As Carnivac and Ryoma squared off in the middle of the arena, the rest of my proxies found places near the seating area to watch and observe. IronHide, though, got roped into becoming a perch for Princess Relena so that she could get a better view. Of course, Ryoma didn’t need to know that their positioning gave Carnivac a full 360 view of everything in the arena.

Cyclone patted Carnivac on the shoulder as he passed by, headed to a position next to ‘Hide.

“You got this big bro,” he said to the shorter wolf-bot.

Carnivac smirked. “Of course, I’m a Prime.”

I laughed at myself for a bit, sometimes I felt like I was playing with giant action figures when I had them talk to each other. Before I found my own place to watch, I shot a finger gun at Ryoma.

“[writeMedia(shield, fire, explosive, ice, recovery, recovery, recovery)].”

Writing Media

Target media has been written and is ready for use.

“[Resume()].”

Ryoma gave me a curious look. “You’re going to regret that,” he snarled.

“Possibly,” I agreed, “but we’ll see. I’m using you as a test run for the Carnivac Mk II.”

“Mark two?” he questioned, shooting me a look that said “the hell are you on about?”

“Eh, long story. Suffice to say, this is a completely new Carnivac body that you’ll be fighting. Be sure to really put him through his paces and try to break him.”

“You... are a really strange sort of creature...” Ryoma said, looking at me sideways.

“I get that a lot. I know I have you by the short hairs right now, but If this goes well, maybe I can call on you for more testing in the future.”

“Short? What? You’re an idiot. I don’t know why you’d throw away your advantage here but you’re a fool. I’m going to ask Lord Jhiax for special permission to be there when he dissects you.”

“Yeah, I get that kinda often too. Okay, I got some great surprises in store for you, so really try to have fun!” I said, giving Ryoma a wink. He recoiled like someone slapped him with a slug.

I trotted over to IronHide and had him pick me up to give me a seat next to Lena.

“You are truly having fun with this, aren’t you Master Prime?” she said, glancing my way.

“Trying to, your highness. He tipped my hand so I might as well go all out here.”

“Why limit yourself to a single soldier? Surely with all your proxies you could crush him easily.”

“Carn needs testing and big boy here should be a good stepping stone, not that he has a chance. Plus, you asked me to destroy him, so I’m not going to just beat him down. I’m going to humiliate him in front of his guild. I’m destroying his position, his credibility, his connections. When I’m done with him, he’ll WISH that all I did was kill him,” I growled.

“How uncharacteristically cruel of you...” she said, giving me a puzzled look.

“Talios,” I said, boosting my volume back up, “the challenger is ready at any time.”

Carnivac thumbed his nose and dropped into a fighting stance. A tendril of blackest shadow crept out from between the seams of his armor plating, wrapping around his neck and forming a thick scarf that covered the lower half of his face and snaked through the air, imitating an impractically long scarf, flapping in an nonexistent wind.

I was nearly chomping at the bit to unleash the Carnivac Mk II and test out all of his new features. Unfortunately, Carnivac would never again function as a pretender shell for me, though I figured I’d gotten to a place where I no longer needed him to. Instead, he’d been loaded up with 8 mana cells to be able to power all the new spell upgrades I’d given him. I was really looking forward to testing them all out.

“Lord Fenrir, destroy him! Grind that oni into bean paste!” someone from the crowd yelled.

“VickyOhMyGodShutUp!” a robot ninja in the vicinity hush-whispered while looking like he wanted to hide somewhere.

Carnivac ignored them and flipped a beckoning hand to Ryoma. Talios cautiously stepped up to the wooden barrier separating the seating from the combat ring and held out a hand. They looked at each fighter, but neither looked back.

“Fight!” they called, with a downward slash of their hand.

Ryoma started circling around Carnivac, shifting the spear in his hands, looking for an opening. Carnivac half-heartedly tossed a kunai at the oni, only to have it deflect off of the Aura Shield Ryoma was using.

“This is a rank 6 Aura Shield,” Ryoma sneered, “you were an idiot for giving it back to me. I told you, you’d regret this.”

“Let’s do something about that shield then, hmm?” I said casually to the princess.

Carnivac rested a finger inside the ring at the end of the kunai waiting in one of his thigh holsters.

“[Charge({trigger:`Impact`,action: Blink({distance:0.1m})})],” Carnvac chanted, imbuing the weapon with the spell.

He flung the blade directly at Ryoma’s chest. Ryoma didn’t even bother to raise his spear. As expected, the green energy of the shield flared to life again as the kunai touched it. As soon as the shield flared, the kunai exploded, releasing a shock wave in a 10 meter radius that blasted the air and dirt in all directions and shook the underground ceilings.

The shield was obliterated on impact and Ryoma was sent flying from the force of what was essentially a modern grenade. Large chunks of him were missing and his skull was exposed. All in all, I’d say he was more intact than I was expecting. A green gem that hung on a string around his neck, burst. There was no reassembly or healing of any kind, he just simply sat back up as if nothing had happened and shook his head. I noticed there were two more such gems, those must have been his Recovery Stones. Handy pieces of kit, I guess he wasn’t taking any chances this time.

“Was that wise, Master Prime?” Lena asked, leaning over IronHide’s thumb. “You’ve played your trump card too early, surely magic on that level was costly.”

“Not really, The [Blink] spell is more costly based on distance traveled. So if something is only traveling a handful of centimeters it’s pretty cheap.”

“[Blink]? When did Carnivac [Blink]? Did I miss it?” she asked, confused.

“I see what you did there. Blink and you’ll miss it?”

“I have no recollection of which you speak my dear Prime.”

I wasn’t sure if she was serious or not so I let it slide. “I just put a small [Blink] on the kunai and triggered it to go off as soon as it hit something, in this case, the Aura Shield. After that, it’s just physics.”

“Can Carnivac do that again?”

“Sure. As long as he has enough mana and kunai. The spell is only about 5 mana and he’s currently rocking a pool of 282/300 with an [Inventory] storage of 498 kunai.”

Lena just stared at me blankly. “You... you’re serious aren’t you... you wicked little man...”

I turned my attention back to the match as Ryoma was in a rage slinging fireballs at Carnivac. He wasn’t chanting, so that was probably the work of the Fire Stone he had on him. The balls weren’t terribly powerful, far less so than the ones that the walking turret, the muscle mage the Prince had, used.

“Fine, let’s test ranged capabilities,” I murmured.

Carnivac easily dodged and evaded the fireballs, nimbly flipping around them. He allowed them to come close enough to nearly graze him before spinning out of the way. This was all done to piss Ryoma off, of course. Which it did to great effect.

He dodged back with a back-handspring into a back flip to make some distance, charged up 3 kunai from his holster as he sailed back through the air.

“[Charge({trigger: `impact`, action: FireBurst()})].”

The charged kunai were flung together in a single motion. Ryoma smacked 2 of them out of the air, while the third hit him in the shoulder. As each one impacted, they executed the FireBurst spell, releasing a one meter orb of fire that burned for a second each.

“Trying to fight fire with fire??” Ryoma laughed. “Fool! I’m fireproof!”

As the flames winked out, Ryoma noticed the bursts of ice at his feet, encasing them and trapping him up to his knees.

“Graah!” he yelled, frustrated, slashing at the ice with his spear but only barely chipping at it. “[Excite Energy. Matter Vibrations Increase. Bring Forth Your Warm Glow.]”

As Ryoma repeated his chant, the ice steadily melted until he was able to easily break out of it. Once free, he continued chanting and the blade of his spear burst into flame. It was a neat looking effect, but I doubted it would gain him anything. He started growing until he reached a height of 12 feet tall. Surprisingly, the spear grew with him. I was curious about how that worked.

Ryoma began swinging and dancing around with his flaming spear, his movements were clean and designed to cover any potential openings. Carefully, he advanced on Carnivac, who still stood open-handed in his ready stance.

“Let’s try out... Rain of Terror,” I said, as I steepled my fingers. I pointedly ignored Lena’s questioning glance at me.

Carnivac dove forward, popping up and springing off of Ryoma’s spear, leaping high into the air. At inhumanly fast speeds, Carnivac started flinging kunai from both hands. Each time one was pulled from his holsters, a new one reloaded from his internal [Inventory]. With each throw, Carnivac used [Blink] to move to another position around Ryoma, [Blink]ing and hurling kunai from all directions around the oni at a rate of multiple times per second.

Ryoma, for his part, was doing a remarkable job of blocking a fair amount of the attacks. I assumed it had more to do with the defensive dance kata he was performing with the spear and less to do with actually intending to block specific attacks. He was starting to look a bit like a pin cushion, though it didn’t seem to be actually causing him any damage.

“Weak! Your attacks are all weak! Is this all you got, coward?” Ryoma roared.

Some of the kunai started getting deflected into the crowd of onlookers. Maybe he was blocking attacks better than I gave him credit for. There were some screams, but it looked like the Adventurer Anani was doing a good job of blocking anything that came their way.

Carnivac landed directly between Ryoma’s legs and whipped his blades out, slashing the oni’s thighs and knee caps. Ryoma stumbled back and slashed down with his flaming spear but Carnivac was already cartwheeling out of the way.

Carnivac threw one of his blades at the oni’s face but it was blocked by the spear. The blade flung off into the air only to be redirected back at the oni after Carnivac [Blink]ed to intercept it and parried it with his remaining blade. Again, Ryoma blocked the attack, this time sending the blade upward. Carnivac [Blink]ed above Ryoma, driving the blade into the over muscled shoulder with an aerial forward flip kick.

Moving faster than I would have expected, Ryoma lashed out with an open hand and caught Carnivac by the leg before he could retreat.

“Fell for it,” he smirked.

Ryoma twisted and slammed Carnivac into the ground like a rag doll, then hefted him over to repeat the process on the other side. As Carnivac bounced from the impact of the second smash, he was caught by a massive punch that had some sort of explosive magic woven into it.

The force of the blow sent Carnivac flying backward, directly to where I was seated in IronHide’s arms. IronHide quickly shifted me over to the other hand so that I was placed in a shared seat with the princess. With his freed hand, he caught Carnivac and flung him back at Ryoma. I couldn’t help but think of the famous “Fastball Special” from the X-Men comics.

Carnivac turned his new trajectory into a flying side kick, Kamen Rider style. Of course, in real life such a move is easily seen and blocked. Ryoma immediately had his spear ready and was thrusting it at the oncoming kick. At the last moment, Carnivac [Blink]ed to the side, shifting his direction, and slammed his foot into the side of the oni’s head.

Ryoma stumbled to the side from the hit, but Carnivac grabbed the sword stuck in Ryoma’s shoulder. In a fluid movement, he ripped the blade out and spun around with both wakizashi. The lead blade took off one of Ryoma’s long horns and the other sliced through his throat. Though it wasn’t enough to decapitate him, the attack did get three quarters of the way there.

Ryoma slapped a hand to his throat and fell to his knees as Carnivac hit the ground and rolled out of the way. The second of Ryoma’s green gems burst and he shook his head, glaring at Carnivac. His body started shrinking back down and went right past his usual size until he was only about 6 feet tall. Even his build deflated, leaving him looking wiry and long limbed.

Ryoma’s spear also looked a bit longer and thinner. It had a wobble that I associated with kungfu movies. He launched himself at Carnivac in a flurry of attacks. His speed was considerably faster than it had been as attacks seemingly came from all directions as he whipped his spear around fluidly. It was almost as if he had multiple spears, the attacks came so quickly. He was almost as fast as Carnivac.

With a blade in each hand, Carnivac blocked and dodged all of Ryoma’s attacks looking for an opening. Ryoma went for a slashing attack, intending to take the proxy’s head. Carnivac dropped to his knees, arching backward into a bridge to slide under the swipe. He planted his blades in the ground and sprung back up with a double fist strike to Ryoma’s gut that sent him flying backward, feet first, and landing on his face.

Ryoma punched the ground and pushed himself back up. “Why didn’t you finish it there?” he growled.

Carnivac calmly pulled his blades out of the ground and resumed his ready stance. “The test isn’t over.”

Carnivac’s shadow scarf exploded like a jellyfish, engulfing him, wrapping him completely in its shadow cloak. Around Ryoma, shadow apparitions appeared in the exact same shape and size as the original. The shadows surrounded him, six in total, and each one as still as a statue.

Ryoma looked around him nervously and slashed at one of the shadows, only to have his blade pass through like smoke. He tried another shadow with the same result. One of the shadows lunged forward and slashed Ryoma across the back of his leg and he stumbled before counter attacking only to find his spear pass effortlessly through the shadow mist.

“How are you doing this Prime?” the princess asked in a low whisper. “Shadow clones can’t actually touch anything, they’re only shadows, used for distractions and confusion...”

Different shadows took turns attacking and slashing at the guild master only to swirl in the air whenever Ryoma tried to counter attack. Only one shadow would move at a time while the others remained perfectly still in Carnivac’s ready stance. Ryoma was screaming in frustration as the shallow slashes and cuts all over him healed themselves while we watched.

“Carn is [Blink]ing from position to position, hiding inside the shadows. It takes a lot of concentration to keep this going though, that’s why the shadows are still like statues. I mean, I should be able to move them all at once but trying to also [Blink] and sync w/ the shadow covering is pretty taxing,” I explained.

“I dare say, you may have created the ultimate ninja warrior here...” Lena replied appreciatively.

“That’s the goal, I'm tired of getting caught with my pants around my ankles. Here, you’ll like this trick.”

All of the shadows moved as one and thrust their swords at Ryoma. Before they could connect, Ryoma twisted his body around and swung his spear in a full circle, slashing through all of the shadows in a single move.

The shadows dissipated like mist from the flaming spear attack while Ryoma frantically looked around, swiping at the air. Nervously he whipped around and jabbed at nothing, then turned and stabbed the open area behind him. His eyes darted over at me and I gave him a little salute.

Ryoma’s spear was suddenly knocked from his hands, clattering uselessly on the ground. A clawed hand gripped his throat and lifted him up into the air. Before him, all Ryoma could see was a hazy humanoid shape, like looking through glass or the heat distortion above a flame.

Ryoma grabbed at the unseen arm holding him in the air, frantically trying to pull the steel fingers free. Ryoma began growing again, but before he was big enough for his feet to reach the ground, he was released. Carnivac snapped around with a spin kick that took Ryoma’s head off.

The headless body hit the ground and went straight to its knees as the head landed some ways away. The third, and final, Recovery Stone burst and by the time the body completely slumped to the ground, he was back to normal.

Ryoma pushed himself up to all fours and sat back on his heels, breathing heavily, sweat pouring off of him. Carnivac de[Cloak]ed, releasing the Predator illusion around him. He stood in front of the fallen guild master, looking down.

“Your last recovery stone has broken... but would you like to continue the testing?”

“No... No, I give up... I yield... you win... Guild Master.”