The Energy-infused Barong heads on Wisesa's outstretched hands hungered with a fervour akin to the Binxtrunachs drooling in proximity. He tossed them in various directions as wandering energies that would not dissipate before snatching a soul in their jaw. Barong itself, his faithful sentry, raked its claws and rent the entrails of any mujinos that were about to pounce on the host’s blind side. More ravines yawned, earths overturned, and pebbles took flight.

Yet, it was nought but a flight of fancy to both of them. the monsters as close as the palm of their hands were kissed by fire before they even knew what to do.

"Dude, if you keep stealing my prey, I might as well go back to the barracks and sleep!" Wisesa half-ranted, his hands flailing downwards.

But the lad's tirade was overshadowed by the lass's raucous laughter. "You're the instigator of this contest!" Izel countered. "I remain firm in my resolve. Citlalicoatl shall not rue the prowess of his worshippers when pitted against another god!"

"You are indeed a warlike madwoman." With a flourish of one hand, Wisesa crushed a score of Bixturnachs into a large boulder, which he then hurled towards Izel, whose gaze was elsewhere watching the mujinos turn to ash. "Might as well take care of this one!"

The boulder almost shoved Izel's neck forward had she not swiftly rolled over. Her screams turned into feral howls. A blast of flame shattered the boulder into pieces, leaving a miniature mushroom tower in its wake.

"I see. It seems your patience is as thin as your resolve!" Izel jested. "I won't judge you. Return to the barracks while I bask in triumph, and Citlalicoatl chokes in its deluge!"

"What are you doing, Wisesa? We may indeed be defeated by her!" Barong's voice was muffled, its ethereal mouth preoccupied with squashing a Bixturnach's skull and slurping Zaloses. All of which went straight to excrement in mere moments. "Bring not shame upon me!"

"Why do you care so much about a god-fighting game with some jealous ignorant who has never been host to a god? Not like you're getting another worshipper anyway. No one is worshipping you now, even," Wisesa grumbled. He directed his inner strength towards the monsters, its potency too great they were pulped rather than propelled. At last, his first kill tally since the competition’s inception.

"Half my strength, Wisesa! Please! You won't regret it!"

"Now you're begging?" Wisesa burst out laughing. "Gods, you're the most pathetic god!"

Bixturnachs and Zaloses were nothing but old game pawns. Wisesa ceased his murderous spree when his hearing registered an unusual screech. It was human-like ambiguity as any other mujinos, but much deeper, as though emanating from nasal passages.

The lad's gaze met that of a burly, purple-hued entity.

A humanoid with a grotesquely contorted body shape, tumours and gems defaced its body. Eight legs supported its form, bereft of arms, devoid of ocular organs, its brain laid bare, its dentition composed solely of molars. Formzassaz.

"So this is the mimic of which Izel speaks?" Wisesa muttered to himself.

Formzassaz had come out of the portal alongside other monsters, but they only appeared from the forest recently. One of them continued its lumbering gait on all eight towards a War Walker carriage. Ballistic steel was blasted upon the purple creature, and in the moment's notice, its form shrank into a steel roundabout exactly as the projectile it absorbed. It entered a moment of inertia, then reversed course, bounding back into the carriage's cannon barrel, sealing its explosive end.

However, the purple projectile did not pause. It was no longer a bullet after all.

Approaching the other chariots of War Walkers, Formzassaz chose to forsake its bullet manifesto. It engulfed a whole chariot and the people on board. And so the mujino was now a colossal chariot of war careening wildly over friend and foe alike, with a random hail of cannons from its prominent barrel.

The impromptu ground explosions that followed after the ear-splitting whistles repelled the soldiers towards the trenches. One bullet even landed near Wisesa, sending him flying. Fortunately, the lad hardly died. Unfortunately, his stone armour fared not as well.

"See? You're a mess!" were Barong's words to his once-again naked host instead of, "Crap! Are you okay?"

"Calm down, Soulf of Durga! You sound like a mother, and even my mother wasn't that concerned."

"Well, the War Walker's warhead is not equal to the ordinary inner strength blows! Ordinary people can die instantly!"

"Aren't you at least a little satisfied to know I'm intact because of your quarter strength?"

"If only half of it flows in your veins, then no matter what attack, you'll be as solid as a coral rock—"

"Damn it, Dumb Beast! The next time you offer your wares, I'll seal you from my consciousness!"

Pebbles began to roll up into another armour through Wisesa's legs before a purple katana split it into two pieces again. The sundering was deep enough to mar the seal tattoo upon his flesh.

"What the goddamn...?" Before another curse escaped the lad's lips, the purple lanced forth anew. Wisesa attempted to evade with a sweeping motion, yet found his hand ensnared by the blade’s edge, and the purple essence inexorably spread across his skin. The choke hold that followed from carelessness accelerated the spread. The infected veins and arteries writhed as if beset by a thousand teeth. Wisesa's eyes were verging on expulsion. Before him stood the armoured shinobi, who had been absorbed by Formzassaz, its brain perching atop his helm, giving the impression that the shinobi’s head contents were spilt out.

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"Don't just stand still, you idiot! That monster is taking your form!" Barong shouted. However, Wisesa felt his body's control being taken away by intense agony. As the Beast Spirit prepared to chop up the shinobi for the life of its host, flames blasted the foe.

"Fool!" mocked Izel. "A god in your body and you can't defeat a single mimic!"

The purple essence in Wisesa's body ebbed away instantly but was replaced by the numbness from the searing pain.

"Engage not Formszazaz with physical contact!" Izel cried once more. "Kill it with raw energy!"

"You could have said that earlier!" Wisesa snapped.

However, the lad's yell was met by the Patron of Land's taunt, "That's what happens when you insult my offer. What's that? You want to seal me away? I dare you now, O Mighty Man Absorbed by Formszazaz!"

"Asshole!"

Now that Wisesa had familiarised himself with Formzassaz, an increasing multitude of their ilk closed in on him. The shattered remnants of the War Walker earlier reunited their scattered spare parts by the limbs of one repulsive purple. The purple war chariots bristled with readiness for another bout. But not only the vehicle, the purple shinobis and samurais confronted him as well.

Barong Heads blazed in Wisesa's grasp, yet as he took the first step, his resolve wavered into doubt.

"These are all humans!" Wisesa exclaimed again. His eyes beseeched Izel for a response.

And luckily, Izel obliged. "In the veil of Formszazaz, they are already corpses! In war, mercy has no place, Man! Death or Glory! Choose!"

"I shall test your theory!" declared Barong, feigning curiosity. Its essence surged towards the infected War Walker, coercing sand and gravel into every crevice of the chariot’s engine until it erupted from within.

Five purple personnel immediately ran towards Wisesa and began throwing hands to catch him. Forced to rely on reflexes, Wisesa dodged every slash and punch to his limit until he gained sufficient distance to retaliate. With a release of the Barong Head projectiles, he incapacitated two assailants, while Barong dispatched the others with its claws.

The final Formzassaz proved the most obstinate—probably the most cunning too. In an unexpected way, it gathered the corpses’ dismemberments with its sprung hands and merged with them! Now the purple warrior bore three torsos, and each of their hands gestured a Mountain Knot sequence.

"The mimicked ability includes spellcasting?" Wisesa marvelled. "Damn it! If they caught me earlier, I can't imagine how happy the Illegal Cat in my body would be to fully unleash its power!" he chided as he slowly faced Barong.

Barong regarded him with a pained gaze. "I'm not that low, Wisesa!"

Suddenly papers flew from behind the purple shinobi and shot towards Wisesa. Numerous evasion techniques presented themselves, but the lad's reflexes drove him to erect an invisible barricade with his inner strength. The paper blasts accumulated until his stone armour shattered away. The lad was sent hurtling once more.

Another fused torso completed its ninjutsu seal sequence. It filled the sky dozens more of it conjured from puffs of smoke.

The triple-bodied shinobi ascended, the central torso executing another Mountain Knot sequence. A shape of broken beast jaws formed with its hands, while cube-shaped energy materialised between the palms.

To Barong's astonishment, all the clones mimicked the gestures to produce an identical energy block.

Wisesa did not realise that. He could not even hear Barong's loud howl because the buzzing was still swarming in his ears.

His consciousness returned only when Barong administered a sharp slap. He had no time to rage as his eyes darted to the multitude of energy clusters aimed at him. He struggled to raise his numbed hands to create an inner strength barrier.

However, the shinobi's mouth incantations outpaced his efforts. "Ninpo: Seikaku na Kikan Dassshu!"

The energy cubes hurtled towards Wisesa with lightning speed!

Barong, aware of Wisesa's incapacity to form a barricade, took the initiative to pull up a block of earth as a barrier. With the last shamanic gesture sequence, Wisesa raised his hands in a scream. How the Divine had cursed them, the cubes of energy paid little heed about the earthen shield...

Before an unfamiliar katana slash from nowhere miraculously stopped the energy projectiles in their tracks.

Wisesa's eyes blinked, and a figure clad in long overalls with six sword sheaths appeared to his right. To his left was Minister Hokutoji Taro whose rifle had turned into a grenade launcher, bombarding the encroaching mujinos.

"You... Hashomon of the Magisterium ...." Wisesa turned his head to the right when Hashomon deposited one katana into its rightful holster.

"Can you stand up?" said Hashomon sternly.

"Don't be lazy now, boy!" Minister Taro scolded as he delivered a forceful blow with the butt of his rifle, driving back a Bixturnach and kicking it aside. "I don't remember there being a luncheon during the war!"

Wisesa clucked his tongue, but he took the Magic General's hand as a fulcrum to his feet.

When the purple shinobi and his clones landed, they immediately ran towards the practitioners, only to meet the same fate as the energy cubes they conjured—stationary, no matter how frenzy the pace of their legs. An infinite distance that they would never reach because some of them reeked of the potion.

"The influx of mujinos from the portal wanes. Exterminate the Mujinos elsewhere with Taro-dono. I’ll deal with this."

Without a word, Wisesa departed with the defence minister. Hashomon, with his epileptic hands, hovered over each katana sheath until he identified the chosen blade. With a firm grip on the hilt, Hashomon drew the katana adorned with "Rain" in Kagatse characters upon its verdant scabbard.

Right at that moment, the epilepsy in his hand passed away.

Kagatsean characters were engraved on the blade’s iron in a vertical fashion. Hashomon's one hand deliberately grasped the blade at the bottommost engraving, one-handed Mountain Knots forming to each letter consecutively to the blade’s edge, mingling his blood with them.

With a violent flourish, Hashomon withdrew her hand from the blade's tip, returning to grasp the hilt with her other hand. He did not cry aloud when he announced, "Kenpo: Surodoi Ame!"

Hashomon instantly circled the purple monsters and performed a vertical slash into empty air.

Instantly dozens of swords rained down on the real shinobi according to the angle and direction of Hashomon's slash! The clones and energy cubes vanished into nothingness. Formzassaz's true form crumbled to dust, leaving behind the shinobis’ mutilated bodies still impaled by the conjured blades.

The General moved on to the rear around and returned a horizontal void slash to a fresh horde of mujinos; a tight line of swords materialised along the slash line and sped away in a flash. One wide-mouthed Bixturnach was agile enough for its tentacles to manage to entangle the general's hand, a warning to him, but he knocked it down at once with a katana scabbard, then finished it off with dozens of sabre swipes as if it had been devastated by a tempest of divine wrath. Now his left hand grasped a long scabbard and his right, a heavy metal blade; strangely Hashomon's hand had never been so steady.

However, wars are never constant and easy, let alone end as planned. A naked man made a sudden appearance and embraced a Bixturnach right to be torn to death—right before his eyes. That, while Hashomon was slaughtering another mujino. That, and Hashomon failed to spare a single hand to pull the madman away.

When the field lay littered with the ephemeral corpses of mujinos, the perplexed Hashomon turned, his ears assailed by unusual cries for a while. They were not cries of lamentation. It was a prayer request. A welcome filled with great joy. It clashed with the screams of warriors who were just as shocked as the Magic General.

The trials that beset the Kagatsean over the past five years had indeed stretched their mettle to its limits. But still, the crowd of people marked only by ashes and spiralling carvings who voluntarily marched towards the monsters as sacrificial lambs was a novelty and madness unfathomable. []