Apocalypse Baby-Chapter 309: I’ve Been Bored

The teleportation light shimmered, humming with quiet authority before it peeled away in soft tendrils of light.

Alex appeared, his boots hitting stone with a sharp, deliberate thud.

But the instant his soles met the ground, a signal blared in his instincts.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

The air wasn't calm. It didn't welcome him with the usual serene stillness reserved for the VIP Combatant Zone, where fighters gathered between rounds to rest, reflect, and prepare.

Instead, it was choked.

Heavy.

Not with tension, but with cinders and ozone.

The scent struck first. Burnt roots. Cracked stone. The metallic tang of residual mana cooked at high heat. It hit his nose like the remnants of a smothered wildfire.

Alex's eyes sharpened.

His senses extended. frёewebnoѵel.ƈo๓

This wasn't residual magic.

This was aftermath.

He took a slow step forward, scanning the surroundings.

The room once pristine was now in ruin.

Scorched earth stretched across the zone like a blackened battlefield. Cracks webbed across the tiles, some deep enough to reveal the broken infrastructure beneath.

The resting pavilions, once quiet sanctuaries of shade and solitude, were little more than charred husks, their beams collapsed inward and smoldering softly, ashes drifting lazily through the air like snowflakes.

This place was supposed to be a sanctuary.

Neutral ground.

But now, it looked like a wreck.

Alex's lips pulled into a thin line. A sigh escaped before he could stop it—more resigned than surprised.

He'd known it was coming.

It had always been a matter of when, not if, a clash would erupt.

Putting apex-level combatants, many lacking sanity, into the same zone without proper barriers or supervision was a bad idea.

But he hadn't expected it to happen when he wasn't here.

Heck he thought he would have been the one to provoke the moment.

But it turned out to be this was.

Still… now he was here.

And the damage was done.

His gaze moved with calculated precision, and then he saw him.

Through the haze of drifting smoke and curling embers—standing alone in front of the arena's viewing screens like a statue carved in fire—was a figure.

Tall.

Unmoving.

Radiating heat.

The source of this ruin

Malik.

The Flaming demon.

The Anointed Heir of the Demon King's bloodline.

And he wasn't alone.

Not exactly.

His right arm was wrapped in vines.

Or… what remained of his victim.

Vess the Tranagian.

The Tree-Walker.

A demi-sentient being who communed with the spirit of nature itself. A walking bastion of mana, encased in bark, vines, and floral wrath.

Her once-lush green tendrils pulsed weakly—spasming like dying nerves clinging to a nervous system that no longer wanted them. A few glimmered with life, barely holding on. But most had gone gray, brittle, crumbling away with every twitch of his wrist.

They looked more like desperate hands reaching out for salvation—and being denied it.

A soft shimmer of heat bled off Malik's body, distorting the air around him. It wasn't the rage of uncontrolled power—it was a calm, suffocating temperature.

The kind that didn't scream to be noticed… because it didn't need to.

He wasn't injured.

Not bruised.

Not even winded.

If anything he looked warmed up.

This is no doubt, was a one sided decimation.

Alex's eyes dropped briefly to the ground near Malik's boots.

Beneath the faint glow of the viewing screens, hidden in a bed of charred leaves and wilted petals, something glinted.

It was a crystal root.

The core that kept Vess alive, basically her root.

But now it was split down the middle.

And it glowing faintly.

Like the light within was a beat from dying out.

Alex was surprised to see Vess in this state.

He had watched her fight before.

She wasn't just strong—she was elemental. Immovable. Every strike felt like it was drawn from centuries of growth, her aura a cathedral of calm menace.

Her vines didn't attack.

They conquered.

Yet here she was.

Reduced to ash.

Blackened into debris under Malik's boot.

Scattered like kindling after a storm of fire.

Alex's grinned.

He knew the Tranagian hadn't been weak, which only made the result that much more thrilling.

This was the opponents he was going to face to move on to the third and final round of the legacy trial.

He knew Malik hadn't overpowered her with technique, hadn't dodged and parried and countered her roots one by one.

No.

He'd burned her.

All of her.

Mind. Body. Spirit.

Everything Vess had become over her years of cultivation—reduced to twitching, dying vines that now clung to Malik like ghosts denied entry to the afterlife.

And he'd let them cling.

For whatever reason.

But now?

He was done.

Malik exhaled.

And with that breath—just a whisper of air through his nose—the vines turned black.

Then crumbled

Fine ash scattered across the ruined floor like spilled incense powder.

Alex watched in silence.

There was no need to ask what had happened.

He already knew.

Malik hadn't just defeated her.

He obliterated her, over and over again.

Players couldn't die in the combatant zone and they kept being spawned back to life.

What which meant, for the damage to the restoring room to be this severe, was that Malik had been killing her as she respawned.

Alex couldn't imagine how that must have felt.

The frustration.

The helplessness.

The torture must have made the Tranagian crazy.

The fire prince was still standing exactly where the final blow had landed, boots firm in the cratered ground, unmoved by destruction.

Like a lion refusing to leave the carcass of its prey.

Alex stepped forward, the crunch of scorched gravel loud beneath his boots in the eerie silence.

Malik turned slowly.

His chin tilted slightly, and those crimson eyes locked onto Alex's golden ones.

For a long moment, neither spoke.

No flare of aura.

No rise in tone.

Just two predators measuring each other.

Malik's gaze wasn't hostile.

But it wasn't friendly, either.

It was calculating.

Curious.

Then—

A creepy smile spread across Malik's lips.

The kind that didn't reach his eyes.

The kind that came before something burned.

Then he asked, voice low, deep, laced with amusement.

"What took you so long? I've been bored."