CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN

Jason tumbled straight towards Castor, flying out of the combat dungeon. He'd perfectly timed his defeat of the Top Mech with the dungeon's innate timer, meaning that he now had an enormous advantage for his next fight.

On top of that, Jason rapidly inputted commands on his machine, ordering the Mana Gatherer Spikes to push the countless broken shards straight towards Castor. The pieces, coated in blood from his splattered legs, slightly adjusted their position in the air so they now flew directly at his opponent. Since the Red Minerva's blood had gotten on the parts, Jason was able to control them with his spikes. The small amount of blood wasn't enough to grant him perfect control, but he could nudge them in the right direction before allowing momentum to do everything else.

Castor, who was still in the middle of a fight with Danny, whirled towards Jason as soon as he appeared. The spider was on the brink of destroying the Angry Duck, but it promptly turned to attack the greater threat. The biological upper body whirled towards the flying shards, spinning on the spider's flexible waist.

Due to the speed and quantity of the debris, Castor knew he couldn't dodge, so he started firing with his revolvers in a futile attempt to deflect the incoming barrage. However, the bullets just shattered to pieces against the top's armor. This time, the top's freakish durability was helping Jason--even though it'd been split apart and destroyed, it was still made from extremely high-quality equipment.

Strange blue blood splattered through the air as the pieces lacerated the spider, cutting great gouges in the enemy machine. At the same time, Danny got back to his feet and swung the Angry Duck's charged-up broadsword at Castor. From the looks of it, Castor had avoided all of Danny's previous attacks while badly damaging the Angry Duck, but with the storm of parts bearing down on him, Castor couldn't completely dodge in time.

He jerked back, keeping the blade from obliterating his chest, but the red blade still lanced cleanly through an arm, snapping it and sending it twirling through the air. In conjunction with the countless wounds splattered across the spider, Castor was on his last legs--he'd already used his Overdrive healing to deal with Larsen's poison and there was little more he could do with both Danny and Jason bearing down on him.

At this time, Jason was very happy that he'd combined his machine's Red Lamia and Red Minerva's forms. He needed to use the balance of his ranged and melee abilities to beat Castor, and he couldn't afford to wait for a two-second delay while transforming. Even though his left leg was currently a severed stomp, Jason had no intention of moving--he'd blast away until Castor reached him.

Keeping his opponent's martial arts specialty in mind, he opened with a long-range barrage. He charged up the Pestilent Snipe, then fired, but a swarm of missiles got in the way. Spike's machine, though badly damaged by their previous attacks, was still active. Though it couldn't move, its remaining reserves allowed it to provide covering fire.

Meanwhile, Castor dashed forward as yet another storm of missiles shot towards Jason, who cursed angrily.

Spike and Castor both...

Who should he attack first?

Spike was weaker, and it'd only take an attack to defeat him. Destroying him right now would make the fight much easier, but could he afford to give Castor a reprieve?

In the end, Danny made the decision for him. The badly battered Lucky Duck streaked forward. It was missing an arm and smoke was pouring from the Mech's limbs. The Partner's Lance was a shattered husk, and its only remaining item was its blazing red damage absorption sword. With its thrusters and flight unit damaged, the maneuverability was poor and it dashed forward in a straight line, flying straight through Spike's barrage.

"Jason! We need to win now! I'll take Spike--you take Danny! We won't get a better chance than this!"

Jason gritted his teeth, then nodded.

Danny was right. Castor and Spike were better than them, but they'd taken severe damage due to others interrupting the fight. In a one-on-one format like the Tournament of Assassins' final round, Jason and Danny would lose. Their best bet right now was to take advantage of circumstance and their team play to eliminate them now. It was a risk to go all-out with so many people nearby, but this was their best option.

With Spike distracted, Jason blasted Castor with two more Pestilent Snipes before the spider reached him. Castor swerved past the first one, but the second shot smashed straight into one of his arms. The loud snap resonated through the room. Though the arm didn't fall off, it was now permanently jammed backwards. Jason wasn't sure if it could still fire its attached pistol, but he was sure that the limb could no longer move. So long as he avoided the angle, he'd be able to avoid all damage from that arm.

In total, Castor was missing three out of his six arms, not counting the damaged one. In effect, he only had two remaining limbs to fight with, putting him and Jason on even ground in terms of arms.

Meanwhile, one of Castor's silvery metal legs was also badly damaged. Unlike the Red Minerva, whose leg was now a bleeding stump, the spider martial artist could still stand on two legs, but its once-formidable stance was rickety.

Both fighters were currently hobbling around on a single functioning leg, but none of the other pilots in the building dared to approach them. After seeing what had happened to the high-ranking Larsen, nobody wanted to tangle with The Hive. They were happy to let Jason battle Castor alone.

As for what happened after the battle...

Jason ignored it.

With such a high-ranking enemy in front of him, Jason couldn't afford to look to his next match. On top of that, he knew what Danny had done by going after Spike. His friend was risking--possibly even throwing away--his chance of qualifying for the final tournament just to clear the path for Jason.

He had to put everything--all the techniques he'd learned and practiced--into this battle.

Castor reached Jason, and the two remaining hands switched from their ranged mode to their close quarters configuration as the hands twisted into blades. Since Jason couldn't walk on his missing leg, he shifted to running on all fours, placing most of his weight on his front two hands and using his leg for balance. He dove straight forward, the lengthy Red Minerva swerving from side to side like some kind of giant snake.

Castor stabbed three times, but Jason used his long and flexible neck to dodge and avoid his opponent's attacks.

However, he knew better than to use his regular shoot. The conventional set-up would excuse his elbows, leaving his Mana Gatherer Spikes open to a counterattack. Instead, at the very last second, he flipped his position so he wound up with his belly pointing upwards. Castor stabbed again, but the attack only left two gouges in Jason's chest. The spider failed to inflict critical damage, and Jason grabbed onto the metal legs.

He pulled, collapsing the legs inward. The spider fell forward, practically falling over. Eventually, Jason wound up on the ground holding his opponent in a reverse hold--although the Red Minerva was on the bottom of the pile, Jason had control of the situation since the Red Minerva's flexible arms were wrapped around the spider's body and preventing much movement.

Caught on its back, the spider could only furiously wriggle its limbs as it tried to right itself.

Jason aimed, then swung with his tail. The wire hissed loudly as the deadly Ghostfire Dagger swung straight at his opponent's face. The spider shifted, but there wasn't much it could do. For now, Castor just sacrificed the remains of his damaged limbs to block the first attack. Moments later, the doubled strike from the Ghostfire Dagger reverberated through the machine and it spat out bright blue blood.

The two machines continued writhing back and forth on the floor. Jason brought his tail back to swing again, but this time, Castor had devised a counter. At the last second, his opponent's head shifted and the spider gnawed off the wired cable with its fangs. Though the Ghostfire Dagger itself was a deadly weapon, the delivery system was vulnerable. Jason cursed as the blade clunked uselessly to the ground.

Castor pushed both hands against Jason's chest, straining and bracing himself as he tried pushing away. Jason thought about wrestling his opponent, then decided better. In terms of their raw stats, Castor's spider was stronger, especially after Jason shifted his machine to include parts from the fragile Spell Titan class.

Instead of getting into a raw fight, Jason needed to attack around his opponent with his new abilities. He summoned the shark at close range, and the creature took an enormous bite out of his opponent's chest before splattering apart into disparate ooze. The spider's caved-in chest spurted out blue blood all over Jason's machine, but unfortunately, Jason couldn't control his opponent's blood, not only his own.

He readied another Biological Beast, but then a warning sign flickered on his screen.

After casting so many spells in rapid succession between the fights against the Top Mech and this current battle against Castor, his Mech was running out of mana. He needed to wait for it to recover...

Jason nodded, promptly switching to his next attack. After diligently practicing with his machine, Jason now had plenty of different moves he could use to defeat his opponents. With Castor wheeling, the particular attack didn't matter--he just needed to keep the beatdown coming.

Jason wrapped his lengthy neck around his opponent's body, constructing the spider almost like a snake. With twenty feet of neck available, Jason twined around an arm before binding it to his opponent's head, pressing hard so that the spider couldn't move. Next, Jason twisted around and started blasting his opponent from point-blank range with poisonous flame.

The spider's health rapidly dropped, and Jason thought he had the match won, but then an enormous explosion rocked the air. He jerked sideways and saw that Spike and Danny's battle had wrapped up. Both the Lucky Duck and the Firefly had been reduced to smoldering wreckage--both Mechs had killed the other, with no obvious winner.

Danny had been eliminated.

Jason cursed and pushed the thought out of his mind. He'd known that this was coming--the key was to beat Castor so the BAG Guild as a whole still had a chance to win the tournament.

But then, he realized that the spider had escaped. The damaged Mech had slipped out of Jason's grip and was struggling to get back to its feet.

It was just a single moment of distraction, but Castor had used it to escape.