Chapter 166: Saving Face

‘Fighting William Oh’

• Idiom meaning ‘to struggle against the inevitable.’

Homefield Advantage

85 Charges remaining.

Rather than play the game where Will danced around and allowed his opponent to transmute the battlefield until he controlled the entire arena, Will changed it into a field of slippery ice.

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of this, Will thought as Sammohan wobbled in place for an instant, just long enough to duck under one of the massive man’s swings and bring the Blade of Frenzy into play, raking it across his ribs.

It still had the majority of its stacking bonus, causing it to hit like a greatsword of legend.

The coating of liquid steel and armor parted enough to send a spray of blood from Sammohan’s ribs onto the ice.

The bandit leader grunted in pain and whipped around with more dexterity than Will would expect, catching Will in the left shoulder with his forearm.

Crack!

It felt like someone hit him with a sledgehammer, and it sent Will careening towards the edge of the arena, sliding across the ice at breakneck speed.

BOOM! BOOM!

Staccato explosions from Nukers, thrown weapons and arrows rained down from the stands as the bandits recovered from their stunned silence.

‘And now the rebuttal.” Lord Bakton said, craning his neck to take in all the devastation that was raining down on Will.

Most of the projectiles and explosions missed, save a handful with tracking capability or decent aim.

Will was a little singed, and had an arrow in his gut, leg, and lung.

He really wanted to just lay down and take a nap, but that would be…unwise.

Will shoved himself up and started sprinting up the side of the arena walls, Phantom Hand going the opposite direction, picking out the four people that had successfully shot him.

It was a rush-job, so Will used Phantom hand’s Manifestation Ability to manifest two sets of two cannonballs for a fraction of a second each.

Focus 91->63

BOOM! BOOM!

Focus 63->91

The stands where the four people who’d been able to hit Will exploded, while Will yanked the arrows out of himself.

Arrows designed to shoot people with inhuman toughness weren’t broadheads one might use for hunting. They were narrow, chisel-faced sharps, designed to punch through armor and stone-like flesh.

That made them pretty easy to yank out.

Save for the lung.

The sensation of arrow scraping across rib, and his lung being tugged on by the object lodged in it was going to stick with him for a while.

No time to overthink it, Will thought, coughing up blood, the sudden drop in oxygen causing his eyesight to dim and dozens of bright worms to streak across his eyes.

Will’s Phantom eye saw Sammohan hurtling forward aiming to cut Will off.

Will waited until the last second and then dug in his heels and juked, causing Sammohan to fly past him.

The huge man had weird metal miniature windmills coming out of his back, which seemed to be allowing him to fly, which would prevent Will from carelessly tossing him up in the air again.

“Cool!” Will shouted, backpedaling and sending Phantom Hand back to himself.

Now.

While Sammohan stalked forward, Phantom hand dropped a Potion of Greater Healing into Will’s hand.

Sourdough

62 Charges Remaining.

Sammohan’s eyes widened and he lunged forward, taking a wild swing at Will from far too far away for it to do any-

Will’s eyes widened as the air in front of Sammohan’s fist turned into a pancake of solid steel and shot forward, aiming to crush Will against the arena’s wall.

Will grabbed the air with his toes and created a layered, angled piece of air.

With a twist of his foot and a lean to the side, the pancake of steel missed Will by a hair’s breadth and exploded into the arena wall behind him as he drank the potion.

Sammohan arrived a fraction of a second later, his fists raining down on the spot where Will stood.

“Was that a cantrip? One seCOUGH!” Will hacked out the last of the blood in his throat as the lung patched itself up, ducking out of the way of the first strike and shoving himself backwards with Phantom hand before the follow-up could remove his head from his body.

Will relaxed his grip on the icy floor and slid backwards with apparent effortlessness as Phantom Hand pushed him around the arena like a skating rink.

Sammohan’s feet spawned catlike claws of liquid metal that anchored him to the ice as he lunged forward, his shoulder-windmills creating an obnoxious whine.

Will slid out of the way of several more transmuted air-pancakes. When he got too far away from the Mercurial Prospector, Abilities and projectiles began raining down on him, so he changed his pattern to dance around Sammohan, keeping away from his attacks while using him as a human shield.

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The man was fast for a massive slab of muscle, but Will was fast for himself, which was in a completely different category altogether.

The Stormfist Gauntlets speed boost was 30%, which made Sammohan appear like he was moving underwater.

This gave Will time to study the man’s gauntlets. They were a separate piece of armor, and Will could’ve taken them into his Dimensional Storage, except for the layer of liquid metal that seemed to be reinforcing Sammohan’s entire suit, binding the gloves, torso, legs, and feet together into one seamless whole.

That makes it harder to snag them.

Will put the ‘stealing’ idea on the backburner and refocused on just winning the fight.

Heavy armor…need something that is good against heavy armor.

Typically, that would be a war-pick. It looked a little bit like a regular hammer, albeit the back instead of being split and curved to pull nails, was a single spike meant to be driven through armor.

Will glanced up and scanned the angry audience for a war-pick, but didn’t find anything. armor-piercing wasn’t at a premium against monsters, compared to all-out damage dealing. Will did however see a decent-looking stiletto.

Will led Sammohan over to the side of the arena, sending Phantom Hand up and snatching the stiletto out of the man’s belt before bringing it back down, sliding out of the way of Sammohan’s steel pancakes while aiming for the bandit leader’s bac-

“STOP!” Lord Bakton roared, his voice drowning out the shouts of pain and rage and bringing the entire battle to a screeching halt.

The Lord wiped his lips with a napkin before setting his lunch aside and stalking out onto the sand of the arena with a whipping rod hanging loose from his fingers. If the ice underneath his feet bothered him, he didn’t give any sign of it.

“Sammohan, you’re overcommitting to your ranged attacks,” Bakton said, “As if you’re trying to punch through a wall. You’re not punching through anything, you don’t need follow-through, only velocity. It’s slowing your feet down and letting him run circles around you. Try snapping your hand like so.”

Bakton made a snapping jab with his hand that only involved his shoulder and tricep. Not very powerful, but very fast.