Legendaria, west forest, ???, KaizoStomp

  "What's your status?" Kaizo asked angrily as he got up, his eyes still blinded by the fsh of the explosion.

  "They got my brooch. Who the hell is attacking us?" GesStar tried to look around, registering the light reflecting off the cooling pools of gss around them. "Seems like a pretty eborate setup. I think it might've been for me. This whole pce got repced with sand—I didn't notice it until Earthen Wall failed to cast."

  "Got mine too. Who do you think it is?" Kaizo raised his left arm and touched a bracelet that held a telepathy cuff. "Kurt, did you see who it was?"

  Kaizo waited for a response, but their assaints arrived before any reply—if one was even coming.

  Kaizo and GesStar stood, staring at the lip of the crater they now found themselves in, locking eyes with Sheko just a moment before Mai crash-nded beside him, kicking up a dust cloud.

  While GesStar began shouting at them—"You battle junkie idiots! What do you think you're doing attacking us—after we welcomed your sister to our party?!"—Kaizo's gaze locked onto Sheko's gem-studded bracelet. He stopped GesStar mid-rant.

  "Seems like they're here for revenge."

  GesStar stammered for a moment before Sheko replied,

  "You know it. Thought you might've forgotten me."

  "I didn’t know back in the party that you were with the Seelie Court. Should’ve known you’d be friends with some fae."

  "What? No. You killed me over a month ago—when I just started pying. I have no clue what you’re talking about."

  Mai, however, interjected. "I think I have an idea what he's talking about. Just another crime onto the pile. Don’t you dare let him escape, Sheko."

  "Wasn’t pnning to. But catch me up on what you figured out."

  Kaizo didn’t wait for her expnation before dramatically revealing his own.

  "Why do you have to make it sound boring? You low-rank loser—you never should’ve let me see you again, because I assure you, as the new King of Flora, I won’t let you have a moment’s rest in this game."

  As Kaizo finished his little speech, Kurt spoke to him telepathically:

  <"Hoko told us Sheko is pnning to kill you. We’re on our way, but he set an ambush. Try to hold out.">

  <"Bit te to warn us now! Finish them off—our brooches were broken.">

  <"How the hell did they manage that?!">

  <"Doesn’t matter. Stay alive. Record them. I think they’ll make quite the spectacle of themselves.">

  "Cold feet? Or was it your team getting sughtered by our first ambush?" Sheko taunted.

  "You think you lot amount to an ambush? Let me show you why I don’t worry about those I crash beneath me! Rite of Flourishing – Phoenix Cherry Blossom!"

  In one smooth motion, Kaizo raised his right arm and summoned his executioner’s axe, then spun it so the axe head was parallel to the ground. He struck the smoldering earth, the axe sinking almost a foot into the stone before stopping. A wave of roots burst through the ground, spreading in every direction and sprouting a grove of red cherry trees in full bloom. The eye contact between the two groups was cut off as the sea of red and pink blossoms enveloped them.

  Moments ter, before the spell fully completed, Sheko took to the air—seemingly turning tail and abandoning his ally.

  "Talked a big game, then ran like a rat. Typical high-ranker," Kaizo sneered. "Suddenly get an Ultimate Skill and think they can take the whole world. GesStar, finish her off. I have a promise to fulfill."

  Ignoring GesStar's protests, Kaizo also took to the air, galloping on hardened ptforms of air just like Sheko had. A wave of fiery cherry blossom petals rose with him. With each gallop, Kaizo accelerated, leaving behind a trail of loud pops as he shattered the air ptforms beneath his hooves.

  After just a few seconds—drawn out by Mai’s accelerated perception—she watched in terror as Kaizo began to close the distance toward Sheko. Somehow, this murderous druid wasn’t just strong enough to kick around a raid boss the size of a small building, and the all-but-confirmed murderer of the King of Flora… but also faster than a dedicated AGI build like Sheko.

  Dark Knight, Mai HigaishaEven with the level gap, it was hard to accept the overwhelming disadvantage. It should've broken Sheko's and Mai's morale—so GesStar was completely blindsided when Mai charged straight through his deadly bck sand barrier. As he turned to follow Kaizo’s chase, Andromeda instinctively tried to back away from the physical juggernaut Mai had become, but it couldn’t move fast enough.

  A white gauntlet emanating with ominous darkness grasped GesStar’s neck, and his vision turned bck.

  “You’re a fine appetizer, mageling. I must say, you’re quite the disappointment next to Kaizo.”

  GesStar’s sight kept bcking out and recovering as the blindness curse on Mai’s gauntlet repeatedly reapplied. But between the bckouts, he could clearly see Mai’s unprotected face pushing through the churning bck sand, her skin shredding and rapidly healing.

  “Are you insane?! How can you just dive headlong into a shredder? Do you have no sense of self-preservation?” GesStar shouted, igniting Andromeda and engulfing them both in a sphere of fire as hot as a thermite reaction. The arm holding him jerked back—still gripping his throat—signaling he was at least hurting the alchemically enhanced knight.

  Her END had to be insane to withstand that kind of damage while still holding onto him. It was true that neither of them could feel pain—at worst, only sharp discomfort, like the crushing pressure around his neck—but it was exceedingly difficult to ignore the primal fear of being burned alive.

  “Well, stay long enough around Sheko and you’re bound to either get over it to win or lose ‘cause he doesn’t mind breaking an arm to punch you. Why I’m surprised you’re not more accustomed—I'm sure spending time around Kaizo, you’d see lots of broken people. I mean, after all, you are his right-hand man.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about exactly. I’m not part of any of Kaizo’s streams. I just came to enjoy the anniversary!”

  “Well, then—my condolences that you’ve been caught in the crossfire because you just didn’t know your friend is a murderer and sver.”

  The grip around his neck tightened further. If he didn’t escape now, she’d snap his neck.

  GesStar attempted to separate them by creating two gravity fields pulling in opposite directions as Andromeda condensed from a raging fming sphere into a staff. As the weapon finished solidifying and Mai prepared to punch, a burning bck spear shot from the staff’s tip, severing her arm and cauterizing the stump.

  “Whatever he does is his business. This is a game. Or are you one of those insane Worlders who think this is real life? Look at yourself. This is just make-believe!”

  Mai, struggling to hold on to GesStar as sideways gravity dragged them apart, didn’t dignify him with a response. Instead, she shouted a primal roar and brought the full force of her STR down on his neck—breaking it.

  As fast as it came, the gravity vanished, and she dropped to one knee. Dismemberment was one of the few debuffs Raggedy couldn’t fix—not that she could while fighting GesStar. While Mai was an unstoppable monster at the moment, Raggedy was resting in her master crest, taking on the brunt of the debuffs Mai had accumuted from consuming so many mutagens at once.

  “Bit anticlimactic, huh?” she muttered, kicking the body on the ground. She meant to simply tap it with her foot, but her barely controlled strength sent it crashing into one of the surrounding cherry trees.

  For all the grandeur Kaizo had invoked summoning the spell, the effects were underwhelming. The burning blossoms continued falling, lightly scorching her throughout the fight. Either her END fully negated the damage—aside from the miniscule fire damage weakening her regeneration from the Troll tincture she’d taken before the fight—or the grove was meant as a setup for other skills he was using against Sheko.

  Mai tried to locate Sheko and Kaizo but couldn’t see them from the ground. So she jumped—over a hundred meters into the air. As she began to fall, she suddenly accelerated—dozens of times faster than free-fall.

  She stabilized mid-air and nded on her feet with a thunderous impact, creating a new crater inside the old one.

  “Why did you think it’d be so easy to beat me? Whatever spat you have with Kaizo—fine. But you involved all of us. So let me be clear: I’m not some consotion prize. Tsuno isn’t some tool for you to exploit. And I will not be lectured by a duo of battle junkies ying traps for people!”

  How is he alive? I could feel his neck snap. I’ve never tried it before, but I’m sure he was dead. He should be dead.

  The seconds ticked by as the ground liquefied and crushed against Mai’s body. Once her buffs expired, she would die immediately. She wouldn’t have time to reapply them. At least she wasn’t panicking—one of the Ravens had drowned her in terrain before, and she'd learned to stay calm since.

  But she kept wrecking her brain for a way to escape.

  Wait—escape? What am I thinking? GesStar is wrong about Dendro being just a game, but there’s no way he and Kaizo found some way to gain immortality. If they had, Sheko probably would’ve known. Either it’s something extremely new, or I was wrong about killing GesStar… or there’s some fw in that immortality.

  Suddenly, she heard Sheko’s voice in her mind:

  <"Are you done with GasStar? After all the preparations we made, this has been quite anticlimactic. I guess bnketing the sky with burning blossoms is pretty impressive, but it wasn’t very effective.">

  <"Listen quick—he isn’t dead. Find the body. Don’t let it touch the blossoms!">

  The connection abruptly cut off as she continued struggling to escape her tumbling tomb, while the other battles raged far away.

  Gale Knife Juggler, Sheko Ruun

  A pre-Superior. Honestly, this is better than I first thought. I can throw everything I have at him. Arrogant, powerful, infamous—win or lose, fighting Kaizo would be a proper sendoff to Infinite Dendrogram.

  Sheko turned around to see how far Kaizo was—and was somewhat terrified to see that Kaizo wasn’t just keeping up, but actually catching up. Both of them were moving at transonic speeds. It was tempting to use Odysseus to shoot forward and leave Kaizo in his dust, but for one, Sheko wasn’t running away.

  Well, he was—but it wasn’t out of cowardice.

  As the seconds passed and Kaizo kept his focus on Sheko, the centaur suddenly accelerated. The change wasn’t tremendous—Kaizo was still gradually closing the distance—until another eight seconds passed, and Sheko accelerated again. The change was again small, but Kaizo quickly realized that he was no longer closing the distance between them.

  Before Sheko could accelerate any further, Kaizo cast Enhance AGI, and in moments, he gained all the ground Sheko had made—and was now rapidly closing in again.

  Knowing Sheko might actually escape if he kept stalling, Kaizo began his attack. As the chase continued, more and more cherry blossoms gathered behind Kaizo, forming a glowing pink corona. The giant wave expanded over both of them, turning the sky pink. Then, a part of the cloud detached and rained down on Sheko just as Kaizo swung his axe—a bde of fire trailing in its wake until it detached completely, growing from the width of a short sword into a solid crescent of fire that could burn a sizeable patch of forest—anywhere other than Legendaria’s fae forest.

  Sheko was now caught between running into a rain of fming, seemingly sharp cherry blossoms, or facing Kaizo head-on while dodging an ever-increasing onsught of fire. At the rate it grew as it traveled, the fming crescent would reach close to 500 meters in length, with a width and height of at least eight meters. With Kaizo’s speed, he could form an almost inescapable pattern of fire to reduce Sheko to ash.

  Either Kaizo hadn’t practiced the technique enough to trap him that way—or he wasn’t trying his hardest.

  With the rain of fire now forming around them, the fight had finally truly started. Sheko could no longer run away. The petals closed in a ring around them, steadily shrinking the perimeter. At the same time, Kaizo continued unleashing waves of fire. Sheko attempted to retaliate, but even as his speed continued to increase every eight seconds—thanks to Untouchable Champion - Greater Matador’s ultimate skill—and even with Philosopher’s Accelerated Computation, he was stretched thin.

  He couldn’t control his throwing knives with enough precision to surprise Kaizo.

  Was he tricking me—letting me get a little farther when we started? I really didn’t expect him to be this fast. Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I should close the distance now—at least until I’m in reach for SHEOTT - steady hand, eyes on the target - to be able to attack Kaizo’s back.

  Sheko kept evading waves of fire mixed with an ever-changing maze of falling petals. As he considered his remaining three MP potions, he wondered how long Kaizo could keep this up. His promotion to King of Flora had to be recent—hopefully, his MP wasn’t inexhaustible. Creating the cherry grove must’ve consumed a huge chunk of it. Controlling the petals that were keeping Sheko in range had to be another massive drain, and those fiery crescents certainly weren’t cheap either.

  That axe looks mighty fancy. I thought it was just a high-rank weapon when we met, but since then, I haven’t seen many non-embryo items to compare it to. Even when arena rankers fight, they rarely have something so obviously magical in nature. It can’t be his embryo... so either he has amazing contacts—which isn’t off the table—or that’s a UBM reward. In that case, I shouldn’t make this a fight of attrition. Clearly, I’m already losing that fight.

  Giving up on accumuting enough Red Cape stacks to guarantee a win, Sheko threw caution to the wind. In seconds, a pn was formed, and its execution began.

  He marked a one-meter space in front of his artificial arm, then pushed it forward slightly, dragging it along with him as he dodged more fire. As the next crescent was about to engulf him, he threw a knife linked to the marked space. Somehow, Sheko expanded the space to encompass a two-meter radius. At the moment, it just felt natural.

  The knife flew true. The space in front of it spun, as if undecided on what direction it should take—cutting through the fire, one might say, while also capturing more and more fmes inside the marked zone. The space glowed hotter and brighter as it flew toward Kaizo, and following in the cleared path it created came Sheko—enveloped in his own blue sphere, blinking in and out of reality.

  He put everything into the attack. His AGI was nearly double what it had been at the start of the fight, but even then, using Odysseus’s Ultimate Skill to move himself like that was insane. Any features of the terrain became nothing more than a bluish blur. His only warning to decelerate came when the marks on the knife and its space vanished.

  Sheko immediately stopped his acceleration and threw a new knife with a fresh marked space. The knife, engulfed inside, created a feedback loop of acceleration—like what had just happened to him inside the sphere. And just like he had done with his spear, Sheko stopped in midair, now only twenty meters from a smoldering—but clearly alive—Kaizo.

  "That’s quite the trick you’ve got there. Should’ve known a territory type couldn’t be as simple as just ‘spin stuff.’ Well, what now? You see I’m barely worse for wear. Come on, attack! Let’s finish this!"

  Sheko didn’t think of anything to say. He simply accepted the invitation. His MP was nearly full—but only because he had used all the potions hidden in his abdomen during his charge. Whatever he had left, that was all he was going to get.

  Kaizo readied his axe for another overhead strike. He seemed to enjoy the theatrics.

  Sheko leapt forward from his air ptform and Launched himself, leaving a sonic boom in his wake as he closed the distance in a fraction of a tenth of a second.

  Sheko shouted as Kaizo’s axe came down trailing ice rather than fire: "Catastrophic Astrobe – Syzygy!"

  Kaizo had miscalcuted Sheko’s max speed. Sheko struck first—not with a knife or a spear, but with Odysseus itself. Its fingers were linked together to form a sharp point, the palm engulfed in three yers of marked space, each smaller than the one before, all spinning together with the arm. The spin reached maximum velocity before the hand even made contact.

  As Odysseus hit Kaizo’s chest, his body contorted—space itself trying to tear the centaur apart. Before Kaizo could even process what was happening, Sheko’s hand ripped through him, detaching at the wrist joint immediately after.

  It was done.

  The axe never finished its strike. Cherry blossoms rained zily down as Kaizo’s power dissipated and his body fell to the ground.

  "HA! What about that, you arrogant idiot! You haven’t even hit me once!" Sheko shouted in triumph. He knew Kaizo could still hear him, and he wasn’t about to miss the chance to gloat.

  Sheko quickly dropped to the ground, catching himself at the st second with a burst of air. He shifted Odysseus to its shield mode, bracing against the still-burning petals drifting down.

  He reached for his telepathic cuffs—only to realize too te that he was missing his left hand. Odysseus morphed under his will, but the best he could form was a cw instead of a proper hand. This’ll have to do until it fixes itself. A small price for victory in the end.

  With a touch of the cw, the connection was made:

  <"Are you done with GasStar? After all the preparations we made, this has been quite anticlimactic. I guess bnketing the sky with burning blossoms is pretty impressive, but it wasn’t very effective.">

  <"Listen quick—he isn’t dead. Find the body. Don’t let it touch the blossoms!">

  What does she mean? I felt my hand go through his heart. There’s no way he survived that...

  Sheko's assumption was proven wrong.

  A cage of bckened veins suddenly encased him. Then, just a moment ter, a bde of ice as tall as the unicorn raid boss sshed through the veins—and through Sheko’s right arm.

  "How?! I literally ripped your heart apart!"

  "Phoenix Cherry Blossom. What, you thought I’d waste that much MP for some AoE damage? That’s just stupid. Now, if it’s any consotion, you’re way more interesting than the previous King of Flora and his court. What a sad bunch. Burned their concve like kindling.

  Though I guess it’s to be expected... when a pre-superior wielding a UBM reward like me comes for you."

  Kaizo’s burning silhouette stepped closer.

  "So—are you ready for round three?"