The spider-like Cursed Warrior that rested on the floor asleep after the Sky Warrior Giniata hypnotized it, rumbled, shaking off the dust and terrifying those around the awakening Cursed Warrior. So far, these colossi proved themselves more than just formidable but flat-out invincible. Many different factions of warriors tried challenging these walking forts, but none of them succeeded.
"Cursed Warrior…" a lone phantom dressed in black and wearing a white crown atop a hippo's head it wore as a mask or a helmet addressed the risen behemoth. "You've come here to compete alongside warriors, yet I am not convinced that you are entirely human. Be it a walking fortress or a living super-weapon of mass destruction, you do not deserve to occupy space amongst men and women of flesh and blood."
The arachnoid giant leaned its frontal head platform decorated with man-sized red gemstones that could've acted like both windows or the eyes of the stone creature and let out a thunderous growl that ripped through the entire arena and made the spectators cover their ears. It helped little as the resonance formed, spreading shockwaves rippling the very water comprising the water inside every person there.
The black cloak that the hippo-headed serial killer donned ruffled, revealing a feminine body dressed in a worn and filthy nurse's uniform underneath. With the resonating clamor settling down, the cloak rested back into place and concealed the only signs of this woman's humanity in her pale, moist skin and her spoiled uniform.
"Not only do you occupy space reserved for human beings, but you occupy so much of it too. The grounded lot amongst you occupy most of the space of this arena, for crying out loud," the nurse concealing her face underneath the belfry of a beheaded hippo with rolled back, terrified eyes and tongue that flapped out from its chubby jaw spoke completely unintimidated by the boisterous roar of the Cursed Warrior.
Yet when the many-legged fort tilted its front segmented limb of black stone pillars into the air and bent it over the location of the daring or profoundly stupid serial killer, the sound of reeling steel wire slashed into everyone's taxed perception. For the second time in the same minute, the audience's faces twisted in disgust at that horrid sound as they instinctively reached for their ears. Before they could become too frazzled with it, however, a much chunkier rumbling sound piqued their curiosity.
One twitch at a time, the limb of the Cursed Warrior it intended to crush the serial killer with began turning out of shape. Inch by inch, the lower segment turned backward, while the upper one remained unmoved. This way, it was only to be a matter of time until the walking colossus fell apart. The lower segment of its leg popped and fell off with a crumble of a collapsing wall. Unbalanced, the Cursed Warrior stumbled back and began teetering over the back edge of the arena.
The audience began howling. Here it was–the elimination of the first Cursed Warrior. The invincible goliath cluttered up the arena and made a battle royale look like a scene of war with heavy rumbling equipment, destructive energy rays, and ground-shaking explosions. The cloaked nurse leaned down, adopting an all-fours stance before raising her hippo head. Because of the awkward balancing, the head leaned to the side in a partly slip off her face, revealing scarred and greasy lower jaw, slathered in dried innards.
"Do you hear it? Cheers… I've never been cheered for my work. Though honestly, people only usually observe the result. Not that I mind, my lessons are not intended for them, they're for the subjects," the woman said, moving her right arm forward stiffly. While initially, her arm moved slowly, once it touched the tile, the rest of the skittering motion came rushed. The arachnid skittering performed and imitated by an ordinary yet very disturbed human appeared quite a bit on the uncanny side, creeping out the casual beholder.
Before the nurse could approach her next and by far the most colossal victim, her right arm remained stuck to the ground. The sticky white strings attached to it forced the nurse to collapse and flop face-first. Her partly decomposed hippo head she wore as a mask smacked the ground quite hard, denting it from the front and making it look like someone had smashed the face of the poor animal with a brick. More and more of the slathered, scarred, and bloodied façade of the woman hiding underneath the mask could've been made out from the holes in the stripped and mushed flesh.
"Web…?" the serial killer turned her attention to that which was stuck to her hand and now stuck to more of her body as she flopped face-first into the sticky white substance. "My, my… You truly are more spider than man."
The red panels on the head platform of the teetering Cursed Warrior lit up. They flashed with complex, synchronized, and sometimes symmetrical patterns, though the intensity of the light they flashed with picked up more and more. The serial killer turned her head to the side, bubbling with inquisitiveness. One by one, destructive rays of magenta-colored light flashed from the glowing gemstones according to their pattern of flashing. They beamed like the light of a vibrant disco ball, moving in a scanning motion until a handful converged upon the place where the stuck serial killer laid.
Despite what must have been immense heat and searing pain covering her whole body, the overwhelmed woman didn't scream. Silent, her body lifted off like a bag of bones, with the web keeping her stuck in place, burning up in a blink. Her black cloak ripped and burned, and the hippo's head dissolved, revealing a diseased face that was cluttered with tumors, some of which interfered with the ordinary look of a human face. Some of them left teeth displaced and while the serial killer had long black hair, it only grew in a select handful of patches of her scarred face.
The Cursed Warrior leaned its head forward, overcoming the imbalance that was about to send it out of bounds. Its front smashed into the ground while its still healthy hind legs began carving and digging through the arena tiles, forcing the fallen fortress to walk forward as its complex system of gemstones beamed destructive energy beams.
"To be human is to know suffering. Unlike a building or a weapon, a human is innately flawed. Diseased. If you wish to prove to us your humanity, you must show us you too can suffer, that you too know the failings in your design and fight on through the circus of life despite them, led by nothing other than that magnificent human spirit. That is what it means to be human," the serial killer woman stood up and reached for something tucked underneath her torn and hole-ridden skirt of the decayed, dirty, and bloody nurse uniform.
A loud seismic shock rumbled through the section of the arena where the convulsing Cursed Warrior dragged itself closer to the injured serial killer. The diseased woman covered her face and turned to the side, avoiding the chunks of debris and dust. It was only after a few moments when the dust settled that she moved her hand away and admired the view of an impaled Cursed Warrior's head platform fallen into a trap pit full of needles wrapped in size-expansion sealing tags that made them almost house-sized.
"Now is your chance to prove to us your humanity. Struggle, bleed and, for the first time since your creation, live!" with manic obsession and bloodshot eyes, the sickly serial killer approached the trap hole and lowered herself to the ground, pulling her upper body over the edge as she marveled at the display. A ripping blast sent her flying away from the hole as an explosion went off on the upper right side of the Cursed Warrior's head.
A chain reaction that spread through the rest of the broken body of the cursed beast of stone and primal energies followed the first rip. The same forces that held the obsidian connected now sought to break it, smash it, rip and toss it apart as far away as possible. The warriors all turned to the lukewarm sight of the colossus' destruction while the audience roared for the elimination of the first Cursed Warrior that, instead of freeing up more space, granted another scar to the landmark of the Sun Disc arena to fight on–the carcass of the Cursed Beast.
"U-Unbelievable! Who would've guessed that someone belonging to a faction with nearly half of their members eliminated already would score the first elimination on a Cursed Warrior!? There you have it–Aizuru the Trial Killer has cleverly set all the traps she needed to eliminate the Cursed Warrior Batsuru while the beast was slumbering!" the announcer pumped and shot his fists high into the air. "We will now see if one of the 123 other competitors will attempt to exploit the opportunity and kick Aizuru herself before she can set more traps!"
"You!" a man in the peak of the human condition, wearing a black and orange sleeveless jumpsuit, calmly approached a man nearly twice his size with amber-colored skin and a regal blue robe wrapped around one side of his chiseled chest. The Salvari warrior had a sophisticated golden headdress decorating his head. The jeweled headdress looked like a bona fide crown, leading to the warrior making a kingly first impression upon those he looked at with glowing cerulean eyes. "You're one of these Salvari warriors, aren't you?"
The amber-skinned king, who may have easily passed for a statue in most circles, stood up from a cross-legged position. There were two women surrounding him from each side who looked very displeased because the exalted Salvari warrior stepped up to the martial artist seeking a challenge. The royal Salvari kneeled by the knee with a benevolent look on his face and extended his hands in welcoming the martial artist who fought through hordes of warriors before reaching the Salvari from a whole different corner of the arena.
"My name is Darthkama. I am a Salvari," Darthkama nodded in confirmation with a tender look at the curious challenger, who stood with a wide-open stance, feeling completely undaunted by the exotic-looking and accomplished Salvari warriors around his target.
"That's putting it mildly," one of Darthkama's female Salvari companions interjected. "Here in the Sun Disc arena, besides gauntlets and exhibition fights, there are several tournament classes that are being run: Rumble Class, King Class, Sun Class, World Class, and God Class. God Class tournaments are comprised entirely out of fighters carrying the title of God or Goddess of the Arena, and in order to be acknowledged as a Salvari, one must win at least one God Class tournament. Darthkama has won seven."
"I see, that is very impressive!" the energetic martial artist clapped with a genuine smile of admiration. "I have been thoroughly taken aback by the level of competition here. You must be an impressive combatant to have won not one but multiple tournaments against opponents calling themselves Gods of the Arena."
"Calling themselves? You fucking zit, I'll fucking kill you!" a wild woman with snow-white skin and tribal tattoos decorating it stepped up, drawing sickles from her back and stepping up to teach this insulting martial artist his final lesson.
"Calm down, Shakali. Violence is no answer to being insulted, besides, we can't yet be sure if this man meant to insult us, to begin with. I swear, you should spend more time talking to people and connecting with them, then maybe you'd have more fans," Darthkama placed a gentle hand on the shoulder of his companion. The blood-red drained from the whites of the woman's eyes that were sunken in hefty black bags only accentuated by black tar smears around the eyes. The pumping tension began to elevate the hair of the Salvari warrior, but Darthkama's interruption seemed to nullify the tension completely.
"I don't get paid and adored for talking to people. I get paid for decapitations and butchery! That's where my fans are!" Shakali grumbled, wanting to flip out at the gentle Salvari giant, but feeling too impartial to him to freak out like she usually did.
"I did not mean to insult you at all. It's just that calling yourselves the "Gods" of the arena makes me naturally eager to challenge you. After all, I called the Messiah of Martial Arts myself!" Jet raised his cheeks up in a cocky smirk while pointing at himself with his thumb.
"You don't strike me as someone pursuing an empty conflict for the sake of violence itself. In you I see a curious and lively soul, eager to prove yourself, to teach what you know… And to learn," Darthkama nodded, placing his hands together in prayer before walking out in front of his two Salvari companions and standing directly in front of Jet. Darthkama was no longer kneeling or leaning before the martial artist. Now they stood as equals. Each as excited to exchange fists and kicks as the other.
Jet leaned toward his opponent, bringing his bent arm and the back of his fist with a slam just to test the waters. A rowdy pop spread in all directions and it was as if Jet's fist hit a wall made of solid nothingness. A bright flash overwhelmed Jet's senses, making his dark eyes turn grey and blanked out while Darthkama leaned forward with a haymaker to crush his opponent in what he saw as a moment of weakness. Despite the smoke and mirrors, Jet ducked under the strike and repeated the step-in backfist to force the striking arm to overreach.
Seeing a whole left side open, Jet punched at Darthkama's ribs before jumping into the air high enough to reach Darthkama's face, and drove the back of his hand to the face of the amber-skinned giant. The two Salvari women gasped as the pride and joy of the Salvari hovered in mid-air and slammed flat on his back, humbled by a mere man. A martial artist, not too much different from the hordes that a Salvari warrior crushes daily in the arena.
"That was just the basics," Jet swiped his thumb under his nose without dropping his proud grin. "I expected someone they call a "God of the Arena", even better–a God amongst Gods, to be better than this."
"You'll have to forgive me," Darthkama sighed while popping his glowing eyes wide open and sitting up. "I was too absorbed in my own entertainment. I thought that the Halo of Salvation technique will rob you of your sight and hearing like it does most warriors, so I held back. I seek to enjoy this meeting as much as I can, so I didn't want to crush you immediately."
"Consider yourself shown that you do not need to worry about that around me," Jet began a swift and deceptive sway while adopting a martial arts stance. As proven already, the so-called Messiah of Martial Arts could explode with tremendous might at any moment from this swaying stance and deliver all of his punishment in no time at all. Even the Gods of the Sun Disc respected Jet's speed, as evidenced by his earlier exchange. "You may have robbed me of my sight and hearing temporarily, but that is no detriment to me. Each of my senses is so honed that I can switch between them to guide me at any given time."
"It is merely a test I put martial artists through. Us Salvari have awakened our eyes to see dharma itself, for it is all that we need to see. The ability to function without sight or hearing is a sign of a budding Salvari when you encounter it in the arena," Darthkama nodded in acknowledgment of Jet's skill.
"Enough lessons, let's fight!" Jet barked out, kicking off to a rapid charge toward his opponent as he threw another backfist strike at Darthkama. Yet again, he only hit a wall of thin air that burst into an ear-popping and sight-robbing flash. Jet elegantly hopped back and took a defensive stance, eagerly awaiting the Salvari's counterattack, but nothing came his way.
Jet turned, driving a swift jab straight into another popping halo of light. This one sent a tremendous shock resonating through the martial artist's arm, but besides a meek facial tick, Jet didn't show pain. He turned again, driving the back of his fist into an incoming popping halo right behind him. While Jet's counterattack detonated the starry flashbang, the force packed within sent Jet flying in a vertical spin. With the best of his effort, Jet stopped himself and landed on both feet, dragging his thumb under his nose and turning his head to feel other incoming Halos of Salvation.
"Impressive, Messiah, you truly see the dharma even without your eyes or ears. You see it with your spirit itself. Remarkable!" Darthkama commended Jet from behind the martial artist. Jet turned his head in reaction to Darthkama's voice, making the mistake of getting caught in a point-blank Halo blast. Darthkama thrust his open palms out, switching in between different praying poses while the chained explosions of Halos juggled his opponent from left to right, from up to down.
At long last, Darthkama threw a real punch, sending a visible aerial ripple with a Halo of Salvation at the front of it, like a starry tip of an arrow. Jet's body bent out of shape and the martial artist's eyes whited out as the tip of the tunneling star ray dug into his gut and sent him skidding across into the nearest lump of rubble. Darthkama adopted a more reserved praying posture, closing his glowing dharma-seeing eyes and abandoning his trial. The God of Arena to the Seventh Degree turned around, wishing to leave this place of profound disappointment only to hear a resonant crack.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Jet burst out from the stone, charging at Darthkama and assaulting him with a flurry of blows, the speed, and power of which took even the long-legged giant of amber skin by surprise. "All my eyes see is chi, the fundamental life force that flows through everything. Chi-Sight is essential to martial arts! I wouldn't have left the kwoon without it!"
The two godly martial artists exchanged blows, each blow meeting a block or a redirection that led to a counterattack. They danced a dangerous yet marvelous at the same time dance of life and death. A unique form of physical arts, the passion for which they both shared, even though they came from vastly different backgrounds. Each of the pair had reached a certain mountaintop of excellence in what they did, and meetings such as these were essential to determine which one of them was superior and truer on their path to purity.