A lone, bruised, and humbled figure in a broken set of armor and a saber that it could no longer hold up straight and dragged across the ground stumbled away. Occasionally, the wounded conqueror turned back to try to see if his pursuer was still on his tail. Fighters from all the different factions that had their dance partners parted ways, letting the beaten conqueror flee for his life.
Wanting to hide and escape elimination, the broken and burnt Jyujin Gyozarro climbed the collapsed remains of the Cursed Warrior pieces, ascending them to the top. The elevation gave the conqueror a nice vantage point to survey the battlefield, though it also might have given his pursuer another chance at spotting Jyujin, so the injured conqueror kept his head low.
With a masculine grunt, a man dressed in a lightly scorched shirt and donning an elegant bowtie smashed into the fleeing conqueror with a shoulder charge, taking both men spiraling down into the collapsed hole in the Cursed Warrior's armor. Both combatants spun uncontrollably and smacked into various sticking-out pieces of iron comprising the inner skeleton of the destroyed weapon of mass destruction laying in the middle of the battlefield. Although both men took bumps that were just as grievous, the spy Codename: Bird Watcher was the first one to stand to his feet and correct his cuffs.
"The Water Lord sends his regards, old chap," the spy muttered before pulling out a plastic chip with a sealing glyph painted over it and showing it in front of him. With a pop sound and a burst of smoke that drowned the room, Bird Watcher walked out holding a backpack with straps of plastic. After pulling on the rear end, the steel backpack spat tongues of blue flames and seemed to struggle to escape the spy's scope.
"I… I don't understand. My crusades against debauchery and savagery of the oceanic islands were done with the approval and support of the Water Lord," Jyujin Gyozaro frothed with a mouth of busted teeth, looking too beat after his rough but victorious scuffle against the lich of Tonika Village, Yabure Kotsuzu to move, let alone fight off the spy gunning after him.
"I believe that's the problem. When you commit war crimes and all-around atrocities, it's best not to end up in a position of a loose end to someone much more influential," Bird Watcher smirked and released the steel backpack. The mechanical jetpack slammed straight into Jyujin's chest and spiraled off, bursting through the carapace of the demolished Cursed Warrior from inside and shooting off into the sky.
"He promised me… He promised me… The islands!" the conqueror Jyujin Gyozaro yelled with the dripping mania of a man who was about to meet an explosive demise shortly before the super-spy Codename: Bird Watcher casually lit up a smoke, then puffed and exhaled a mouthful of gaseous tar, pulled out an elongated and thin, one-handed kunai dispenser and fired with a deadeye, chakra-coated senbon shot straight through the jetpack.
The gadget splashed all across the sky with a blossoming firestorm, throwing burnt chunks of Jyujin Gyozaro's remains all around while Bird Watcher finished his smoke and walked up to the side of the collapsed frame of the Cursed Warrior. A red dot that seemed to boil the fallen mass of debris from inside formed before dragging a circular shape across the armor frame. A boot against the sliced wall made it pop out, opening up the way for Bird Watcher to walk out.
"W-Wow, what a ruthless elimination! The spy Codename: Bird Watcher is simply taking no prisoners! Not to mention, for whatever reason, he seems obsessed with eliminating conquerors! This is the second conqueror that this dashing super-spy has eliminated, could he have an ulterior motive for participating in this tournament!? Either way, with the Crusader of the Islands, Jyujin Gyozaro eliminated, this leaves 69 competitors duking it out in the arena and only two conquerors left in the competition!" the announcer ruled.
"Jyujin Gyozaro is pushing daisies, love," Bird Watcher reported, reaching for a bud planted in his right ear. "Mission completed."
"W-Wait up! What's this? Oh, direct your attention toward the north-western section of the arena, ladies and gents!" the announcer bawled out, wrestling against the front rail that he had pulled off its hinges and reinserted a few times now. "It seems like there's a fight breaking out between Lao Zhuzi and the last of the Sky Warriors, Neshtcha!"
True to the announcer's proclamation, concussive bursts filled the skies with white flashes and an occasional flock of sparks. Occasional static images of one or both of the colliding warriors broke through, with Lao Zhuzi demonstrating a slight advantage. The worn-out veteran pirate was oppressing his opponent with well-aimed kicks and shots, but they ended up meeting the armored hood of silver feathers while Neshtcha's Sky Warrior training and bird suit allowed him the luxury of superior positioning in the air.
An explosion of crystal-clear blaze of visible chakra aura around Lao Zhuzi's body telegraphed the awakening of one of the Eight Inner Gates. The pirate gained a tremendous increase in speed and power and blitzed his opponent, appearing behind the owl-man with a well-timed back-flip kick that rocked Neshtcha straight in the back and sent him crashing down and dragging across the battlefield with a bloody smear across the arena tile set.
Neshtcha coughed up and struggled to return to his feet. He had to clutch his ribs while staring at the veteran pirate captain, who descended in front of him with a light tap of his feet and immediately took off in a mad dash toward the last of the Sky Warriors. With a swift and relentless flurry of strikes, Lao Zhuzi completely overwhelmed Neshtcha with a physical combination of strikes topped off with a reverse kick to the abdomen that bent Neshtcha over and stunned the Sky Warrior.
With most of his bird suit wrecked and scattered across the arena, his scout goggles halfway smashed, half of Neshtcha's face was visible so, based on his bulging eyes and soured, pain-ridden expression, there could have been no mistaking the fact that the Sky Warrior was taking a mauling. Eager to conclude this engagement before it extended for too long, the Fisherman's Son threw some potent power strikes with an elbow smash, and a knee thrust and then finished the attack with a front flip, smashing into Neshtcha's back with both of his feet.
Weightless and with a completely totaled wingsuit, Neshtcha hurled out of bounds and writhed on the ground for a fair amount of time before the shrouded healers rushed out and scooped him onto a stretcher. Lao Zhuzi straightened his body and massaged his own back with his hands crossed behind his back. The clear aura shimmering around him extinguished like a flame, though the wear of battle was still clear on the veteran pirate captain.
"Ho-ho-ho! It's true that I've decided to retire as a bane of the seas, that being said, you must still first put in the hard work before you can kick back and take it easy," Lao Zhuzi chortled to himself before turning around and waddling off deeper toward the center of the ring and further from the edge where he could be easily thrown out of bounds by an ambitious fellow competitor.
"And that's it!" the announcer pulled in a table from his right side with one hand so that he could smash both of his hammering fists into it for an impressive slam. Had he done so to the railing he's been bullying this entire time, it would have popped off its hinges again and probably fallen onto the heads of the spectators below the announcer's platform again. "The Sky Warriors from the Sky Country are the first faction to be eliminated from the battle royale with the Fisherman's Son, Captain Lao Zhuzi, eliminating Neshtcha, the owl Sky Warrior!"
A tall and beefy Salvari warrior, clad in golden chains and chiseled without a flaw, with a dark violet shade of skin and eyes beaming with an azure dharma glow, stood before a shaky, reptilian Cursed Warrior. Like many of his Salvari peers, this one had a long and thick haystack of curly hair that would've driven the ladies mad and a bushy mustache but the most curious attribute of this one was the two bovine-style horns resting on the top of the Salvari's head. Meanwhile, the Cursed Warrior that clashed with Vasupala, the Salvari, who prefers to spend his days posing as a cow so that he can get closer to the hard-working milkmaids tending to the bovines every day.
"You guys have been making a big splash in here! How about testing your mettle not against first-timers, but a seasoned God of the Arena?" Vasupala flexed his right biceps before effortlessly transitioning into a full-body flex, showing off his exotic-looking yet flawless musculature.
With a wild, mechanical, and muzzled hiss, the obsidian reptilian with emerald-colored mosaic patterns littering its body breathed out a wall of blue flames out of its mouth. The audience rustled in unease and boomed with objections, believing they have just witnessed the obliteration of one of the Salvari, the clear crowd favorites. Their worries proved unwarranted when something nestled inside the sky-scraping wall of raging blue flames. Like a caterpillar working its way through a cabbage, Vasupala burst out with his horns pointing down and soaring like an arrow.
"Gopala Headbutt!" the violet-skinned Salvari chanted while smashing into the lower chin of the obsidian reptilian, which forced a storm of sparks to bleed out. The Salvari entered a grueling power struggle while attempting to drill and punch through the invincible carapace of the Cursed Warriors. "Gopala Arrow!" Vasupala bellowed like a bull, kicking with his right foot so hard that he caused a sonic boom with the lash of his foot.
Using this air pillow for some footing, Vasupala entered a drilling spin with both of his horns still pressed against the reptilian Cursed Warrior. The spewing of sparks became blinding, but the drilling finally yielded triumphant results as Vasupala drilled clean through the wide and flattened head of the titanic reptilian. Explosions littered the entire body of the grievously damaged Cursed Warrior as it slumped down with its arms weighed down and its long tail dropped and stretched across the arena and to the outside.
The audience roared and cheered with pumping fists as it became clear that their favored Salvari was victorious against a member of one of the most formidable factions and the likely favorites to win the entire thing. With a jarring hole, squirting oil and sparks that lit it alight in mid-air with sky-blue flames, the powerless reptilian went dead still on its feet, but countless explosions continued to resonate across its body. Almost as if its body was still proceeding to die a thousand times inside, when, in fact, this only telegraphed a network of system failures of the walking artificial titan of mass destruction.
"My, my, what is this?" Vasupala smirked with a warm turn of his chiseled jaw, looking at a tall young woman that he cradled in his arms. A surprise pilot of the opponent he decimated just now who ended up in the way of his incessant drilling and would have ended up shredded into mincemeat had it not been for a timely intervention from the Salvari. "Why would a beauty like you play-pretend to be a hideous, fire-breathing lizard, I wonder?"
A resounding slap rang through the upper layers of the arena, on top of the head platform of the defeated and slumped reptilian. The audience winced, feeling the pain of rejection while the woman dressed in a formal red uniform skirt measuring up to her heels, a white shirt with a ribbon, a red vest, and a blazer rolled off the Salvari's arms and vaulted back with a handstand to stand up on her own.
"Umm… I would like to inform the unnamed pilot of the Cursed Warrior Batsukage that a notable part of its tail is touching the area outside of the arena's bounds. This means that Vasupala, the Beast of Love, has eliminated the Cursed Warrior Batsukage, so any further attacks from her part will be treated as a violation of the rules, permitting the intervention of the Sheikh's armed forces and her forced removal from the premises without the obligation to treat her wounds or provide escort through the desert," the announcer yelled out. Although the audience favored the Salvari warrior who triumphed against the damaged from previous engagements Cursed Warrior, they didn't react with vitriol to the smack, perhaps thinking it well-justified, though they observed the situation and how it would resolve with a tense look.
The tall and elegant pilot woman with blue eyes and fair skin, long black hair with parted bangs rattling wildly in according to the demands of the dry desert wind behind her back, stared at the Salvari with a spiteful look, looking like she was visibly uncomfortable standing out in the open and outside of the Batsukage's cockpit.
"You shouldn't have pulled your punches and rescued me," the woman scolded the Salvari, much to his bafflement.
"B-But… You'd have suffered a grim and violent death. If your slap is any indication, you're not much of a fighter outside of your walking monolith," Vasupala reasoned with her.
"We, the pilots, are an extension of our Cursed Warriors. We live and die by them. Now you've left it up to me to do your job for you. You are utterly toothless," the pilot scolded Vasupala with a look that drew the resentment back, as well as any traces of other emotion, and now were sad and empty. Slowly, the uniformed pilot took a step back, spread her arms, and plunged off the top of Batsukage's head.
"Wait just a seco…!" Vasupala flipped out, dashing to the edge of the defunct Cursed Warrior and taking a plunge off the back of the head to swoop down and rescue the suicidal and deranged pilot. Before he could even set his sights on the sky-diving pilot, an adamantine, obsidian fist of another Cursed Warrior clenched around him and swatted him into the ground, elevating its feet to squish the Salvari. By vaulting backward, Vasupala avoided the stomp, only to witness the grisly sight of the back of the pilot's head hitting the ground at a terminal velocity from 280 meters in the air, becoming a bloody stain on the ground and filling the audience and even the arena, full of seasoned warriors with a stomach for this kind of sight, with grave silence.
Completely spaced out, Vasupala gulped and turned around, bellowing in frustration, he charged with his horns pointed down so that nobody stood in his path while he dashed away from the haunting scene and the chilling sight that became a living testament to it.
"This… This is just… Even in the Sun Disc, we rarely get to see horrific sights like these. Even during the darker days of the past, when Agbarah had lost its way and celebrated carnage rather than the artistic sight of martial arts, this is just… Unfortunately, the battle royale must continue and we cannot send anyone to hide away this dreadful sight. Sometimes we see scenes of blood and murder, that's just a natural part of the craft sometimes, but… I think I speak for everyone when I say that this is not the type of sight any of us came here to see," the announcer said with a depressed tone while the resonance of the events they've witnessed continued to keep the audience shocked and silent. The image of women holding their mouths to muzzle screaming and men covering up their eyes and looking away defined the mood amongst the spectators.
"Those Cursed Warriors," Mana's mental signal reached Vatee, who turned her segmented body to look at the wrecked Five-Tailed dolphin-horse statue hosting Mana's mind and consciousness. "I've seen something like that before. A group of revolutionaries used it to attack the Stone Gulf in the Land of Earth a while back. I've even sat inside one of them. What's going on here?"
"Unless you have any tips on how to deal with them, it's hardly relevant right now," Vatee pulled Mana back to the real world. "In our current state, our best plan of action is still to avoid any contact with these guys."
"The one I piloted was an invincible war machine," Mana recounted. "It's easily capable of laying a siege on a settlement and probably even a ninja village. There're no weaknesses or an easy way to beat it, other than to just destroy them with overwhelming force."
"In that case, we'll be in deep trouble if one of those guys will make it to the Top 16 and beyond, which is still looking likely right now," Vatee hissed with a troubled resonance of thoughts.
A cartoonish-looking mop that looked like it had just been painted on a flat, two-dimensional surface brushed the bloody and mangled remains of the female Batsukage pilot into a cartoonish scoop. Sachiko Tanogen, the swordswoman cursed with cartoonish reality-warping abilities did everyone a favor in cleaning up the gruesome scene of suicide and dropped off the mangled sum of body parts outside of the arena bounds, where the shrouded staff serving the Sheikhate could take it away without interfering with the battle royale.
All that remained now was the haunting sight of a slumped, devastated walking fortress and a widespread, still-wet pool of blood where the pilot hit the ground. Bit by bit, still a bit held back by the chilling events, the fighters returned to their ordinary slobber-knocking. The only ones that looked completely unbothered by this scene were the remaining six Cursed Warriors.