The next fight was declared on the holoprojection screen, the ninja Tora-Tora would fight the masked man called Meta. General Luena was in the tournament monitoring room. He noticed that only Meta had climbed into the ring of the Grand Arena. The Oriental was nowhere to be seen. If he didn't show up, it would be considered a defeat by WO.

"I request the team to find out the whereabouts of this coward immediately!"

To the military officer's surprise, no one answered. She turned to the control team. They were all dead. The lights flashed. Luena shuddered. Someone had broken into the room unnoticed and executed all her subordinates quickly and easily.

But who could have done it?

A drop of blood fell from the ceiling and hit her left shoulder. She looked up. A figure was clinging to the ceiling.

"Relax, I've just come to pay you back."

"Tora-Tora⁈"

The enemy leapt at her from the ceiling with extreme speed and swung his sword, slinz. Instead of hitting his target, the Japanese warrior hit the seat where she was sitting. Luena disappeared without a trace.

"Damn it! Where did she go?"

"She didn't go anywhere…"

She came up behind him. The general's hand went through Tora-Tora's back and out his chest. The man struggled like a hooked fish, but he couldn't escape the enemy's clutches. He struck out with his katana. Blood dripped from his mouth and nose. His chest convulsed. Luena lifted him into the air.

"For a ninja, you're pretty incompetent."

"How did you escape that blow, you bastard? Did you teleport?"

"No, I've been here the whole time."

A monitor was holoprojected into the room and one of the event's security guards asked how they should proceed, one of the fighters had not been found. General Luena threw the ninja's body on the floor like a sack of garbage and ordered a cleaning crew to come to the room and clean it. He ordered the following:

"Declare victory for Meta by forfeit for Tora-Tora. That idiot ruined my planning. I hate it when things get out of hand. Declare the Neo Axis group's last fight with the masked Okan."

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

"Yes, sir."

General Luena turned to his would-be assassin. The body was bleeding profusely from the chest. He stepped back and prevented his feet from touching the pool of blood sweeping the room. He shook his head, considering a serious error in his security system.

If it weren't for my Quantity Alteration: Absolute Refraction of Light, I'd be dead right now.

⸎

Pestzart trembled in fear. Caesar XVII was dead, and the ex-yakuza hadn't come. Changing the dynamics of the Grand Arena tournament, his fight would be brought forward. He would be fighting Okan, the masked woman who used techniques involving a type of mist. He thought about running away, but the tournament security guards made him climb into the ring.

Okan, facing him, seemed at ease. Her self-confidence shook him even more. He raised his arm to declare he was quitting the fight, but the ambushed woman acted quickly and kicked him in the right shoulder. Her ankle dug into his bones, dismembering his humerus from his scapula. The German fell to his knees on the ground.

"For someone who thinks he's as superior as you, getting down on your knees must hurt your pride, doesn't it?"

He stood up with a scalpel in his hand. He struck, but only hit air. Around him, a vast mist of plasma thickened from floor to ceiling. A spectrum of purplish light showed small flashes of lightning.

"You seem to be trapped, Doctor."

Vap, zup! Pestzart cut with his scalpel. Little by little, fleeting images of Okan formed. The smoky atmosphere created a sense of psychedelia. It was impossible to distinguish reality from lies. The timbre of Okan's voice echoed cynically as if from the bottom of a glass bottle.

"When I heard that a group called Neo Axis would be taking part in the tournament, I laughed like never before. A neo-Nazi group who believe in their supposed superiority and who have come here to show Ilu Nla that 'you can't be trifled with', how pathetic!"

He cut a copy of Okan with his scalpel, but the image turned into an electric current that struck him like a bolt of lightning. The German writhed on the floor like a snake. The electrocution was strong enough to knock him down, but not enough to kill him. He wished for death. He was panicking.

"Ilu Nla already has a lot of problems, it doesn't need to deal with garbage like you. Since the colonial revolution, we have repelled the advance of all our enemies. An ideology as vulgar as yours poses no threat to us.

"As he stood up, she kicked him once more, in the back. The man fell to his knees on the ground again.

"Stay on your knees, foreigner, I'm not finished yet. Do you know the real reason your superiors sent your trio of suckers here? It's because you're nothing but rats, the only place you can have a stage is in the underworld. I repeat, you're nothing but pathetic."

"ENOUGH! I won't have someone as inferior as you talking to me like that."

Pestzart stood up. He threw the scalpels at Okan's smoky images. They crumbled for a few moments and then formed again. They laughed. The German felt humiliated. His heart was pounding. He had come to the most obvious conclusion: he wasn't superior, he was just a coward.

"Get away from me, I said!"

"Feeling strong fighting someone weaker than you doesn't seem like a fair ruler to me. In my clan, they used to tell the story of a master blacksmith…"

"Shut up! I don't want to listen to your primitive fables."

"I'm not asking for your permission… the blacksmith claimed to have forged the supreme sword, a weapon that could cut through anything. In his presentations, no one was unaware of the power of its edge."

"No! Help! I give up! Let me out."

"No one can hear you, sorry. Then an old man asked to speak and contradicted the blacksmith. He asked if the sword could cut the ocean, the stars and time. The blacksmith said that the ocean was too fluid for the blade to cut it, that the stars were too distant for the sword to reach them and that time was too invisible and powerful to be touched. He apologized for his arrogance and went back to forging swords. Now die and take your pride with you."

She snapped her fingers. All her plasma replicas fell on Pestzart and turned into electric fields. The neo-Nazi was electrocuted to death. When the plasma mist dissipated. Only his blackened corpse remained.

As she left the ring and was greeted by her teammates, the holothelon projected the last fight of the round.