I Died 2,000 Years Ago: The Underworld Fears Me-Chapter 86 - 83 — The Arena Learned to Fear Iron

The heavy iron bell bolted to the arena wall rang once.

The deep, low frequency vibrated through the reinforced glass of the Skybox, rattling the half-empty champagne flutes left on the polished mahogany tables.

Down in the pit, the slaughter initiated.

The three elite gladiators did not hesitate. They were professionals, heavily sponsored by the Zhang syndicate, bred to execute quickly and efficiently to keep the betting turnover high. They saw a slow, rusted metal golem standing completely still in the center of the blood-soaked sand. They saw easy money.

The four-armed mutant moved first.

It launched itself off the iron grates lining the perimeter, closing the distance in three massive bounds. The heavy musculature of its legs kicked up sprays of wet sand. As it hit the apex of its final jump, the mutant unhinged its jaw.

A thick, pressurized stream of bright yellow acid arched through the sweltering air of the coliseum.

The general admission bleachers roared. The ghosts loved the acid. It usually melted the flesh off opposing gladiators before they even hit the ground, leaving a clean, glowing skeleton for the cleanup crew.

The acid struck Red Dog directly in the center of his broad chest.

Hiss.

A massive cloud of toxic, foul-smelling steam erupted upward, completely obscuring the seven-foot Myrmidon.

Up in the VIP suite, the man in the emerald suit slammed his hand onto his leather booth. "That’s it! Core breach! Mark the time of death! Liquidate the shorts and pay me my margins!"

He reached for his holographic terminal to collect his winnings.

Down in the pit, the toxic steam began to clear.

Red Dog had not moved. He hadn’t raised his arms to block. He hadn’t taken a step back.

The corrosive yellow acid dripped off his chest plate, sizzling against the glass-fused sand at his feet. It had eaten through the centuries of accumulated grime, dirt, and orange rust.

It had not scratched the armor beneath.

The acid had simply cleaned him. Where the rust peeled away, the true First Era metal was exposed—a flawless, matte-black iron that drank the harsh neon light of the coliseum and reflected absolutely nothing back.

The four-armed mutant landed a few feet away, its wet, grey skin twitching in confusion. It had never seen a material survive a direct hit from its stomach lining.

Red Dog’s optical sensors flared a dull, violent crimson.

Heavy, ancient gears shifted inside his chassis. The sound was like a bank vault locking shut.

Red Dog stepped forward.

The sheer localized density of his foot striking the ground sent a visible tremor through the packed sand. He reached out with his right claw. He didn’t use a martial arts technique. He didn’t channel Qi into his fingertips. He just grabbed the mutant by its upper left arm.

The mutant snarled, raising its other three limbs to strike the metal chassis.

Red Dog planted his boots. He pulled.

Snap. Tear.

The sound of wet meat and thick bone separating echoed clearly through the stadium microphones.

Red Dog ripped the mutant’s massive arm completely out of its shoulder socket.

Thick, highly corrosive yellow blood fountained into the air, splashing across Red Dog’s matte-black visor. The acid hissed against his optics, completely ineffective.

The mutant didn’t even have time to scream.

Red Dog swung the severed, two-hundred-pound limb like a baseball bat. He slammed the meaty end directly into the side of the mutant’s skull. The kinetic force was so absolute that the mutant’s neck snapped at a ninety-degree angle. Its skull caved inward with a sickening crunch. The massive body folded, hitting the sand like a dropped sack of wet cement.

Dead in five seconds.

Up in the Skybox, the man in the emerald suit froze. His manicured finger hovered an inch above the COLLECT button on his terminal.

The neon stock ticker built into the glass wall blinked.

RD-DG: +0.05%

"A fluke," the man muttered, a bead of cold sweat breaking out on his moisturized forehead. He looked back down at the pit. "The mutant was careless. The swordsman will cut its joints."

The cybernetic swordsman was already in motion.

He was a Tier-3 cultivator. His organic legs had been amputated and replaced with sleek, hydraulic steel. He moved at blinding speed, leaving a faint blue afterimage of Qi in his wake. He didn’t attack Red Dog from the front. He circled the massive Myrmidon, his boots barely touching the sand.

He drew twin blades. The steel hummed, vibrating at an ultra-high frequency designed to part molecular bonds. The blades glowed with a lethal, bright blue aura.

The swordsman saw Red Dog slowly turning his heavy chassis. The golem was too slow.

The swordsman lunged, aiming a crossed-blade strike directly at the back of Red Dog’s right knee joint. It was a perfect, textbook execution designed to cripple heavy armor.

CLANG.

The impact generated a concussive shockwave that blew the bloody sand away in a ten-foot radius.

The swordsman’s eyes widened in absolute horror.

His high-frequency, Tier-3 Qi-infused blades did not cut the iron. They didn’t even leave a scratch. Instead, the absolute physical density of the First Era metal reflected the kinetic energy directly back into the attacking weapons.

Both of the swordsman’s blades shattered into a hundred jagged pieces of flying shrapnel.

The recoil traveled up the swordsman’s cybernetic arms. The hydraulic pistons in his elbows blew out with a loud pop, spraying black machine oil across the sand.

Red Dog slowly turned his head.

The swordsman scrambled backward, slipping on the glass-fused sand, his ruined arms hanging uselessly at his sides.

Red Dog raised his left foot. He took one step. He closed the gap instantly, defying his massive bulk.

He reached down and wrapped his iron fingers completely around the swordsman’s head.

Red Dog lifted the Tier-3 cultivator three feet off the ground. The swordsman kicked his hydraulic legs frantically, his expensive boots sparking against the iron chest plate.

Red Dog squeezed his hand.

The reinforced cybernetic skull buckled. The metal crumpled inward.

Red Dog dropped the crumpled trash onto the sand.

Dead in twelve seconds.

In the VIP suite, the silence grew heavy. The polite, aristocratic chuckles were completely gone.

The holographic terminals embedded in the dark leather booths began to flash a warning yellow.

RD-DG: +450%

The stock price I had purchased for pennies was violently correcting itself. The algorithmic valuation recognized the slaughter happening in the pit. Red Dog wasn’t just surviving; he was dominating heavily funded assets without spending a single fraction of Qi.

"Close the shorts!" a woman in a diamond choker screamed, her voice cracking in pure panic. "Buy it back! Buy the shares back right now!"

She slammed her hands against her keyboard.

A harsh, buzzing error tone played from her table.

ERROR: NO SHARES AVAILABLE TO PURCHASE. FLOAT IS LOCKED.

The elites looked around wildly. They had shorted the stock. To close their positions, they had to buy shares back from the market. But there were no shares on the market.

I owned the entire float.

I sat back in the dark leather booth, resting my hands on the curved handle of my black umbrella. The holographic interface of my terminal bathed my face in a calm, steady green light.

"You can’t buy what I refuse to sell," I said to the empty air.

Lingshan stood rigid at my shoulder. A small, cold smile touched the corner of her lips as she watched the aristocrats begin to hyperventilate.

Down in the pit, only one opponent remained.

The Beast Tamer and the rabid Manticore.

The Tamer was screaming, whipping the beast’s thick hide, trying to force it to charge. But animals possess an instinct that cultivated humans often bury beneath their own arrogance. They understand predator hierarchy.

The two-ton Manticore dug its heavy, lion-like claws into the sand, refusing to move forward. It stared at the matte-black iron giant standing among the crushed corpses. The beast hissed, the fur along its spine standing straight up.

Red Dog didn’t wait for the charge. He walked toward the beast.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The Manticore panicked. Driven into a corner, survival instinct overrode its fear. It lunged forward, opening a maw filled with razor-sharp teeth. Its heavy scorpion tail whipped over its head, driving a stinger the size of a short sword directly toward Red Dog’s optical visor.

Thick, glowing green venom dripped from the barb.

Red Dog didn’t dodge. He simply raised his right hand and caught the descending stinger mid-strike.

The barb punched against the center of his iron palm. The metal didn’t yield. The stinger bent backward, the sharp tip snapping off completely.

The Manticore shrieked.

Red Dog closed his iron fist tightly around the thick, segmented tail. He planted his boots into the sand. He rotated his heavy torso, using the momentum of the beast’s own lunge against it.

He pulled.

The entire two-ton Manticore was yanked off the ground. It flew through the sweltering air, a massive blur of fur, muscle, and venom.

Red Dog slammed the beast directly into the arena floor.

The impact shook the entire coliseum. The fossilized ivory ribs of the Flesh Exchange groaned under the transferred kinetic force. A crater formed in the packed sand.

The Beast Tamer was thrown from the saddle, tumbling across the ground, his collarbone snapping as he hit the iron grates.

Red Dog stepped forward and placed his heavy iron boot directly onto the center of the Manticore’s ribcage.

He shifted his weight.

CRUNCH.

The beast’s chest cavity collapsed entirely. The screaming stopped.

The Beast Tamer tried to crawl away, dragging his broken shoulder across the sand, weeping in terror.

Red Dog bent down. He picked up one of the jagged, shattered pieces of the cybernetic swordsman’s high-frequency blade from the dirt. He didn’t look at the crawling man. He just flicked his wrist.

The broken steel launched through the air with the speed of a railgun slug. It punched straight through the Beast Tamer’s chest, pinning his body cleanly against the rusted iron wall of the arena.

Three elite assets. Completely liquidated in under sixty seconds.

Zero Qi spent.

The general admission bleachers fell dead quiet. Millions of ghosts stared down into the pit, trying to comprehend the absolute, mechanical violence they had just witnessed.

Up in the VIP Skybox, the silence was shattered by the screaming of the machines.

Every single holographic terminal in the suite turned a violent, flashing crimson. The automated voice of the Zhang Central Bank blared from the hidden speakers.

MARGIN CALL INITIATED. INSUFFICIENT ACCOUNT BALANCE.

COMMENCING FORCED LIQUIDATION.

The short squeeze triggered.

Because Red Dog had decimated the competition, his algorithmic value skyrocketed. The elites who had bet billions of phantom silver against him were now legally required to cover their bets at the new, astronomical price.

But I owned the shares. The System automatically forced their accounts to buy my shares at whatever price the market demanded to balance the ledger.

The man in the emerald suit grabbed his chest. He collapsed onto the crimson silk carpet, gasping for air as his terminal drained his life savings, his real estate, and centuries of his cultivated lifespan in a matter of seconds.

My terminal chimed.

The screen glowed a brilliant, blinding green.

PORTFOLIO VALUE: 2,450,000,000 SILVER.

I had walked into the Skybox with a hundred million. In sixty seconds, I had drained two and a half billion silver directly from the veins of the Board of Directors.

I looked up from the screen.

Across the suite, Baron Zhang was no longer sitting.

The Market Maker stood at the edge of his velvet lounge. The First Era iron plating on his chest heaved. The heavy glass cylinder bolted over his sternum was flashing wildly, the Queen’s soul fragment reacting violently to the sheer karmic shift in the room.

He stared at me. The blood-red color of his eyes darkened with a sudden, dawning realization.

I didn’t smile. I raised my cracked smartphone and tapped the glass.

"Cash out," I said.

[AUTHOR NOTE]

The squeeze is squoze. 📉🔥

You don’t short First Era iron. Half the VIP suite just went bankrupt because they thought Qi was the only thing that mattered in a fight. Red Dog just reminded them that density always wins.

Ren just secured 2.4 Billion Silver. The financial war is won. Now... the hostile takeover of the Warlord begins.

If you loved Red Dog turning elites into paste, smash those Power Stones and Golden Tickets! The Arena is about to break! 🤖💼