King Ren quickly lifted his hand. Brisk Warrior, huh? He questioned. If he truly is fast for a brute, then I've got to not only be quick, but also effective in regards to strength.
King Ren's power was then activated. He put down his middle and ring finger, and in that moment the air around Jonah shifted. King Ren thrusted his hand forward, and then the air solidified. He then punched the ground with full force, and there was a loud BOOM sound that echoed through the room. But it did not come from the ground. It came from the air that enveloped Jonah, and it sent a powerful sort of punch, seemingly from nowhere, right into Jonah's chest. This punch knocked him back a good nine feet, and it caused him to lean forward and catch himself by putting his hands to his knees. His sharp foot dug into the ground as he looked up.
They both traded stares once more.
"So that's the famous air manipulation I've heard about." said Jonah.
Ren's power was air manipulation. He could freely manipulate, or control, the air in our atmosphere. He could solidify it, create great winds, change the temperature from extremely hot to extremely cold, and even remove oxygen from the air to suffocate his opponents.
"Do you like it?" Ren asked with a smirk.
"It's neat." Jonah said monotonously. "But I've seen better."
Ren's smirk widened. He's cocky, he thought. After a bit, he took on a serious expression.
"Why didn't you move at all?" Ren asked. "I was expecting you to charge straight at me as soon as the battle commenced. I was fully preparing to dodge your attacks."
"I was just getting a feel for your power." Jonah said.
Ren's tone was now serious. The opponent that he was dealing with was not one that he could just take lightly. He realized that he would have to go all out with his power.
Ren threw his hand back up in the air, and this time, pointed all five of his fingers towards Jonah. He then clenched his fist, and in an instant, a mound of solidified air flew straight from the tips of his fingers towards Jonah. Jonah stared at this attack as it approached him like a bullet. It got closer and closer, from the middle of the room, to the back, and all the way to where it was right in front of Jonah's face. It was right about to hit Jonah, and then suddenly...
Ren saw Jonah disappear before his eyes.
Ren expected this however. This is where the 'Brisk' title comes in, doesn't it? He thought. He's unusually fast. I was sure that it would hit him, but it would have almost killed him if it did, so obviously I expected this.
Ren's first instict was that Jonah would appear behind him and strike him with his almighty blade. So, Ren made the air that surrounded his back extremely hot, enough to melt the blade in it's entirety and burn Jonah alive. This gave Ren the ability to dash forward and move from his current spot and not worry about a surprise attack from behind.
Ren was now running around the room, jumping, and occasionally shifting to the side in order to dodge any attack that would catch him off guard. He constantly placed his eyes in every corner of the room, surveying it for the tiniest glimpse of Jonah.
Either this guy disappeared from the room completely, or he is just so fast that I can't see him, Ren thought to himself.
As soon as he finished this thought, Ren felt a sharp pain on his left arm. He thought it was just a prick at first from some debris that had flown across the room from his fast footing, but it grew increasingly more intense.
So intense that Ren was now on the ground screaming.
Blood splattered and spilled all over the floor in great quantities. At first, Ren didn't realize what was going on. The pain had put him in shock. He quickly realized the severity of the situation when he saw his left arm ten feet away from him.
It had been completely severed.
Jonah had appeared from above and struck Ren in a motion so quick that Ren didn't even see it.
He now lay on the ground, screaming, holding pressure with his right arm upon the open wound. His mind was blank, he had gone in alert mode, and all that he thought of now was what he could do to survive. Ren realized that this was no time to be screaming in agony and that if he wanted to keep living on as the King of All, he couldn't let a student of a Warlord be the one that takes the title from him.
Ren leaped up and surveyed the room once again, but now, he was dashing faster than ever. Once he saw no sign of Jonah, he got to a stopping point. He put his right arm up again and clenched his fist. He closed his eyes and delivered a piercing scream which bounced on all the walls in the room.
In that same instant, Jonah had dashed behind him and prepared to deliver a great strike which would slash down the middle of Ren's body. But before Jonah could reach Ren with his blade, Jonah was taken back by wind. He was thrown so far that he hit the metal wall and a huge dent was formed. Jonah remained sitting in the place he was thrown to and proceeded to observe the attack that Ren had cast.
Ren had manipulated the air to be that of a powerful hurricane, except, the winds were three times as strong. Ren opened his eyes and stared at Jonah. However, the stare that Jonah received wasn't of intimidation, it was of trauma.
Ren was genuinely terrified of the monster that had come into this room.
The wind that circled around the room was pushing Jonah further back into the wall. Jonah tried to move his body forward, straining every ounce of muscle that he had, but it was no use. Ren took the wind from areas around the room and kept putting it into the wind force that was pressuring Jonah.
"THIS TIME..." Ren started to yell. "THIS TIME IT WILL BE YOU WHO LOSES AN ARM!"
Ren focused the hurricane wind on Jonah's arm. Jonah started grunting, closed his eyes, and gritted his teeth. The pain was becoming unbearable to him, and he thought of a way that he could escape.
Ren clenched his fist even harder, putting more pressure on Jonah's arm. Ren then opened his mouth to deliver a message to the struggling warrior.
"WITH ONE FINAL BLOW," Ren started, "YOU WILL NOT ONLY LOSE AN ARM, BUT YOU'LL ALSO LOSE YOUR LIFE!"
Jonah was astonished by the newfound aggressiveness of the King that, just a few minutes ago, was joking with him about repairing a door to his throne room that he had broke.
Ren prepared the final blow by shifting his arm with a clenched fist to a point behind his body, like he was charging up a punch. Ren's furious expression resembled that of a demon. This final blow would be payback for the arm that he had lost, so Ren was outputting all of his strength into it.
"GOODBYE, JONAH!" He shouted. At that moment, he started throwing his fist in the direction of Jonah at full force. It kept flying through the air, and Ren cracked a wide smile. After this is thrown, he thought, all my problems will be over for another five years. He then started to laugh like a maniac, thinking about how the impact of this punch would completely obliterate Jonah's body. He didn't want anything else in this moment other than to see his opponent suffer a brutal, bloody death. He wanted him to pay for what he did to him.
Ren unleashed all of his power towards Jonah with an astonishing scream to follow along with it. It kept going and going, whirling and whirling. The wind that was being unleashed with this attack broke the sound barrier.
Finally, the attack had stopped. Ren was now looking at the ground sweating, dripping blood from his wound, and panting heavily. In the aftermath, one would notice that the entire back side of the battle room where Jonah sat was completely destroyed. You could see the great blue horizon, and the square of the Kingdom of Mace.
Ren smiled. He knew that his opponent had been completely destroyed, and that gave him great satisfaction. He wanted to see what kind of damage had been done to his opponent, so he looked up with a grin the size of a continent on his face.
But after looking up, that grin quickly became an expression of horror.
Jonah was nowhere to be found.
And in that instant, Ren felt another sharp pain. This time, it was in his back. The tip of Jonah's great sword pierced all the way through his weak body.
Ren stared off into the hole that he had made. He saw the city of a kingdom that he had ruled for fifteen years. A single tear fell from his face. How? He thought to himself. How did he escape from there?
The sword then jerked out of his body and he fell to the ground, face first. He sat there for a few seconds, and then turned to his back only to see Jonah looking down on him with a smile.
"You're smiling now, you bastard?" Ren asked with a shaky voice.
"Only because I'm King." Jonah replied with a great grin. "I'm happy. I achieved what I wanted."
Jonah drew his sword from the ground. He lifted it up to deliver one final blow to Ren. Jonah inhaled deeply, and then titled his hands back. He was ready to deliver the attack, but then Ren started to speak again.
"I finally figured out what was off about you." He spoke softly. "You have no scars on your face. Or your arms. You walk like you haven't been injured. Others in the past, they came in here all sluggish. They were drained of their energy, weak, and had no will to fight although the most grand opportunity in the world stood right in front of them."
Jonah's smile faded. "That's because they were weak." He drew his sword back behind him once again and prepared to deliver the final blow.
Ren closed his eyes. He took into consideration what Jonah said, and then asked himself; Were those people I fought back then truly weak? Was I never really that strong? Of course, these were silly questions for someone who held the title of King of All. For him to have achieved that title, he had to fight some of the world's strongest contenders in the square and then kill the current King. No weak man could ever amount to that. It wasn't that the men that Ren fought in the past were weak at all, no, it was quite the opposite.
It was just that Jonah was too damn strong.
Jonah unleashed the blade from behind his body and struck Ren one last time. His eyes remained closed as the blade hit his torso, and the tears that he had shed fell to the cold, hard ground, which was his deathbed.
Jonah pulled the blade out from his body and looked at the door that he had entered from the throne room. Inside of it, he saw the throne. He saw the place that he would sit on for decades and rule the world.
Jonah then looked down at Ren's body. It had one arm and a huge hole in the middle of his chest, both from the power of Jonah's great sword.
"You fought well." Jonah muttered to his corpse.
Jonah then looked back at the door and sluggishly walked towards it. He thought about all the hardships that he had endured, all the battles that he had fought, and especially all that he could do now that he was the King of All.
He passed through the door, and the throne was now just a few dozen feet away. His sword dragged behind him, and he was unknowingly doubling the size of the blood trail that he created when he first entered the battle room.
Jonah was now at the start of the throne. There were eight steps that led up to the seat, and he was ready to climb them all.
But then he realized that there was no point. He was already King.
And in that same moment, he removed all of his articles of clothing. He took off his cloak, his suit of armor, and anything that he had on.
Ren had said that Jonah seemed like he had not been injured. But now, with Jonah completely unmasked, you could see that it was quite the opposite.
Jonah had massive open wounds on his chest, back, legs, and everywhere else you could think of, except for his face and arms. You could even see some of his organs through the holes that he had in his body.
Once Jonah had removed all of his clothing, he let out a great exhale. He then closed his eyes and fell to the ground. This resulted in a BOOM sounding throughout the walls of the throne room. Medical guards came rushing down the hallway and the open door at the sound of this, since it was in the throne room instead of the battle room, and saw a bleeding Jonah on the brink of death. They rushed to attend to him.
It turns out that Jonah had used very minimal strength in the fights outside. He used just enough power to beat his opponent, and in each battle he suffered nearly fatal wounds because of his lack of power exertion. He was saving up all his power on the King. He did not care to unleash it upon the small fry that he had to fight in the square, because, they were not the supreme leader of the land. He knew that if he prioritized it all on the King that he would be able to defeat him with ease.
And King Jonah did just that.
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