“Are you fellows all right?” The knight asked Azim and Leone. “You don’t seem like yourselves. Well, more you, kid. The shiny guy seems about the same.”
Leone was rattled, and wasn’t sure if what he was looking at was real. Azim, on the other hand, as the knight had mentioned, did not seem any different. His stoic stance and unreadable face remained unchanged. As for the armored man, his whole demeanor had shifted.
In addition to the knight’s eyes, which were now glowing mauve pupils surrounded by violet instead of the man’s usual blue-grayish color, he himself felt changed. He had a wicked smile beaming across his face, his entire guard was more relaxed, but he felt something more. Deeper… more within him. A bloodlust. A hunger.
The robed bald man stood back and watched as the knight slowly approached his new companions. Leone held up his hands in a fighting stance but couldn’t hide a look of contempt toward the situation. The young man was not necessarily nervous about their current predicament but instead more unsettled. He did not like the sight before him but resolved to not let it get the best of him. Azim, however, had a little less of an understanding of the situation.
Obliviously, the robot asked, “I apologize if this comes off as inappropriate, for that is not my intention, but why do your eyes now glow purple? Have you developed a sickness?”
“No, buddy,” Leone answered for the knight, keeping his guard tight. “The guy’s possessed, not sick. The dude in the robes did something to him, and now the guy is on his side.”
“I understand,” replied Azim. “I—“
The metal man could not utter any more than those three words before the possessed knight charged forward. He raised his sword high behind him, preparing to bring it crashing down. Azim abruptly handed his triangular sword to Leone, who was unsure what the robot was doing. “What— What’s this?” Leone asked the metal man.
“I need my hand free,” Azim stated blankly.
The robot then raised his arm and attempted to cast Scrap Return. However, the knight did not allow it. Upon the spell grabbing hold of the possessed man’s blade, he twisted his wrist and snapped the effect of the spell off his weapon. He brought down his blade without issue.
Azim and Leone each ducked out of the way, narrowly dodging the armored man’s broadsword. Azim was curious about how the knight had rejected his spell, but then thought back to the green-skinned woman he had fought outside Ki’tk’s house. She had pulled off the same move the knight had, rejecting the android’s magic and holding onto her weapon. The metal man wanted to know why some were able to reject Scrap Return the way those two had. He wanted to know what he could do to keep that from happening in the future. Though now was not the time to wonder how.
Without saying anything, Azim lifted his hand toward Leone and pulled the large, triangular sword from his grasp. The move caught the young man by surprise, but he quickly brushed it off. He cast Strength Switch and stood firm. The two were ready now. The silver, sword-welding robot and the young, black wizard both stood guard as their new companion stared at them with murderous intent.
While the three combatants fought, swords clashing and fists flying, the bald witch simply watched. The magic he was pouring into the knight was more concentrated than what he had been previously using. Not only was he taking control of him like the others, he was making him stronger, hence the glowing eyes. The knight was being boosted with so much power that did not belong to him, it practically flooded out through his eyes. The black-robed man had started focusing less on his other puppets, but that did not matter to him. The knight had chatted his attention. This man, as far as he had known, had all but been killed as the witch had dealt with him not 30 minutes ago.
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The fourth floor was the first floor to have open windows along the stadium walls. They were, of course, magic, and could not be entered from the outside. One could only exit from within, leaving them to start back at the bottom if they wanted to return.
Upon first entering the fourth floor, the witch had been the one to deal with the auspicious knight. The robed bald man was doing everything in his power to keep people from advancing forward, pitting fighters and adventurers against one another, making sure they all ignored him entirely. The man did not care about advancing upward himself, but simply keeping others from doing so. When the knight assessed what the dark-skinned witch was doing, he became the armored man’s main target. Unfortunately, the man quickly realized how outclassed he was.
The witch sent forth several of the available fighters at the time to swarm the knight, who was quickly overwhelmed. He tried to hold his own but could not last more than a few minutes. His sword was smashed into pieces throughout the fight, leaving him with nothing but the handle and cross guard, and his body was left bruised and battered.
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The knight had an enchantment built into his armor, one that could only be activated 3 times a day. He had used it once earlier when fighting the third-floor ogre on his own. Then against the witch and his forced soldiers, the knight had triggered his enchantment a second time, though it had not been enough. The other combatants had truly overwhelmed him, leading the knight to get thrown out one of the windows, utterly defeated, and plummet down to the ground just outside the front entrance of the tower.
Beaten so badly, the witch had every reason to believe that the knight would succumb to his wounds outside, and that would be the end of it. What he had not expected, however, was a scrappy band of adventurers showing up at the same moment, who were kind enough to heal him of his injuries. Now that he had returned, and with a vengeance, the black-robed man was all the more amused. He found the case fascinating, and rather than messing the armored man up, decided to make a toy out of him.
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“Snap out of it man, snap out of it!” yelled Leone, jumping out of the way of the knight’s swords as he did.
The knight was lurching back and forth between the two adventurers. Each swing of his broadsword carried with it an aura of heaviness and static, like the energy poured into him by the black-robed witch was radiating out of him and his weapon. With every movement, an overwhelming intensity grew within him, one that could not have possibly been truly his own.
Azim got in close and brought up his large sword from down low. The knight clashed his blade against the robot’s, holding the weapon steady with a rivaling strength. One that could have only come from his possession. While the armored man was preoccupied, Leone snuck up and sucker-punched him in the stomach, lifting the knight off his feet. Taking advantage of the lack of pressure on him, Azim tucked his giant blade around the armored man’s, slashing his side and sending him flying a few meters. Leone charged forward without waiting for the robot, caring intensely about the knight’s wellbeing and hoping he could snap the man out of his trance.
“Hey! Hey, you alright?” Leone asked cautiously, debating whether or not to drop his guard. “We need you back, man, are you good?”
Without warning, the armored man’s broadsword swung toward Leone’s face, who just barely stepped back in time. “Woah!” he shouted as he reacted.
While the knight was still getting up, Leone ran up close and delivered another gut-wrenching punch to the knight’s stomach. However this time, the effect did not seem to be as impactful. Leone stood nervously as he looked at the knight, unmoved and seemingly unharmed by the attack. The man in armor simply grinned.
Leone hit the floor instantly. The punch from the armored man had shockingly more strength than the young man had expected. Lying on the ground, looking back up, the young wizard saw it now. There was a thin veil of translucent energy surrounding the knight’s armor. It ebbed and flowed ever so slightly, emanating from every piece of the man’s suit in tandem. “Ow…” groaned Leone. “M—“
Another hearty punch to the back and Leone was down. It was now just down to Azim.
The robot looked over to his knocked-out friend before staring down his possessed companion. The knight was already charging toward him, a sly smirk across his face. Azim glanced at the bald-headed witch behind him, who seemed to be enjoying the show. The android tried to throw his triangular sword at the black-robed man, but the knight smacked it away with his own sword before it could reach him. Retracting the oddly shaped weapon back to himself when the knight was just a few meters away, the metal man held up his blade in a defensive stance… just in time for the two of them to crash. The robot had been just a second away from being sliced in half.
The possessed man quickly swapped hands holding the broadsword, bringing it down in a clean vertical motion to Azim’s right. Not having enough time to react, the robot sidestepped just enough out of the way for the incoming blade to miss his shoulder. Instead, it swung down right beside him, slicing through where his right arm would have been.
Azim’s cloak ruffled as he moved, folding in itself to cover Azim’s shoulder. The fabric tore as the sword ripped through it, but reminded both fighters that there was no limb there to cut off. The knight, however, in his possessed and active state, did not waste any time with the misstep. Instead, he flung his unarmed right hand forward, smashing the robot’s armored chest with his reinforced aura and launching him back into the wall of the arena.
“Azim!” Riva called out from the sidelines, she and Roman still keeping back anybody who got too close. “Azim, hun’, are you okay?!”
Slowly picking up himself, the android lifted his head and uttered, “I… am all right.”
Azim was twitching slightly, a tiny spark flickering from his metal collarbone. He had dropped his sword, but it did not seem to be a concern to the robot. After a couple seconds, he readjusted himself, calming his fidgeting body and looking back up at the knight. “That… was not optimal,” Azim spoke softly. “It appears we must try again…”
Before finishing his thought, a thin hawkling with a pair of small axes came down on the robot from above, sticking one leg out to pin the robot with before striking. Azim was not in the mood. He grabbed the hawkling by the leg, his clawed toes still about a foot or two away from the android’s face, and smacked him straight into the ground. The attacker spat up a desperate cough. Azim pulled him up off the floor and into the air while letting go of his leg, punching the hawkling in the chest before he even started to fall. The impact sent the fighter flying across the field, whizzing just past the possessed knight, who stood still, unflinching, as the body screamed by.
“…In the hopes of an alternative outcome,” Azim concluded.
“Oh?” the black-robed witch mumbled from afar, impressed at the display of strength from such a thin figure.
Picking up the large, triangular sword, Azim held it up to his empty right shoulder and chanted in a monotone, “Reforming Alloy.”
As he did, a flash of light shone from the robot’s left hand, enveloping his shoulder socket and the handle of the sword. A second later, the robot stood tall, his glowing orange eyes of liquid amber gazing into the depths of the knight’s vengeful violet irises. The knight could not believe what the strange, steel-covered man was planning. In all honestly, it seemed a little absurd to him. But that was no matter. The possessed man in armor would beat him down all the same.
The dark-skinned witch was just as befuddled. This metal stranger before him was certainly a character. The man acknowledged the fact that he had never met someone so peculiar. The stranger fought in a calculated way, yet many of his actions or decisions, such as this one, seemed odd and unorthodox. Yet given the metal man’s calm and collected demeanor, these strange actions did not come off as desperate last-ditch efforts. The bald-headed man’s interest was piqued.
Meanwhile, the android’s cloak hung still behind him, violently torn by the possessed man in front of him. Just like the knight, Azim was unflinching. His automated body was ready. His digital mind was calculating. Last but not least, the giant sword that now hung by his side in place of an arm was calibrated and ready for action. And so was the robot that was wielding it.