“What the?!”

“Who’s that?!”

Exclamations burst out of the people in the bunker as they stared at this unexpected intruder with three eyes and a monstrous appearance with a human like stature. The alien, Bruton, was smiling around at them as he took in his surroundings before spotting Raze that was lying down unconscious on a bed near the heroes, and his smile widened.

“You!” Alestor exclaimed, looking shocked and instantly recognising who he was.

“Ah. It’s that man from before,” said Bruton and smiled serenely at him. “You put up a good battle, but you’re weak.”

“That appearance of yours…?”

“This?” The alien asked, indicating at his original form and shrugged. “You should congratulate your hero for managing to remove my mask after the beating he dished out. Really remarkable of him.”

Seeing the alien there shocked the older man, who was expecting him to be engaged in a heated battle against the Solaris Hero. However, the fact that he was here meant that something had happened, that meant that the alien had given the hero the slip or did something to him before coming here for his prize.

“Where is he?! What did you do to the Solaris Hero?!” Alestor exclaimed, looking sharply at him.

“Oh? I don’t know,” the alien said, putting on mocking expression of confusion. Then he appeared to have remembered and said, “Oh! Right! He’s probably busy trying to survive… at the bottom of the molten lava!”

This caused Alestor to widen his eyes in shock and demand, “Lava?! Where?!”

“In your planet’s core, you fool,” the alien replied, rolling his eyes and looking exasperatedly at him while everyone gasped in shock. “I got the best of him and sent him straight down to the planet’s core, and believe me; he’s history.”

Alestor could not believe what he was hearing and looked like all hope in the world was lost. At that moment, Gram stepped forward and eyed the alien menacingly.

“So, you say you killed the Solaris Hero?” He asked coldly, and the alien turned to nod at him.

“Yes, and now, I’ve come to retrieve that which belongs to my master, so if you’ll excuse me.”

As he said, he clicked his fingers and instantly, the ground beneath everyone shook violently before their bodies began to be covered by stone. It rose from the ground at high speed from everywhere and stopped right near their necks to allow them to breathe while encasing the rest of their body in its depth.

“We don’t need unnecessary fighting,” he commented with a smile and began moving towards the sleeping Raze.

“Dammit!” Maxwell said angrily, struggling to break free.

“Bastard!” Vikram shouted at him, feeling unable to move any of his muscle due to his body, like the others’, being stuck in the rock.

Bruton stopped and turned to him before waving his finger and saying, “Tsk. Tsk. Tsk. Careful now. I could cause the stone to rise and cover your face, making sure you suffocate and die right here.”

With that warning, everyone went silent and still as they glared at him. However, not all of them were necessarily stuck inside the rock. Natsu, whose body was encased inside the rock like the rest, watched the alien moving close to them as he reached for Raze. He patiently waited for the right moment before activating his power while shouting his attack out loud.

“Destroy!”

In an instant, the rocks around him got destroyed, and his body was finally set free. As the alien got surprised by this unexpected move, the Zeklock Hero leaped forward and punched Bruton right across the face. It was not a strong punch that would send him flying and crashing into a wall, but it was a strong punch that nevertheless had the effect of stunning the enemy and making him jump back to maintain his distance from this new enemy.

“Tsh!” The alien exclaimed, rubbing the side of his face, which stung a little. “It’s you.”

Natsu faced the alien and took on a fighting stance, ready to battle this threat by himself. He wanted to free the others, but he knew time was against him as he would need to focus on them and say the word, which would take him at least three seconds, leaving him wide open for the alien to strike. Seeing as he was lacking battle experience other than training under Lakshman to master his powers, he was left in a tight spot of contending with this alien by himself.

“You dropped your guard.”

“I certainly did,” the alien admitted with a grin. “I momentarily forgot what your power was: to deactivate all elemental attacks and render them useless, but that was stone you just destroyed. How did you manage that?”

“Your stone contained the magic that you cast to keep us locked up,” said Natsu, eying the enemy coldly.

The alien looked amazed and said, “Ah. Of course. Because of my magic imbued in the stone, it allowed you to escape from that jam. Very clever.”

“Very stupid of you actually,” remarked Natsu coldly. “If it were me, I’d have been more cautious.”

The alien laughed at those words and replied, “I can’t believe I’m being lectured by my enemy. This is classic.”

“Natsu,” said Vikram from the side with an exasperated look on his face. “Now isn’t the time to be giving lessons to our enemy.”

“Be careful! He’s a crafty enemy judging by what he’s done so far!” Maxwell warned him.

Natsu nodded silently while keeping his eyes fixed on his enemy, not even blinking for a second as he believed that if he loses sight of him for even a moment, he would be killed. After all, the only power he had was the ability to disable elemental attacks. Other than that, he was an average human with average strength and speed that made him pretty normal compared to the other heroes with their extraordinary abilities and physical prowess.

“So? You’re going to be the new challenger?” The alien asked with a laugh. “What can you do? Your only power is that elemental disable thing. You’re not strong or fast like the rest. How do you think you’re going to beat me?”

The Zeklock Hero remained silent as he was contemplating that very same thing. With the enemy being aware of his strengths and weaknesses, this left Natsu in a stalemate that could easily be tipped in the alien’s favour if he did something that surprised Natsu. As such, the hero wondered to himself whether there was a way for him alone to take on this powerful.

He remembered the words that Lakshman advised him with when he had asked the same question to the hero.

“I think it’s best that you fight with a weapon that’s around and give him a run for his money,” replied Lakshman with a smile. “You’re not exceptionally strong, nor are you really fast; putting you just above the level a normal person would be. However, you’re smart, and you think fast on your feet, so I’m confident that you can do it.”

Then he gave the young hero a big thumbs up and a grin as a confident gesture for him. Natsu accepted the advice without thinking, and now that he was faced with a situation just like he feared, he realised what he must do. His advantage was that he could easily nullify the enemy’s attacks while feeling confident he could win if he had a weapon.

He was unarmed for the moment, but that was going to change when he glanced at the surroundings near the alien and found a few spears. Those were dropped when the Royal Guards reacted in shock when their bodies got encased in the stone. As such, he came up with a plan of attack and charged straight towards the alien.

“A frontal attack?” The alien asked, looking bemused. “How typical.”

He aimed his hand at him and fired a blast of wind to send the hero flying backwards. However, Natsu aimed his hand in front of him and disabled the wind, causing it to spread everywhere and raised dust into the air around them. The Zeklock Hero quickly raised his hand to dissipate the wind, but the risen dust had already spread around and distracted him, allowing the alien to leap away from him.

With the alien out of the way, Natsu dived for one of the spears and grabbed it before rolling on the ground and rising to his feet within seconds. Then he faced the alien with the spear in hand and ready to do battle, which surprised Bruton.

“Interesting,” the alien commented and smiled evilly at him. “A spear battle, ah? Let’s see how you fare against the likes of me!”

He extended his hand to the right and caused a stone spear to rise out of the ground. Grabbing it firmly with his hand, he charged towards Natsu with a wild look on his face as he went into battle mode. At the same time, Natsu gripped his spear firmly and charged at his enemy with a determined look on his face.

And so, the battle between the alien, Bruton, and the Zeklock Hero, Natsu, began in an earnest. Bruton had used his magic to increase his speed as he charged at Natsu and swung his spear at him with the intention of destroying the enemy’s spear. Fortunately, the spears made in this world were strong and that allowed Natus fend off the intense first attack, but he felt his feet buckle beneath him by the tremendous force.

“Oh! Not bad!” The alien remarked, impressed that his enemy blocked his first attack. “Let’s see if you survive the rest!”

He continued to apply more force to his spear to bring it down onto his opponent, but Natsu kept at it while gritting his teeth tightly. At that moment, he realised the spear his opponent used was made by magic, and so he focused on it and shouted a single word.

“Destroy!”

However, nothing happened and the spear remained firmly strong as ever in his enemy hands.

“What? Trying to break my weapon?” The alien asked with a laugh. Then he sneered and said, “Don’t be mistaken, fool. I know about your power, and I cast a counterspell on mine so both your attack and mine nullify each other. We can do this all day long, and my spear wouldn’t be breaking any time soon.”

Alarmed, Natsu quickly used the pushing force to get away from Bruton and land before charging back at him. From there, the battle between the two spear wielders became intense as they spun their spears, twirled them in their hands, and swung them with strong force towards each other.

The others watched in amazement as the heated battle between Bruton and Natsu raged on. It looked like a stalemate between the two warriors from the way they were fighting. Natsu even managed to cut the enemy’s face and arm a few times in their battle. However, it soon became evident that the hero was losing stamina and fast.

“What’s wrong? You’re breathing hard!” Bruton asked, pushing the hero back and watching him breaking quickly.

“Ah! Just catching my breath,” replied Natsu, before he lunged at them.

It soon became evident that Natsu would not last much longer against the three-eyed alien, who wore a smug look on his face. Even he knew that he was going to win as he applied more and more force to his attacks while Natsu’s attacks became weaker and weaker by the minute. It was only a matter of time before Natsu made one mistake, a stumble, or a fall, and the battle would come to a tragic end after the valiant effort he put up to fight the alien.