The sky above the Grand Colosseum shattered as the [Solar Cleansing Lance] erupted from Sol-Invictus’s golden beak.
It wasn’t an ordinary magical projectile or elemental burst. It was a nonstop, roaring column of five-thousand-degree solar star-fire, three meters in width, lancing downward from fifteen hundred feet with the world-ending fury of a falling star. The huge heat pressure created a sonic blast wave that blew the air out of the lower stadium bowl. That forced one hundred and twenty thousand spectators to shield their faces from the blinding, blazing bright glare.
The star-fire beam struck the center of Ring 1 dead-center.
THUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM.
The sound was not an explosion. It was the nonstop, ear-splitting roar of a sky fire consuming reality.
The sand surrounding the impact point didn’t merely scorch—it experienced instant heat liquefaction. Forty meters of coarse arena sand melted into a bubbling, swirling cooking pot of emerald-green boiling glass that hissed and cracked under five thousand degrees of clear heat. Spectators in the front ten rows felt the skin on their faces blister from the radiant heat backwash. It screamed as they scrambled backward up the stone steps.
Through the blinding curtain of white-hot star-fire, Scion Aurelius Valerius laughed with frantic, triumphant madness, pumping his fist into the air. “Yes! Boiled away! The gutter rat is melted into ash!”
