Grabbing the cloaked and armored Immortal in one hand, a massive mountain of muscle and hair raised him over his head and sneered with overgrown tusk-like teeth protruding from the longer than it'd have been considered normal for a man's jaw. Sneering at the captive immortal, the ogreish conqueror pulled him in closer to his snarling face before thudding his oversized skull into the Immortal's face and tossing him aside. The Immortal skidded across the tournament arena floor before flopping off of the corner and down on the ground.
"Cornab Thunderbone, one of the favorites from the bunch of conquerors and adventurers, the human siege machine known for decorating his weapons with the bones of the conquered, eliminated one of the Immortals from the Ryuuchi Caverns without breaking a sweat! That means that there are now… No… Wait… This doesn't seem to make any sense. We've all seen the Immortal getting eliminated, but there still seem to be ten Immortals fighting in the arena… What is going on here!?" the announcer yelled after turning to the audience. The man did the count several times yet no matter if he tried counting the overall fighters still left in the arena or the Immortals specifically, it appeared as if the overall number of warriors, the number of the Immortals too, stayed the same as before the elimination.
A round and thick, bald martial artist with a rugged and torn white gi rolled through the arena like a cannonball and locked his arms and feet around Cornab Thunderbone's leg. Cornab was such a massive unit that even the fleshy boulder human cannonball took the full length of his thick arms and legs to wrap around the limbs of the brutal conqueror.
"Seeing an opening in all the confusion, Balujo, the master of ground-based fighting techniques, has applied his bone-crunching lock on Cornab Thunderbone! This now devolves into a struggle of power and mastery of combat arts. With every second that Balujo has his hold applied, Cornab's legs are in danger of spraining and breaking, and if Cornab collapses and brings the fight down to the ground, the fight might be as good as over!" the announcer relayed to the audience the focal points of the madness and cacophony booming from the arena.
Cornab stiffened his whole body, but Balujo bulked up as well. Cornab had a peculiar, barely noticeable mint-green tint to his skin and a slimy texture to it. With the conqueror twisting his face in tension and taxing his musculature to the limit, the secretions coming out from his pores started foaming but despite the hold he had applied becoming more slippery and problematic to maintain, Balujo held his own with clenched teeth and a brush-like black unibrow that bent into the shape of a downward-pointing arrow. Balujo's skin took a reddish tint from the extreme physical effort the ground submission master put out to bring the cruel conqueror to rub against the tiles of the arena.
"Oh! What impact!" the announcer turned around on one babouche-style shoe while striking a flashy pose and pointing his v-shaped fingers into the sky as gratitude for what he was seeing in the arena. "Cornab was nicknamed "Thunderbone" by his tribe of settlers because when he strikes his bone-decorated weapons, it sounds like thunder itself has been brought down upon his enemies, though, ironically enough, now the thunder comes from the sound of Cornab's face planting against the floor! The struggle has moved on to the ground, now there may be no more hope for Cornab Thunderbone!"
A wicked smile changed the twisted and filled with agony expression of the merciless conqueror as he moved his hands to wrap around Balujo's thighs and calves as well. Cornab grabbed hold of his opponent's squeezing thigh and rolled on to the side like a crocodile when it chomped down and began rolling about and thrashing. Balujo's taxed, blood-red complexion shifted to pale-white in a second as Cornab applied his own rolling leg lock and the two began wrestling on the ground until one of them either called it quits, or their limbs did it for them.
"What a surprise! It appears that Cornab is just as skilled on the ground as Balujo is! Which one will tap out first!?" the announcer screamed out into the rustling and cheering audience.
"We both know that's a load of boloney!" Cornab thundered with a meaty and low-pitched voice that would've made the storm clouds stir. "I can't match your moves on the ground, but what I have is pure savagery! I've wrestled against hundreds of stranglers and I've gouged all their eyes out. I've seen thousands of armlocks and I've broken all of them by drowning those applying it in viscera of their peers. I've smashed the heads of those trying to bearhug me into thick brain soup. You… I think I'll just eat your leg up."
Cornab drove his head down and dug a meaty chomp into Balujo's calf. This made the round face of the bald martial artist twist in painful expressions as he let out a pitiful scream of agony, but clenched onto his opponent's leg like his life depended on it. Even a chunk of his flesh tore off Balujo's calf and his white gi began dyeing with lively red, Balujo held on, realizing his opponent's plan of breaking his hold that he had no technical ability of breaking.
"I might try wriggling my leg out of your grip…" Cornab wheezed out through considerable physical sting in his locked leg. "Maybe I could try hammering you with punches or snapping the fingers you're holding my leg with? No… I've got a nasty feeling that this is exactly what you're waiting for. I'd rather just keep building my strength up at your expense."
"Incredible…" Balujo squeezed a response out from the bottom of his lungs while the two brutes wrestled on the ground. "What you lack in technical mastery of martial arts, you appear to compensate for in impeccable fighting instincts and a talent for violence."
"Balujo's martial arts style is known for entrapping his opponents. But that's not the worst of it, ladies and gentlemen! Balujo commonly finds himself wrestling against other skilled martial artists, strikers far surpassing his skill and submission specialists of similar experience and skill and yet Balujo always comes out on top, having won multiple martial arts tournaments around the world! That's because of his spider-like ability to keep entrapping his opponent's further as they attempt to disassemble his submissions! It's a work of art, I tell you, and it's a genuine pity that we won't get to see it!"
Balujo's eyes whited out as the combination of Cornab's sequoia-thick arms bent and twisted his leg while the conqueror's chipped and jagged teeth dug into the meat around the knee again. Working together the two engines of savagery sprained Balujo's leg out of shape while the chomp forced it to spray blood from the ripped-apart tendons and dislocated joints while crumbling even the titanium-tough bones of his opponent that were tempered to withstand the strongest shots and submission contests possible in martial arts competitions. The audience that had gathered here to witness the world's strongest and deadliest warriors find out which of them was the best and see the successor of the Agbarah Sheikhate being crowned halted in horror as Balujo rolled back on his back and released the lock. The lower section of his right leg had twisted diagonally up and pooled with thick blood beneath it.
"This is the difference between me and you, Balujo," Cornab rolled on his knee, still shaken by the gruesome and painful submission that the world's premiere master of limb bending put him through. His face was solemn and drowned in the shade of his wild hair while his expression still fended off the betrayal of the pain that reverberated through his lower section. "You fight to win competitions. You fight to prove superiority to your opponents as dictated by some arbitrary set of rules."
While he lectured his opponent, Cornab slipped on a cluster of steel rings with bone decorations that seemed to have suffered some punishment, as the bone surface had been bent out of shape and polished by brutal hammering. This was neither the first time that Cornab Thunderbone would use these knuckle dusters to seed violence, nor was it the first dozen.
"A conqueror… He fights to eradicate," Cornab wound his fist back and then shot it down. His knuckle duster smashed into the round, bald head of his fallen opponent with a meaty crunch, but soon a deafening shock wave overwhelmed the grisly sounds of a collapsing body. "He fights to crush opposition that stands in his way, he butchers to kill everything and everyone that stands in his way. Not to prove his superiority, but to claim land and move forward to new horizons. His violence needs to be so measured and so precise that it doesn't entirely exterminate the insects underneath his feet nor must it ruin the land, but it must crush them so utterly that the conqueror only needs to move forward and never back to the lands he already claimed as his own."
With each added lecture, Cornab brought his fist down and down again. Any lesser man's belfry would've long since given way and been smashed like a watermelon, but Balujo's round head just let the knuckle dusters bounce off of them while clobbering it into the ground underneath. It swelled and bled, but it didn't cave in. Teeth flew out, but the jaw didn't unravel or break. Out of nowhere, a tight clench locked around Cornab's side braids and pulled the head of the ogreish conqueror down for a bloody greeting. Cornab grunted in pain as Balujo's roughed-up head smacked into his own forehead.
Smelling blood in the water and only three-quarters of it being his own, Balujo wrapped his left arm over Cornab's neck with the same motion. The headbutt served as a fine setup. Also, a way to daze and confuse his opponent before the guillotine choke snapped shut and Balujo could begin to do away with his opponent.
"You fool!" Balujo roared like a boiling kettle, exuding about the same amount of heat and boiling hate from his thick body. "Did you think I walked in here expecting everyone to play by the rules of a martial arts competition? Did you really think that it had never occurred to me to throw out the rulebook and do what I need to do to get it done? I will have a clear consciousness choking you out or snapping your neck, whichever comes first."
"Hmmm…" Cornab wheezed something unintelligible out as the pressure around his airwaves didn't let him talk right. With a swift pair of jabs, the brutish savage smashed two of his fists into both sides of Balujo's exposed ribs, letting the jagged edges of his bone knuckle dusters dig in. While Cornab felt Balujo's ribs shattering and being dusted from his meanest hit, the madman kept his guillotine going. He must have known that this was an all-or-nothing choke for him. He'd have withstood bites, punches, kicks, and bearhugs just to keep this pressure up for a few more minutes and to rid the world of the fearsome bane of the Lightning Country who had both the guts and the ability to challenge the strongest ninja village military and the entire centralized samurai military force of the Land of Iron.
"Hmph!" Balujo spat out blood when Cornab's gutting knife dug into his abdomen and carved him open from one side to another. The first stab was incredibly shallow as Balujo's adamantine body fended off the thrust with just a skin-deep injury, but Balujo couldn't bulk himself up as much as he wanted to because of his busted ribs. Each time he tried to tense up his core, his ribs started burning him up and didn't let him breathe right or do anything else but grunt and moan in pain of his dusted ribs. It only took a few repeated attempts to slide the knife in and open the ground fighting specialist up.
Balujo flopped on the ground weightless like a sack of vegetables. His body went numb and limp. Even then, the martial artist did his genuine best to force the slipping innards back through the opening so that he could prolong the fight for as long as he could. Not even when his body had failed him and given up on the fight did Balujo accept defeat. Even the merciless Cornab wavered for a second there, stunned by this display. Panting and bent over, the fearsome conqueror stared at the crumbled warrior before him in respect. Then his arm reached for his back.
The audience howled as their blood froze up. Men and women alike turned away from the grisly sight in the arena after a thunderous crack had shown them the reality they sought to recreate here. The gruesome nightmare that was war which they sought to simulate in a controlled environment for their amusement. Cornab Thunderbone felt personally responsible for letting these clowns know what horrors he would bring to them if they ever saw him and his army knocking on their gates. He gave them a first-hand lesson in the reality of combat.
"I… I can't believe it…" the announcer belched a few times, frozen and speechless after Cornab Thunderbone pulled a bone-shaped ivory hammer from his bulky back and drove it straight down atop of Balujo's head. The ivory Morningstar was less of a weapon than a battering ram. It didn't cleave Balujo into two, it bashed halfway through, smashing the head to porridge and making its way through the adamantine chest of the martial artist before getting stuck somewhere by his guts and leaving him just dangling smashed and open. "This is… I know the Sheikh said anything goes but… We need to stop this… I'm sure that the audience could use a break and… We need to remove this… From the arena maybe…?"
The spectators of the horrendous execution felt many things, yet neither of them felt fortunate that there had been so much blood everywhere that it had done a great deal at obstructing the gruesome reality of Cornab's violent finishing blow. With his spiky, bone Morningstar club in hand, the conqueror looked around him, trying to find his next prey to clobber. To everyone else, this tournament was a life-changing opportunity to own a piece of land and realize their lifelong dreams. To Cornab Thunderbone this was just another patch of land for him to reign in.
"The martial artist Balujo… Has been eliminated. The remaining number of competitors is now 176," the announcer relayed to the frozen and appalled audience with a solemn and restrained tone.
One by one, the audience members stood up and began bolting toward the exits, reducing the number of those willing to put themselves through this affair by at least a quarter. At least half of those that remained stayed not out of respect or admiration of the sight they've been looking at but out of terror. It was because their bodies froze in place, just like a graceful herbivore halted after realizing that a fearsome predator had its eyes fixed on them.
Turning around again, Cornab swung his ivory Morningstar and bashed Balujo's remains aside, flopping and rolling like a sack of dead meat until it flew out of the arena's bounds and smacked at the protective walls that kept the action from spilling over into the spectators' seats. The gigantic conqueror then spared a few seconds to stare at the sight of his actions before turning back to the action, immediately being greeted by the sight of a handful of martial artists lining up to pay back the favor.
"Balujo came so close to beating him. I have learned respect for all martial arts as a result of our meeting. And you four… After seeing one of your peers die so gruesomely, you stepped up to avenge him without faltering for a second. I bow my head to you all. I stand in awe at the mindset of a martial artist…" Cornab thundered down at the assembled queue of warriors itching to take him on as if he had read it off of a stone slab. Cold and emotionless as the stone, the prophets had written it on. "Is that what you expected me to say?"
"Have you no remorse for your actions, you monster?" a bald, frail-looking elder with a horseshoe mustache shook his fist at the titanic brute who swung his ivory Morningstar over on his shoulder in preparation to take on the entire handful of martial artists seeking retribution. "You already had that fight won. Even if you won by stabbing Balujo, he had accepted such a possibility. Yet it wasn't enough for you. You clobbered him without mercy like he wasn't even human that deserved dignity and respect!"
"Remorse? You're delusional, old-timer…" Cornab closed his eyes as his expression rot to extreme displeasure. The giant took so much offense at the old man's lecturing, that veins began littering his body, telegraphing him straining out of spite. "A conqueror can feel no remorse for trampling his way to victory. Remorse is for those standing in his way and being bashed aside or trampled. Balujo was strong, there's no doubt about it. That's why I hate him and why I let him have it. Powerful people get the wrong idea that they can get in my way. My entire arsenal has become dulled and chipped at the expense of the skulls of sturdy people. It seems like no matter where I turn, strong people keep lining up and setting me back. I can't stand it!"
"Balujo was human, and he deserved to be treated with respect as a warrior and your peer. Even a rotten scumbag can understand the concept of human dignity!" a young man with spiky black hair and an orange and black bodysuit stared up at Cornab's eyes with searing hatred and a need to take his feelings out on the cruel conqueror. "The one that's inhuman here–is you!"
"Dignity!?" Cornab's rotten attitude shifted in a snap as he began thundering with laughter. "Where is this dignity in death? If you die, it doesn't matter how you die. Whether you go out in your sleep, or a rock caves your head in–you're dead either way and there's no dignity in either of the two ways. I see the problem here. The source of all of our disagreements and your delusions…"
"Our delusions!?" a tall blond woman with a ponytail and a white tracksuit freaked out at the response of the monstrous man looming over the lined-up martial artists.
"That's right. All of you have learned about fighting from tutors that pulled their punches, afraid they'd break you, and taught you about the rules you had to adhere to lest you're exposed to the reality of the savage world of true violence. You learned the philosophy of combat by hearing about it from some old men jerking each other off. None of you had to smash your hands through the skull of a man and squeeze their brains out through their ears. That's why words are wasted on the likes of you. You're irreparable, damaged to the core. Worse yet, you're all strong. Terrifyingly so. And thus, I'll have to trample and smash my way through you all the same… Nothing ever changes. Anywhere I go, there's a powerful person to be taught the same lessons over and over again…" Cornab ground his teeth while his bloodshot left eye twitched over his swollen cheek. The giant swung his ivory Morningstar off of his shoulder and slammed it onto the ground in front of him, making the martial artists that have come to challenge him jump back, startled to avoid getting in its path.
It may have been inevitable, but this massive battle royale had become personal to more than a few of the warriors taking part in it.