh~ so it's true the pathetic prince lives on."

"YOU. IDIOT. BRUTE. HOW. DARE. YOU!" Zeraphira's voice tore through as she zoomed across the battlefield like a comet—and slammed into Barbaras mid-flight, violet arcs lancing around her like jagged lightning, the sheer force of her collision sending splintered shards of concrete and earth flying in all directions. Yet, even as she struck, the berserker didn't stagger—he only tilted his massive head, crimson eyes flickering as his mocking grin stretched.

"Ah~ Satan of Wrath's daughter, so you were the first to find him. I envy you, really. I thought I was the fast one, but you found him first. But no matter." Barbaras's laugh rolled like thunder across the park, shaking loose shards of debris from nearby trees. His claws dug into the fractured pavement, leaving deep gouges that hissed and steamed where molten energy met concrete. "And it seems that Silver Maid is absent too, such a perfect opportunity~"

His figure blurred as he bypassed Zeraphira's charge, seizing Dominic by his throat and slamming him to the ground with a resounding crash that shook the fractured remnants of Central Park like the strike of a falling mountain. Dust and debris erupted in a thick cloud, obscuring the scene for a heartbeat, while the air trembled under the sheer force of impact. The ground beneath them groaned, fissures racing outward from the epicentre as if the earth itself were trying to flee the onslaught. Dominic's body pressed flat against the pavement, the Chains of Enkidu slipped out of his grip, freeing the Champion of War. His blackened Armament Core resisting the brutal pressure of Barbaras's grip, but even that strength strained under the raw power now pinning him down.

"Oh~ I will ravish you, tear your limb from limb, and watch that wicked little grin of yours shatter beneath my claws," Barbaras growled, his voice a low rumble vibrating through Dominic's bones. Each word was a promise of carnage, a predator savouring the anticipation of the hunt. Crimson scales glinted under the fractured moonlight, every muscle coiled, every tendon a living spring of lethal intent.

"I wonder, what expression your Silver Maid will have when she sees your broken body? Will she cry? Get angry? Leash out? Or she will be broken too from sheer shock? Oh, I cannot wait to see the face of the bitch who dared protect you for over a millennium," Barbaras taunted, each syllable a physical blow against Dominic's mind, intent to crush not just body but spirit.

***

Stone me, I can take it!

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