REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!REVIEWS AND POWERSTONES PLSSS!!!!!Chapter 55: Kill the Boss, Get the Drop
Did Rando have techniques suited to this situation?
Possibly. But he could no longer locate them himself.
Technique Plunder had always worked on impulse. And since the abilities were stolen from others, he had never particularly valued them. Once he lost interest in a technique, it was almost certainly shelved, and because these abilities had been seized rather than developed from scratch, they would fade from memory over time.
So when Ross's taunt landed, Rando genuinely could not recall whether he had anything on hand to deal with the current situation.
His aura consumption, however, had no interest in waiting while he hesitated.
Sustaining his airborne position and directing the kamaitachi were both drawing on his reserves continuously. The dojo rules had made this worse. Even without the taunt, he would have been forced to land.
And the maintenance condition for Slash Wind Formation was being airborne. When he could no longer hold it and his feet were forced down, the remaining kamaitachi that the Hadouken hadn't consumed dispersed on their own.
Even through the poison, Rando's senses were still working. The instant his feet touched the ground, he registered the significant spike in his aura recovery. The arena rule, clearly.
But Ross was not going to give him any time to use it.
As Rando descended, Ross had already lined him up and, with practiced economy, used his left thumb and the muscle at its base to complete the forward-forward-attack input.
Then Ross hit Rando like a cue ball driven hard off the table, aura sawblade and all, slamming straight into his chest.
The crack in Rando's chest from Yusuke's earlier Spirit Gun immediately sprayed fresh demon blood.
But in the moment of collision, both briefly locked in mutual stagger, Ross touched the ground lightly with hands and feet, felt his body rise, and confirmed he was fully airborne.
The next second, with no warning, his entire body converted into a roaring fireball and drove into Rando's completely open chest a second time.
The impact and the heat made Rando cry out against his will. Even the blood that should have scattered was instantly vaporized.
Flame Shield: Flame Impact.
The poison from the Pharmacy had never triggered the shield's damage-absorption effect. The shield had held through everything. The one-hit absorption was still intact, and now it was spent here.
That had given the airborne Ross one extra Flame Impact.
And the wall behind Rando, in the direction he had just been launched, was made of materials that Arena rules explicitly protected from destruction.
Rando, hit by two consecutive accelerating blows, flew backward and slammed into it.
The impact knocked a mouthful of blood out of him. His body slid down the wall like a picture that hadn't been hung properly.
Before his backside reached the floor, two strong hands caught him under both armpits.
[All-Style Judo Rule 3: When a competitor takes damage, both vitality and aura decrease. The aura reduction is significant.]
After two consecutive collisions, Rando's current aura was under one unit.
Throw judgment: passed.
[Auto-Suppression: Limited item, effective in All-Style Judo only. Price: 25 Gold Badges (Gold Rings).
When you make contact with your opponent, an automatic aura comparison is performed, equivalent to continuous rapid-fire attack inputs.]
When someone uses the same technique repeatedly, either it is the only one they know, or it is simply the best one available.
Rando felt his body go weightless. He was airborne again.
Like being stuffed into a washing machine and spun around. Everything hurt.
But demon instinct made him force his eyes open as he was launched. And when they opened, they met Ross's, the two of them at exactly the same height.
One look that lasted an eternity.
Rando could barely detect any killing intent in those eyes. What was there was pure excitement. But alongside that, in the depths, he saw something he almost recognized.
Those eyes looked like those of someone who had just finished watching a great drama series. The TV switches off. The screen reflects their own face back. They felt genuine emotion for the characters and story while it was playing, but at a fundamental level, they never took what was on screen personally.
"Fireball... Spike!"
With one round of real combat behind him, Ross executed the ultimate throw descended from Super Dodge Ball even more smoothly than before.
Rando, struck in the abdomen, converted into a fireball and hit the solid wall a second time at a forty-five-degree diagonal.
Under the All-Style Judo rules, the double collision plus Fireball Spike had temporarily emptied Rando's aura completely. Airborne, he couldn't reach the arena's recovery effect. And Ten, which served the same function as breathing, simply went out.
This time, Rando hit the wall headfirst.
The bone-shattering sound made everyone within earshot want to pull their neck in. His neck twisted to an angle no humanoid creature's neck should reach, and then he dropped, producing the dull thud of dead weight hitting the floor.
The light in his eyes went out entirely.
The All-Style Judo countdown froze at two minutes and six seconds.
[Winner: Ross!]
[The winner may choose to immediately end the match and exit with the opponent, or wait two minutes and six seconds for automatic transport.]
Standing over Rando's body, Ross raised his right hand in a pose of absolute no-regrets satisfaction.
This was what a pay-to-win warrior could do.
Two bottles of poison at four silver rings each, which had even poisoned himself in the process, combined with the aura damage from Yusuke's pre-arena ORA-rush and full-power Spirit Gun, had ground Rando's powerful demon body down to its last reserves. The suppression and combo kill had taken care of the rest.
More satisfying than taking down Kazemaru. Thoroughly cathartic.
Still savoring it, Ross didn't forget to eject the cartridge and summon the Navigation Arrow.
Sure enough, the arrow immediately repeated what it had done with Kazemaru: extracting aura from the fallen opponent to materialize equipment.
Ross was already speculating while it worked. What would Rando drop?
Given that Rando was fundamentally a spider demon, the games with similar themes that came to mind were: Spider-Man, the Sinister Six on the Famicom, and the various arcade fighting games like Marvel vs. Capcom that featured Spider-Man.
If enemy characters counted, the cross-bandage-firing spider monster from The Three-Eyed One, the spider demon from Journey to the West, or even Heavenly Silkworm might qualify.
Beyond those, nothing came to mind immediately.
The difference this time was notable. Unlike the extraction from Kazemaru, the arrow pulled from Rando's remains like it was trying to drain everything the corpse had left in one go, drawing a full barrel's worth. Then it waddled to Ross's hand like an overfed Labrador and began materializing.
What took shape was something Ross had never imagined in his wildest speculation.
One and a half forearms in length. Overall blue and oval-shaped. Thick. Open at both ends: the larger end sized to fit a hand, the smaller end clearly designed to fire something.
"...Why is it Mega Man's Mega Buster?!"
Ross stared at the object in his hands with an expression of total incomprehension.