The three-million-gallon clouded eye of boiling demonic blood fire cascaded from the four-hundred-foot titan’s maw like an upside-down red volcano.
The heat was instant, choking, and biblical in scale. The air above the central combat sand boiled away into a blistering empty pocket, the radiant heat blast wave turning the loose surface gravel into bubbling red-hot melted rock waste. Half a million spectators screamed in terror, shielding their burning eyes behind their stitched silk sleeves as they braced for the certain sound of Frank’s mortal flesh sizzling into greasy vapor.
In the upper bleachers, tributary kings gripped the stone railings, their knuckles white. High-ranking Nascent Soul grandmasters pulled their students behind them, preparing for the blast wave to blow through the arena walls. The Grand Imperial Protector closed his eyes. He whispered an ancient funeral mantra for the brave rustic master.
Down on the combat sand, Frank didn’t dive, roll, or throw up an old family defensive magic charm shield.
He simply took half a step back with his left insulating work boot. He planted his heels at a solid shoulder-width stance. Then he lifted his twenty-four-inch cast-iron pipe wrench with both calloused hands.
He didn’t strike the fire. He didn’t try to chop the flames in half with martial intent. Instead, he angled the hardened carbon-steel jaws at a precise forty-five-degree tilt, treating the falling torrent not as mystical soul-fire. But as an uncontained high-pressure burst from a heavy-duty town water main.
