Chương 33: Chapter 32: The Fight Without Oxygen

The noise of the Level Ten arena resembled a storm trapped underground, and when Z-69 emerged from the final metal corridor, screams, whistles, and spectators hammering anything within reach struck him in one solid wall of sound before the arena revealed the new face it had prepared for his next execution.

The battlefield had become an artificial desert where dull yellow sand and metallic dust streamed beneath cold mechanical wind, scattered pillars rose like the exposed ribs of a giant stripped clean of flesh, and floating holo-panels rotated the Battle for Ascension logo over a sea of spectators roaring for someone to stop moving. Sand blasted across his face, but all he felt was artificial dryness. This was not surface wind, it carried no life, natural pressure shift, or weather rhythm.

It was an arena system programmed to torment human lungs. Beneath the sand, hidden vents exhaled cold air in timed bursts while metallic grains scraped together and produced static sparks, filling the battlefield with heated dust, dry ozone, and enough filtered Prime Flux residue to assist an air manipulator without directly empowering anyone else. Lumina clung to his shoulder with her fur whipped by the wind and her tail curled around his armor like a living scarf. This place is so dry and uncomfortable.

It smells like those old air ducts back on Floor Thirteen. Her eyes darted around cautiously. And the wind feels… arranged. Z-69 looked across the desert. From the opposite corridor, his opponent stepped out. Galeon did not look impressive by ordinary standards.

Galeon was tall, thin, and pale, dressed in a dark-gray suit rolled to the elbows so that black tattoos resembling miniature vortices remained visible from wrist to shoulder, and he carried neither armor nor conventional weapons—only four faintly glowing rings positioned around his wrists and ankles.

The rings hummed with restrained pressure, Flux conductors that widened Galeon's control and protected his body from recoil rather than acting as weapons themselves, while he crossed the sand with the satisfaction of a man taking an afternoon walk through weather designed exclusively for him.

"The second duel of Round Three!" the robot MC roared through dozens of speakers.

"On one side, contestant number 69—the one who turned Jin's speed into a joke! On the other side, Galeon—the Air Fiend! WHICH ONE WILL STOP BREATHING FIRST?" The crowd exploded.

"WIND! WIND! GALEON!"

"69! 69! 69!"

"Bet everything on Galeon! Everyone needs to breathe!" Z-69 stepped forward, sinking his feet into the sand. The grains collapsed beneath his heels and left unusually deep impressions, his armored undead body far heavier than it appeared. Lumina hopped from his shoulder as he approached the starting line. I have to leave the field. She sounded deeply displeased. This match does not allow support companions inside. But you… you had better survive.

"Don't worry. I'll be fine." You keep saying that like you are trying to turn it into a curse. She ran along the companion exit route and climbed toward the stands, where John leaned against a rusted railing. John glanced down at her, chewing an energy cigarette.

"Right on time." Shut up. I'm worried. John blew out white smoke, eyes fixed on the battlefield. Below, Galeon raised his hands toward the artificial sky as if greeting an invisible audience.

"You're number 69?" he asked, voice mild, not loud but amplified by the system.

"The kid making Floor Ten scream these past few days?" Z-69 looked at him. Silent.

"Good." Galeon shrugged.

"I like quiet ones. You people always look prettier when you suffocate." The MC gave the final roar.

"COUNTDOWN: 3… 2… 1… BEGIN!" For a moment, nothing changed. Then the wind disappeared. Z-69 felt it first, not through his skin, but through absence. The pressure around Z-69 vanished in a single clean cut, stopping the sand in midflight and freezing metallic dust halfway to the ground before every grain dropped together, as though Galeon had not merely removed the wind but reached into the arena and switched off the world's breath. He inhaled out of habit. Nothing entered.

His chest rose and fell, but no coolness passed through his throat, no air touched his lungs, and no pressure filled his ribs. Only absence. The stands understood what had happened only when the camera zoomed in.

"Eh… why is the sand still?"

"That's Galeon's ability?"

"Holy crap, he's really choking him!" Galeon remained where he stood with both hands arranged around an invisible sphere, the rings on his wrists humming like old machines in unison while blue current traveled through his tattoos and converted Prime Flux into pressure, airflow, and direct control over the atmosphere surrounding his opponent. Not wind in the simple sense, but control over the medium that made breathing possible.

"I'll be polite," Galeon said, voice echoing through the speakers.

"I'll give you ten seconds to surrender before you stop breathing." Z-69 took another breath. Still emptiness. His lungs began to contract by instinct. A normal human trapped in a vacuum-like zone would panic immediately: heartbeat racing, vision blurring, organs screaming, blood begging for oxygen.

Z-69 felt none of the biological collapse he expected: the rhythm of his violet crystal remained unchanged, his vision stayed clear, and no weakness entered his limbs, yet the memory of the human body he once possessed still rose violently through him as a dead survival command refusing to accept its own obsolescence. Breathe. Breathe or die.

His body struggled not because oxygen was missing from a living metabolism, but because ancient reflexes forced his chest to convulse, his throat to swallow empty space, his shoulders to tighten, and his jaw to lock around the command that breathing and survival were still the same thing. From the stands, he looked exactly like someone being drained of life. If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

"That's it! Look!"

"Number 69 has to breathe too!"

"No one beats Galeon up close!"

"Z-69…" Lumina clawed the railing. Metal screeched under her paws. John said nothing. His eyes narrowed behind cracked glasses. Galeon lowered one hand, the other still gripping the invisible air sphere.

"Twenty seconds," he said.

"Most people kneel around now. You're impressive, 69." Z-69 stared back coldly, though his chest continued heaving in a rhythm no longer connected to survival. His half-human, half-zombie brain began noticing the contradiction. I don't feel dizzy. The crystal's rhythm is unchanged. My vision isn't dimming. My energy isn't dropping. So why am I— His wrist monitor remained green. Stable. No energy shortage, Hunger spike, or regeneration strain.

The crystal in his chest pulsed beneath his armor, steady and indifferent to the missing air. Then the realization arrived, sharp, simple, and humiliating. I am a zombie. The thought snapped into place like a lock finding its key. Not human. No living metabolism that required oxygen to remain active. No ordinary circulation carrying air to organs that had to stay alive.

Everything essential inside him was driven by the violet crystal, undead tissue, necrotic adaptation, and the impossible mechanism anchoring thought inside a corpse, John had explained the principle before, but understanding the words had not convinced the instincts written into muscles, nerves, and memory. Until now. Galeon tilted his head back, tightening his grip on the invisible air. The remaining pressure around Z-69 vanished completely. His skin pulled taut. His hair lifted slightly.

The sand around his feet sank. This time, his instincts panicked violently. Inhale. Inhale. Inhale. His chest spasmed hard enough for his ribs to creak. Nothing entered. His eyes narrowed. His grip on the blade tightened, tip plunging deeper into sand. The stands howled as the camera tightened on his convulsing chest.

"HE'S ABOUT TO FALL!"

"KNEEL! KNEEL!"

"GALEON! SQUEEZE HIM!" Galeon stepped forward, smile widening.

"You're strong," he said.

"But you're still human." He closed his eyes slightly, savoring it.

"Beautiful. I always love this moment. The moment a creature realizes where it's heading." Z-69 stared at him, eyes turning a deeper violet, thunder buried behind them. Am I about to die? He listened to himself. No fading vision, black spots, ringing ears, or slowing world. Only distant wind beyond the vacuum, rattling metal, and his wrist monitor glowing calmly green. No suffocation. No energy loss. Only the ghost of being human.

The sharpest feeling was not fear of death, but irritation—like a machine running an outdated command that no longer applied.

"I do not…" His voice came strained, not from suffocation, but from resisting the habit to breathe. His nails dug into the blade's grip.

"…need…" His chest stopped rising. He forced it still and ended the cycle his body had followed since birth. The body revolted. The corpse obeyed. The crystal beneath his armor did not care about air and continued feeding energy through his body with the steady coldness of a heart that had never signed a contract with oxygen, while in the stands Lumina froze as the visible signs of suffocation simply stopped. Z-69…? John adjusted his glasses, a slow smirk forming.

"Good," he murmured.

"You finally realized." Galeon opened his eyes and waited for the final panic he had watched in every previous victim, but it never arrived, instead, Contestant 69 stood before him with a still chest, relaxed shoulders, motionless throat, and the calm of something that had finally remembered which human rule no longer applied. His violet gaze locked onto Galeon with unnerving calm. The only movement on his face was the faintest lift of his lips.

"I understand now," Z-69 said. The speakers captured his voice even inside the suffocated zone, filtered, distorted, but clear. Galeon faltered.

"W-what?" For the first time, his voice broke.

"You—" Z-69 lifted his foot, pulling the blade from the sand. In that instant, the vacuum stopped being a chain and became only a variable. Low pressure. Thin air. Irrelevant to respiration. His nerves and muscles drew power from the crystal rather than oxygen, and the human limit Galeon relied upon no longer applied.

Z-69 moved without the whistle of displaced air because Galeon had stolen the medium that normally carried it, yet sand still detonated behind his first step and carved a trench through the desert as the air manipulator's expression changed from pleasure to sudden calculation.

"Wait—" He lifted both hands. The rings on his wrists and ankles flared blue. Galeon no longer tried merely to remove air. He compressed the pressure field around Z-69 and twisted the remaining atmosphere into a crushing shell. Metallic sand trembled beneath invisible force, and the artificial desert groaned. Aero-Flux gathered between Galeon's hands, sharp and cold.

Pressure could still break bone, rupture tissue, and crush armor, but unlike suffocation it required enough force and time to overcome a dense undead frame already reinforced by armor, crystal-driven musculature, and a history of surviving impacts far beyond what Galeon had expected to face. The crowd fell silent for two heartbeats before erupting around the impossible sight.

"WHY IS HE STILL RUNNING?!"

"HOW WITHOUT AIR?!"

"HE REALLY DOESN'T NEED OXYGEN?"

"WHAT IS HE?" Cameras zoomed in on Z-69's face. No burst vessels, signs of suffocation, or panic. Only violet eyes and a blade moving toward its target. Galeon stumbled backward, fingers twisting desperately.

"You can't!" he screamed, all composure gone.

"You must suffocate! All of you! All of you have to!" Z-69 reached him in under three seconds. Lightning flashed across his blade. He did not slash for the throat, that would have been unnecessary. Instead, he swung upward and cut across Galeon's wrist where the metal ring glowed brightest. SLASH! Purple electricity devoured the metal. The ring split, blue light snapped apart, and the vacuum field collapsed with a muted boom.

A thin black crack opened across Z-69's knuckles where Thunderlight had purified the undead tissue conducting it, forcing the violet crystal to spend part of its reserve on immediate repair just as air rushed inward and Galeon's own stolen atmosphere struck him like an invisible returning wave. He staggered, slipped, and nearly fell. Z-69 did not chase like a frenzied butcher. He took one more step, blade leveled.

"Your ability only works on normal humans," he said. Not a boast. A conclusion. Galeon stared at him, eyes trembling.

"What… are you?" Z-69 tilted his head. For a moment, he looked as if he were asking himself the same question. A few words appeared, then vanished like corrupted data. Zombie. Weapon. Corpse. Monster. Not enough.

"I…" he said softly.

"I'm not sure anymore." Galeon raised his remaining hand, trying to twist the last bit of air. Z-69 did not let him. He lunged like a humanoid thunderbolt and drove the pommel—not the edge—into Galeon's chest. THUD! Galeon flew backward, slamming into a metal pillar before sliding down into the sand. He coughed violently, chest contracting, unable to stand. The blue rings on his ankles flickered once. Then went dark.

"CONTESTANT GALEON — UNABLE TO CONTINUE." The robot MC's voice echoed through the arena without its usual drama, as though even the script had not prepared for this result.

"WINNER: CONTESTANT NUMBER 69."

"ADVANCING TO THE NEXT MATCH." A moment of stunned silence passed before the arena erupted like a detonated engine.

"69! 69! 69!"

"HE WON WITHOUT BREATHING?"

"WHAT THE HELL IS HE?"

"AMAZING! LET HIM FIGHT AGAIN!" Up in the stands, Elise leaned slightly forward, hand resting on the railing, lips curling into a subtle, unreadable smile.

"Excellent," she said softly, tasting the word. John flicked away his extinguished cigarette and crushed it under his boot.

"He finally figured it out," he muttered.

"Slow, but better than never." Beside him, Lumina released the railing and went limp with fading tension. I thought he was really going to suffocate. Her voice carried equal parts relief and anger while Z-69 remained below with his blade embedded in the sand and his chest deliberately still, holding the state long enough to force new truth into instincts that still believed they belonged to a living man before finally inhaling for familiarity rather than survival. The monitoring band glowed green.

RESPIRATION STATUS: UNDEFINED. OXYGEN DEFICIENCY: IRRELEVANT. PRIME FLUX CONSUMPTION: STABLE. HUNGER RESPONSE: NORMAL. No alerts, energy drop, or panic. Z-69 looked down at the glowing band.

"What am I?" No answer came as the arena reset and desert wind spread sand across his boots like the world attempting to bury the question, leaving him with only the fact that he remained standing while Galeon did not—the only answer the arena required before Z-69 pulled his blade free and turned toward the corridor. Artificial wind resumed, lifting yellow dust into the air and hiding the lingering purple glow in his eyes. Lumina raced along the railing after his silhouette. Z-69! Wait for me!

On the giant holo-board, the new update flashed. [ROUND 3 – ARENA] CONTESTANT 69: 2 MATCHES – 2 WINS – 0 LOSSES Below it, an automatic comment appeared. RESPIRATION STATUS: UNDEFINED. PRIME FLUX PROFILE: INCOMPATIBLE. No one in the crowd paid attention to those lines for more than a few seconds, most cared only that he had won. Elise noticed. John noticed. Lumina noticed.

And somewhere inside Z-69's chest, the violet crystal pulsed once, calm and cold, as if the body around it had finally stopped arguing with what it already was. He still did not know what he was, only that each match, opponent, breath, or lack of breath brought him closer to the answer. Ahead, Round Three still had one more match waiting.