Catato Patch 

“What’s going on back there?”

 

‘Why did the harpies yell like that? Did something happen to Numila and the others?’

 

As I was about to say something, Mimiya took to the air and from her vantage point, surveyed our backlines. “The gate closed.”

 

‘The gate closed? Sh*t, those shutters pulled a fast one over us...I knew this place couldn’t be that simple!’

 

Now that the shutters closed up, our surroundings began to change as well. The pitch black darkness started to fade and even though there was still no light source, the walls and ground regained their enamel coloring. It was then that I realized that we were in a huge rounded room. Looking around, I wouldn’t be surprised if this room was able to fit another 30 000 of us.

 

The innermost ring of the room was made of the same bone walls we saw previously. There were, however, three gigantic shutter gates evenly spaced apart…’this architecture style...it feels so familiar, an arena for beasts? Yes, it had to be an arena’

 

Soon after the shutter gate slammed shut behind us, a black whirlpool appeared roughly one hundred meters in front of us. It had an almost translucent quality to it that made it seem like an illusion. However, there was something decidedly real about it. A second after it appeared, a strange object surfaced from within the whirlpool.

 

‘A fist?’

 

It was a fist that could easily contain a child in its palm if it opened up. That black fist had no flesh at all but was instead made entirely out of bone that seemed to have metal infused within it.

 

‘Probably some undead we haven’t seen before.’

 

Because this entire situation seemed too strange, I decided to observe for now. Though the thought of attacking right away had crossed my mind, I restrained myself in the end as I was afraid something else might surface from the whirlpool before we could destroy it.

 

As the metallic bone arm pulled itself out of the whirlpool, its shoulders surfaced into view after which came its giant head. Peering into its eye sockets, I could clearly see the unusually active soul flame within it…

 

‘Damnit, how could there be such a huge undead...it’s a titan, isn’t it?!”

 

Even though only its arms and head had surfaced so far, the oppressive aura it exuded was enough of a warning for me already. ‘We mustn’t let it crawl out! It’s too dangerous!’

 

Nether Fireball!

 

Eyes locked onto that black whirlpool floating in mid air, I promptly channelled my mana and fired off a dark red fireball.

 

Sizzling audibly as it hurtled through the air, the fireball quickly collided into the whirlpool but unfortunately, it caused no visible damage to the whirlpool. In fact, the moment it came into contact with it, the whirlpool seemed to absorb the fireball and grew even bigger. At the same time, the speed at which the skeleton titan crawled out seemed to speed up as well…

 

‘That whirlpool is able to convert the mana it absorbed into energy for itself!’

 

‘This is bad, it was already halfway free and from the looks of things, it had to be at least 10 meters tall…’

 

“My magic seemed to have an opposite effect on the whirlpool instead, do you know what is that creature?” I asked the more experienced Habona.

 

“I’m not sure as well, perhaps granddaddy might know.” Turning to her werewolf bodyguard, she said: “Have the elder come over…”