"I see you fancy yourself a grandmaster of weaponry of sorts," Long Ben leaned back and shoved his round belly out from under his coat, marveling at the majestic appearance of the Salvari warrior he decided to nab for his Gold Country people. "I'll have you know I started out as a pirate hunter myself, so I am more than familiar with the craft of sword-fighting."
As if to prove the worth behind his words, Long Ben pulled out a saber and adopted a ridiculous stance for a sword fighter that would've baffled any samurai or a mercenary that wielded a sword. It was as if the famed Pirate King leaned his entire body back, thrusting merely his sword-fighting arm and the blade itself forward. Meanwhile, his other hand wrapped around the wrist and sought to protect the hand from harm.
In a bountiful leap, the graceful Salvari warrior rushed forward, swinging his golden mace-wielding hand down and forcing Long Ben to slip aside from it. Clouds of blue smoke spread accompanied by electrical currents and fireballs as the lower sets of arms began a pulverizing offense. Each hand slipped inside of a decorated gauntlet with a long blade protruding from the tip. Oddly enough, while Bishiyari proved to be superior in terms of a sword-fighting style that protected his hands, Everyman's impeccable footwork and delicate movement of his lone sword permitted him to deflect the innumerable strikes coming at him.
"You pretend to be sophisticated, powerful, and regal, yet your fighting style is barbaric and you use your own flesh to protect your sword-fighting hand. Your advancements in warfare pale compared to even the most basic of our weapons," Bishiyari scolded the Pirate King. "Your vanity and disregard for other people you see as lesser, treating foreigners no better than you treat trinkets and coin, is an evil that must be crushed and rooted."
"Excuse me, were you saying something, savage? I must say, I am thoroughly distracted by these haunting faces all over your body. What a positively freaky sight!" Long Ben shivered, hopping a few times just to circulate the adrenaline coursing through his body and settling back in his unique one-arm forward, whole body leaning back stance.
With a slick metallic noise, the swords retracted into their gauntlets with the tall amalgamation of ten blue-skinned unborn men reached for the belt wrapped around his waist that held his robe tight and kept it from ruffling about when the wearer moved swiftly. The segments comprising the belt proved to be easily detachable and each of these rings shot out a hand-long spike of dark grey alloy that then released two golden ends on each side with bright blue energy connecting the golden rods and the central spike and completing the punch-knife aesthetic.
"Mock the avatars of the Supreme Being of Ultimate Goodness at your own peril," Bishiyari warned his opponent with a soothing voice from which one could only surmise the best of intentions. "It is not their fault that they were not the avatar necessary to purge all evil. However, they are still an exalted part of the Supreme Being of Ultimate Goodness and, as such, you empower your own doom by insulting them."
"I appear to have encountered a savage of limited intelligence," Long Ben waved his sword about. Bishiyari's iron-colored eyes carefully followed the hypnotic movement of the blade, and because of that, they could tell exactly when the sword turned black. While the first thought on Bishiyari's mind was that this blackness let the sword cut sharper or made it adamant and immune to dulling or breaking, when the Pirate King drove the blade into the ground beneath his feet, it disappeared into it, causing the stone-hard tiles of the arena to ripple like an ocean's surface. The thrust drained the blade of its shadowy appearance and created a bog of black waves underneath Long Ben Everyman. "It is of no import, as it will not impair the fact you possess your outlandish appearance, so your presentability will remain intact."
Black arms burst forth from the shadowy bog, filling the air with haunting screeches as featureless faces with empty mouths that led to nowhere and empty eye sockets emerged from the shadows. The nature of these shadowy men Long Ben Everyman employed remained a mystery, though their haunting appearance did half the job for their master. With grace and precision, Bishiyari danced through the ranks of an advancing army of shadow men, cutting clean through them with blinding speed and precision. It didn't take too long for the Supreme Being of Ultimate Goodness to appear before Long Ben.
"Now pay for your heresies, greed, and insolence! One Thousand Reincarnations!" Bishiyari chanted with a disgruntled expression that was uncommon for the usually serene presence of the Siamese decuplet. His countless punch-knife-wielding arms ravaged his opponent, punching hundreds of thousands of times a second, and unleashing bolts of solid light. Golden beams of radiance and certain goodness that were to bust the wall of evil that Bishiyari had challenged.
Each fist resonated with a pound of a thousand ripping thunderbolts and sent a beam of light coursing through the obstacle in the Supreme Being's path. So endless were the barrages of goodness-imbued punches that it appeared for a second that reality itself became too overburdened in processing them, as nothing else seemed to exist but the towering Protector of Goodness and his nine unborn avatars, all swinging wildly to decimate all evil before them.
Bishiyari concluded his serene dance with a pose of benevolence, pressing two of his hands together in prayer as the others vanquished the punch knives they wielded and connected the rings back to a belt position, slipping it over the giant's waist while the rest of the arms struck a star-like pose and basked in the desert sunlight gleaming behind him. With the evils of ridicule and greed decimated, all was good again.
"Incredible! Ladies and gentlemen! We've wondered for a while if we would see the majestic Bishiyari fight seriously. It isn't often that the Supreme Salvari fights, as he only employs as much strength as he deems necessary to crush particularly wicked opponents, but this is the first time we've seen Bishiyari fight someone so rotten to the core that his One Thousand Reincarnations turn them into a literal gold statue!" the announcer bawled, thrashing about and refusing to believe that punches, no matter how many, could turn a man into solid gold.
"Neo Providence!" a shout ripped through the stage as a vehement blow of an expanded golden fist slammed straight into the center of Bishiyari's face. Long Ben Everyman's face remained coated with a golden layer and static in its joyful expression and a full-mouth smile. Black, shadowy tendrils whipped from the ground, wrapping themselves around the golden forearm and pumping it in size, and it grew larger and larger until the whole area began reverberating with microscopic tremors.
It all came back with a bright singularity. An instantly expanding flash that then left fractures across the super-sized fist and, in a lone sonic boom, the golden layer coating Long Ben Everyman shattered, leaving the stumbling Pirate King fully exposed to the elements and surprised that the reverberation from his limit-breaking power cracked his own shell before moving his opponent one inch back.
"You cannot win," Bishiyari boldly claimed, placing each of his pairs of hands together in a prayer position before shutting himself off from the dark and violent world he felt responsible for bringing light and goodness into. "Do you know why? It's because you possess evil inside your heart. And as long as even an ounce of evil, chaos, or destruction stands before me, I shall cleanse it all and restore order and goodness."
"That mouth of yours will annoy the bystanders incessantly. I do not believe that can be remedied without removing your tongue. I'd probably have done it, anyway. Adds to the mystery of a freaky savage, you know…" Everyman grumbled. Just as he shoved the lapels of his coat aside and ripped his shirt open, exposing a tattoo of a sealing glyph, a black serpent with starry scales and flaming eyes emerged out of nowhere and coiled from a mysterious space behind Bishiyari, swallowing both Long Ben Everyman and the Supreme Being of Ultimate Goodness whole.
"What in the devil…?" Long Ben looked around, trying to determine what sort of dimension the serpent stored him inside as the Pirate King had slumbered within the stomachs of leviathan beasts and this neither felt nor smelled like either of those times. A cosmic pulse, radiating with white shrouds and quaking the entire sealing dimension the pair found themselves in, sent the baffled pirate into a stumble.
A lone white dot of light sparked into being, expanding as it swallowed the darkness and spat out stars and galaxies in return. The sheer scale of the instantaneous creation overwhelmed the Pirate King as, long before he knew it, everything became bright and tranquil and all was good again. From within that white goodness, Bishiyari descended and brought alongside him heavenly and serene daylight, landing atop a layer of thick white liquid underneath him that smelled of almonds and rippled gently, yet was soft to the touch and had a milky substance.
"All this mongrel witchcraft may humble lesser men, miscreation, but I'll have you know that in the civilized world, even children can recognize illusions," Long Ben pointed his finger at the silent Bishiyari.
"I shall grant you one final chance to repent. Accept your defeat, surrender, and liberate all slaves in your country. Live a life in which liberty and joy are the values you pursue and base your country's way of life around," Bishiyari opened his eyes, revealing a blue iris ring in their center.
"With the abhorrent conditions of your birth and your nature as a savage, you seem to lack the intellectual capacity to comprehend the situation you are in," Long Ben pointed his finger at the praying Siamese decuplet. "It is the responsibility of a gentleman to elucidate the mongoloid masses, however, so I will do thusly…"
A round puddle of black goop expanded around Long Ben Everyman's feet, creating a bog that was the birthplace of his shadow men. As the first of a handful of shadow men rose from the bog, the Pirate King walked up to one of his semi-faceless servants and leaned down over it, grabbing his chin and turning its empty-eyed and noseless face up for a better examination, almost like one would examine a horse they were about to buy.
"You may have seen these strapping dear chaps around. Though, based on your misguided mongrel self-righteousness and the ferocity with which you've done away with them, I'll surmise that you are unaware of their origin and nature. Allow me to be a dandy and decipher this mystery for you," Long Ben Everyman looked up at the serene-faced slender giant with a dozen praying limbs and plentiful tattoos decorating the exposed body that took some getting used to in order to look at it without staring. "As even your limited savage intelligence has already put together, people are not only an available, but a worthwhile commodity on Gold Country. However, to truly make the best out of this investment, one must know how to put this spare chaff to good use."
"Is this your confession?" Bishiyari raised an eyebrow.
"More like a lesson in the finer aspects of the art of the hustle," Long Ben Everyman shrugged. "To some, the manpower necessary to do the mundane chores and ungentlemanly dirty work would be enough value, but to one such as myself, pertaining of course to my uncanny talents, I find mere work hands to be a waste. If you can't juice out all from your investment, you shouldn't be hustling in the first place. That's how I became the Pirate King–not by being the strongest or winning the most battles, but by getting the right tools for the right jobs, making the right plans, and seeing them to fruition."
"Are you saying that these minions of yours are… People you own?" Bishiyari broke from his prayer, placing his bare foot down on the milky surface and lowering all of his arms to hang loosely by his sides as he clenched their fists in simmering acrimony.
"Something of this sort. I am such an astounding businessman that I not only excel at that which none of my contemporaries can achieve but my savvy, polished by life in civilized society, also allows me to use my commodities for their intended purpose too. In other words, I employ their husks to do manual labor, while their souls work as my crew in the field of battle," Long Ben Everyman extended his hands as if marveling at the genius of his own grand scheme. "I can even wager their souls in exchange for my own, rendering me immortal as long as I have stocks to burn."
Bishiyari closed his eyes, inflating his face-littered chest until it became perfectly round, and then breathing out a sigh cluttered with mixed emotional baggage. The Supreme Being's shoulders slumped, bringing a few pairs of his unborn siblings' arms to teeter in front of his hunched body. Long Ben Everyman raised his index finger to address his opponent, feeling inclined to permit him to take his time to wrap his head around the scheme the Pirate King had just explained to him as if that was the problem here, but with a paper-thin outline of solid light, Long Ben's words became stuck in his throat.
"It's okay, I don't expect someone of your abominable features and square brain to understand the complexities of civilized entrepreneurship. That is why you will be more of a physical attraction to the citizens of Gold Country, like a one-man freak show, if you will, with you being the entire show, of course. Look at it this way–you'll still get to be "Supreme" in something…" Long Ben Everyman began rapid-firing words, trying to nail the exact pressure point to get on the same page as his opponent without fathoming that the two of them weren't even reading from the same book.
"Since you've been so forthcoming, it is time I share something too," Bishiyari raised one of his many right hands in the air and pointed his index finger to the sky of the limitless daylight void they found themselves trapped in after being devoured by Bishiyari's serpent. "I am easily the most powerful of all Salvari warriors, however, sometimes that is difficult to prove because I never fight with my full potential. Each time I face an opponent, it is only if they are wicked, full of arrogance or they use their strength to bully the less fortunate. And every time I use the exact amount of strength necessary to eradicate their evil presence and not a speck more. Because, while violence is in and of itself evil, just enough violence to stop malice is, in fact, justice. By admitting to the true nature and scale of your wickedness, you've essentially just unchained me to use any amount of strength I desire to vanquish you because a heart as rotten and irredeemable as yours cannot keep beating."
"I so dread to interrupt your most fascinating drivel, wretch, but you should know that, because the nature of the illusionary arts is well-known to me from my time fending off ninja hunting me, I am undoing your, admittedly, impressive illusion as we speak with the aid of my shadowy assets," the Pirate King interjected, looking utterly unimpressed by the galactic ellipse full of gem-colored stars and miniature planets forming at the tip of the Supreme Being's finger.
"Hmph… Face your punishment," Bishiyari exclaimed, moving his galaxy-armed index finger toward the monarch of a self-described civilized society. This mockery and pretentiousness never left Long Ben Everyman's eyes all the way until they rolled back and the twitching chubby began undergoing drastic transformations from the influx of the energy and cosmic knowledge he had absorbed while trapped in the illusion.
It was as if a flaming, tumorous growth had formed inside of Long Ben Everyman, a blazing bile that shifted from one limb to another, inflating a part of his body to which it surged to cartoonish proportions until shifting to another body part. All the while, the Pirate King's expression became a miserable version of its earlier self as his whited-out eyes and his smile turned to a downward frown from an insurmountable head-splitting strain.
Stumbling back, further into the infinite void of eternal daylight, Long Ben became so full of boundless knowledge seeping through his allegedly civilized body that it lifted him off the ground and distorted the very illusionary dimension he was in, turning it all into black blotches of ink over a white and silky sheet. The slave owner's body popped, just like the balloon he had become, unraveling from within into beaming rays of twisted malady as the magnetars, planets, quasars, and stars sprinkled in all directions from the Big Bang localized entirely within one man of infinite greed and endless vanity. A man who lived a long and prosperous life at other people's expense, shifting his share of troubles to the people he oppressed and the people he bought and sold.
"The Void of Milk is my domain, the poor souls under your enslavement may need just a second to return you from it on the physical plane, but here… I determine for how long a second lasts. No chaos escapes its due punishment in here," Bishiyari said in a monotone tone as if recounting a mantra while his opponent met the order to match his chaos.
Like a handful of ash thrown into the air, Long Ben Everyman vanished in a burst that scattered his husk from which countless things came to be while the illusionary dimension unraveled as the Big Bang of the mind hosting this endless illusionary dimension became its end, rather than its origin. However, in this end, it gave the fruit to many promising new beginnings, free of Long Ben's oppression.
"Supreme Being!" a handful of other colorful and exuberant Salvari warriors rushed to the decaying husk of a serpent that vomited a room-sized egg while it rot into ashes around it. The glowing ethereal egg cracked, revealing inside its shell Bishiyari in an exalted pose of prayer and his opponent, utterly lifeless and greyed out. The only semblance of vigorous color in Long Ben's remains that surfaced from the illusion were the white rolled-back eyes and his pearly whites stretched out in a horror-ridden expression across his face.
"Dispose of this shell. All the contracts are void, his mind is shattered and now I shall sleep," the supreme Salvari snapped his fingers only for a gigantic bronze-scale cobra to enclose its crown around him and coil into a resting position.
"No surprises here, the Protector of Order, the Supreme Salvari - Bishiyari crushed Long Ben Everyman! The Pirate King is no more, it seems, and Gold Country will need to find a new monarch to govern it, also, this leaves it at 133 contestants left!" the announcer sealed the deal of Long Ben Everyman's participation. The soulless statue-head Galdva used to reside in, now laid bound by chains outside of the arena's bounds, half-submerged in soft and grassy soil while the battle royale continued.