SEASON 2 — EPISODE 15: THE TITAN KING'S ARENA
Cold Open — The Planet That Roars
The gas giant loomed in the viewport like an eye half-open in the dark, its swirling storms blinking with arcs of living lightning. Veins of plasma pulsed through ochre clouds, branching and merging like blood vessels under translucent skin. But the more Xavier stared, the more it became clear—this wasn't just weather.
The lightning followed a rhythm.
Slow. Deliberate.
Almost like… breathing.
Kai hunched over the forward console, his voice barely above the hum of the engines.
"That's not the atmosphere moving," he said. "That's something under it."
A low tremor rolled through the ship, rattling the paneling. It wasn't the violent shudder of turbulence. It was steady, measured—like a colossal heartbeat echoing through the void.
The dropship's scanners pinged with urgent clarity.
ALERT: Six hostile signatures detected on the surface. Distance between each—calculated for a kill zone.
The Tribunal Six were waiting.
Act One — Descent into the Maw
The dropship dove into the storms, swallowed whole by a churning wall of ochre and electric blue. Lightning cracked so close to the hull that the plating sizzled white-hot, streaking molten scars across the armor. Below, whirlwinds the size of continents yawed open, their spiraling maws dragging entire mountain-sized clouds into their cores.
Kai's knuckles whitened on the controls.
"Hold on. This isn't a landing—this is threading a needle in a hurricane."
Xavier braced against the side rails, eyes fixed ahead. Through the chaos, a darker shape emerged—so vast that the mind refused to process it at first.
A ridge of black metal rose through the storms, stretching farther than the horizon would admit. As they descended, the truth hit him like cold steel.
It wasn't a ridge.
It was armor plating.
The Titan King's shell curved away into infinity, every plate the size of a city block. The beast's scale was beyond numbers, its surface marked by centuries of war scars—gouges from weapons long forgotten, molten streaks from battles in atmospheres that no longer existed.
And then it moved.
Four colossal legs, each wider than mountain ranges, shifted their stance. Clouds rolled away from the motion. Two horns, curved like the blades of executioners, tore through the sky with a sound that wasn't thunder—it was the groaning protest of the planet's air itself.
The Titan King turned its head.
Its eyes—if they could be called that—were oceans of molten gold, each the size of a city's harbor. When it exhaled, the storms bent in obedience.
HUD ALERT:
• Hostile Detected: Titan King — Threat Level 50,000
• Hostiles Detected: Tribunal Six — Threat Level 3,500–4,000 each
• Combined Threat: Exceeds survivability index
⸻
The Six stood on the vast plain of its shell, perfectly spaced, weapons drawn. Behind them, the Titan King's gaze locked on Xavier.
Act Two — The First Exchange
They moved first.
The Six charged, their speed so violent it left dents in the Titan King's armor where their boots landed. The Titan King itself lowered one horn and swept it across the plain like a guillotine the size of a city wall.
The air detonated. The impact carved a trench deep enough to swallow skyscrapers. Shockwaves tore under Xavier's feet, sending fissures racing outward. Lightning vortices ripped open on either side of the battlefield, their pull strong enough to drag in chunks of armor plate.
It was war on three fronts.
Dodge the assassins. Evade the Titan King's horns. Stay clear of the lightning maws.
Phantom Step blurred him into afterimages, each movement breaking the Six's aim for a fraction of a second. It wasn't enough. One sniper's plasma bolt grazed his shoulder, vaporizing the air around it. Another's blade hissed past his ribs by millimeters.
Every second burned stamina like paper in a furnace.
Act Three — The Collapse Point
Hours passed like minutes. His muscles screamed. Every breath was molten glass in his lungs. The Titan King's movements never slowed; the Six never faltered. Even the storms seemed to feed on his exhaustion.
By the fourth hour, his body was at the edge. His legs felt like stone. His arms dragged. The edges of his vision were closing in.
And then… the breaking point came.
Not the moment of defeat—
—but the moment the body refuses to break.
His breathing evened. His pulse slowed. His mind cleared. Pain dulled into background noise.
HUD ALERT:
• PERMANENT ATTRIBUTE EVOLUTION
• Endurance +1000% (Permanent)
• Energy Recovery ×3
• Immunity to combat fatigue for 72 continuous hours
⸻
Xavier straightened, rolling his shoulders. His voice cut through the storm.
"Now… we fight on my schedule."
Act Four — Turning the Battlefield
He stopped rushing for the kill. He fought like the storm itself—patient, relentless, unending.
Every step herded the Six closer to the Titan King's danger zones. Every retreat was bait, every feint a lure.
A horn sweep crashed through the field, the shockwave obliterating two of the Six in an instant—armor crumpled, bodies hurled into the abyss beyond the Titan King's shell.
Snipers tried to reposition on higher ground. Xavier vanished into Phantom Step, reappearing just long enough to redirect the Titan King's lightning arcs into their perches. Plasma and bone vanished together in a blinding flash.
By the eighth hour, only three of the Six remained. And now, the Titan King had decided the real prey wasn't the Six at all.
Its gaze locked on Xavier.
Its head lowered.
The air trembled.
Act Five — The Exit Strategy
The dropship screamed in low, mana cannons firing in sustained bursts. Beams hammered the Titan King's face, staggering it just enough to disrupt its charge. Clouds ripped away from its horns in molten ribbons.
Kai's voice cracked through comms.
"You're smiling… that's disturbing."
Xavier vaulted onto the dropship's ramp without a glance back.
"This? This was just the warm-up."
The hatch sealed. The ship climbed, the three surviving members of the Six shrinking into the storm below. They didn't follow. They simply stood, watching, their forms swallowed by lightning.
HUD UPDATE:
• Level Up: 2,525 → 2,530
• New Passive: Iron Will Engine — Movement speed unaffected by low stamina
Ending Cliffhanger
EXT. DEEP SPACE — TRIBUNAL FLAGSHIP
The Tribunal Master sat in shadow. The projection of the Titan King burned in molten gold before him. Then, the image shifted. Another silhouette filled the view—too vast, too alien to comprehend in a single glance.
The Master's voice was a whisper of power.
"Release the World Breaker."
INT. DROPSHIP — DEEP SPACE
Xavier stood at the viewport, his reflection lost against the field of stars.
"Whatever's next…" he said, the ghost of a grin on his lips,
"…it won't be enough."