The plan was simple, Issei felt—If he wasn't allowed to kill Schnell in any way, then it's best to harm him without inflicting lethal damage. The Generals focused too much on haphazardly dishing out all the damage they could fit in the tiny windows they kept opening for each other, but more often than not that led to killing intent taking over and resetting the battle. With such a mindset, they would never have won to begin with... But Issei knew this, and he planned his battles out accordingly to circumvent such an outcome.

"Dammit, bzzt!" Schnell barely got himself off the ground, "My muscles ain't workin' right! Zzt, you're a real pain, Black Eyes!"

"It's called strategy, brain." Issei felt a lot more confident about continuing the battle after taking a short break, "Read up on it sometime, it just might save your life."

"The ones that get too cocky too early often die in the next 5 minutes." Schnell ripped the pencil out of his stomach, "Hey, you really should learn not to leave the weapon lodged into the enemy."

"Next you're gonna say: 'Cause they might use it against ya'!" Issei struck a bizarre pose.

"Cause they might... Gasp!" Schnell hesitated mid attack.

The brief moment of insecurity allowed Issei to hop over him and neatly sit on top of his shoulders. The hanging tail from the ripped apart shirt was then used to choke him out slowly and painfully. The main advantage of this maneuver is the difficulty of Schnell reaching him, but there're also extra benefits like Issei not having to expend too much strength, and the fact Schnell will only get weaker as he loses oxygen. When the time was ripe, and just as Issei was nearing the end of his own strength to hold on...

"Bzzzzzt!" He felt the strength of a thousand thunders coarse through his veins, "T-T-T-The pencil lead!"

"S-Still has-s sssome currrrrent left!" Schnell tossed him off with a smirk, "Don't think I was just planning on simply stabbing you after what you did to me!"

Right, under normal circumstances the electricity that coursed through the pencil lead would have gone away by now, but since most of the shock remained in Schnell as a conductor, he managed to properly transfer it back onto Issei. This time, Issei felt the damage he had done to his opponent, and it wasn't pretty.

"M-My leg...!" He inspected the deep gash Schnell left in it with the pencil lead, "Crap, Auros! Help me out here!"

"Best I can do is this, Foreigner!" Auros smashed the ground, instigating a hundred meter tall wall to grow around Issei, "Try to think of something with this time I've given you!"

"Was there a point to making the wall that tall?" Schnell merely approached it before issuing a dangerous barrage of punches, "You know damn well climbing over would've never been an option, orc!"

Issei now sat alone in the stone resting area. The impromptu room made him feel like he was in purgatory, a state of limbo that culminated around the anxiety that occurred with each consecutive knock from the enemy. His wound was bleeding badly, and although the pencil lead lodged inside it mostly kept him from bleeding out fully, it was still pretty immobilizing. Issei looked towards his torn shirt desperately.

"...No, I gotta think of another way." He banished the thought, "Using it as a bandage would stop the blood, but then there goes my insurance."

As such, he briefly considered using his pants, but opted to at the very least die in a not so shameless manner. If he died and the world ended, he reasoned, then surely when everyone met back up in Heaven, he wouldn't have any shame in boasting about his final battle.

"Wait, as someone not from this world, am I even gonna go to Heaven?" He thought to himself, "Wait, so Eleanor and Othelia are just gonna sit around up there without me?! Damn, I better ask the Gods to make an exception for me in that case."

Though he joked as much as he could, it didn't stop the protective wall in front of him from slowly crumpling away. The tiniest of holes had been made finally, and Schnell wasn't far from reaching him.

"What's this? A glory hole?" Issei laughed, "Hey, back up, I might poke your Eye out!"

"Your shrimp dick wouldn't reach the other side." Schnell finally broke through fully, "Now what?"

"Sigh, didn't want it to have to come to this..." Issei took a deep breath, tightly clenching the tattered shirt that was tied around his waist still, "Time for round final."

It seemed he had planned to do the same trick once more. Seeing as they were both battered and bruised, Schnell was way too easy to climb on top of, but Issei was also just as easy to get grabbed and thrown off. If Issei wanted to try choking him out again, he'd need to be a lot more wary of Schnell's grapples. With a running start, Issei had in fact passed right by Schnell's right side as he tossed his shirt tail over to his left. The switch up, surprised Schnell, but by this point there was nothing he could do.

"What are you-!?" He shouted.

"There!" Issei finished tying the shirt around his waist as well, effectively chaining the two opponents together in a rather small range, "Now neither of us can run. Whoever wins this round will have all the time in the world to throw the other into Hell, so may the best man win!"

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***

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"You... tied that thing around my waist too?" Schnell couldn't help but let out a chortle.

"Got a problem with that?" Issei readied himself for a fight, only to get punched straight in the schnoz, "Unf!"

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

A punch of that magnitude and from that distance would have sent him back a thousand meters at least, surely. However Issei was now tethered to his opponent, a fatal flaw in his plan to have Schnell stop squirming out of losing at the nick of time. In tying them together, Issei was now the one getting thrashed around freely. The shirt tightened like never before as it barely held Issei from getting sent flying, and as the law of elasticity began going into effect, he was sent flying back towards a second blow from Schnell.

"Yah! Bah, uwah!" He cried uncle, "I give! I give! Stop, I got two wives back home, let me live!"

"I ain't the most appropriate person to be sayin' this, but if that's the case, ya' should've stayed back." Schnell kept the haymakers coming, "Congrats, jackass! You just turned two women into widows. Here's your prize!"

Grabbing the shirt that acted as a rope between them, Schnell spun it above his head like a cowboy would a lasso. Issei could barely keep himself from fainting from the G forces, but he had to hold on. If he had fainted now, that would mean Schnell would just immediately toss him into Hell, out of which there was presumably no coming back. Decidedly, Schnell took the first step towards the hellhole as he spun Issei above him.

"W-Wait..." Issei noticed this and pleaded one last time, "Seriously, stop..."

"At least go to Hell with some dignity, man." Schnell rolled his Eyes, "You guys attacked and killed me a bunch of times, but now that I got the upper hand, you wanna back out? Come on, have some shame."

"A-Auros!" Issei held back from puking, "Help...!"

Alas, Auros could only stand back and watch. Currently, the Fighting God's Blessing was in full effect for all of the fighters inside the bottom of the world. It is no understatement that each and every one of them was only alive still because of his Blessing. Had Auros dropped his Focus for even a moment to intervene, it would spell death for all of the Generals, not to mention Issei himself. There was no one else to rely on.

"Lune!" Issei began to sob, "Lem! Ed! Lee, Meil, somebody! I can't die here, I can't! Please, please help me live through this!"

"Quit it with the tears, man! Eugh you're getting snot on my face..." Schnell complained as he stopped walking right above the Hellhole.

"Blergh!" Issei puked, "Augh, uuugh... Puhlease, let me go...! I'll go home, I won't hurt a fly!"

"Do that and the world ends, by the way." Auros mentioned.

"To hell with it!" Issei shot back, "To hell with the world, immortal old men and their should-be dead friends! To hell with the Gods, and everything they created! What matters to me is that I'm with Othelia and Eleanor!"

"Alright, my arm's getting tired." Schnell yawned as he threw Issei into Hell, "Hm? Ah right, the rope you made, I was wondering why you stopped falling after getting tossed in."

As the Grandmaster Adventurer fiddled around with the impossible to undo knot around his waist, he eventually resorted to chewing on the rope with his bare teeth. One would assume Issei would use this time he bought for himself to try and climb back up or something to that effect, but from this position he could do nothing but watch. A cruel fate, to dangle just above Hell as your opponent quite literally looks you in the Eyes and gnaws on your lifeline. Nonetheless, the expression on Issei's face was very unbefitting of the dreadful situation.

"Yeah yeah, I get it, I look funny doing this." Schnell groaned, "Doesn't mean you have to smirk at me like that. It's scary!"

"Hmph. Scary, eh?" Issei smiled back, "You haven't seen scary just yet! Auros, I got him in front of the Hellhole!"

"Oh? Aha! That you did!" Auros understood with that one single call out, "Attaboy, Foreigner! Finally grown some balls, I see!"

The Gods' all knowing nature lent itself quite well to making them quick on the uptake. No prior planning was uttered from Issei's mouth before this, and even then it was merely him shouting Auros' name. But that was more than enough for him to understand what Issei wanted done.

"So that's what you meant by insurance..." Auros chuckled once he realized, "You weren't talking about yourself, you were talking about the world! Admirable, Foreigner! Rejoice!"

With this loud battle cry, a mighty stomp of his foot caused the terrain to change one last time. An infinitely smooth wall shot up from behind Schnell, inching closer and closer towards the Hellhole where he stood. As the Grandmaster Adventurer kept losing stable ground to stand on, the pressure to cut Issei off quickly and find a way to not get pushed in himself kept growing exponentially. This was Issei's initial goal with tying them together in the first place.

"If I can't get you to come close to the Hole alone, then I might as well be your guide!" Issei started yanking on the rope, effectively making Schnell lose his balance even more, "Come on, you said Hell wouldn't be so bad alone, so let's test that theory!"

"You...! You'd go so far as to sacrifice yourself just to get rid of me!?" Schnell started panicking for real, "Idiot! Why trust these Gods so blindly!? The very Sun God we worshipped was the one to kill us all those years ago, and now I see you making the same mistake as we did! Stop this, Black Eyes! We can fight him together, I'll pull you up!"

"Is that hypocrisy I hear?" Issei grinned smugly, "Now that I got the upper hand, you wanna back out? At least go to Hell with some dignity."

And with that, the bulky man anchoring himself to the last remaining traces of the overworld had finally lost all stable ground to stand on. He tried clawing at the wall, punching it away, kicking it... Anything to avoid getting pushed in his prison again, but alas... The two men fell into the forgotten dimension, the dimension from which none can escape.