He didn’t have time to pick up his bag, nor the leeway to reload his gun as he ran with everything he had, pushing beyond his limits to get to Yuzu, the girl firmly cornered by the false golems surrounding her before it was too late.

From the potions he’d already downed and the bands on his arms he could already feel his mana regenerating as he forced his legs to move faster with each step, pushing past his limits while reaching to his vest for the only things he could grab as he took advantage of the single benefit he had. The section wasn’t meant to be challenged by two people at once.

With none of them looking at him he threw more of his space bombs, aiming to take out what he still viewed as the greatest threat, the lava golems as each one hit, the adrenaline flowing through him as his minds reached a level of absolute clarity, seeing his goal and bring his aim to a laser focus as he ran past, feeling drops of the molten lava explode outwards and burn into the only exposed skin he had while he ignored the fire and pain it brought to his face.

He threw two more from there, getting two of the stone golems by the time he’d entered the crowd and risked throwing one more to get the last of the lava ones, immediately feeling the effect as space collapsed too close to him, the edge of his arm being caught by the effect. it being pulled one way as he insisted on continuing another, the act ripping the limb from its socket as he didn’t bother to suppress a scream, letting it hang limp from his side as he kept going forwards.

It all happened fast, but the other golems started to pick up on the fact that something was wrong by the time Yuzu noticed him, her eyes locking on Ben in shock as he slipped past the closest stone golem, slapping its leg with his good hand and pouring every bit of his destruction into it with the little mana he had, separating it from the limb as it crashed to the ground while Ben kept pushing forward, finally standing before the soul mage and turning to face the remaining eight golems as he activated the barriers in his shoes while he took stock of the situation.

Even if he had made it, their position was terrible. They were backed against a wall and even if he was blocking Yuzu the best he could, he couldn’t bring her into the enchantment with him, meaning if anything got around him she was screwed again. Worse, he was running low on his collapsing space bombs.

Still, better to put them to use now, right? He thought to himself, a manic smile stretched across his face despite the severity of the situation as he reached down and grabbed them, throwing them out one by one as he felt the effect of each enchantment drag him forward, his barrier being too close to the golems to go unaffected by the blasts but not to the point of dragging his body in like his arm had while he watched one mud and two stone ones get destroyed, leaving him with no more bombs or any sort on hand.

Okay, so my vest is now empty and my bag is basically a distant memory with how far off it is. Great. Definitely should have squeezed a few more pockets onto this.

With that particular weapon used up, he needed more options, and just as importantly he needed two functional arms. During the same time he fumbled about, trying to force it back into place, two golems came forward and struck, their fists smashing into the barrier that didn’t give.

“Looks like I’ve got time then, love it when something actually works in my favour,” Ben smiled, only briefly getting to enjoy that moment of confidence before he got to suffer through the pain of forcing a bone back into place. Still, he had a lot of experience ignoring pain by then, as well as what felt like very good news. If his barrier would hold against their fists then he could reload his gun and he reached into his pocket to do just that, only for his heart to freeze in his chest.

Not there.

No matter how he fumbled around, he couldn’t feel it or the bullets that should have been there, the only option being that it had fallen out in his desperate sprint, leaving him limited choices as the golems in front of him kept pounding on his barrier. It was only a matter of time before something got around him to Yuzu

And I don’t even have my bag to help. Oh joy, He thought dryly. In that case, what option can I pull? What do I have in my skills, my person, or…

His thoughts drifted off as his teeth clenched, a single option springing to his memories as he considered one more thing he had available to him. His company.

“Hey Yuzu, on three I’m going to bring the barrier down and in that instant I need you to give me the most powerful, body-destroying buffs you can. I’ll also need you to keep healing whatever damage it’s doing to me so I can fight longer.”

His time with Greed had cemented his memories of what it meant for too much power to flow through a person, but desperate times called for desperate measures. All he could do was hope that whatever a soul mage could pull off wouldn’t kill him on the spot.

“Wait don’t, that’s crazy!” She yelled at him, having only a partial understanding of what he’d go through if she did that with it still being enough to make it a horrible idea. “You’ll-”

“One!” Ben yelled out as another strike hit his barrier, not intending to put up with any argument given their situation.

“I’m basically going to be killing you doing this!” She yelled, trying to get him to change his mind.

“Two!”

Another blow struck. Ben didn’t know what buffs Yuzu would actually be able to give him. Greed had been able to do everything, but the crab had blessing magic. Yuzu’s was built on the properties of life and death, meaning it should only have been able to buff his body, but the fact that she’d gotten to the point that it would act on souls as well meant that in theory she should have been able to do something for his mana on top of that. Not that it mattered. As long as she could keep up with all the necessary healing, he would make due.

“Ben!”

“Three!” He shouted, bringing the barrier down as Yuzu screamed, her mana flooding him in milliseconds with the level of control only a third-tier skill holder could manage, even if it was still too much, the incredible boost to his power quadrupling his heart rate, only for it to come to a sudden stop a second later.

He felt all of it, the power flowing into him making time drop to a standstill as he watched another blow come from the closest golem, Ben shifting to avoid the attack at the same time Yuzu restarted his heart, before he slammed his hand into the limb, unloading every bit of mana he had to use for his destruction, getting a bigger effect than he could have dreamed.

Before whatever Yuzu had done, he’d been able to separate a limb at the cost of most of his mana, but now the entire golem turned to sand under his touch, telling him all he needed to know about whether a soul mage could buff that particular attribute.

The pain was nearly unbearable as he felt his heart stop again, only to start a split second later, Yuzu healing all of the damage she’d caused before it could leave him a broken husk. He didn’t know how long he could keep going like that though so he needed to make every second count, kicking off the ground with more power than his body had ever dealt with, only meaning to get to the next closest golem but smashing into it instead. He couldn't tell if the bloody face print he left on it was a result of that or if his various orifices had already been bleeding, but he didn’t stop to think about it, instead forcing his destruction through that new one before it could move to react and going on to the next one from there.

After that it was down to three and two for what was left, the three mud golems throwing caution to the wind as they sent an onslaught of their mud at him, each of Ben’s mind paying attention to a different one, moving his body out of the way from the attack by a hair's breadth as his muscles and tendons tore under the force they were under as he got his hands on two of them.

A small part of him noticed the blood coming out of his fingernails and pores by that point while the mud golems collapsed into piles on the ground, but as long as he could survive whatever was to come he knew it could be healed so he turned to focus on the next one, rushing to the last mud golem and having it almost under his hand before he lost sight of it.

It wasn’t just it though, he’d lost sight of everything, his eyes going blind and his other senses all but unusable from Yuzu’s power flowing through him. He didn’t know for sure if he was even touching the golem, but with no other choice he had to go off hope, using his skill for all it was worth as his vision came back under Yuzu’s healing, letting him see the pile of dirt before him.

Two left.

As he went to the closest he stopped being able to breathe, the air he sucked in doing nothing for him as his body screamed for it through all of the agony of his very cells tearing themselves apart from the mana assaulting him, with him turning it to dust under his hand before turning to the final golem, taking a step towards it, and collapsing to the ground.

His entire fight with them all couldn’t have been more than a minute long, but the effect on his body was devastating. Everything ached, everything hurt, he was sure that any part of him that blood could have leaked out of did, and he couldn’t even move a finger as he laid there, the golem seeing him limp and powerless and rushing forward to trample him underfoot.

So this is it huh? Death number two. Or maybe I should be counting it as more than that. Does every time my heart just stopped count ‘cause then I might be up to death tenish. Myriad, I’m sure you’re listening so time to tell me about whatever secrets the system holds. You promised and everything so no letting me go off without an answer.

He wanted to fight against it, but if Yuzu was still healing him then it didn’t seem to be having any effect. All he could do was watch the golem grow closer, needing two more steps to end things, only for someone to pull him away as it got down to one.

With all that there was left being a single stone golem, even if Yuzu couldn’t fight it, she could at least run, and her exceptional attributes made doing it while carrying his dead weight a breeze as she sprinted away, getting to the other side of the colosseum as fast as she could, all while she kept working on healing Ben.

“I told you this was a terrible idea!” She screamed at him while he was unable to respond. “I think you were technically dead for a bit of that! I had to actively keep your soul from leaving your body while I was fixing it!”

Huh, neat, hope there aren’t any crazy side effects to that.

He didn’t care one way or another if he’d almost died or technically died or anything along those lines. What mattered was that he wasn’t dead then, and as Yuzu kept running with him, buffing herself farther than she’d normally be willing to since Ben had shown his own determination in that regard, they were able to stay away from the golem as he was healed, albeit slowly, all while Yuzu complained along the way.

“I barely know how to fix some of the damage that I just did to you. You want to know how fast I can usually treat wounds, Ben? Instantly! I can help regrow limbs in seconds as long as the person missing them has the spare body fat to convert! You, I basically have to repair cell by cell right now!”

“And you’re doing great,” He said as encouragingly as he could the moment he could talk. “I’m a real big fan of how you’re keeping me from dying right now.”

The last sentence was accompanied by blood rising up his throat while Yuzu yelled for him to keep quiet while she kept running, doing everything in her power to keep his body alive to heal and repair as it all just wanted to shut down until he was finally out of danger, even if he still needed a lot more work to get to top shape again.

“Alright, that means we just need to take care of the last one now,” He mumbled. Yuzu was going to try and tell him off there, to convince him that they could think of another option before he needed to be buffed like that again, or at the very least to wait till he had been healed more, but before she could bring up any of that she watched as he wiggled around in her arms, facing where the others were helplessly stuck watching. “We need to grab my bag please.”

Seeing he had an idea that didn’t end with him destroying everything she’d just worked so hard to heal she rushed over, bending down to scoop up his bag and letting him pull out something he hadn’t yet used, his sticky pads.

They were similar to the space bombs he’d used, only meant to act as traps to hold something in place instead of destroying it, but Ben had access to all of the rings on his fingers and he was happy to modify them on the fly, a large part of him wishing he’d had his tools in hand before he’d been forced to resort to such an extreme method as he changed them to more space bombs.

It would technically be a bit weaker, the item not made to deal with the space affinity the same way the others were, but it would be enough. He directed Yuzu to run at the golem the moment he was done and watched it collapse into a dense ball before their eyes, with Yuzu falling to the ground with him the moment they were sure it was destroyed.

For a second they both laid there, hearts pounding as they caught every bit of breath they could, but it didn’t take long for Ben to pick up on something that was very, very wrong. They’d destroyed every golem there, he knew they did, but no announcement went up to congratulate them like it had for the prior ones, and worse than that, he saw the dust of the destroyed pieces start to move.

…Right, okay, I get it. If we’re following patterns there really should have been a fifteenth for Yuzu too, and having another type of golem would fit how the third and fourth rounds went…

“But come on, even the gods need to admit this is pretty damn fucked up,” Ben muttered under his breath as they both stared up at what was forming before them, an outrageously giant golem held together from the sand and stone of the ones he’d already destroyed, as well as swirling vortex’s of air, creating what seemed like a living sandstorm before their eyes.

Yuzu felt all but defeated by what they were seeing. It was outrageous, the thought that one person would be forced to fight against it ignored any bit of fairness or decency, but before it began to move Ben reached into the bag he was grasping so tightly, grabbing three of the same item to be on the safe side before tossing them in the wind.

“Version two space bombs, go,” He called out half-heartedly as he and everyone else watched their more niche effect taking place, doing the opposite of the first version as they expanded the space they hit instead of contracting it, pulling the last challenge of that section apart while everyone watched with an announcement ringing out seconds later.

“With victory comes well earned pride! Would all competitors move on to the next section?”

He let himself fall back while the bar sealing the door fell away as he heaved a deep, painful breath, happy despite everything that they’d both managed to live.