Fire could barely avoid the incoming attack, his opponent was charging at him at full speed, thinking he could end the battle as soon as it began. Fire jumped aside, rolled and came back to his feet in one fluent movement. The Shop Guy had to fight against the momentum he and his heavy diamond armor had built up. While the armor protected him it was also a disadvantage for the Shop Guy because its weight made him less maneuverable.
Fire extended his claws all the way out, normally they looked like cat claws coming out of his fingertips but when fully extended they were deadly sabers capable of cutting everything into slices that was unlucky enough to be in their way. Fire's opponent had come to a stop and turned around, still with active kill aura, the air was searing hot from the sword cutting through it in every possible angle.
It was now Fire's turn to attack while the Shop Guy recomposed. He ran towards him, the world around him entered a slow motion state like when he was jumping down the quarry. He pretended to attack him directly but then jumped over him with a gigantic leap. While falling, Fire turned around right after he landed and he covered the back of his opponent's diamond chestplate with a furious rain of strikes from his claws.
The Shop Guy's arms couldn't reach his back so there was a hole in the kill aura, the hacks weren't built for a server that simulates realistic situations. The chestplate flashed purple every time Fire hit it, no damage was going through but its durability was degrading. A second after Fire had landed the Shop Guy noticed what was going on and turned around as fast as his armor let him. It looked very slow to Fire, who had enough time to escape the deadly blade storm of the kill aura. Fire sprinted around his opponent and towards the other side of the arena.
Ambigious' feelings were a mixture of tension, hatred towards the hackers and amazement about Fire avoiding the hits and attacking over and over again.
"If they continue like this, Fire is going to win." he whispered.
freeZe was worried, now more than before, she said: "The hacker is angry but not dumb, he will soon notice that it can't continue like this."
Fire's friend spoke in his soft voice, without a trace of worry: "Fire will probably win, but this is not how, this is just him killing time and thinking of a better strategy."
"True, this chestplate will break eventually, but not any time soon." Unchosen agreed.
As they spoke Fire got into a bad situation, he didn't roll far enough to get out of the hackers range, who noticed this. He made a curve and ran towards Fire, ready to reduce him to a bloody pile of bones, flesh and organs. Fire, was lying on the floor, he couldn't escape. Even though he saw everything in slow motion, this didn't actually increase his speed. The world around Fire kept getting slower and slower in face of the growing danger.
Suddenly the hacker stopped and turned his kill aura off, the world returned to normal speed.
Fire asked: "What now?"
The hacker laughed and whispered: "Do you really think, that I will just give you a swift death?"
Fire was calm on the outside, but in fact he tried to think of a way to avert his fate, he said: "In all honesty, no. I know about your mental state."
Fire's only weapon now was more provocation, that way he could either make the hacker make a mistake or just kill him faster.
The hacker was somewhat perplexed: "What?"
Fire now spoke with a loud voice, so that every single person in the arena could hear him: "Yes, your mental state, you have all kinds of problems up there."
"That's wrong, do not listen to him!" the Shop Guy said in an overly cool tone.
"Oh yes it is true."
Anger was boiling in the hacker's head again, making his vision blurry and his thoughts short, he shouted: "Prove it!"
"As your praised leaders may know, you can in fact look into someone else's mind here, which is why they are here."
The Shop Guy made a confused face, which was almost covered by his visor.
"Oh, they didn't tell you about it? You were here before their takeover and you were afraid of being sent to the quarry like me, so you joined them. On the side, by doing this you also violated the terms you agreed to when you joined, you are lucky that the admins' enforcer hasn't come for you yet."
The people on the ranks began booing out the Shop Guy.
"Before the takeover the admins took a brief look into every new person's mind whenever they joined, this whole server is for an experiment after all. They clearly found out about your mental state and because am a close friend of theirs, I happened to see that information too."
The Shop Guy didn't say anything, he had to think about what he just heard. He let out a scream of insanity, raised his sword above his head and prepared to execute Fire.
The four invisible people on the ranks listened to all that with open mouths.
Unchosen stuttered: "So the hackers are not just here to enjoy the feeling of power? They have a goal."
Fire's friend said: "Yes, they have one and if you knew it, you wouldn't like it."
freeZe asked: "Why didn't he tell us earlier?"
"It is all part of Fire's plan."
"What pl…"
"Shh, look!"
They turned their heads towards the bars again and they didn't like what they saw there: The Shop Guy, with his sword in hand, jumped into the air, turned his sword and let it come down on Fire. But suddenly Fire was not there anymore, he was behind the hacker with the claw on his index finger extended all the way. The sword drilled itself into the sand where Fire used to be a second ago.
"What?" The Shop Guy shouted. "Where did he go?"
That was the last thing he said before he felt a cold stinging pain, right where the gap between helmet and chestplate was.
Fire had slit the Shop Guy's throat with his claw. Fire had won, he retracted his claw. The people on the ranks started cheering for Fire.
The Shop Guy somehow managed to pull his sword out of the ground and slashed out for Fire one final time. The sword cut right through his coat at his left shoulder, it was torn apart in a clean cut, so were his scales and a big portion of the muscles under it. The sword would have cut Fire's arm right off if the Shop Guy hadn't been almost dead when he launched the attack, instead it stopped at Fire's collarbone. The sword slid out of the wound, making it extend over Fire's chest.
In the first moment, Fire didn't feel anything. Then he felt the cold blade and the hot magic burning and tearing apart his flesh, he was knocked off his feet by a pulse of energy coming from of the sword. While falling he opened his mouth and let out a loud scream of pain, his voice had an otherworldly screeching resonance to it, making everybody on the ranks press their hands on their ears, then suddenly, the scream was over, the last thing Fire heard before blacking out was someone calling his name.
"Fire!" His four invisible friends screamed at the same time, the visible one was searching his pockets in haste.
He found what he was looking for and said: "Someone, quick, bring this to him."
He hadn't even finished as he felt the vial with pink liquid being ripped out of his hand.
He heard a female voice saying: "I'll do that."
Despite the desperate situation Ambigious still poked TehLulz invisibly, the expression on his face was easy to guess, but he didn't say anything.
freeZe ran, she looked for a gap in the grid that was big enough for her to fit through. She put her feet through and then the rest of her body, hung herself down from the bars, the vial in one hand. freeZe dropped down, trying not to land in the water. As she landed on the sand, she felt a sting in her feet but ignored it and ran right over to Fire who was lying on the ground next to the body of his dead opponent. She shook Fire's body, crying and calling his name.
Fire was not dead but he was bleeding out, the only thing he felt was the pain, it was a feeling he could hardly describe, it was a sting and pull at the same time. It had been a long time since he had been subjected to this amount of pain and he had no time to prepare himself for it. Under normal circumstances he would have been able to easily resist the pain but due to the malnourishment in the quarry his physical condition wasn't the best. After an unknowable amount of time something appeared at the very edge of his perception, it was not very big but it was something other than pain.
His mind was violently pulled out of its blacked out state, he woke up, the pain was even stronger now and he wished he would black out again. He didn't see what woke him up, he just felt that someone was shaking his body, he also saw a vial with a pink liquid inside it and recognized it as regeneration potion. It seemed so surreal that he thought that it was just a hallucination caused by the pain. Then his sense of hearing kicked in, he heard the people on the ranks yelling and crying, there was also someone crying right next to him, Fire didn't know who it was, then he looked at the vial again, he knew only one person using these kinds of vials… And he only knew one person who would cry like this if he would have died, well two, but only one of them could be here.
"freeZe?" He said with a very quiet voice, shaken by pain.
"Yes?" Her voice was full of hope again.
"Could you please give me that potion?"
"O… Of course." She stuttered.
She opened the vial and emptied it into Fire's mouth, he swallowed and his body relaxed a bit. He could feel how the liquid ran down his throat and on the way down got absorbed by his blood. It felt like cold fire running in his veins, first directionless, then more and more towards his would, rebuilding cracked bones and torn muscles, taking his pain away. He fell asleep, part from the exhaustion, part from the potion.
