An arm burst forth from one of the trees created from the scattered remains of Mizumi Kesho. More random body parts began punching through the rough bark. In a sick and unpredictable turn of events, the entire battle royale roster had their own trouble with the immortal serial killer to deal with. Mana dashed to the side in a powerful leap and skidded across to another tree, throwing the hind legs of her statue body to destroy the tree with thrashing limbs burst out from it in a single buck.
"Damn!" Priskom's voice made the startled Chaos Factor turn their attention to him. Kesho's emerged face had chomped down on the spring wire of Priskom's armored body and held it locked down in place until another arm came out from the tree's roots and grabbed hold of the spring, reeling it back.
The Chaos Factor charged for the tree all at once but they were separated from their leader by a bountiful harvest of nightmarish trees that all tried to rake at them, grab hold and tear them apart with the bare hands of the monstrous serial killer of Rice Country. In a deafening snap that resonated to the very core of Mana's soul and froze her in place, Mizumi Kesho pulled Priskom's arm and leg apart from his body and grabbed hold of his armored waist, forcing the leader of the Chaos Factor to get dragged into the terrifying tree through its hollow.
A stream of red light blasted through the side of the tree. "It's Priskom's spiritual chakra!" Poru chanted, dancing around like a simian, which was the only type of joyful reaction his totem-like body permitted. Just when it seemed like Priskom would overpower his assailant and bust out, the disassembled and separate parts of his armor began flinging through the hole in the tree where the spiritual energy was leaking and scattered with a trail of smoke smoldering off from their edges.
"No…" Mana cried out to herself, unaware that her thoughts may have been more perceivable by the other Statumen now that they shared a common fate.
"What an unbelievable turn of events! Nobody could've predicted that splattering Mizumi Kesho across the entire ring would cause this nightmarish forest to bloom. And now this attempt to obliterate the immortal nightmare that haunts the Rice Country has cost the Chaos Factor team their leader! Beyond any doubt, Priskom of the Chaos Factor is eliminated from the competition. The remaining number of competitors now is 153!" the announcer clamored for the audience that was rustling in discontent since the forest of trees made of bark and flesh obstructed their clear view of the battlefield.
"Hmm… It appears we've got an infestation on our hands…" an Exterminator dressed in the standard, plain Exterminator uniform over a leathery black bodysuit decorated with metal rings and a head full of scopes and goggles of varied colors turned around, scanning the environment. "Every single one of these has a fraction of the Rice Country abomination in them."
"Man, bringing this guy here was a real hassle. Seeing him in action though, I'm beginning to doubt just how good of an idea it was though," the wearer of the Scorn Reaper mantle reacted to the erection of the colossal forest of limbs and branches alike that sought to carve and rip anyone unlucky enough to get in its way.
"Enough of this nonsense already," a golden-haired swordsman with a black dogi and steel shoulder guards threw his odachi up in the air, sending a silver slash that cut through the limbs, the tree bark, and the leaves alike. The ranged slashing stroke created an opening through which the desert sun once more could enter and cast light upon the frustrated swordsman. "We need an arena to cut loose on," the golden-haired member of the samurai team plunged into the air and raised his odachi over his head.
As the blade whizzed through the air, it ignited with flames so red that they carved one's eye just for feasting one's eyes on them. The flames began concentrating at the tip of the sword as the swordsman continued to add more and more kenki into his blade and ignite it to where the blade resembled a sky-piercing column of raging fire that surged into an asteroid-size fireball over his head.
"Begone," the fiery swordsman with the grand sword stroke it downward, casting the tremendous fireball to slam into the dense nightmarish forest with a pulsing shockwave of flames. The expanding firestorm engulfed the entire woods and burnt them down to cinders, as that which was built from chakra could only be destroyed by chakra. The swordsman's flame proved itself to be superb at destroying as just a handful of paper tags danced about.
"Now, what is everyone waiting for? The trash won't cull itself…" the ronin with black and white gi and golden hair turned around to face stunned faces of other warriors that were stunned by the grand show of destructive force. To obliterate an entire battlefield of Mizumi Kesho trees would've required an otherworldly amount of chakra, yet it seemed like just a flex to this independent swordsman.
While fighting slowly resumed, as evidenced by occasional metallic clangs, thunderous thuds, and painful grunts flooding the air, the Chaos Factor lingered on the untimely demise of their leader and where this left their squad. The sizzling paper tags that remained of the nightmarish woods from before accurately represented the emptiness they felt right now as their dream of returning to their own bodies took one bountiful step back and became tougher to see through the clouds.
"Get together!" a strict, low-pitched hiss snapped the Statumen out of their oppressive haze. "I won't let your wallowing prevent me from returning to my body! Regroup and heed my command, and maybe I can still pull all of you out of this."
"What's the matter, Drasko? I thought you liked this new body of yours…" Vatee beamed fiery glares at the floating separate pieces of spiky armor held together in a humanoid shape by empty rags of torn capes and cloaks laying discarded on the stage. By adopting this appearance of a phantom soldier, Drasko became a transcendental, haunting avatar of war itself. All armor, blades, and spikes, no humanity underneath.
"Even if I do, I won't have some poser presume he's in any condition of toying with my soul as he sees fit! I'll return to my old body, then carve this Conductor to jerky and hang him to dry as a warning!" Drasko hissed with a husky, spiteful tone and raised his bladed gauntlets as a warning.
A cruel gale blew a handful of paper tags that were scattered like flower petals in freefall, blowing toward the eastern side of the arena. As it was their fate, the tags emitted fuchsia-colored lightning and stuck to one another as if this jolt magnetized them. Discharge after discharge of chakra shocks, More and more paper tags began clumping together until a tall and cumbersome humanoid shape stood before the Chaos Factor once more.
Mizumi Kesho lived again.
Without hesitation, Mana pointed her horns at the revived slasher and rushed at him. The rest of the Chaos Factor just gasped and turned to follow her with their eyes. A considerable shockwave boomed from the point of her collision with the monstrous serial killer. Mizumi Kesho had caught the horns of the dolphin-horse statue with his hands and wrestled the statue's head to the ground. Yet again, Mana felt trapped and terrified. Trapped not only in this stone body but also in Mizumi Kesho's grip. A rambunctious revving noise attracted attention toward the immortal serial killer once more.
"Is that a chainsaw sword? Where did he pull that from?" Poru made an overblown expression of shock by leaning back and throwing his clobbering arms to the sides.
"It's that bog…" Drasko pointed at a puddle of bubbling green slime underneath Mizumi Kesho's boots. "It must be some sort of sealing technique. Who knows how many more weapons he can pull from it?"
"He's going to cut Mana's head off!" Vatee grumbled. She sounded more annoyed and inconvenienced than concerned by this. It made sense that some of the Statumen feel worse about their odds of returning to their own body, diminishing with the slimming down of the Chaos Factor ranks rather than genuine worry for their comrades' lives.
"That's no way to live!" Galdva declared, opening his mouth and spitting with shown tongue a horizontal tunneling hurricane that slammed right into Mizumi Kesho's chest and caught him. The howling vortex sent the unstoppable butcher hurling across the arena and slamming into the jagged rock edges erected earlier by Lord Mifune's battle.
"I don't recall ordering you to attack and throw away your life," Drasko scolded Mana while the dolphin-horse struggled pitifully to get control over her alien body back and return to her feet.
"I don't recall accepting your command. If memory serves, the Conductor appointed me as 2nd in command," Mana shot back. This was the first time in recent memory she's accepted a leadership position and it couldn't have come at a more inopportune time. How could she command a squad of Statumen when she hated her own body and tried committing suicide in battle not too long earlier?
"That may be true but… Are you really in any condition to command?" Vatee spoke of the same doubts Mana was experiencing deep down as if she could peer into them through the stony façade. "Drasko might be a war criminal but he has experience leading marauders into committing said war crimes…"
"We cannot kill or destroy Mizumi Kesho. But that doesn't mean we can't stop him. We can still ring him out and eliminate him that way," Mana signaled the rest of the Chaos Factor without confronting Vatee's doubts. Frankly, Mana didn't feel like she could do that right now.
"We should forget it…" Poru suggested with that haunting grimace of a flashy totem statue. "Priskom's obsession with eliminating this juggernaut caused us all these problems, to begin with. He might still be competing if it weren't for this obsession."
"Look at it…" Galdva objected by turning to the sides and scanning the surroundings of their district of the battlefield. "No one's attacking us. That must be because we're picking a fight with this man. Nobody wants to end up in his crosshairs. Perhaps eliminating him is for the best?"
"Let's go then!" Vatee slithered back and coiled to prepare for a lunge. Cracking the jaw of the statue she embodied open, the serpentine Statuman sprayed a jet of murky green liquid that engulfed Mizumi Kesho and sizzled on contact. It was a peculiar type of acid that didn't corrode through chemical means but appeared to burn on contact with any other compound save for oxygen. The smoldering black smoke trails from across Mizumi Kesho's body suggested that much.
Galdva popped his own massive jaw open, spraying a stream of flames that singed flesh off of the serial killer's bone, reducing it to paper tags once more and then burning them off to stacks of scattering ash. Poru charged onward, slamming his hammering clubs for arms down and shattering the charred remains while Mana lowered her head.
Channeling all the anguish and uncertainty, all the need to return to her true body and regret over Priskom's fate, drawing from her many past regrets before that, all of it began accumulating in discharges of mustard-colored electricity that passed up the dolphin-horse statue and focused at the tip of the Five-Tails' horns. It formed a round sphere of spiritual energy and when Mana couldn't hold it any longer; she let it go, releasing a tunneling wave of energy that tossed the bones that were garnering paper tags and regain their flesh aside. The half-reformed slasher leaned back, feeling as if he was struggling against an ongoing current, and then flew rolling back as said current effortlessly washed him away.
The audience clamored in terror when the mangled remains of Mizumi Kesho slammed into the protective wall in between their stands and the arena on the lower floors. The entire arena of warriors and the audience turned silent as none of them expected to see the hush-hush serial killer of urban legends and the lone reason it was dangerous to tread into the Rice Country crash into the wall outside of the arena and remain slumped while his flesh reformed.
"Mizumi Kesho from the serial killers' group is eliminated! The remaining number of contestants is now 152!" the announcer brought life back to the arena as the audience cheered for the unexpected loophole that rendered even indestructible dreads such as Mizumi Kesho susceptible to elimination.
"Well, that was unexpected. You've learned to tap into your spiritual chakra at last…" Drasko let out a husky hiss. "Maybe you'll stop being a weak link for once. Just in time, since our ranks had dropped one short."
"Yep, that's how you do it!" Poru danced side-to-side, switching legs as he hopped from one to another, flailing his arms over his head. "It wasn't anything too impressive for now, but it was more than enough to send that guy flying off the arena bounds!"
"Hmmm?" Vatee's focus tightened as she wrapped her serpentine body around Mana. "Something's off…" she mumbled.
"Indeed, no self-righteous remarks or response. How very unlike our virtue-signaling companion…" Drasko hissed in mockery.
"This… This isn't a joke, guys. Spiritual chakra comprises one's own ethereal essence. What if Mana overdid it and irradiated her own essence at that butcher, deleting herself from existence?" Galdva chattered his painted decorative teeth in worry. "If that's the case, all that remains of her now is this empty statue."
"That'd be a bummer…" Poru thought to himself, tapping the side of his head with his clobbering forearms to stimulate thought.
"Don't let the announcer notice for as long as we can. We don't want to send any messages that our ranks have weakened any more than they already have. Plenty enough people here want us out of the competition already," Drasko issued a command while flickering away in search of the next target to eliminate.
Fortunately for the Chaos Factor, some other matter occupied the attention of both the warriors on the battlefield and the audience and the announcer as Mizumi Kesho grumbled with his arms raised over his head and began expanding a field of bubbling bog around him, spreading all the way onto the stage and into the announcer stands. Upon the touch of the corrupting area, the Sun Disc announcer stands and the arena alike began to decay and liquify, becoming part of the expanding bog.
"Oh my! It appears that Mizumi Kesho isn't bright enough to understand the fact he's been eliminated! He seems dead-set on continuing his rampage!" the announcer gasped in terror before leaning over the stand. "Please, anyone near the eliminated butcher, please flee for your lives!"
"Water Style: Fierce Whirlpool!" a gentle-faced shinobi with a Takigakure headband and spiky, long charcoal-colored hair weaved his hands together. Rising from the moisture of the slasher's own bog came a soaring twisting whirlpool that knocked the goliath up like a rag doll. With a cool and completely careless look in his azure eyes, the Takigakure ninja fixed his glare on the airborne monster. "If you wish to attack the audience, you'll have to go through me first," he declared.
A man in peanut-colored trousers and suit pulled out a kunai dispenser and fired a few knives into the airborne target, nailing him in both eyes and once in each joint. Even the coolheaded Takigakure ninja turned to the member of the spy team with respectful awe. The spy rolled his dispenser in his arm and pocketed it before pulling out a lighter and lighting up the smoke. The kunai attached to the killer detonated all at once, timed like clockwork. Body parts splattering paper tags that spat black sludge in all directions began raining down from above with the distraction, giving the audience ample time to retreat to safety.
"That was impressive accuracy," the Takigakure ninja admitted to the spy. "Entirely pointless, though. Physical harm cannot hurt Mizumi Kesho."
"Either way, can't have you ninja hogging all the fun and credit for saving the audience. You believe civilians serve you, well, we spies are public servants, so we serve the civilians. I'd be a lousy spy if I stood idly by and let even one civilian get hurt after you tried your best and mucked it all up," the spy blew smoke out into the air, enjoying his cigarette and a break in all the fighting as one-by-one, the nearby warriors shifted their attention to trying to stop Mizumi Kesho.
Just as the Takigakure ninja turned to argue, an arrow buzzed past his hair and hit the slowly regenerating Mizumi Kesho straight in the chest with a deep plunge that downed the behemoth. The fleeing audience turned around, observing a black swirl of shifting dimensions taking Mizumi Kesho as the eliminated archer girl from Fennec's Crew panted, having landed a bullseye shot from all across the other side of the audience stands.
"Well, it seems like both of us have been spat over by that young lady," the spy flicked his cigarette away and extinguished it by rubbing it into the ground with his boot. The mushy bog that began consuming the arena hardened bit by bit again, comprising a tough surface of rock that had softened like grilled cheese before softening instantly back to its droopy state.
"Hmph… The audience will think she's a hero for removing Mizumi Kesho from the equation with her Time-Space Seal arrow, but she most likely transported Mizumi Kesho only she knows where. That means that even if Fennec's crew lose this tournament, they've won an unstoppable asset to terrorize the entire world with," the Takigakure ninja made a dire expression that was in stark contrast to his previous cool and unbothered vibe. What was even worse–he couldn't confront or eliminate this woman either, being in the middle of his mission.
It seemed that the balance of the world powers would shift in more than one, obvious way after this tournament…