Ezekiel charged right at the massive rhino, only to receive a devastating swing from his electrical mace. He could feel the harsh current trying its best to break through his armour, like a ravenous beast, desperate to claim a victim.
The exosuit’s armour was somewhat robust, though, and so the attack didn’t cause much damage.
Another swing came his way, but he made sure to stay far away from the mace after being hit with that initial swing.
Ezekiel then charged forward in a straight direction, applying all the force of his suit. He managed to rush right past the extended mace and used his powered gauntlets to throw a swift combination of blows onto his person.
From doing this, he could hear a crack in his armour upon landing the final hit. The two warriors heard this crack too, and he looked up to see the rhino even looked slightly confused from this attack.
Cakonada was not expecting to get hit with such an attack and have it cause noteworthy. Ezekiel stood there daringly, lifting to give off a keen smile from behind his helmet. Just as he did so, though, he received a straight swing from the guy’s mace, that was forceful enough to force him right off his feet.
He was sent sliding away and felt a malfunction in the actuators in his arm. The current, even though his mace was no longer contacting his arm, was causing disruptions in the systems of his exosuit.
They were built to be rather durable and resist these sorts of attacks, but this amount of current was dangerously high.
“Pest.” He cursed, holding his twitching arm.
Across from them, Preston charged right at the warrior that boldly stood still. However, his large, dark green energy rifle was tracking Preston in his movements and slowly declining as he got closer.
BOOM!
From the sheer number of exploding barrels, the energy blasts being released sounded more like a gunshot than a traditional energy rifle.
Preston received the brunt of the force of the attack and was moving straight ahead and couldn’t evade properly.
The attack threw him off his feet. Most energy blasts had enough force behind them to knock someone off course and with these multiple blasts landing on his person, he simply couldn’t stay standing.
He was sent rolling, and he could see the metal at the front of this fighter’s weapon was already glowing a slight amount. Large amounts of steam poured off the head of this weapon, and he could see that he wasn’t able to launch another barrage of blasts yet.
Preston charged forward again, and DRAKEDRAGON looked a little surprised from his identical advance as his head retreated back slightly.
Just before he reached his opponent, though, he slid down to evade the next barrage of energy rifles that shot forward. The numerous blasts fell into the ground and caused a cloud of sand to erupt from the floor.
Preston pounced up and drove his fist right into his stomach, before aiming higher and throwing haymakers at his upper torso.
DRAKEDRAGON had a firm stance, and his arms were already lifted, so that he could catch the punches onto them.
After Preston threw his swift combination of attacks, DRAKEDRAGON stepped back and extended his left arm.
He made a tight fist, and then revealed another energy rifle that he had on his wrist. It was hard to see if he had a weapon there from before the match, and Preston’s eyes widened upon seeing this was the case.
Reflexively trying to dodge the attack, he couldn’t do so in time and was caught by the blast that crashed into his right chest.
The force behind it made him stumble back, and DRAKEDRAGON charged forward like a crazed beast. He threw with desperation, but Preston couldn’t even do anything to resist his clumsy attack.
The strike landed on his chest and almost threw him into the sand ground. He was sent rolling back and felt a searing pain from his right shoulder.
“Shucks!” He thought to himself, touching the newly formed wound.
Before he could even do anything else, too, he received another number of red energy blasts that crashed into his armour.
This time, after having his armour broken down from the previous blasts, some managed to puncture the skin. He grunted in pain upon taking this attack, and his mana-enhanced body was the only thing that stopped these wounds from being life-threatening.
Blood profusely dripped out of the created wounds, and he could feel that he wouldn’t be able to take many more of these energy blasts.
After this combination of attacks, he hadn’t even managed to cause any form of damage to the guy’s gargantuan energy rifle.
“Dammit!”
Lazarro charged toward the spider exosuit warrior, that initially ran toward him on all fours.
As the two fighters reached into kicking range of each other, the man dropped to using his four silver-armoured limbs and threw himself to the left. Planting his limbs, he then forced his body to the right toward Lazarro and punched his exposed arm.
Subsequently, the crouched warrior extended his leg and pulled it across in a sweeping motion. Lazarro’s footing was totally thrown off, and he was sent on a steady descent toward the floor.
However, in a last-ditch effort to save himself, he threw himself back in the form of a backflip so that this spider was too far to hit him in any way.
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“A good fighter. Annoying.” Lazarro realised, making his fighting stance once again.
****
Preston struggled to get himself off the floor after taking those numerous energy blasts simultaneously.
As he raised, he could feel searing pain from the open wounds in his exosuit but prepared himself for battle. There was no escape here.
All he could do was fight to the very end.
“You still have some fight left in you. Surprising.” DRAKEDRAGON confidently stated, shooting two energy blasts from his wrist-mounted energy rifle.
The first energy blast knocked Preston back a step, while the second launched him into the 10 feet tall wooden wall of the ring.
Preston hissed in pain, as that energy blast had hit an open part of his exosuit. Blood flowed out from this newly created wound with an alarming intensity, and Preston tried to hold his hand to the opening to stop the bleeding.
As he pulled his hand off, though, he could see a pool of warm blood in his hand.
Fwoosh!
DRAKEDRAGON rushed in to try and attack the dazed warrior, but Preston just about managed to evade the fist that had been soaring to his face. The strike from this tight, clunky fist made the wall of the ring crack and quake.
This made the fighter more grateful that the punch hadn’t landed on him.
Suddenly, though, DRAKEDRAGON turned and aimed his shoulder-mounted energy rifle lower and toward the bleeding wound in his abdomen.
Even though steam was still flowing out of the hot barrels of his rifle, he was impatient.
PFF! BOOM!
The energy blasts shot simultaneously and were more focused on his torso.
They landed principally on this area and launched the fighter off his feet, and onto the ground. He groaned in pain and held his abdomen in agony.
As DRAKEDRAGON slowly approached him, Preston simply turned and started shooting several energy blasts at the large rifle.
DRAKEDRAGON felt annoyed about this, since there was little that he could do to resist. Preston’s energy rifle was clearly on the verge of overheating, but the intensity of his fire did not waver.
With a final blast from his energy rifle, his barrel had been cooked and blasted right open, causing slag and burning hot metal to wedge itself into his arm.
He roared upon firing this last attack, destroying DRAKEDRAGON’s prized weapon.
“You little!” He grumbled, storming to Preston to stomp on his head.
His helmet shattered under the impact, and his body turned to nothing but blue particles. Preston could do nothing but simply watch from the fight from the rows of seats above, with his destroyed exosuit.
****
Lazarro strugglingly fought the menacing spider-like fighter, who was simply too fast and agile. He was able to fight upright like a traditional fighter, but also at lower levels.
The boy simply didn’t have enough experience against unorthodox fighters like these. The only times that he would meet them would be in the vault, and he wouldn’t even find them that often.
Plasma_Zeus charged forward but Lazarro planted his feet and prepared to throw a punch as soon as he came into range.
He wanted to make sure to hit him before he could perform one of his irritating pivots to arrive beside or behind him.
His powered gauntlet whirred, and his fist whipped through the air, but Plasma_Zeus fell to his arms and swerved around just fast enough to stay unscathed.
“Darn it!” Lazarro cursed, with his fist extended.
Adrenaline coursed through his virtual veins and with so much fighting experience to his name, he could think faster than he could move. With his arm still aimed outward, he knew that he couldn’t do anything to block his next attack in time.
He swept his knee in with a forceful kick, dropping him onto his hands and knees.
Upon falling, Lazarro rolled to his left and aimed his shoulder-mounted rifle right at the incoming fighter.
PEW! PEW! PEW!
Plasma_Zeus’ troublesome agility forced him to shoot numerous blasts in quick succession to try and catch him. Lazarro could already feel the intense heat growing on his shoulder but was desperate to land a hit on the dancing fighter.
His final energy blast just managed to hit him on his right flank, melting open that part of his armour. The damage was no where near deep enough to reach his skin, but he could still feel the heat.
“Ha! Take that!” Lazarro thought, as he began to raise.
Before he could, though, Plasma_Zeus grabbed his arms and was looking downwards at his feet. He was looking for a submission.
Lazarro used this rash move from his opponent to blast him with as many energy blasts as his rifle could output without cooking itself.
It turned out he could only shoot 2 quickly, with a final delayed blast about a second later.
He managed to make the fighter step back with his final blast, and it had drawn blood.
Surprisingly, the fighter charged right back and used his powerful arm actuators to slam Lazarro into the wall of the ring.
He struggled to try and overpower this warrior, who basically had arms with the strength of legs.
He managed to place his right leg just behind Lazarro’s right, throwing him over and onto the ground.
As they crashed into the floor, Lazarro received a straight punch to his helmet.
Sand raised up from the impact of his head hitting the floor, and the two warriors continued their wrestling match.
Lazarro couldn’t free himself from being under this fighter, and he received many more strikes to his face and body.
He could only use his shoulder-mounted rifle ever so much, and Plasma_Zeus could predict when he’d resort to using it.
This caused many of the energy blasts to endlessly soar into the sky, where they eventually vanished.
With an arm on his neck, he struggled to breathe and soon felt himself getting slower and weaker. His vision blurred, until he started to see nothing but blue.
“No!” Lazarro called out from the stands, with his head in his hands.
He was hoping that they would get promoted, but he felt like they were cursed by this win-loss culture of theirs.
“Don’t worry. Ezekiel’s fighting like a beast out there. If anyone could take on this 1v3, it’s him.” Preston replied confidently, signalling for him to look back at the arena.
The trio closed in on Ezekiel, who was forced back to the ring floor. He looked around hastily to see his two friends watching on from the stands.
All they could do was cheer and give him support. They were out, and it all came down to him.
VRR!
His powered gauntlets activated, and he surveyed his surroundings with focused eyes. He precisely looked at opportunities to make his way out of this.
Upon doing so, his eyes fell upon DRAKEDRAGON. His energy rifle was cooked, and all that remained was his wrist-mounted energy rifle.
In a flash, Ezekiel was off and charged right at him.
POW!
With a single punch from his powered gauntlet shook up the fighter. Before he could resort to using his wrist-mounted rifle, he firmly grabbed him to hurl him into the floor.
Ezekiel then finished off with a sequence of full power punches on his head. He could feel the heat from his powered gauntlets seeping into his forearms.
His body turned into nothing but blue particles, and he turned his attention toward the other two fighters that remained.
After fighting cakonada for so long, he'd only managed to inflict minor damage on his towering exosuit. All that he had really done was tire the gargantuan fighter out.
Therefore, he chose to take on the other target.
He cocked back his fist all the way to his chest and extended it with ferocity. The attack soared toward his face, but Plasma_Zeus was too agile for this burly warrior.
He pivoted past his fist and swept at his legs in a similar fashion to Lazarro. Due to how much force he had placed into charging forward as fast as he could, Ezekiel was basically thrown into the floor.
Just as he turned around as fast as he could, he could see the electrical mace hurling down toward his person.
An electric trail followed it in its course, and it landed straight on his helmet. His world almost went black for a second, and he felt his vision return to him, only to be seeing his adversary from mere seconds ago from an overhead view.
He grunted in annoyance upon realising they had lost, and notifications appeared in front of the fighters to show them their rewards for the match.
[Match Lost!]
[+12 Power Points]
“What?!” Lazarro blurted out, upon seeing how much they had made.
[Rank Up!]
[Skilled I]
“YES!”