While Bishiyari, the Supreme Being, stood in serene meditation, a circle of purple flames surrounded the whole region of the arena before sinking the ground into an ocean of purple flames. Given the multitude of faces and limbs comprising the supreme form of the strongest Salvari, it was nigh impossible to surprise Bishiyari with a surprise attack.
Even so, the Supreme Salvari stood in awe for a second when he saw a gigantic, fish-shaped Cursed Warrior appear from the ocean of purple flames while the Salvari warrior spun his arms and all of his weapons to form a whirlwind that washed the flames around him away. The Salvari stared at the majestic sight of the sky-obscuring fish Cursed Warrior soaring over him to flatten the Salvari or drown him in these purple flames.
"I see, so you've finally decided to come after the troublesome opponents you don't want to face in the later rounds," Bishiyari surmised while staring at the airborne obsidian leviathan. With the revelation that the Cursed Warriors were merely airborne weapons of mass destruction being controlled by human pilots, making sense of their motivations became much easier. They stood and fought for exactly what a human being would have stood and fought for. Every action they made and every strategy they concocted could have been explained from the scale of human desires and motivations.
"That being said, I have no intention of submitting and abandoning the position of godhood. If you want dominance over this arena, you shall have to fight me for every inch, One Thousand Reincarnations!" Bishiyari exclaimed, swinging all of his arms forward with violent thrusts while each of his limbs was equipped with a golden punching knife, producing golden bolts of dharma homing in on the colossal airborne leviathan like a fusillade of missiles.
The airborne marine beast halted in place, unable to make the desired splash and squish the warriors it had targeted, Bishiyari included. It only let out an artificial bellowing that shook the ground and rippled with shockwaves, yet appeared to be located beyond the audible specter and therefore was impossible to hear. It was like a tremorous hum that affected all the Battle Royale participants below, despite none of them being discomforted by the clamor of the noise.
The leviathan opened its mouth and spat out a fat mouthful of blue flames from its mouth, like a tidal wave of destruction after the floodgates were opened. "Sudarshanachakram!" Bishiyari chanted out while raising one hand over his head and praying with another pair in front of his chest. His sublime dharma concentrated as a tremendous red orb that had golden dust circling it. After fully forming and attaining the peak of its power, the red orb showed some sort of gravitational field that united the golden dust into the form of a disc that buzzed in speedy rotation around the orb. Smaller dharma balls of varied colors surrounded the slicing golden dharma chakram before Bishiyari flung it through the tsunami of blue flame.
With the noise comparable to a diamond saw disc slicing through stone, augmented in volume by a dozen times, the Sudarshanachakram ripped through the flames, splitting them into separate chunky masses that burnt up and sizzled in the air with the concentration keeping the mass together being broken. Despite the powerful response, the colossal obsidian whale bent its front backward, performing an unbelievable aerial flip that allowed it to avoid being hit by the galactic disc of dharma while swinging its tail straight into Bishiyari and sending the Supreme Salvari rolling and crashing through the wreckage and debris and closer to the edge of the arena.
Hathmonpachi, Dashula, Vasupala, and Manshuri, all the still competing Salvari, instantly leaped to the aid of the Supreme One. However, they found other combatants standing in their path. Yoibetsu-N, the lively Kumogakure shinobi, stood in the way of Hathmonpachi with a smirk, sparkling with the yellow electricity of his Lightning Armor Version 1.
"I'd rather you didn't come to that competitor's aid. He's quite terrifying and I would just hate to fight him in the Top 16, the quarterfinals, semi-finals, let alone the finals…" Yoibetsu-N teased the single-braid Salvari, enjoying the desperation gleaming from Hathmonpachi's face that reflected the knowledge that the Salvari leader needed help and Hathmonpachi couldn't get to him immediately.
Kai the spy stood in front of Dashula with a stoic expression, gripping some sort of hi-tech, cannon-shaped concoction that, without a doubt, wouldn't have let the Blissful Yogi Destroyer pass without at least a brief scuffle. Despite not saying a word, the intentions of the spy Codename: Kai to prevent Bishiyari from receiving timely assistance didn't need to be spoken out loud to be understood.
A draconic Cursed Warrior let out a focused scarlet power beam that left a deep shatter in front of Vasupala and bought the obsidian dragon decorated with neon red lines like a network of blood vessels some time to swoop in front of the Beast of Love of the Salvari who has already dispatched of a Cursed Warrior and was, in fact, the one to reveal the true nature of the Cursed Warriors to the audience and the other competitors.
A sharpened and polished charcoal rod embedded into the ground in front of the feet of Manshuri, the Dream of Abundant Love of the Salvari. This was a clear signal for the goddess of the arena to stop before the steel wire reeling noise alerted her of an incoming combatant, a shaved, tall, and athletic-looking man dressed in a grey turtleneck, jeans, and trench boots. This was another one from the spy faction, based on the faction line-up at the beginning of the battle royale.
Meanwhile, the obsidian sky whale waved its side fins to direct its entire body and crash into Bishiyari head-on to force the weakened and weathered Supreme Being out of bounds. Opposite to what the leviathan intended, it took only one open hand for Bishiyari to stop the diving tackle of the tremendous ocean beast that swam through the air as comfortably as it would have roamed the abyssal depths of the seas. A vertical ring of white force split off from the contact point before the sum of the force resonated throughout the torso of the weapon of mass destruction.
Deafening cracks and thuds and ugly indentations all across the Cursed Warrior's body alerted the spectators that the weapon of mass destruction had suffered massive damage after flattening straight against the immovable wall of Bishiyari's palm. Unable to keep flying, the beast flopped on the ground with pathetic rubbery moaning while Bishiyari reeled his hands back for a beatdown.
"Strength relying on deception is weak. Truly puny. That's because it comes from desperation, knowledge that every cheap advantage is necessary to secure victory. Confidence and tranquility fuel the fists that swing the strongest," Bishiyari assured the Cursed Warrior's fallen frame before going to town on it with a flurry of fists all cracking straight into the front of the fallen obsidian whale structure. The fortified flying weapon lifted off the ground while Bishiyari's fists proceeded to leave horrible craters in the leviathan's build.
After pushing the beast back and moving well away from where he was in danger of being eliminated, the Supreme Being pressed all of his hands together in prayer before the electrified and devastated wreckage of the Cursed Warrior. The entire arena began reverberating with microscopic tremors, as if the outline comprising everything that exists became not drawn with straight lines, but stacked from a collection of thin vertical needles. The world itself became abstract in its appearance because of the quakes.
A bright singularity deleted all traces of anything but the two clashing warriors. The world shattered like an artistic panel of stained glass, leaving nothing but black behind. The infinite void of black became the scales of a black serpent that swallowed both warriors by jabbing at them from what felt like a universe away.
"Wh-What is the meaning of this!?" a tall and burly man with long, black hair tied into a loose ponytail with shaved sides of his head. The pilot of the Cursed Warrior was dressed in a similar black and red formal uniform that the other pilot wore, except a male version of it, instead of a long black and red skirt, he wore trousers with a vertical red line splintering off with three thinner red lines by the thigh. "Where did Batsujira go? Why am I out in the open?"
A cosmic pulse, radiating with white shrouds and quaking the entire sealing dimension that the pair found themselves in interrupted the pair before Bishiyari could reply. 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 any other immediate concerns that the Cursed Warrior's pilot had 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.
Unlike when he existed within the physical plane, inside Bishiyari's Void of Milk, the Supreme One lacked the glowing eyes of dharma. Instead, all of his faces that could open their eyes showed white eyes with blue rings for irises, matching the color of the dharma that beamed from the Supreme Salvari's eyes when he fought outside.
"The Void of Milk reveals things as they truly are. There is no use in approaching a steel cage. I'd rather speak with the man trapped in it," Bishiyari proclaimed, showing himself off differently than he appeared outside of the Void of Milk. In this illusionary dimension, he didn't show any sign of wear or injury.
"Trapped, you say!?" the pilot scoffed. "You're just afraid that I would wash you away with Batsujira's overflowing destructive power!"
"I do think that you are trapped. After all, when Vasupala liberated one of you from your flying toys, she committed suicide out of despair. Sometimes I think that I too would choose to die if I were to ever lose the ability to fight. I think I might understand what you feel like a little in that way. Therefore, to avoid you hurting yourself, I will shatter the evil in your heart and break through the programming that left you so dependable from that flying iron monster," Bishiyari declared, revealing branching pairs of arms that all pointed their index fingers at the dazzled pilot.
Twenty arms in ten pairs of two fired beams of all the different colors of the spectrum. Condensed rays of different expressions of dharma that didn't accelerate toward their target like any ordinary beams. Instead, they split time-space itself, like different splits of the same fracture. The pilot's eyes blanked out as the canvas of existence shattered with him alongside it. Everything collapsed into a nova of beaming rainbows. Vivid colors that swallowed the very Void of Milk whole.
"It's over!" the announcer bellowed, igniting passionate cheers, waves, and fists pumping into the air as the violet light decorating the black whale died out, signaling that the source behind Batsujira's power snuffed out. With a lone index finger, holding a single golden chakram, Bishiyari spun it into a real cutting whirl before swiping his hand down and splitting the leviathan's cockpit open, revealing the unconscious and whited-out pilot with no signs of consciousness.
"The Supreme One even managed to prevent the Cursed Warrior's suicide by sending them to the Void of Milk and shattering their mind! Even in the face of devious tactics, distractions, surprise attacks, and unquestionable evil, the Supreme Salvari remains stalwart and immovable, but also kind and benevolent!" the announcer riled the audience that already had their hearts out for the Salvari to go even madder in their incessant cheering. "It is difficult to fathom, but the once invincible Cursed Warriors now face a very real threat of elimination! With six Cursed Warriors eliminated, only four now remain and Batsuken has been put through its own wear and tear and can't have much left in the tank!"
After seeing Bishiyari freed from his engagement against the Cursed Warrior, the other opportunistic warriors that obstructed the way of the other Salvari and stalled them until the Cursed Warrior could dispose of Bishiyari, for everyone made a swift retreat into the chaos of the battle royal. The other Salvari decided they were content with merely regrouping together rather than over-extending and chasing their assailants into the uncertain brew of battle where 48 other competitors could have attacked them at any time.
A middle-aged woman dressed in oriental leather armor and armed with a curved dao-style sword rushed against a petrified automaton in an Exterminator uniform with a bulbous black steel head with three different colored segmented lanterns sticking out from its headpiece-like hair. Despite the unnatural alacrity of the Exterminator, the female pirate captain carved its uniform up and threatened the rod-shaped, rubbery body of the Exterminator.
"We have no business fighting each other!" the Exterminator waved its long sleeves up over its head. Its sleeves were stuck up at their ends and could reach the ground, making the uniform hang like a straightjacket on this particular Exterminator. "You aren't a monster! You're a human woman!"
"The best kind of fight is one against an opponent that doesn't want to fight you. It's like robbing helpless bureaucrats who can't be bothered to defend themselves and gamble their precious lives in a fight. It isn't easy for a woman to keep forty pirate fleets happy. You seem to be built out of some fancy material so stripping you bare and splitting the parts across a few crews should keep them happy and obedient like puppies for a little while," the female pirate with a tightly pulled bun and two strands hanging from each side cackled to herself while frantically slashing at the Exterminator and leaving a handful of scratches on its exposed rubbery, rod-shaped body.
"Ma'am, I'll make an executive decision that you are not very nice. Acting upon that decision, I'll let you know that I've decided to protect myself!" the Exterminator proudly declared before rearing its different-colored head and letting off intense flashes of green, blue, and red-colored lights that flashed in different intervals. The flashes proved to be less than mere light as they knocked the female pirate aside and ripped her tightly tied hair to flow freely.
"What was that?" the female pirate wondered while struggling to return to her feet. "How could… It feels like a cannon has blasted me head-on! How could mere light do something like this?"
The Exterminator began prancing around in a wild and goofy dance, turning different-colored lamps and exposing his opponent to each of the different-colored lights at the front interchangeably. The continuous blinking of the lights kept the pirate from being able to return to her feet and resuming her attempts at stripping the Exterminator for parts as loot.
"This isn't merely a flash of light, it's radiation!" The Exterminator wobbled like a rubbery balloon man, showing off the limberness of its core body. "Each of the different lamps I'm equipped with can beam you with a different type of radiation and waves of differing wavelengths. What you feel now isn't mere blunt force trauma, it's organ failure!"
A deafening thud stunned the Exterminator as he turned its faceless head up, almost as if to try to see what had happened. There was a round iron ball embedded in the glass of one of his lights. Just a few moments later, the lamp shattered and whatever devices generated the vast quantities of radiation being beamed out busted down alongside the busted radiation lamp. Without needing to get back on her feet, the female pirate aimed her hand cannon and shattered each and every radiation lamp on the Exterminator's head before feeling confident enough to rise on her feet and continue her offensive.
"Such a terrifying ability…" the pirate captain coughed some blood up and the examination of the few traces on her hand revealed to her that her skin had adopted a yellowish hue. She could only stare at that grisly sight for a second, as soon all vision from her eyes became tinted with red as the blood vessels inside her eyes burst at once. "A few seconds more and I could have truly been in trouble."
"I was wrong!" the Exterminator scrambled, stuffing its straightjacket-type sleeves where its mouth would have been if it were human, as a sign that its artificial body had not yet forgotten its human habits, such as biting its nails. "You truly are a monster, lady! You blew my lamps up without sparing a second for consideration of my feelings!"
"It was my late husband who devised a version of the pirate code that all pirates sailing in the South Ocean abide by. After his death, enforcing it wasn't easy. Sometimes it feels like if it wasn't for his brother's firm and merciless hand acting as my enforcer, I'd have long since been overthrown in a mutiny. Sometimes giving those savages in my fleets a bit of leeway like deciding that the code of how to act with prisoners doesn't apply to things like demons, wraiths, and whatever the heck you are goes a long way. So no, I don't consider your feelings, because I don't consider you to be a human being deserving the same rights that my husband's code grants our captives. Make no mistake, you're loot to me!" the female pirate pointed a judging finger at the Exterminator, sending it into a mad lashing flurry.
Its outrage was so unexpected that the female captain found herself disarmed when the sleeve that felt like being lashed with a strand of iron smacked her saber out from her hand, and then another one knocked her loopy with a whip to the cheek. Her body was an abused and failing shell of what it was when the battle royale started because of the awful radiation shower she'd received. As such, when the ironclad grip of the tangled straightjacket sleeves wrapped around her neck and the Exterminator began swinging and thrashing her hanging body around like some weight, she found herself gasping, choking, and kicking for her life.
Now even a few good hand cannon shots could penetrate through the strand of the uniform that the Exterminator wore and free her from the tangled, elongated sleeves. Gathering her strength, the pirate captain thrust her feet out and let her legs absorb the shock of the following swinging impact. That way, she gained some leverage. At the same time, the pirate woman flung a handful of black iron bombs at her opponent while scaling up the wreckage it would have slammed her through to pull it in closer and prevent its escape.
That way, its tangled and hardened sleeves would serve as a detriment to its own escape. When the triplet of explosives went off, the sleeves finally tore and the brunt of the blast flung the battered Exterminator out of bounds, laying flat on its back and smoldering while grumbling pirates scattered around it and collected it from the ground as booty.
"Whoa! Another unexpected resolution as the pirate captain Li Shan blew up her opposition, the Exterminator Model: LED Flashlight, and sent them out of bounds, reducing the number of competitors down to 47!" The announcer ruled another elimination much to the adoration of the audience that enjoyed the flashy and loud detonation that won the woman pirate lord her match.