“I…” he began, only to suddenly twist his sword free whilst delivering such a sudden and forceful kick that it sent Zelsys sliding backwards. The Dragon Knight drew in a deep breath, his stance suddenly shifting from typical low guard to a high stance taught solely to disciples of the Black Horse Family’s Founding Branch. “...I have no obligations of nicety towards a Southern Tarpan. The existence of your heretical sect is an insult to the very idea of cultivation, and I will not be admonished by one such as you. I, too, gave you the courtesy of holding back, knowing the consequences of revealing myself as a Black Horse; a mistake I will not make again, Tarpan.”

He began Fog-breathing and set upon Zelsys with all his might, maneuvering to place her between himself and that accursed gunwoman. Even the other survivors’ gunfire hadn’t done anything to that blonde, as she seemed to just flicker out of the way, as if she could predict when a bullet would strike her.

The knight set upon her with the measured fury of a real martial artist, one who had seen through the pointless mysticism and grasped the true nature of an ancient art. Burgghusen’s handling of his superheated blade was downright impeccable, the unrelenting assault emblematic of the Black Horse combat style littered with feints, kicks, and the spewing of flame as a diversion. Nevertheless, he didn’t live up to Ubul, to the Krishorn Matriarch, or even Red in her parasite-armored form. Were Jorfr not busy smashing the life out of an errant beetle-boar, she would’ve just let him take over so she could focus fully on that spear-wielding locust that was so anxiously waiting for an opportunity to strike her down.

Zel had to give Burgghusen one thing: He had surprised her. The way he had fought in the pit had made her think he’d had formal martial arts training, but not that he was a former member of one of Ikesia’s two most prevalent sects. And that epithet… Southern Tarpan. It was an insult invented by the Founding Branch to distance themselves from the Willowdale Branch, effectively branding them as barbarians. That the grudge ran so deep as to carry over onto an unrelated sect that merely repurposed the old sect grounds only made her wonder just how deep the feud had been. His breathing technique was basic but well-polished, focused on a steady intake and output cycle that granted an evenly-spaced rhythm of waxing and waning strength while being easy to maintain. It went counter to Spring Breathing, the technique which Engine Breathing was rooted in, which focused on more hands-on control of one’s respiration to achieve bursts of high output timed such that they were most effective.

After baiting Burgghusen into a powerful swing, Zel once again captured his blade between the Broken Butcher’s prongs, this time stepping around him and getting him into a standing grapple from behind, restraining his arms with her own while using her braids to further restrict him, using one to choke him.

“Impressive though your skill is, I couldn’t care less for the grudges of a Black Horse reject that turned to a False Path,” she smugged into his ear as he thrashed against her grip. He even briefly caught her off-guard and managed to move his hand enough to scratch her, numbness spreading out from the site. For a moment, her leg grew weak and stiff, before her body subsumed the venom. A venom of this type, no matter how potent, would never work on her again.

She’d intended to go all-out here, but… It would’ve been a waste, she felt. It was a more meaningful victory in her eyes, to defuse Burgghusen’s skill with her own rather than overpowering him by sheer superiority of attributes. She could just end it here and now, break Burgghusen’s neck, maybe have one of her braids burrow into that calcified weak point on the side of it, wherever it had come from, but she had noticed something - or rather, someone. It was Victor, murder in his eyes, and… A weird, oversized bullet made from bone, floating within his palm, bladed fins running down its length. For some reason the fly of his shorts was undone.

An exchange of glances was all it took to make her understand his intentions, and she couldn’t have been happier to play along, even as she felt the spear-wielding locust approaching from behind. She turned such that the weak point in Burgghusen’s neck was plain for Victor to see, simultaneously beginning to build up a Fulgur charge in her armor sleeve and shifting her iron grip on his left arm so she could grasp her arm-cannon’s trigger lever. Just as the young man leveled his curious projectile at the struggling knight, the spear-wielding locust tried to lunge at her, only for a green-tinged bullet from Zefaris to smash into him, briars rapidly growing from the wound and enveloping him, immobilizing his spear-arm. A simple, quick manifestation of Viridimancy that withered in seconds after its growth, but it bought enough time. The Devil’s Tooth rocketed forward through the air, twin tails of flame trailing behind it before it struck the weak point which he’d burned into Burgghusen’s neck, drilling into his flesh, blood and viscera spraying out through the grooves between its fins. Only when Zel felt it strike, when she felt the knight shudder in her grasp and emit a gurgling, wheezing cry, only then did she spin around and throw him right into the spear-locust’s path, the Dragon Knight’s far greater mass barreling the bugman over.

The moment her hands were free she raised her gun, releasing every bit of built-up Fulgur as she pulled the trigger. The shell loaded in the gun was a high-penetration Type-1a, overkill for this purpose even on its own.

“Thundercannon!” she invoked aloud, despite not needing to. This technique hadn’t gotten a proper use in months. An eruption of lightning-wreathed cold-iron split both men down the middle, the blast shredding Burgghusen’s armor along with the lower two-thirds of the spear’s shaft, leaving the afterimage of a roaring beast’s head in the wake of its impact and the projectile itself continued on into the treeline, only brought to a halt after felling several trees.

The tremendous recoil, even reduced and distributed evenly by her sleeve, pushed Zelsys several meters backwards, right up against Jorfr’s ice-cold back. The norseman’s ice-wreathed fists were now busy pounding the life out of two not exactly imposing Dragon Knights simultaneously, the broken corpses of several locust survivors at his feet and the other captives having gathered by his side.

“Got a handle on things back here?” she asked, working her arm-cannon’s bolt handle. Knowing that the port on its side would vent a great cloud of electrically-charged Fog, she turned her arm such that neither Jorfr nor the captives would be caught in the cloud, catching the ejected shell with one of her braids.

“More or less,” the norseman chuckled under his breath, kicking one of the Dragon Knights away before he ripped the chestplate off the other and broke the man’s back over his knee. “Some of these chumps could get beaten by an angry dockworker, don’t even have a proper warrior’s instinct; just sycophants drunk on strength that isn’t theirs. Pathetic.”

Zel loaded a new shell, a standard Type-1 this time, remarking: “Always the same story with these types.”

Before she could move ahead to sweep the areas outside Zef’s field of view for stragglers, Vic rushed right past Zelsys in the wake of her technique, pulling the hand-axe from his belt as he did so. A wounded locust-man survivor that had hidden under a dead boar attempted to lunge at him, grasping for his leg, only for the redhead to stomp on the mutant’s arm as he raised his axe. An exhalation of Fog escaped his mouth and black flame enveloped the weapon as he brought it down between the red locust’s antennae. One swing, two, three before the locust’s yellowed brain matter sprayed the soil. He left the axe there, still burning for a few moments, as he scanned the ground and leapt for what he had been looking for: The spear. Rather, what was left of it; as it was, the thing was more of a shortsword with a long handle.

With only a few survivors left over Zefaris had stopped shooting, removed her mask, and dispelled Death’s Lieutenant. She was now just sitting on the Sturmgandr, aiming Tempesta at the remaining False Drake, her left eye carving the third glyph circle in a row into the air in front of its muzzle. It was plain that she intended to kill the second drake in one shot, and neither of her comrades meant to stop her; Zel trusted Jorfr to protect the remaining captives while she followed in Victor’s wake, her gut telling her that there were survivors somewhere at the other side of the tractor. Unsurprisingly, her gut instinct was right, as a knight sprung up from beneath the vehicle and got a hold of Victor, wisely maneuvering to place the boy in Zef’s line of fire. Letting out a sigh, Zel leapt up onto and over the vehicle, landing right behind the knight and grabbing him by his arms before he could do anything… Though, with his sword still in its scabbard, there wasn’t much he could do. He spat a litany of curses, threats and insults, impotent puffs of greenish flame issuing from his helmet’s breathing-holes. The knight stank of piss and alcohol, pounded into a rancid underlayer by overpowering perfume.

His attempts at resistance felt just about average by comparison to the other Dragon Knights she’d fought. Zel decided to let Victor do the deed, for she could see the killing spark in his eyes as he got his bearings again. Throwing the knight to the ground and stepping aside, Zel looked to the redhead and gestured with her head towards the knight.

“All yours,” she said.

The redhead hesitated for only a split-second before he turned his attention fully to the knight, not wasting a moment before he drew in a breath, burned it, then drew in another. For a few moments he fought with the Dragon Knight in earnest, parrying several of his blows and dodging others, but it quickly became evident that the knight held an unquestionable advantage in raw strength and experience. Vic leapt backwards to try creating distance, but the knight chased after him, not letting up. So they went back and forth, the young man remaining on the defensive as he looked for an opening to sway the balance in his own favor.

As if out of nowhere, a gigantic spear of translucent ice flew overhead, running the second drake through head to rear. The beast grew still, not as if frozen, but as if stopped in time. It was Zef’s “Fragment of Lost Hyperborea” technique, and Victor, having read about it and recognized the signs of it being cast beforehand, snapped out of his stunned silence far quicker than the knight did. In this brief moment he used what Pneuma he’d gathered and transformed it into a concentrated blast of air, toppling the knight over. He got right back up and charged Victor head-first, but the mage had already prepared yet another trick, having spent the time when his opponent was down to dredge up Terra from the leylines.

A spray of greasy mud erupted from his palm right into the knight’s path, who swerved to dodge… Only, Victor had already slid to that place using the last bit of his own grease spell, scrambling back to his feet and thrusting the spear right into the back of the knight’s knee. With a sharp motion, he cut the tendons and ripped the spear out, kicking the other leg out from under the man before he could get into a good position to fight while kneeling. Vic stomped on his hand when he tried to go for his dagger, impaling his sword-hand to the ground while he himself unsheathed the shorter blade and slipped it behind his belt.

“What a disgrace to your armor you are,” the young man laughed disdainfully.