Artificial 3: The Valla Chronicles

Chapter 10: Making Enemies

So I begin to watch the matches from the waiting room,
I had Barack on my back like always, and my diamond shape tsuba Katana on my left hip,
the first two rounds were Artificial Demons fighting in small groups of teams,
the two rounds after were demon familiars in the forms of tiny Cerberuses and Nekomatas.
The 5th round the announcer pages me over intercom to be ready at my gate, my coach walks me there and wishes me luck, the employee on the other hand, not so much.
"Try not to die new blood."

He opens the gates as I enter,
the referee being a hype man and doing a piss poor job at hyping me up. "Entering from the west corner, he's new. He's mean, he's tough and has a body of steel itself! Give it up for NEEEEEEEEEEW BLOOOOOOOOOD!" The crowd boos me once again as most the audience are people of power or already have selected favorite fighters, on the other side the gates open and my opponent steps out,
the refree introduces him as a cold-blooded killer with pets straight out of Hell, hyping him up like no tomorrow.

The Artificial Demon draws a knife and aggressively points it at me.
The refree yells fight, and I draw Barack, take stance, and in a flash of lightning, my opponent's Cerberuses falls over dead from a single stab to both their hearts,
I flick the blood off my blade.
The dumbass opponent realizes he's no match and forfeits,
making the crowd hate him in which a message on the screen above the room appears,
spare or kill is all it says.

In a matter of mere moments, nearly 100% of the poll chose death,
resulting in a water rune to appear on the wall and spray a turrent of highly pressurized water,
resulting in my opponent being cut in half.
I walk back through my gate and rehydrate as the refree gives me genuine praise.
After twelve minutes,
my next round would begin as two rounds had passed.
I make my way back to that employee, and once again,
he says an annoying one-liner. "Beginner's luck, this match you won't have such luck."

I enter the ring for the semifinal rounds. Once again,
I was poorly hyped,
and then the refree hypes up my enemy up as litterally ten Artificial Demons enter the ring.
"I thought these were one v ones?"
The refree turns and looks at me and laughs into the mic then booms out there aren't rules in this pit,
then gets out of the way,
yelling fight,
so I unsheath my diamond tsuba Katana and activate an illusion rune on the blade, taking control of anyone who sees me or my blade,
their five senses were under my control, and so was the illusion,
I made them see each other as me, and one by one,
they killed each other until one man was left standing.

I undo the rune and make him suffer a mental breakdown as he realized he killed his own allys and potential friends,
once again,
the poll goes up on screen,
and they chose to end him. An executioner comes out and beats the healing factor out of him before ending him with decapitation.
Once again,
I was the victor,
and I moved on into the final round,
the Chief sends more men to threaten me,
and they meet with a similar illusion and suffer a mental breakdown,
I absorbed their souls into me right then and there and gain acess to water runes, but at the expense of also gaining their memories and experience,
fifteen minutes passed,
and for the last time,
I was paged.

The final round I was introduced last as I step into the ring as I see two African American Oni's from the Flame Tribe, the one on the right had three katanas on his right hip and a two handed grosse messer on his back,
he had dreads and wore a black T shirt and blue jeans.
His partner on his left wore the same thing but had T.J. Combo hair from Killer Instinct. When the fight begins the enemy on my left,
his eyes turn from brown to bright red and activate two illusion runes over his eyes,
instantly making me bend to his whim and imagination.
When the illusion becomes too much, I take Barack and stab my thigh to break it.

My enemy was taken back by this. "How?! I put you under my hypnosis!" The guy in my right comes at me acting like a Fire Bender from Avatar,
so I fight passive aggressively,
kicking the winds to keep me in the air and whip them with razor-sharp winds from swiping my hand. "Shadow Winds!"
A black whip materializes from my ten fingers as I continue the volley of whipping.
The swordsman Oni teleports to me and hits me to the ground with his dual katanas.

I get up and cast a wind rune on my legs and kick the air hard enough to take away the oxygen of my enemy,
he falls back,
coughing hard,
then I drew my diamond shape tsuba Katana and cast an illusion rune of fighting the weakest creatures on earth, and they couldn't die.
My enemies yelled impossible but eventually broke out.
If I had to hypothesize,
I'd say they have a resistance to illusions with given time,
either that or they inflicted pain on themselves.

The fight picks back up again,
between a fellow swordsman and brawler,
I see where their talents are,
but they clearly lack the nurturing needed to become the best they can be. I separate from them and create familiars to engage them in their own respective strong suits but I made my familiars slightly stronger then them just to analyze them and obtain more information such as how they react, how fast they are, how strong they were, etc.

I made sure those familiars brought out their best whether they liked it or not, I'm talking Grenzbrecher,
which me and Yuzuhara now call Limit Overdrive,
I'm talking about a Full Body Demon transformation,
I brought them to their limits,
and above them,
they even surpassed my expectations when they killed my two familiars.
They were both out of breath,
and I was still in base form,
or rather,
I should say my human form,
the Oni with T.J. combo hair got sent flying when I teleported to him and uppercut him,
I fly up to him and uppercut him again, kick him in the kidneys,
then slam him into his brother.

"Survive this! VAPORIZE!"
I fire shadow lightning ball at them and cause a minature explosion,
I walk out of the dust cloud,
and when the dust settled,
to my surpise,
they lived,
none the less I was declared the victor, but unlike the last few bouts,
I had the poll decide against killing them.
The refree held my hand up in victory while the judge gave me a trophy with money on the inside,
it must have been a few thousand dollars if my guess is right sense, I saw five stacks of $100 dollar bills.

After the crowd boos me some more, I go home with coach Imani and leave behind a familiar to guard him.
I went into the inn for another night,
the next day was definitely an interesting day sense I woke up to more of the Don King's men busting down my door,
boy,
did we have a conversation as I used the shadows of the room to form a giant pitch black hand of infinite void and proceed to grind their bones until they broke.
"Tell your Chief this, I want to work for you in exchange, you leave Imani alone, failure to comply, and he's next on my list." I drop them and let them heal as they scurry away,
might as well get out of bed.