My SSS-Rank Class Is Blood Monarch!

Arthur rubbed the back of his head, flashing a half-hearted, almost playful grin at the massive, decaying hand looming in front of him. The silence that followed was thick—far heavier than anything that had come before. It wasn’t just quiet. It was a vacuum. The kind of silence that swallows even thought.

He kept the smile, casual and misleading, even as his eyes tracked the black corruption crawling across the hand’s surface. Inch by inch, the rot consumed the divine flesh, searing through it like acid, eating away at the last vestiges of whatever power the being still clung to.

The hand didn’t react immediately. No twitch, no movement. But Arthur could feel the weight of its attention shifting, pressing down with a coldness that threatened to turn marrow to ice. The aura of the sealed God thickened, darkened, seething with unspoken rage.

But Arthur didn’t flinch.

He remained oddly untouched by it, standing calmly while the others behind him struggled to breathe, to move, to stay conscious under the divine pressure. He didn’t know why the aura didn’t affect him like it did the others—and frankly, in that moment, he didn’t care.

“Wait,” he said casually, patting his pants and rummaging through their folds like someone looking for a misplaced coin. “Let me check again. Maybe I dropped it.”

He turned out one pocket after the other, making a show of his ‘search.’ The expression on his face was equal parts confused and amused—too exaggerated to be genuine. The tension in the air sharpened as he continued to dig around, buying time.

The black matter kept advancing up the God’s arm. Whatever hope it had left was bleeding out of its flesh with every second, and Arthur could feel its patience fraying like an old rope pulled too tight.

The hand twitched.

Arthur didn’t stop his charade. “Nope… not here either,” he muttered. “Huh, where could it have gone? Maybe it slipped between the cracks—”

The hand surged forward, stopping just short of him, shaking with fury. Its fingers flexed and curled, claws tensing to crush. The divine aura exploded like a shockwave, hurling some of the weakened prisoners off their feet, scattering them like leaves in a gale.

Even Germa was knocked to the ground, his knuckles digging into the dirt as he held on for dear life.

Arthur raised his eyes to the raging being and grinned.

“You’re angry,” he said, as if stating something hilariously obvious. “Good. That means you just realized it.”

He stepped forward, placing himself directly in the shadow of the monstrous hand. “You really thought I was going to hand it over, didn’t you? That after all this, I’d just give it to you like a good little puppet? You poor, pathetic thing.”

The hand lunged.

It wrapped around Arthur in a heartbeat, lifting him off the ground, squeezing him in its grip. The pressure was immense, bones creaking under the force. Arthur winced—but he didn’t scream.

Instead, he laughed.

“AGH—! Yeah, that’s it. Throw a tantrum. Crush me if it makes you feel better.”

Germa, clinging to a broken column in the background, stared in horror. “No!” he shouted. “Leader!”

But Arthur barely seemed fazed, even as his ribs began to ache and his skin bruised from the force. He locked eyes with the twitching mass of divine muscle.

“Let’s play a game,” he said through clenched teeth. “You kill me… and then what? You go back into that hole, bleeding and broken, with nothing to show for it? You think you’ll survive this little stunt of yours?”

The hand paused.

“Ah,” Arthur breathed. “So that hit a nerve.”

His voice was quieter now, but the words carried, digging deep. “You left that pit, didn’t you? Dragged yourself into the light. You’re dying because of it. That black stuff—it’s not just some seal, is it? It’s your punishment. A rot that only the dark holds at bay. The only reason you’re still alive is that the darkness was stopping the rot from eating you whole.”

The God trembled.

Arthur smiled faintly, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth. “You’re hanging on by a thread, old one. Every second you stay here, the corruption eats away more of you. And now you’re stuck, because I told you the truth. Kill me, and you get nothing. Let me go… and maybe, maybe, you slink back to the hole with your pride in pieces but your life intact and wait for that good ol’ opportunity you might again in the future. Perhaps a fool would think of saving you.”

The monster was completely enraged. It truly felt betrayed. After all, it helped Arthur and yet he didn’t do his side of the deal, breaking its last hope. It wanted to crush him and kill him, turn him to paste. But, it quickly realized that… It’s power was no more. A flicker of hesitation rippled through the hand.

Its grip loosened slightly. Just enough to make Arthur’s chest rise more easily.

He pushed further. “You’re ancient. A relic. Everything you knew, everyone you cared for—they’re gone. Buried. You think this world will welcome you back? You think there’s salvation for you here? Even if you emerge again, nobody will hail you as a God… Instead, you will be seen as a demon.”

The fingers started to tremble, not with rage now, but with something deeper—something closer to despair. It understood what Arthur was saying and it struck it where it truly hurt the most.

Arthur’s tone shifted, softer now. Almost pitying.

“You should’ve stayed in the dark. That was mercy. Out here, you’re just another monster. Alone. Forgotten. And the only thing left for you is death.”

The pressure vanished.

The hand dropped him.

Arthur landed on his feet, knees buckling for a second before he caught himself. He looked up to see the hand spasming, clawing at the ground, shaking violently as the black corruption surged up its wrist, its arm, eating it alive.

And then… it began to retreat.

It scraped the earth as it pulled back toward the dark hole it had emerged from, its movements erratic, panicked, no longer filled with divine purpose. More like a wounded animal crawling back to its den to die.

Arthur followed slowly, approaching the edge of the pit. His expression was unreadable, cold and distant.

He peered down.

But instead of shadow, he saw something else.

An eye.

A massive, blood-red eye stared back at him from the abyss. Not wide and violent—but mournful. A single red tear welled up at its edge and fell into the void.

Arthur didn’t move.

He crouched there, mesmerized, feeling something stir within him. A pulse. A resonance. Familiar… but wrong. Ancient and wounded.

Then the eye vanished, swallowed by the dark.

“Leader!! Are you okay?!” Germa’s voice snapped Arthur from the trance.

He turned his head, seeing the man rushing toward him, his face a mix of awe and terror.

“I’m fine,” Arthur said, his voice flat. “It was never going to hurt me.”

Germa skidded to a stop. “But… I don’t understand. That thing—it killed Nameless. It could’ve crushed you. How did you…?”

Arthur didn’t answer immediately. His eyes lingered on the pit a moment longer, then he turned away, brushing past Germa without so much as a glance.

“Don’t bother trying to understand it,” he said. “It’s beyond you. Just take care of the people. Get them moving. I’ll find a way out of here.”

The coldness in his voice made Germa freeze. He nodded quickly, unsure what else to do.

“Yes, sir!”

But as Arthur walked away, his figure framed by the shifting glow of the ruined castle, Germa felt a strange unease crawl up his spine.

‘Am I imagining things… or does he sound different?’

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