Part one:

A man wearing a purple mask over his face waved his hand

“Move, make some space”.

Hydra frowned but obeyed, moving to the side among other paladins.

A bearded man walked through the cleared path; all the gazes focused on him. Some were filled with hatred, some with anticipation.

He placed his palm on a kilometre tall wall focusing on his anomaly, but to no avail.

“No?”, the Nubian with the purple mask asked.

“No”, the man responded.

Hydra smiled visibly, “All those anomaly-enhancing drugs and you are still useless in front of some moss”.

Both the purple mask Nubian and the bearded man ignored Hydra’s comment but lifted their gaze to the very top of the wall.

It was hard to see from this distance and angle, but a small silhouette sat at the very edge of it. His legs dangling and swinging back and forth.

It was Banana!

He was looking down at them with his usual smug smile.

“Smart bastard”, the bearded man turned around, summoning his Divine and opening a portal.

He went walked through and disappeared.

This happened minutes before the first cannons would fire at Razihelnor's walls, issuing the long-anticipated attack.

Naturally, a Divine could open a portal to literally anywhere, as long as its owner could visualize the place.

This took no effort and only required the Divine wielder to have visited the place they wanted to open a portal to before.

However, there was a way to prevent this.

Certain script totems prevented the unmarked Divine weapons from opening a portal around them. Some could even block the activation of Transport Points!

How this exactly worked was a little complicated, but the important thing was that the whole Razihelnor was protected from unmarked Divines, meaning that no enemy could open a portal anywhere near the city.

Hence, the only way is by penetrating the walls.

The only legal and efficient way of doing this was with cannons.

Several different types of cannons were designed over time, each for a specific purpose or an upgrade of its previous version.

A whole week after the meeting has passed. Zafer partly lost the hype and tension of going to a battle.

On this specific morning, however, the adrenaline would suddenly rush throughout his entire body in just a couple of minutes, making him prepared for combat like never before.

It was the first time he had ever heard cannons firing.

It was not as loud as his A-11 explosion but was still loud enough to wake him up after a tiring evening of training.

It took him only a couple of minutes to get ready and head to the battlefield.

Just a couple of days ago everything was still very peaceful although the city was full of Temper paladins and police.

It was during those days that the Priest told Zafer he should head outside of the walls if he wanted to help, and that was exactly where he was running towards right now.

This was a perfect chance to prove himself.

Despite his schedule being dense with grinding flame flowers he still trained every single day.

And every training session was accompanied by sparring, usually against Yana since they hated each other.

Now was the perfect time to put his abilities to the test and show everyone that he wasn’t lazing around this whole time.

Regular knights and policemen evacuated the panicking citizens downhill, and there were even traces of smoke coming out of nearby buildings.

Did Nubians already breach the walls?

Zafer took out a flask of blue potions and emptied it, after which he started running uphill, towards the west gate.

That was where the sound of cannons firing came from.

As Zafer was nearing the gate, thinking about the upcoming battle, there were fewer and fewer civilians running past him.

Eventually, he was all alone, since most of the regulars were already evacuated into the mountain, while paladins were outside battling.

Suddenly something flew right through a nearby building, crashing in the middle of the street Zafer was running along, obstructing his way towards the gate.

The dust slowly lifted, revealing a sturdy-looking male.

He wore a black painted Miyalin armour which indicated that he was a paladin of the Nubis province.

An enemy!

The man straightened himself up as if nothing had happened, sticking out of the crater he created.

He had his back turned to Zafer, completely neglecting his existence.

This was a perfect chance to take him down!

It was only then, however, that Zafer noticed another unique addition to the man’s armor.

He wore a long black cape made out of Miyalin fabric, labeled “Stranger 1”.

At this time Zafer wasn’t aware of it, but this man was the 3rd officer of the Nubis faction. Unlike Temper, they only had 3 officers in total.

Before Zafer could even reach his belt with potions, another paladin appeared, clashing with the Nubian officer, however, he was quickly overpowered and got blasted away.

“This guy is strong!”, Zafer grabbed his potion, contemplating if he should engage in battle.

Nevertheless, the Nubian officer dashed away before Zafer could decide. The guy never noticed his presence.

Zafer exhaled calming himself.

The sound of cannons still echoed, which meant that the walls weren’t breached yet.

But then, how did this Nubian enter the city?

In any case, it was in Zafer’s interest to listen to the Priest’s command and go outside the walls.

His train of thought was reluctantly disrupted when a silent hand grabbed his shoulder, making Zafer turn around in terror.

“Relax. It’s me!”, a floating armour stepped away from Zafer.

It was Banana’s voice! He was under the effect of a pink potion.

He seemed as calm as ever.

“Where is everyone?”

Banana lifted his Divine axe, “They are fighting outside protecting the walls”.

This put Zafer somewhat at ease, but he couldn’t understand what was Banana doing here. As the leader of the Temper faction, shouldn’t he put his life on the front line?

Even if he was half-disabled due to the absence of his primary anomaly, shouldn’t a leader be an example for his paladins?

Nonetheless, this was the perfect chance for Zafer to make an impression by doing something even the leader was afraid to do!

“Take me outside”, he asked the faction leader to which Banana nodded without hesitation.

He swung his Divine axe vertically and cut the fabric of space, opening a portal to the meadow outside the Razihelnor.

The sound of paladins clashing and screaming became much louder, as it passed through the portal as well.

The battlefield was very chaotic!

If one thought that Arena within the city of Koth was a complete mess because of numerous freelancers and trainees sparring, they never saw the current scenario.

Unlike Arena, everyone here going completely berserk.

It was an all-out battle of the most experienced. No freelancers and amateurs in sight.

Lightning bolts, strong wind currents that could lift an adult person, and explosions constantly took turns all over the terrain.

It was hard to see what exactly was going on through the narrow portal opening.

“Come on, go through. I need to close it”, Banana said impatiently.

Zafer stopped daydreaming, taking out a red potion flask and pre-drinking it, before he finally stepped through the portal onto the battlefield.

Most of these people are stronger than Zafer and are going to try to kill him with no remorse.

This wasn’t the time to spare potions.

Stolen story; please report.

Part two:

Zafer scouted the whole place with a couple of glances in each direction.

Everyone was dispersed all over the meadow, fighting either one versus one or two versus one.

Most of them were too far and moved too fast for Zafer to distinguish who was who, except for those near him.

The one closest to him was the Priest.

He fought both Tule and Skank at the same time! How unfair!

Was Temper outnumbered?

If a similar situation were to happen in the Arena, Wabler would immediately join the fight to make it even, but here nobody cared.

They were fighting to kill.

The Priest did a pretty good job persisting the 2 versus one for this long. He was fighting very defensively so he couldn’t deal much damage to his opponents.

He was constantly dashing backward in a zig-zag movement so that it was more difficult for Tule and Skank to catch up to him.

Zafer was witnessing a battle of endurance.

He summoned his axe and started running towards them.

Although Tule was rude to Mint a few months ago, he wasn’t actually a bad person. He even warned Zafer about Hydra looking for him.

However, he could not allow the Priest to die, since the man was also very nice to Zafer.

With this logic, it was obvious for Zafer to take down Skank and let the Priest and Tule fight each other.

Zer Ox was very focused on his two opponents but still noticed Zafer approaching them from the side.

He flicked his body and dashed toward Zafer’s direction so that he could catch up to them more easily.

Zafer realized this of course, and it made a chill go down his spine.

Such telepathy and teamwork… It felt as if he could talk to the priest with just his eyes.

Tule and Skank dashed after the Priest, but that was when Zafer jumped in joining the battle.

He collided with Skank and took him downhill, leaving Tule and Zer Ox by themselves just as he wanted.

Skank was well covered in his Miyalin armor and took no damage from Zafer whatsoever.

He jumped up and lifted his axe.

It contained a couple of colorful strings but wasn’t “Og”, his signature Divine weapon. It seemed that Skill was right when he said that the 2nd Nubis officer was too afraid to bring his strongest weapon to the battlefield.

The axe shone slightly, and a rune was activated.

It was the Purge.

Due to consistent training, Zafer’s body became more durable, and on top of that, he had the Patronage rune implemented into his scarf.

Being struck by the Purge rune was very uncomfortable but bearable in terms of pain.

Nevertheless, he was still stunned for a second due to the muscle spasm caused by the lightning bolt.

This was a single second that Skank needed to end his life.

The Patronage rune could not protect Zafer from a direct hit of a Miyalin axe, especially if it possessed a Crushing rune. And this one did.

Another interesting thing to note in this strike was that Skank had no clue if Zafer possessed the Almighty Eye anomaly, let alone if it was an euclid with the repelling ability.

Even so, in that single second, Skank made sure not to strike Zafer’s head, but the body.

This was just a short highlight of decades of his experience. As a paladin, you never want to strike someone’s head if you can kill them by striking their body.

Unfortunately for Skank, Zafer wasn’t the only person on the battlefield.

Although the Priest finally had a chance to fight Tule fairly, he still didn’t lift his eyes from Zafer.

Just as Zafer’s chest was about to get smashed, Priest’s axe collided with Skank’s axe, deflecting his whole arm upward.

A lightning bolt struck the Priest, from Tule who was catching up.

This didn’t damage Zer Ox, but it removed the potion effects he had, forcing him to replenish them by drinking.

After fighting Yana numerous times, Zafer knew how dangerous this was, especially since Zer Ox couldn’t drink normal red potions, because it could reduce the quality of his 8th Anomaly.

Fortunately, a simple counter to the Purge rune was another Purge rune!

This time Skank and Tule got hit by a lightning bolt from a clear blue sky, and Biotoxin caused it.

That was the name of the Priests axe. It was a Divine.

All three paladins continued to fight each other in a two versus-one while re-drinking their potions.

This was a perfect chance for Zafer to intervene for the second time.

He rotated his axe, activating his own Purge rune.

Due to his axe not possessing some other runes like Biotoxin did, he could only target a single person at a time.

He chose Skank.

The Nubis officer just finished drinking his potions when Zafer’s Purge neutralized the effects again.

This made him clench his teeth out of frustration.

He was now left behind by Zer Ox and Tule who were both fighting at a blue potion speed.

He watched as they moved further away from him.

“Fucking brat!”, he held back from fully facing Zafer and threw his axe blindly mid-turn.

Zafer was shocked as he didn’t expect this rushed move.

Despite not completing his turn, the throw landed with remarkable accuracy, sticking to Zafer’s forehead.

Right at that moment, Skank’s heart twitched, realizing his frustration led him to the bad decision.

Death

The impact of this throw was the same as when Zafer got hit by Nemo when they first met.

The huge difference however was that at that time, Zafer held back as much as his control over the Almighty Eye allowed him to.

Now, however, Zafer got caught off guard and only reflexively held back.

This was due to how anomalies worked. Although intangible, they were a part of the human body just like muscles were.

An explosion that overpowered all the cannons that were shooting at the Temper walls resounded.

Dust within a 500-metre radius got lifted up, cracking the ground itself.

Zafer wasn’t aware of it at the time but all of the paladins fighting on the meadow at that moment had their attention reluctantly drawn towards him.

Although he used almost all of his Almighty Eye’s repelling ability, there were no drops of blood leaking down his cheeks at all.

This was due to the increase in his anomalous pool and stamina, due to the hard training.

An euclid anomaly is an anomaly that’s already developed to a certain extent at the birth.

This meant that if someone was born with an anomaly whose intensity or quality measured more than 2 Verms was considered to be an euclid.

An interesting fact about euclid anomalies was that they could only be improved by 2 Verms, and even that required intense training.

So someone born with a euclid of 5 Verms could eventually improve it to 7, but this was impossible if someone was born with a euclid of 13 or 23 Verms since the jump was too big.

Those were stuck forever at their intensity level, and Zafer was one of them.

This meant that no matter how much Zafer trained his Almighty Eye, he could never improve it, but only increase his overall anomalous pool.

Nevertheless, another such activation would instantly kill him, and he knew it.

The sweat was accumulating on his skin as hot waves of heat washed him from the inside.

Was this enough to kill Skank?

Was this enough to kill the 2nd officer of the world’s strongest faction?

The answer was of course no.

Despite Skank not possessing an Almighty Eye, he could sacrifice a portion of his own anomalous pool to reduce damage by Zafer’s repelling ability.

And that was exactly what he did since otherwise, he would have died thrice.

The officer emerged from the now-settling dust with a perspiring face.

Skank’s anomalous pool was actually vast enough to neutralize most of the damage!

As a reminder, the anomalous pool size had nothing to do with anomaly intensity in Verms.

Zafer got goosebumps.

“What a strength!”

Skank was already past his 50-es, yet Zafer could still see the trail his pinnacle strength left behind.

“So you want to fight me?”

Zafer’s skin was itching and burning.

They were staring at each other anticipating for the other to make the first move.

The burning got so intense that Zafer had to pull up his sleeves to check, and just as it felt like, his skin was full of open wounds and burns.

“That’s my signature anomaly. It took me a lot of years to perfect it”.

Zafer took out a vial of a red potion and emptied it as fast as he could, but Skank didn’t move an inch, instead continued talking.

“It’s an acid which I transformed your sweat into using my primary anomaly. Alchemy”.

Although the flask was emptied, the wounds only slowed down on expanding and the pain got so intense that Zafer had to take his jumper off.

As one would expect, his whole body was covered in open wounds as if his skin was peeling.

It felt very uncomfortable every time the wind blew on him. He could feel every single breeze, but at least the jumper wasn’t touching him anymore.

No matter how much Zafer touched himself, the acid didn’t seem to wear down.

“It’s futile. You will wither away”.

The next layer of his skin started to rip apart and Zafer quickly realized that he was dying.

Skank seemed very calm but this was no joke.

This made Zafer panic and his heart raced. How much time has he left?

The only obvious way to stop this was to kill Skank.

He pounced off the ground, dashing forward, and swung his axe at Skank’s Miyalin chest-plate.

The blade of Zafer’s axe struck the armor, but it caused no damage.

Moreover, an unpleasant crack was heard and this time Zafer’s heart twitched in a literal sense.

Skank stood unfazed, observing the Temper candidate.

“Come on! Try harder!”, he leaned over Zafer.

Zafer checked the blade of his Miyalin axe only to notice a small fragment missing.

It broke off.

Skank started laughing out loud, “Don’t tell me nobody told you to never strike the Miyalin armor with a blade! That’s why everyone uses axes instead of swords idiot! To break and bend the armor”, he wiped the tears off his face, “not to cut through it!”.

Zafer switched his axe into his left hand and placed his right one on Skank’s armor to try to crush it with his Iron Fist anomaly.

Although he had never successfully broken or bent Miyalin before, he never really tried to, yet he was training very hard each day.

He had to be strong enough now, right? If not, this was a perfect moment to push past his limits.

It all happened quite quickly and suddenly, but as soon as Zafer’s palm leaned against the armor, his hand reluctantly flicked back in pain.

Skank’s armor was boiling!

It was a rune, specially designed against Iron Fist users.

Skank continued to laugh and trash talk.

“Well, I can’t blame anyone for not teaching you properly. You are quite weak and talentless. Stupid brat. Know your place”.

He struck Zafer’s stomach with his fist which was also covered in Miyalin armour.

Zafer’s vision blurred, and he fell on his knees letting go of his axe.

Currently, the only reason why Skank didn’t use his axe was because he wanted Zafer to corrode to death.

The 4th anomaly, Alchemy, was the ability to change the chemical composition of any material into any other molecule.

Nonetheless, this anomaly had a catch, because aside from its user being required to train the anomaly and increase its intensity in Verms, they also had to know the chemical composure of the molecules they wanted to play with.

This required a lot of research and experiments and was the main reason why this anomaly was considered to be somewhat similar to the Adjustment since it required brain power.

The red potion Zafer drank only slowed the rate at which he was dying, prolonging his suffering.

This can’t be how his story ends.

Every part of his skin was in pain.

He gritted his teeth, grabbing his axe and swinging at Skank's head, but the latter dodged.

Zafer then placed his palm on Skank's armor again, but this time his skin was too damaged and in too much pain to perceive the heat of the armor.

Skank enjoyed his efforts.

Crack.

Both of their hearts skipped a beat and both of them had to check with their own eyes.

A crack appeared alongside Skank’s armor.

This scary surprise made Skank back off and kick Zafer reflexively.

Zafer rolled on the ground while Skank was perplexed about what just happened. How did Zafer withstand the boiling armor?

“If I’ll die anyways I don’t mind going all out and burning out my anomalies fucker”, he called out to Skank.

Zafer still had the effects of both blue and red potions.

He pounced forward starting an all-out brawl with Skank, not minding about the recklessness of his moves or actions.

Just like the first time he fought Yana.

Since he might die anyway, he will use all of his creativity and risky moves.

There was no reason to fight in a safe mode anymore.

Due to the wounds on his skin, he felt as if he was gliding through the air.

Skank barely blocked Zafer’s first two swings, but at the same time saw no opportunity to consume his own potions.

Remember, Skank drank no potions since Zafer’s Purge rune struck him.

The only way to get out of this situation was to use his own Purge rune on Zafer.

Now they were both equal in terms of potion boost, but how could Zafer ever lose against someone who drinks potions slower than Yana?

Fighting that girl opened his eyes for spotting errors in his opponent's decisions since there was nobody else who could empty a vial as fast as her.

Skank wasn’t even aware of how slow he consumed the liquid, but Zafer did, and he sure did use it to his advantage.

With that and Zafer’s reckless and risky moves, Skank never got a chance to drink any potion at all!

Even if he did, Zafer was ready to activate his purge rune yet again. It was a while since his cooldown ended.

The Nubian officer got nervous pretty quickly and started making some obvious errors in his movement.

Fighting without the effect of a potion sure wasn’t relaxing, and it would soon be clear that as an officer of the Nubis, Skank wasn’t very much of a fighter.

His age and relaxing life as an officer of the world's strongest faction put little to no pressure on him, making his fighting abilities stunt.

This was the danger of a safe and pleasant life.

With every hit Zafer landed on Skank, his armor slowly sunk in more and more until it came to the point where he could not even move his hands or legs anymore!

His armor was so disfigured that he got stuck and was barely able to move.

He lost to a mere candidate who didn’t even wear armor.

Zafer’s couple of months of intense training overgrew Skank’s years of relaxing.

This was the reason how Zer Ox managed to withstand fighting him and Tule at the same time.

Skank wasn’t that strong in the first place! He only relied on his opponent's fear to win. Acid wasn’t a pleasant thing to have on your skin, especially if you didn’t know what it was.

Zafer’s heart raced faster than ever, excited about his upcoming victory.

He slowly started to feel the adrenaline that pumped through his blood vessels this whole time.

Only one hit was enough to kill him, but his risky and creative moves kept him alive.

He was reckless to the point of being unpredictable.

This was something that Zafer will keep in mind in the future, and it will ultimately lead to the development of his fighting style.

Not because it made him win, but because it felt excellent, and was very fun by his definition.