Just as when it first entered the fortress, the enemy smashed through a wall and barreled into an adjacent chamber. Like the arm of an invisible giant, it swept forward. The elbow bending and pulling the fist back in line with the shoulder. Then it shot out and smashed against the next wall in its path. The walls shuddered, the strike causing cracks to form on its surface. A few strikes later and the wall burst open. That giant arm entered a large open chamber and flew forward, swinging and pumping as if its body was at a run. The large chamber was empty, with only an elaborate set of circles, squares, mysterious characters, and other geometric symbols inscribed upon the floor and ceiling.
The giant arm didn’t understand anything about the formation in the room and it flew directly forward, continuing its charge and smashing through another wall. Like a rampaging beast it punched each wall three or four times, bashing open a doorway for itself and then continuing on to the next wall in its way. He had been trapped inside this maze for too long and now didn’t hesitate to use his newfound power to plow his way towards the direction he thought would head to the center. After smashing through ten walls, the giant arm flew into another large open chamber and it paused in place.
Sage felt the angry roaring of the enemy’s presence. The giant arm that was the Fisher Punk’s mental attack had been affected by the bewildering array. While it has caused quite a lot of damage and shown how powerful it was, the array had tampered with its sense of direction and caused it to move in a large circle back to the middle of the array. That giant arm saw the two holes it had created earlier bashing into the chamber and out of it again. Realising it had been tricked, there was a burst of energy and the giant arm doubled in size. The freakishly muscular arm flexed and took on a red color, the veins covering it twisting and pulsing. It spun around and smashed through another wall, only needing a single strike to pierce through a wall. The increase in violent power propelling it through the labyrinth.
There was another bout of furious roaring. It had entered another large chamber. This one didn’t have any holes in the walls yet, but it looked exactly like the first one it had been caught in. Sage didn’t dare to laugh at the enemy, but was quite pleased that the Infinite Immaterial Seat was doing its job. The Four Cornered Forgetfulness Formation influenced those who neared the edge of it, causing them to become absentminded. They’d forget to remain focused on their task and wander back towards the center of the array. The enemy’s rampage had pushed him out of one array, but led him into another. Sage had set up the bewildering arrays side by side, using them to lead the enemy around the outside of the maze so they’d have trouble pointing their way towards the center.
Even after the mental assault had more than doubled in intensity, it still seemed to be taking far too long. In the real world, the heavy fog continued to sap the strength of his body. The enemy seemed content with just waiting him out, slowly wearing down his physical body while delaying his mental attack. Things just weren’t going his way. He had to take more drastic measures before it was too late. He could feel the general direction of the enemy, but couldn’t pinpoint the location. He used his giant fist to pick up a large rock, closing his hand around it and crushing it into smaller pieces. Then with a furious swing he hurled out the hundreds of small rocks with unnatural skill. Even though he’d just acquired the mutant arm, it was like he’d always had it. The hundreds of small rocks were thrown out at a speed many times that of sound, causing a loud boom as they flew out with a perfect distribution. Somehow he’d thrown them to blanket the largest possible area with precise spacing between each projectile.
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Sage had been maintaining his distance, circling around the Fisher and continuing to bombard him with Paradise Nightmare poison. Then, he saw a perfect net of rocks coming his way and he couldn’t move fast enough to avoid them. The best he could do was contort his body into a shape that let only one of the rocks strike him. It smashed into his shoulder, the tiny stone breaking the skin and sinking into the muscle, contacting his bone and getting stopped. It carried far less power than the earlier attacks the Fisher had used, but it had been impossible to avoid. The wound was not much, but Sage learned it was more than that. The Fisher locked in on his position, using the sound of the injury as a guide and hurling himself forward. The man used the giant arm to hurl himself forward, like an inverse throw, vaulting him in Sage’s direction. He spun in place in mid-air, coiling up his arm and winding it up for a punch. It looked just like the ones in Sage’s Spiritual Sea, except this time with a body attached. He was moving many times faster than Sage could and it now became apparent he was holding back the whole time for a moment just like this.
It was just too bad for him that Sage was also holding back. This was a new world and he wanted to learn just what sorts of things he might run into here. With the enemy rushing towards him, he saw just how deadly the locals could be. Sage closed his mouth and then his whole upper body convulsed. His whole body tensed like he’d just sneezed, his mouth opened and there was a flash of something dark.
The Fisher’s giant arm stopped its windup and flailed helplessly a few times. Then there was a loud crash as the man smashed to the ground. Flying through the air had prevented him from avoiding that dark flash and now he’d fallen to the ground and in just a few moments stopped moving. The violent presence inside Sage’s mind gradually dissolved and the battle finally came to an end. Without being constantly fed, the thick fog faded away in just a few minutes and the Blacksilver Knight standing behind Sage was now obvious. The Knight walked over to the corpse and used its foot to flip the body face up. There was a burnt black hole on the man’s forehead and a look of pained horror on his face.
Third Eye’s End. The same poison he’d used to battle the centipede assassins. He’d used Foresight to predict the enemy’s trajectory and responses to his attack, spitting the poison at the exact time when the enemy lost sight of him. The giant fist’s motion blocked his view for just a split second. Sage saw the Fisher blocking his attack with his huge hand dozens of times until that tiny window opened. The poison burned clear through his forehead and melted his brain in just a few seconds.
The Blacksilver Knight split back into a dozen Pawns and then ran off to collect the remains of the rat men that had been involved in the battle earlier while Sage scooped up the Fisher, depositing him inside the Universe Ring. When the Blacksilver Pawns returned, Sage scooped up all the remains and led the Pawns into a building a block away and directed them to hide themselves while he went into the Universe Ring to inspect their spoils. Heading inside, he suddenly heard a loud voice.
“You ungrateful little Bastard, how could you get so lucky!”
Sage had entered directly into his underground storage area, the huge chamber that he kept in constant stasis to store items. Only, he hadn’t been expecting to see an extraordinarily beautiful man with expensive clothing and sloppy hygiene waiting there for him beside the Fisher’s body.