A handful of identical-looking Immortals began cornering Kai from the handful of spies that seek to make a spy haven out of the liberated Agbarah Sheikhate. No matter where the spy dressed in black turned, there was a masked Immortal covering his way. From the looks of it, Kai didn't seem to hold a grudge against the oppressive campaign of the Immortals to eliminate him, since he had sustained his own fair share of bruises when fighting against the Sky Warrior Ganetta earlier.
"The Immortals seem dead-set on eliminating Kai, one of the spies, from the competition. However, it appears that Kai still has more than a few tricks in the book!" the announcer declared, directing the audience's attention to the complicated web of Immortals that were cornering Kai. Kai tried fending off the reckless Immortals by skewering them with a kunai barrage fired from the dispenser that he had concealed behind his black coat, but it didn't seem to do enough.
Kai's glare sharpened with intense focus as he noticed that the Immortals he had littered with kunai fired from his dispenser lost themselves in the chaos of the rumble in the arena and re-appeared a few moments later with no kunai sticking out of them and no signs that they had ever been there, to begin with. Not finding much success and approaching the limit of how many kunai his dispenser could fire before running out, Kai began using his dispenser as a weapon to block or redirect scimitar swings.
"This is where the field experience of Kai the Spy kicks in! Witness how skillfully the veteran spy navigates a hostile environment full of enemies!" the announcer did his job in telling the audience exactly what to look for and what to gawk at. Just as he had mentioned before, Kai navigated the group of Immortals looking to cut him down by slipping in between different soldiers and positioning himself with peerless battlefield intelligence. There was always another Immortal in one's way, at no time did it seem favorable for them to start swinging their sword wildly and Kai was slipping, dashing, and rolling around the group.
Unnoticed, Kai had slipped out the card from the lapel of his coat and drowned the surrounding area in smoke. The Immortals backed off for just a second before a jolt of lightning went off from the smoke and socked an Immortal straight to the chest, stunning it and sending the Immortal slamming against the protective wall outside the arena's boundaries. The announcer raised his hand to announce the elimination of an Immortal soldier, but then, after doing the elementary headcount, he sighed.
"Just what the heck is going on? This is yet another Immortal soldier that's been eliminated, yet the number of Immortals fighting in the arena is still ten!" the announcer scratched his head. "It seems like the Immortals are living up to their reputation, even when a member of their elite troupe is eliminated, there always remains ten of them at all times!"
The surprising lack of progress made Kai take the defensive role again, as this time they forced him to use his strongest gadget as a weapon and fend off scimitar swings using it. This couldn't have boded well for the complex lightning-spitting steel tube. Just as an Immortal might have landed a nasty blow, his scimitar met something solid and metallic and emanated with a loud clang that made the hectic sword fighting cease. The corner of the arena where Kai the Spy was struggling against all ten of the Immortals became silent enough to hear quiet taps of a bare foot that stepped in between Kai and his opponent.
"Who are you?" Kai asked with a husky tone of the muscular and nigh bare man of baggy white trousers and decorated golden belts wrapping around his tall and muscular bare frame. While the bottom of the man's curly black hair stuck out and ran down his back past the shoulders, most of them were fitted inside of a massive golden headdress with spiky horns sticking out to the sides and decorated with shiny jewels. The man had the signature curled mustache of the Salvari monks, his resembled an upwardly curved shape of the crescent moon.
"I may not be a friend of yours, but I am an enemy of this man," the tall and athletic man pointed his open palm at the handful of Immortals brandishing their weapons out in front of them.
"You two got a history or something?" Kai wondered, feeling lucky to have a moment to get his bearings as he let the steel tube that fired lightning spears disappear back inside the small plastic card in a gleam of light.
"No. I have never met this man in my life," the athletic and flamboyant giant proclaimed. "However, my thousand spiritual eyes see right through his trickery. He does not belong in a field of battle or a competition for the name of the mightiest warrior."
"I don't know about that," Kai the Spy smirked before slipping out a black plastic card decorated with a fiery pentagram from the inside pocket of his coat. "I'm a spy, so I dabble in a bit of deception myself."
"Yours deceives the opponent. It doesn't break the rules of honorable combat," the splendid warrior clad in gold proclaimed before extending his open palm at the Immortals that exuded white smoke from the openings in their metal masks and swung their scimitars as warnings of their impending combined assault.
"You're one of those Salvari monks, aren't you?" one of the Immortals spoke. As he did so, his voice shifted and gained a strange and inhuman tremble to it as it passed the mask obstructing his face. Because of the cold metallic façade of their masks, it was impossible to clearly tell which one of the Immortals was speaking. "The battle monks that fight for the Sheikhs. The legends about you guys keep going on and on about how you help the Sheikhs fend off the pressure of the ninja villages and remain independent, yet you've not been doing that good of a job lately, have you? Fennec's forces are all over the Sheikhates…"
"Fennec's rebellion was a blessing in disguise," the tall man pressed his hands together as if preparing to pray. He closed his eyes and became focused on his inaudible prayer. "With a bit of luck, we can have a good three years' worth of bloodshed to hone our skills in. We are thankful to Fennec and his hordes of mercenaries and disgruntled settlers for offering their lives so that we can hone and showcase our skills, for their full extent has been forgotten in time."
Without hesitating, most of the Immortals attacked at once. They sought to exploit the opportunity to strike the Salvari down while he was praying and while his eyes were closed and his long arms occupied with prayer instead of ready for fighting. The Immortals' swords swung through thin air as even with his eyes completely closed and his entire body devoted to prayer and muttering of mantras, the Salvari monk leaned and moved out of the way of each sword strike of each of the ten men surrounding him.
"What the…!?" the Immortals croaked from their metallic masks, exuding white vapor as they spoke.
"You believe that while my eyes are closed, you have an advantage in attacking me, but you are unaware that when two physical eyes close, a thousand spiritual eyes open," the Salvari proclaimed before returning to his mantra, picking up in volume and intensity. Each word thundered with conviction and complete devotion to the Salvari way and the prayer rocked like the mightiest war drum, submerging the Immortals into a rhythmic daze of violence while the Salvari monk danced around their blades effortlessly with his eyes completely shut.
A rowdy crack made the audience wince in empathy for the poor Immortal as a bare foot dug deep into the Immortal's gut, bending the Immortal's body out of shape. When the inertia caught up, the Immortal shot off and crashed outside the arena's boundaries only for ten Immortals to resume their attempts at shredding the Salvari monk. This time, the warrior monk was no longer content with dodging, he was answering each swing with a kick or a vicious strike from his arms. It took only a handful of exchanges for all ten Immortals to hit the area outside of the arena sprawled out and unconscious.
"Incredible! Mahender of the Salvari has eliminated all ten of the Immortals at once! He struck with incredible speed and precision! Oh my, look at this! The Immortals are no longer part of the competition, all of them are gone! B-But… There is only one Immortal laying out of the bounds now. How is this possible?" the announcer's voice boomed through the spectator halls that still held those that didn't flee the competition and welcomed those whose guts had calmed down and they returned.
"You runt…" the Immortal croaked, struggling to pick himself off the ground. "What did you hit me with? I… Couldn't see anything at all…"
"You were too transfixed by the physical plane. You only saw my two eyes and my two hands," Mahender showed his long and athletic hands to the eliminated Immortal that seemed to have been left all alone now with the rest of the Immortals vanishing completely. "You couldn't see my thousand spiritual eyes and my two spiritual hands, that is why your cloning strategy couldn't keep up."
"So, you've seen it through?" the Immortal staggered back in shock.
"Your deceit is shallow and insignificant to the thousand spiritual eyes. They can gaze into your chakra and see you creating your doppelgangers. They saw you getting eliminated and substituting yourself back with one of your clones once more. There were never ten Immortals, there was only one feeble man in a mask, cloning and replacing himself. Go now, walk the path of spirituality and abandon your path of deceiving yourself of being a warrior," Mahender re-entered his prayer pose before turning around and chanting his mantra.
"The Immortals have been eliminated…! Ermm… The Immortal was…?! Either way, there are now 165 warriors duking it out for their place at the Top 16!" the announcer declared only for the audience to cheer after being rustled and caressed by the hype man's voice.
The man behind the Immortal's mask slipped it off and slammed it to the ground beneath his feet. With a furious and sweaty scowl, he seethed with hatred that wished a bloody death on the man that had humiliated him and implied that he was merely deceiving himself to be a warrior. Without reliable control over his actions, the Immortal bowed to pick up his sword and prepared to pounce back into the arena to have his revenge but then froze in place.
The entire world had been sunken into darkness, nothing but violet shrouds and shadowy tendrils as far as the eye could see. All that he could see around him that made sense was the muscular back of the man that had defeated him–Mahender the Salvari monk. The defeated man behind the Immortals' charade gasped in fear as sweat poured down his pale body. Before his eyes, Mahender's body became littered with a thousand eyes colored and textured like a wide myriad of gemstones, all focused on him and his following actions.
With a submissive gasp, the man masking himself as the Immortals slumped onto the ground with a gasp of defeat and wiped the sweat off of his face. The next time he looked at the back of the man that had humiliated him and his strategy, it was nothing but flesh and tempered muscle, and the world was back to normal. As he accepted the help of ring aides, the defeated Immortal wondered if he had taken a stronger blow to the head than he thought or if he truly saw a momentary glimpse of the spiritual plane and witnessed a thousand eyes of spiritual awareness that the Salvari spoke of.
"Incredible… I've heard of the third eye but… A thousand eyes of spirituality…" the Immortal muttered to himself while being dragged off to the infirmary facilities where he could receive some medical help.
In a faraway corner of the arena, a battered and sewn-together linen doll with blond woolen dreadlocks and buttons for eyes crept up to a discarded cardboard box that seemed to lie around in the arena. Normally such a find on a battlefield would've seemed odd, but given how many oddball warriors were taking part in this blood fest and how quirky their abilities seemed, the doll became curious about the cardboard box and tilted it up to examine it.
"Huh… Seems like just the right thing to lure a sucker in. The moment someone will get interested and take a peek at harmless little ole me, I'll stab 'em right in the eye!" the doll's sewn-together mouth twisted in waves and tested the integrity of the threads that held its mouth sewn shut, speaking in a husky smoker's voice despite having a girly appearance and wearing a makeshift denim doll dress. With a malicious cackle, the linen doll slipped underneath the box that seemed like it was fitting to host a child's toy inside and an inconspicuous place for one to hide.
The discarded cardboard box laid on the tile floor for a few more seconds before loud grunts came from inside and the box began bending out of shape. The box burst open with a spy clad in a tight leather bodysuit weaved with armored fibers rolling out of the box with kitchen knives sticking out of his shoulders, his back, and one stuck deeper in his eye.
"How 'bout that, didn't know the sucker already came packaged with the box…" a long and slithery, reptilian-like tongue slipped from the doll's sewn mouth and licked its own bloodied face and the edge of a kitchen knife it held in its hand to lick the traces of blood that got on it during a messy scuffle with the spy that was concealed within the cardboard box. "Oh, Bambi, looks like your dress is gonna get all bloody today. Then again, that was always the plan…" the doll's woolen eyebrows looped over its button eyes as its mouth turned to a malicious upside arc.
"Look at the northern side of the ring, ladies, and gentlemen! We've not seen much bloodshed just yet from the serial killers' group, but it seems like the first one has pinpointed its target. The deadly killer doll Bambi appears to have pointed the edge of its knife at Hit Boomslang, the accomplished spy turned famed mercenary who borrows his skills to any country that pays him and is known for his unorthodox battlefield tactics! This is a match-up made in heaven and it looks like Bambi has drawn the first blood already and a whole pint of it!" the announcer pointed his hand at the unexpected collision that occurred over something as trivial as a cardboard box.
"Huh…" Hit Boomslang grumbled while slowly reaching for a pouch behind his utility belt with a mean scowl on his face. "I've heard about you. Aren't I a bit too old to be your target, or are you branching out?"
"I didn't have a Yamanaka permanently seal my mind inside of a girly linen doll to stab old geezers, I'll tell you that but jeez, how hard is it for a guy to get a cardboard box in here?" Bambi croaked with an unflattering smoker's voice while brandishing another kitchen knife. The doll had cut stitches over its limbs and body, suggesting that the knives it had stuck into Hit Boomslang during their scuffle under the cardboard box it pulled from inside its own body.
"I was looking to sit low for a while until the hotheads got themselves eliminated, but I suppose I'll have to make an exception for a kid-butcher like you…" Hit Boomslang hissed before flinging a couple of silver throwing knives from his pouch. With a creepy giggle, Bambi rolled aside and grabbed a sheet of the cardboard box that it pulled alongside it while it dashed away to hide somewhere else. Sharp metallic clangs came from further away, where a very unorthodox-looking samurai wearing a white bandana with "Bodyguard" written on it and donning a long and open leather vest over tattered and rough denim hakama. The man had a crude face with a full beard and shoulder-long greasy hair and chewed on a thick needle.
"Yo, I'd tell you that you can poke an eye out with those things, but it seems like someone already beat me to the punch…" the ruffian samurai rolled the needle he held in his mouth across his tongue with a mean look shooting at the legendary spy-turned-mercenary. "I've heard that you're a one-man-army and can accomplish any mission. That sounds badass as shit to me, problem is, you hide under cardboard boxes and behave like a sissy, avoiding fights like some lowly ninja dirtbag. See, it's stuff like that that confuses me a little…"
"I don't have time for you…" Hit Boomslang pulled out a smoke and stuffed it in between his dry lips, snapping his fingers to ignite a little flame at the tip of his fingers using some sort of taser-like gadget installed into the fiber of his bodysuit.
"We have all the time in the world to settle this!" the ruffian samurai issued a raspy-sounding challenge while dashing toward the legendary spy with an arcing smile and psychotic eyes of a murderer relishing the violence he's about to take part in. Boomslang's knife came out of nowhere and collided with the mad slash of his charging opponent. The leather-clad bandana samurai smirked with a full-teeth smile when the knife Boomslang used to block the strike clanged and broke, but by then the sword only hit thin air as the mercenary previously holding it slipped away with an evasive move.
"Seriously? Sneaking up behind me? You're boring me!" the samurai laughed out while drawing a second katana with his free hand and thrusting it behind his back without looking. The blade contacted something, but the sound that came out wasn't the pleasant fleshy splat that the renegade samurai was looking for–it caused a loud pop and a whistle of a deflating balloon.
"An inflatable dummy?" the renegade samurai scratched his head, messing up the positioning of his bandana which made him have to tighten it around his forehead. "The fucking pussy ran away again…" the bloodthirsty swordsman grumbled to himself after looking around and failing to find his foe who used the distraction of a balloon doppelgänger to slip away from his annoying pursuer.
"Good, you have tied up all your business then, Trujano Kuroda. I challenge you to a duel!" a veteran samurai in full Do-maru style armor took a basic in no kamae balanced sword stance.
"Oh! What an unexpected development! The esteemed samurai and a trusted right-hand man of the Iron Shogun of the Land of Iron, Lord Mifune, has challenged the renegade swordsman that cleaved and carved his path to infamy–Trujano Kuroda! Both incredible swordsmen are samurai that came here to prove that samurai are still the greatest caste of warriors in the entire world, yet, for some reason, they chose to clash right here and now! We're in for an incredible collision between two swordsmen comparable to the Four God-Swords themselves!" the announcer seemed to hype this meeting up to the point where he was losing his voice. This sudden event of two notable warriors meeting their eyes and drawing their swords attracted the attention of other warriors who, out of respect and the oppressing aura of the two, stopped the fighting in that part of the arena and formed a tight circle around the two, about as long as the reach of each of their swords.
"You dumbass motherfucker…" Kuroda spat the needle he had been sucking on to the side, chewing his dried-out mouth and missing the taste of metal in his mouth immediately. "We're both samurai. Don't get me wrong, or anything, I'm more than glad to shut your condescending, classy-ass trap for once and stomp you like a roach in a can that you are, but don't you got something passed down by the Iron Shogun to prove?"
"You are a disgrace to the samurai. A discarded runt from the litter taken in, you shouldn't be polishing a samurai's weapon, let alone using it. Your coarse language, ridiculous raggedy clothing, and the way you wield a sword… I will not allow someone like you to represent the samurai, even if it impedes our chances of victory! I'd much rather have the samurai lose this tournament but retain their honor as the once strongest warriors of history, than have a no-good punk like you representing our name in public," Lord Mifune exclaimed with boiling hatred for everything that the standoffish hooligan samurai in front of him represented.
"Alright then, old geezer, I'll whoop ya… Just be warned that I cut to maim and kill so you might need a backup sword and a good stitcher to put you back together after we settle this…" Kuroda sneered at his opponent, shooting a demented stare his way while shining a twisted rotten-teeth smile his way.