Donning a Redder outfit than the rest was the young warrior, Shakram. His mastery over the spear was unmatched within the ranks of the Archipelago's residents, though even outside of their regularly hosted inter-island fighting tournaments, he would pose quite a threat to even the most experienced of brawlers.

"Whoa, ooh! Oho!" Lem dodged the jabs and slashes, though his weakened arms made him way more worn out than he would usually be, "Geez, you must be the best spear fisher on here!"

"I grab a dozen every day for my mama!" He proudly admitted, "Just a swish, flick and bop! Three fishies on one spear!"

"Someone get this man a fishing rod... Uwah!"

After him came the ditsy lady Shillianna. Do not be tricked by her bubbly and outwardly friendly behaviour, for behind that mere facade lies a trickster type who only knows how to cut veins lengthwise. Her dual blades allow for quick maneuverability used to both dodge and counter the forces that may come from an opponent. She is a feisty one, attacking first and only using her specialty parries when backed into a corner. Her hair was the rarest of all the residents, on par with though opposite of Showa's, wherein she bore pure Brown hair as Showa possessed pure White.

"Haha, you flinched!" She teased Lem, "Come on, now I gotta punch you in the arms. Sorry, I didn't make the rules~!"

"Toss that cutlery away first, then we'll talk." He shot back, still falling behind on the backfoot, "Tch, step off!"

The third of the lot, and also the bulkiest, Schocco. Schocco's bare fists can punch a hole clean through most of the world's trees. As one could imagine, substituting the tree in this example with a spine would work out quite seamlessly. If Lem wanted to survive this one's hits, he'd need to constantly chant the weakening Command he learned just recently. Though he wonders, with such a heavy hitter opponent, would this even work?

"Ngah!" Schocco yelled out a battle cry, his mighty fist hitting Lem head on, "Eh?"

"...Pah!" Lem panted strongly as the wind got knocked out of him, "Nhuu, uhhhn! Ngbah, that was way too close, asshole!"

"You didn't get torn in two?" Schocco scratched his head in confusion.

"Maybe your swings are all fake." Lem gave him a wry smirk, "I know, under all those layers of fat and muscle must lie a heart made of gold that wouldn't hurt a fly! Tell me, guy, did you ever donate to a charity in your life?"

"I do volunteer work at the hospital." He clashed his fists together, "I'm gonna learn from the doctors and help my dad walk again!"

Once again, regret had sunken deep into Lem's heart. It was now made more apparent than ever that all these guys were just regular, ordinary people who all had their own problems to live with. Lem had singlehandedly dropped in and created a whole slew of extra ones for them, which ate away at his heart immensely. Still, he couldn't just give up fighting now, for then he wouldn't be able to run to Nelly's side and help her and Meil in their battle against Olyahim. Losing here meant death, and losing after that wasn't much better either. He had to chase the sunset, even if it meant crawling through this horrible day.

"Wait, weren't there four of you?" He remarked as he looked at them, "Not in the bushes... Not hiding behind any of you..."

"Close, but you're forgetting the sky!" The girl clad in a White blossoming leaf bikini jumped him from above, "The mighty Sheila strikes from the clouds! How'd she get there, nobody knows!"

To dodge the attack from this distance would only put him in a worse position with the others. Lem knew that fighting four people all at once, what's more with two injured arms and a ton of fatigue could only be barely manageable, but this was on another level. He had to use his brain at max capacity along with his body, which led to him analyzing the entire current state of the board.

"Sheila, was it? What's her shtick?" He looked her up and down before she reached him, "I don't see a weapon. Is she just there to tackle me? If so, I could reasonably toss her away with a backwards roll, but doing so without my arms would mean my legs would be doing all the work. Meanwhile, the closest to me was the brute, Schocco. He'll use the situation to his advantage by charging me while I'm on the ground. Better prepare the Chant in advance, then. Ah, but he's gonna keep beating me until I start taking damage, so let's set the conditions to have him be unable to deal any at all as long as he's under my Command. For now, that's enough, since the other two are far away."

"Gryahhh!" Sheila opened wide, showcasing teeth as sharp as a shark's, "Chomp!"

"Shit, what the-!?" Lem fell to the ground immediately after getting bitten in the neck, "Ngh, I Command you to let go!"

The order worked, but the plan he had made in advance had already failed. This was the moment he feared most would happen—There was no time to cast another weakening Chant against Schocco. Immediately, a single powerful blow fell down from above him, causing a crater to form around the entire outer perimeter of his body. Lem had lost.

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***

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Lem, no last name, died before he could ever reach Nelly's side. What was left of his body was nothing more than a nightmarish bloodsplatter that extended a good ten meters from his body. His head was crushed flat from the mighty brute's punch, his Eyes popped out completely from his skull. The normally Yellow Pupils had gone a melancholic Purple... He was gone.

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"...Eh? That was it?" Shakram approached the three, "I barely even did anything, and he's already dead?"

"Can you blame him, though?" Shillianna teetered along, poking Lem's cold, squashed cheeks a few times for funsies, "A punch to the face from Schocco is equivalent to a stomp from an elephant's foot. This guy held out pretty long, all things considered."

"True, our doctor in training here sadly has a way better knack for hurting than healing." Sheila shook her head and clicked her tongue, "How sad, what a curse to live with."

"Stop making me sound like a tragic hero!" Schocco blushed, "It's not my fault none of you guys ate your veggies! Dad said so himself—Eat and grow big and strong!"

"I don't think that particularly applies to everyone as well as it did for you." Shakram scowled, "In any case, we should bury this guy quick and get going to the elder. That demon's been doing annoying stuff on his own for way too long now, it's about time he got an earful about it."

"If by earful you mean an earful of hurt, then sure!" Shillianna sang a tune before stopping, "Ah, but let's first cut this guy up. The animals eat dead bodies away way faster when they're bleeding from every orifice."

"That's such a lie!" Shakram got mad at her, "You just wanna steal all the credit by making it seem like you killed him!"

"Boohoo, you got me..." She sulked.

"Guys, we're wasting too much time." Schocco calmed everyone down, "Let's leave him here until we're done with the elder. If the other residents find him, they'll do something about the body. If they don't, we can always come back later."

"Aww, what?" Sheila pouted, "You're always like this—Hurr durr, let's finish everything we have to do first and put off fun stuff for later! Such a chore!"

"Isn't that just called being responsible?" Schocco furrowed his brows, "We all know the elder can be speedy at the worst of times. If he was running away from this assassin, then he must already be on the other side of the island by now."

"I agree, every second spent dawdling is a second he'll most definitely use to run and hide." Shakram nodded, "Come on, unlike the assassin, he won't be expecting us to kill him. Once we get this over with, we might even become famous heroes!"

"Ah, you think they'll sing songs about us?" Shillianna clung to him, "Ooh! I can definitely see that happening! The legendary heroes that killed the evil assassin threatening the island, as well as the old evil elder tyrannizing it!"

"Might wanna work on the lyrics there." He gently put her hands off of him, "Either way, I doubt we'll be that praised. At the end of the day, we'll just be slaying a stubborn old man that refuses to die of old age."

"Ehhh? So no one's gonna sing about us to future generations?" Shillianna wept, "Hmph, if that's the case, then I'm not going!"

"You're not about to back out just 'cause our good deeds aren't guaranteed to be rewarded." Schocco pulled her back, "If we don't kill the old man, then we killed this poor guy for nothing."

Hearing the situation be posed from a different angle made the other three quite shocked. They never thought to look at Lem as also just a guy who wanted revenge for the wrongdoings of Olyahim. Though they knew of his background and goal, they still cut his mission short in favor of their own revenge. It was that, a battle of whose passion for comeuppance came out on top.

"Wow, you actually feel bad for this monster?" Sheila patted Schocco on the back, "You really are a softie."

"Schocco, he harmed a bunch of innocent lives." Shakram warned, "One of our family members could've just as easily been in the spot of the ones he injured."

"...But he made sure not to kill a single person." Schocco sighed.

"...."

Indeed, Lem had only aimed at the non-vital areas of his enemies' bodies. Parts like limbs, hits shallow enough to not even properly break someone's wind, that was the type of fighting he put onto the table. In fact, it was the fault of the island residents for not being better prepared to fight that they even took so much damage. Anyone with even a hint of fighting experience would've been fine from that exchange. Still, this mercy seemed to have only been recognized by one lone brute, and he failed to speak up about it to the others until it was far too late.

"He attacked wildly and without any regard for our fellow residents' safety." Shillianna was surprisingly the one to refute this, "He's an assassin. It's true the elder's the true villain here, since he was the one who sent everyone in to fight this guy, but he was the one who harmed us. Remember our code, Schocco, no hard feelings."

"He agreed to them as well." Sheila rolled her Eyes, "If he defeats us, he continues onward to kill the elder. If we defeat him, we kill the elder. Either way, nothing changes in the end."

"Yeah, now come on!" Shillianna happily pranced onward, guiding the others as she ran into the woods, "Let's go find that old man and beat him up!"

With a single glance at one another and an accompanying chuckle, the other two followed closely behind. It was only the large Schocco that remained to look deeply into Lem's lifeless body.

"Nothing changes..." He parroted the words before dismissing them in a quiet mutter, "As if. If you'd have won, you surely wouldn't have killed us. I'm sorry, may you rest in peace."

As the large man with a heart of gold gave one final prayer for the deceased teenager, the other three simply glared back in disgust and contempt. They disliked the idea of praying for an enemy's, much less an outsider's salvation more than anything. Now, they press on to find Olyahim, carrying Lem's will through them.