Next up for combat was Benny. Where I'd been fighting the werewolf, Benny was up against the metal man. An appropriate match up considering that iron hide was his original power. I was sure this Mountaincrusher person was able to synergize some more skills in to make himself even tougher, but Benny was going to have a tough time taking the man down based on what Alden had said. I was looking forward to the match, and based on his fidgeting I was pretty sure Benny was too.

My best friend leapt off the seating he'd been perched on and dropped into the dirt ring. Instead of plummeting and landing hard, he drifted to the ground. Not slowly, but not nearly as quickly as he should have. I was pretty sure he had altered the density of his leg again making it lighter than air to provide a bit of resistance. He landed on the other leg, strolling out to meet the absolute beast of a man who emerged from the other side of the circle to fight.

Mountaincrusher was a large man. Like...about as tall as Fang in his wolf form large. Rather than a mask, Mountaincrusher sported a bare upper face and a massive bushy beard that joined his tangled and matted hair in tumbling down his chest and back, covering his otherwise bare chest and making him look like some sort of ancient warrior savage or something. His wide green eyes were fixed on Benny, and his lips were pulled back in a manic grin that exposed white teeth from between the bushy plumes of beard and mustache.

"So, you're my opponent. Bit scrawny, aren't you?" Mountaincrusher rumbled in a voice that was appropriately deep and booming. Unlike Fang though, his voice was less growl and more crash, like an avalanche rather than an animal. I wondered if that had anything to do with his name and size. It seemed like the kind of thing people might subconsciously attribute to someone and then affect through recursion.

Benny glared at him. "Asshole, I'm six foot three, I am NOT scrawny, you're just gargantuan. I will not be made to feel inferior because people are taller than me." He turned to glare at me. "Especially if they fucking shouldn't be!" I grinned under my mask, Benny had been enraged about Callie paying off one of her wishes with an inch of height because we had previously been the same height and now I was taller than he was.

I'd expected Mountaincrusher to be offended by getting snapped at, but his grin just widened even further. Benny rolled his eyes, muttering something about 'crazy battle maniacs' before turning to give Alden the ok to call the match to a start. Alden smirked at their antics before holding up both hands. "Alright, once again, the fight goes until either someone gives in or I call it to a stop. No attempts on anyone's life of course. This is just a friendly match, so have fun with it."

Benny stepped forward at his indication, and the match began. The spider legs extended from his back, gleaming wickedly in the low light of the pavilion, and his turtle shell formed behind him in preparation for attacks. Mountaincrusher looked intrigued at the devices, shifting his body into his metallic form as the fight started to make sure he could handle it. His pale skin rippled, becoming the rust red of old metal as his body converted from one of flesh to one of iron. He raised his fists in what I recognized as a boxing stance and stepped forward.

Benny's spider legs lashed out, and Mountaincrusher raised his guard to tank the hit, deflecting them off his forearms with the boxing stance, the ground beneath him cracked at the impact, and my eyes widened as I realized what had just happened. I turned to Callie, whose own eyes were just as wide with surprise. "Wait, did he just density shift those spider legs?" Benny didn't have nearly the strength to strike with that much force, which meant he'd done something else. Add in the cracking of the ground under his own feet, both of them mind you, and density shifting the spider legs was all I could think of. His effects were supposed to be limited to a single body part last I checked, sometimes able to spread, but the leg that allowed that move was a completely separate limb. We turned to Jessie, who spent the most time with Benny lately, something I felt guilty about.

She gave a wide grin. "Yup. Clockwork figured out that his embodiment makes the items part of him, so he can use their properties like Skills and not just trigger them. He can't use more than two at once yet, but even that is pretty impressive." She gave a small sigh. "He's been training hard when you guys aren't around. He feels like you're leaving him behind, and he doesn't want to be useless. Even though he acts like nothing bothers him, he came here to support you. Well, he also wants to become stronger so Celine will be impressed, but still."

I had no idea." I knew my voice was hoarse as I spoke, but my head was just spinning. I knew how hard mastering Skills like that was. Benny must have been completely exhausting himself trying to get better, and I hadn't even noticed. I pushed that day off with my best friend up even higher on my list. I was definitely going to talk to him when we hung out. I wanted to find out more about where his head was at. Jessie was right, he'd come here for me, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say I felt bad about spending time with Callie, especially when he had been off with Celine just as often, I did feel like shit I hadn't noticed all he'd obviously been doing to get better.

Meanwhile, in battle, Benny was kicking ass. While he wasn't able to use more than one extra skill on the same limb, it did not, apparently, affect his ability with the others. His brain was clearly overclocked based on the speed and precision of the weighted spider limbs striking the metal mans arms. Mountaincrusher was on the defensive, holding up under a barrage of ultradense strikes with the wicked metal arms. He was also laying into the bigger man's guard with his own fists, and while even the triple strike punch wasn't managing to do as much as the obviously much more powerful spider limbs, it was doing something.

I didn't see any obvious effect from the tranq punch, but he was still managing to put his opponent on the back foot. Finally though, the attacks stopped being enough. Mountaincrusher got his footing and started lashing out with quick but obviously powerful blows. I was worried Benny might be hurt (though with his F rank gear even the stat disparity shouldn't be enough to do serious damage) but even that turned out to be an unfounded concern. As the fist approached him, Benny activated the ranged attack attraction effect through one of the spider limbs, pulling the punch off course.

The attraction was used perfectly, pulling the bigger man up and forward with the offending limb, pulling him off balance and leaving him open on one side in a way that made it clear Benny was using that cognitive speed boost to best effect. He stepped in and smashed a series of powerful attacks into Mountaincrusher's torso while he was open, before drifting back out of the way and avoiding the recovery attack in a way that made me pretty sure he'd lightened most of his body to pull off the move.

Mountaincrusher stepped back, guard up and not willing to attack, but I was sure he wasn't giving in, just trying to find gaps. Benny's demonstration of multiple abilities of Skills was worrying, but Skills could do lots of things. My DS Mastery was unique, but it wasn't the only unique Skill out there. Benny's combat style wasn't perfect, but being able to stack his effects was devastating in a direct fight. I was absolutely flabbergasted in how much improvement he was showing here. I'd kind of been starting to think of him as mainly an inventor, but this new trick put him on the same level as Callie and I in terms of potential, probably higher if he could get some better gear integrated.

Despite what Mountaincrusher might want, he wasn't capable of just standing there and waiting for the attacks to show a weak spot. Those spider legs were G rank, and with the density increased, they were heavier, denser metal than his body was, which meant he was essentially getting beaten up with baseball bats as far as actual inflicted damage went. It was a brilliant counter to his strengthened form, but then, iron hide had been Benny's first ability. I was pretty sure he'd considered how to get past it well before this match.

Despite all that, I truly believe without his armor Benny would have been broken by this guy. F ranked gear was pretty much the best possible safety measure against serious injury in a fight between G rankers. It wasn't some impervious invincible shield, granted. It covered the parts of the body that were directly protected, and it mostly stopped piercing damage. Even my gear, which was enchanted with the same sort of impact absorption that I'd had on my last set, wouldn't fully nullify blunt damage, just siphon off some of it to store.

When I wanted it to. It became clear we could somewhat manipulate the effects of our gear, since Callie wasn't constantly nearly impossible to see, mostly saving that for combat situations. Regardless, the powerful gear gave Benny a chance to make mistakes without paying for them in blood, and a few broken bones wasn't the end of the world. He was improving at a noticeable rate, managing to switch between secondary abilities on each limb much more quickly as time wore on. He even got a opened up a slice on Mountaincrusher with one of the spider legs, presumable with the three times damage ability.

As they fought on though, it became clear what the deciding factor would be. The tranq punch. It wasn't exactly all powerful, and even augmented three times (I suspected he had the triple fist and the tranq fist both augmenting each other so he got both effects on each hand) it was taking ten or fifteen minutes, but I could see the metal man beginning to look a little unsteady on his feet. The amount of buildup needed was staggering, but it was working over time.

They traded blows for about a half hour in total, Benny looking like he was about to pass out from pushing himself hard and fast enough to keep up with the much stronger man. Even being lighter he had a serious disadvantage, and if not for the ability to attract punches with the spider limbs and Mountaincrusher's slow descent into dizziness and eventual unconsciousness, I doubted he could have lasted the whole time with just the Vitality stat he currently had. Eventually though, the bigger man slipped out of consciousness with on final hammering tranq triple punch, and fell over backwards.

There was a massive thud as the big metal man hit the dirt, and Benny dropped to his own knees after, groaning in discomfort and cradling his hands, which had been punching actual G ranked metal for the last half hour, even with the gloves taking the worst of it. Alden grinned down at him, and called the match. "Clockwork WINS!" He walked over and knelt down, offering Benny a swig from a flask, which he took, and giving my best friend an approving slap on the back. "Well done lad. That was a hell of a fight to watch. Go back to your friends and get healed up." He needn't have said anything, Jessie was already headed over to heal them both. Once that was done we all settled in to wait. Callie had the last match of the night. After that, we would see if we'd earned enough respect to get in deeper and finally learn what we came here for.