A spiky blue and yellow blur blitzed past the ankles of the armored golem under the Fennec crew's employ, sending the giant to its knees with a resounding, artificially augmented, mournful cry. Quill-Man unraveled from his spinning blitz with a ferocious pose, lining the kneeling giant for elimination but, before he could slice him up to bits, Quill-Man hit a wall of glass spikes in his way. Because of the intense augments on his rolling back blades beaming with a chakra coating, Quill-Man busted through and sliced it up to a diamond hail of shatters, but he stood up to face another opponent in front of the humbled golem.
"You guys don't have many competitors left in this. You would have been wiser to sit still and avoid trouble," Vizeriman noted, pointing his finger at his opponent as an accusation of a crime that would be the cause of the failure of both Quill-Man and the superhero faction.
"Sorry, bud. Sittin' still just ain't my style!" Quill-Man snarled, putting up the blades on his back, the back of his head, elbows, ankles, and heels. "Just like that Wulithmes guy, you could be trouble if you advanced ahead. Might be for the better that I finish you off here and now."
"I am sure that no other competitor amongst those I've eliminated has had that brilliant idea before," the transformed Vizeriman taunted his opponent while showcasing the majesty of his prismatic form, shining split rainbow rays of elegant sunlight in all directions. With a mere flex of Vizeriman's wings, cascades of shredding glass shrapnel bombarded toward Quill-Man, forcing the superhero to roll up into a ball and take off.
Quill-Man sliced and diced the ground he rolled through until he curled up with perfect tightness and formed an airwave around, becoming more of a living cannonball than a shredding roller. Despite Vizeriman's corrections and the wide-angled range of his glass shard bombardment, Quill-Man bounced around with excellent grace and speed.
Vizeriman turned to his side, skipping his opponent as he would have slammed into Vizeriman's front and then smoothing out the surface of his glass wings to become less jagged, flatter, and more panel-like and causing a whirlwind around the area in which he flapped his wings. Before the second flap, Vizeriman jagged his wings up with the shrapnel of busted glass and imbued the walls of the hurricane with slicing glass created from the mystical sand produced by the Heart of the Desert artifact, compressed and heated into a glass form.
Quill-Man's pain-ridden growls filled the air as the howling gale pulled him in and the innumerable glass shrapnel buzzards ripped into him all over, tearing up his uniform, becoming embedded into or under the various light armor pieces that Quill-Man wore to protect himself from his many back blades cutting him after a careless motion. Sliced up and bleeding, Quill-Man flopped on his side unceremoniously when the glass tornado that had become crimson from the bloodied glass shards died down and the little sprinkles of reflective sunlight chinked onto the ground.
With a grunt that was equal part wrath and pain, Quill-Man ripped the pieces of armor that had tiny glass chunks jamming them or stuffing them down under the armor and slicing them into the flesh that the armor was meant to protect. His heroic yellow uniform hung with rips, tears, and tatters on Quill-Man's chubby body while the hardy superhero put up his dukes. The tattered yellow uniform exposed patches of dark skin underneath.
"I ain't done with you yet," he declared, staring at Vizeriman with a crystal-clear look and brutish snarl of slobber colored with traces of blood from the hero's many lacerations.
"What a coincidence, I didn't intend to let you off easy either," Vizeriman sighed. With a feral roar, Quill-Man kicked off the ground and lashed at the immortal carrier of the Heart of the Desert with a swipe of his hand. The cerulean gleam of base chakra coating grew into a mighty crescent slash, expanding outward further to where Vizeriman's brilliant, prismatic body was. With a shocked pair of eyes, Vizeriman looked down to witness his own body sliced diagonally in half.
"Such a pretty-boy with all those pretty-boy colors. 'Bout time someone cuts you down to size," Quill-Man snarled out, turning horizontally instead of rolling vertically and forming a whirlwind shredder of chakra-imbued blades with the focus of a ninja who spent their entire career perfecting chakra imbuement before becoming a hero. In just a few flashy blinks, Vizeriman became reduced to a handful of round glass slabs that slid apart from one another and thudded down on the ground. The lowermost couple of slabs shattered on impact with the tiles. "That's somethin' I missed bein' a ninja. Usually, those the most deservin' of some humility were the ones payin' my bills. Bein' a superhero doesn't pay as well, but it's a hell of a lot more cathartic!"
"That's an awfully shiny ball you've stuffed yourself full of," Quill-Man mumbled, approaching a glimmering ethereal sphere of raw energy, sparkling with rainbow colors and displaying a perfectly spherical shape despite appearing thick and liquid in texture. "It's too bad that powerful trinkets like these tend to fall to the least deservin' hands. Usually for the best that I make it so nobody can put their hands on it ever again!"
With a bestial howl, Quill-Man vaulted over the Heart of the Desert and slammed the back of his elbow into the artifact's core. The shimmering heart expelled beams of intense white light before sinking the entire country into its sparkling gleam. Once the flash and the shine died down, there was nothing. The Heart of the Desert was destroyed and just a bunch of piles of sand laid by Quill-Man's feet.
"Shit, I've got dirtbag all in my boots!" Quill-Man snarled, hopping back on one leg and pulling a boot off to shake all the ashen sand out of the damaged boot. Because of his wrecked and cut-up uniform, Quill-Man ended up cutting himself on his own swords a few times, wincing and cursing under his own nose each time, but accomplishing ridding himself of every tiny grain of Vizeriman left.
"Contestant Vizeriman has been eliminated!" the announcer bawled out, leaning over the railing in front of him with a face swollen red from tension and littered with veins. "What a shocking elimination! Contestant Vizeriman appeared to be able to take on all challengers from all factions, but it's almost as if slaying impassable, immortal challengers comes as second nature to the superhero known as Quill-Man!"
The audience rustled and boomed in shock and awe. When they first set their sights on the lame-looking, colorful, slouched, and round-bellied superhero, none of them thought much of him. When they saw the ranks of the heroes plummet, losing some of their heaviest hitters like Hero Man, Guard Woman, Smash-Man, Dandy, and Randy Men, it seemed as if though the elimination of the superheroes was all but inevitable, and yet most flamboyant, uncool and the least hero-looking one proved to be the most capable of defying even the tallest of odds.
Even an audience highly favoring their local gods of the arena, the Salvari, found a place in their hearts to welcome the most unlikely of challengers inside. A chubby, short, and hunched-over man well past the age of his physical prime, able to speak only in grunts and snarls with the voice of an experienced smoker, with the lamest fighting style that hurt him as much as his opponent, yet capable of slaying men worthy of ruling the entire world with their mountain-moving power and overcoming challenges of immortal foes. Deep down in the audience's hearts, the legend of Quill-Man was truly born, and they finally understood the meaning and the necessity of the superheroes.
"Damn! I can't believe I just flung away my Devil Suiboku like that!" Amerigo Hangyaku, a young punk onmyoji focusing solely on using his mana to augment his physical abilities, exclaimed, grabbing his head, and looking around with terror reflected on his face. Instead of being terrified of all the incomparable combatants around him, Amerigo Hangyaku was instead terrified of shattering this world of glass around him if he were to throw just a single punch with his unrestricted physical power.
Before he could do anything, however, a chilly white vapor left Hangyaku's breath, surprising the young man. A dark haze began shrouding his vision, a fog of malevolent miasma that made it impossible to see any further than three steps past his nose. The entrapped punk onmyoji looked around before throwing his gaze up in a static angle and realizing that he's been entrapped in a dome of vile and dark energy, produced by a reptilian-shaped Cursed Warrior with circular, glowing eyes, a Venus flytrap-shaped head, and spiky obsidian teeth.
"Buddy, you've got not even the slightest idea of what trouble you're brewing up here…" Amerigo groaned, cracking his knuckles, and expelling black static crackles of unruly mana, ready to break loose. He clenched his fists by his side and began breathing in and out deep. A teal-colored aura with an inky black outline surrounded Amerigo and burst outward with an unrelenting shove. The malevolent dome of cursed chakra became rippled with white cracks, casting rays of light out into the open before shattering like a glass dome.
With its black and green colors warping and twisting out of shape because of the chaotic and swift motion of the gigantic Cursed Warrior beast, the Venus flytrap reptilian smashed a hammer arm into the ground, casting an explosive concussive shockwave pillar into the air and crumbling the tiles all along the arena, causing a violent earthquake all around.
"Where are you even looking right now?" Amerigo Hangyaku mocked his opponent, flashing in and out of the Cursed Warrior's radar up in the air. With a shriek, artificially augmented whoops, the Cursed Warrior threw swift jabs of concussive force with the same malevolent cursed energy wrapped around its fists like gloves. No matter the speed or force, all that the Cursed Warrior could hit was thin air as afterimages of the punk onmyoji mocking his assailant vanished upon being hit.
After avoiding one of the strikes, Amerigo materialized out of thin air, kicking off a mound of debris and charging right at the colossal obsidian monster with neon mosaics. A thunderous right cracked into the slim chest of the living monolith weapon of mass destruction. The raw physical power elevated the massive obsidian reptilian off the ground while Amerigo ran through thin air, throwing a shoulder-led beatdown of shifting left and right arms.
A devastating roundhouse to the chin of the Venus flytrap head of the Cursed Warrior sent him tumbling backward in mid-air. Rolling through the air by using air pockets for platforms for movement in mid-air, the punk onmyoji rolled through the air and grabbed hold of the Cursed Warrior's head, shoving it down into a knee strike straight to its belfry before rolling his sleeves back and proceeding with an elementary barnyard brawling beatdown.
Once he felt like he had inflicted enough punishment, Amerigo vanished and appeared by the core of the long and slender abdomen of the obsidian reptilian, thrusting a rising high kick into it that shot the colossal obsidian beast shooting into the sky. The onmyoji apprentice didn't put all of his force into it, however, instead, he used half of that force to propel his own body rolling backward to put some space between him and the beast if it were to plummet back down.
"If I still had my Devil Suiboku, I could channel my mana and obliterate you with a good Black Magical Wave Slash! Though if you still haven't had enough, I'm more than willing to finish the work with my bare hands too," Amerigo pointed his finger up in the air. While the onmyoji didn't think that his opponent could hear him, somewhere inside the obsidian reptilian's head, strange symbols drew up on a salad-green reinforced glass screen—an exact translation of the onmyoji's warning. A woman with long, black hair and a strict, military-style uniform, and a heel-long dress piloting the Cursed Warrior squinted with ire from within the Cursed Warrior's belfry.
The obsidian reptilian rolled through mid-air, using its tail like a whip and slamming it straight at the punk onmyoji apprentice from an incredible distance. A vocal pained grunt colored the chaos of the battle royale. When the Cursed Warrior pulled its gecko-like tail away from its crash landing spot, the flattened rebellious young man laid sprawled out and bruised in the crater left by the whipping tail. Regardless of the damage that the Cursed Warrior thought it had inflicted, the young man kicked up and back to his feet, dusting himself off and throwing his onmyoji robe aside to reveal a sleeveless black shirt and baggy black trousers underneath.
"Alright, you've asked for it," he growled, moving his hands down to his thighs.
The Cursed Warrior extended its hand, surprising the burgundy-colored powerhouse youth with the fact that it had ranged attacks available to it. A gale of black, corrupted winds picked up, expelling tendrils of vile chakra from the tips of the Cursed Warriors' fingers, casting them at the confused young man and causing turbulent obliteration where the ranged finger beams hit the ground. Grunting and covered up, the onmyoji apprentice flew out of the blast zone as the destructive detonation flung him out and dragged him across most of the arena floor, tripping over other combatants as he swept through.
The burgundy-haired youth winced in pain as he pulled himself off the floor and patted his aching sores. His black shirt had been torn off and the damage he took to his outfit exposed the youthful and slender build underneath, decorated with many gemstone rings wherever piercings could have been put. The reptilian war beast whooped again, but the punk onmyoji swiped his hand to the side.
What initially may have looked like a mere dismissive motion proved to be a much more dangerous method of attack. The Venus-head froze stiffly and expelled an artificially enhanced grunt when something powerful hit it square in the chest and indented its black body out. Wild flocks of spark began spilling in all directions where the slashing wave of air, electrified with black electric crackles of the onmyoji's dark mana, socked the Cursed Warrior.
"Gee, I guess I still can attack you from a range, even if I'm not good enough with ranged spells yet. If a hand chopping through the air hits hard enough, it can create airwaves hitting as hard as the toughest cleaver!" Amerigo cheered for himself with an empowering pose, pumping his right forearm.
"Alright!" amped up with his own hype, Amerigo skidded forward, sliding across the ground and evading the attention of other competitors while rushing toward the Cursed Warrior on his back. With his hands off to the side, Amerigo was building up acceleration and creating an aerial slash on both sides that would surely sever the Cursed Warrior's feet and leave it crippled.
The damaged Cursed Warrior let out a mournful roar and jerked around as a decisive, invisible blade severed its heels. With thunderous thuds, the Cursed Warrior collapsed on its front and knees while Amerigo rushed to its tail, wrapping his hands around it and preparing to heave the gigantic living monolith out of bounds, freeing up so much space in the arena for the surviving competitors to duke it out in.
Red electricity with black, inky outlines shot out in all directions, going wild in an ethereal lightning storm as the punk onmyoji grit and ground his teeth, swelled up his expression, and nearly popped a vein in his forehead, heaving the massive, monolithic beast against its forceful, clawing and dragging resistance. Just when it seemed like the victorious moment was within reach, a crude thud made Amerigo feel lightweight.
"Oh!" the announcer bawled out, slapping his forehead in disbelief. "Just like a real lizard, the Cursed Warrior Batsuraya detached its tail, causing Amerigo Hangyaku to spin wildly out of control with all of his limitless magical power! This is getting dangerous!"
The Cursed Warrior snapped its Venus flytrap mouth open horizontally, revealing a blinding golden light coming from its insides. Like a dragon breathed fire, the living monolithic weapon breathed out a raw chakra cannon that blasted the uncontrollably spinning onmyoji apprentice slamming through the colosseum walls and laying flat on his back in the faraway desert regions of the Wind Country. At the same time, a medical team of healers rushed out atop camels to retrieve him and give him medical attention.
"And that's it! Despite having a clear edge in power, speed, and toughness, a clever ploy of the Cursed Warrior Batsuraya gave it all the edge it needed to eliminate the rebellious punk onmyoji apprentice Amerigo Hangyaku! What a terrifying young man, fueled by a whole mountain of chakra and an ability to augment his physical body with it with no limits in sight, if only he had more experience to boot that terrifying potential! In any case, I have a feeling that this encounter provided young Amerigo with just that experience he needed to win his next competition with a landslide victory!" the announcer hyped the audience up.
The kneeling Cursed Warrior scanned the line-up of warriors who have all had enough of the tyrannical dominance that the Cursed Warriors have shown until now, only losing two competitors who have succumbed to a series of daunting challenges rather than a fight where their abilities proved to be insufficient.
"What's this!?" the announcer stumbled back, pulling his bandana-like headdress up and his shades down to get a clearer look at the developments in the arena. "It appears that the clutch victory of the Cursed Warrior has had the opposite effect! Instead of making the rest fearful for their chances of success, it only inspired them to take up arms and challenge these unfathomable goliaths together! Amazing, the Cursed Warriors who have displayed undisputed dominance until this moment have finally found a reason to be worried!"