“Are you okay?” Natsu asked, kneeling down to check on Asura.

Asura coughed twice and snarled, “You fools! Why are you here?!”

“To help out obviously. Can’t you tell just by looking?” Vikram asked, who stood beside him while facing the enemy.

His response made Asura grit his teeth in anger and exclaim, “Stupid. All of you. There’s no chance of survival for any of you once you fight him!”

“Well then, if there’s no chance of victory, then let’s die giving it our best!” Vikram said brightly, and he faced him with a smile.

Asura’s eyebrows twitched because he suddenly got the sensation that he was looking at someone familiar. Then he realised that was the attitude that his current-self, Lakshman, would have taken even if the odds were against him. Giving up had never been a part of Lakshman’s growth, and this made Asura envious of him.

So, when he saw the similar attitude shown by Vikram, Asura smiled a little in humour and sighed in resignation.

“I guess that’s the only thing left to do, isn’t it?” He asked of no one in particular.

“Right!” Vikram said, and he punched his hand into his other palm and turned back to face their enemy. “Time to do our best and get rid of this guy!”

The God of Calamity, Climax, eyed them coldly and asked, “You deem you’re worthy to fight a being like me?”

His attitude greatly angered William, who exclaimed while raising his clenched fist into the air, “He sounds so high and mighty! It’s pissing me off!”

“Yeah. I don’t like it either,” admitted Fred coldly while looking very angry.

“Maybe we don’t have a hope of winning against you, but it’s better than idling around and wait for our doom!” Vikram replied cheerfully.

“Yes. I agree,” agreed Natsu, rising to his feet while helping Asura back to his feet.

Climax eyed the eight heroes present before him and closed his eyes while sighing resentfully. Then his eyes opened in a flash and caused them to suddenly feel a shiver run throughout their body from just his glare.

“How foolish to think you arrogant mortals would dare approach me?”

With that, he aimed the palm of his hand in Vikram’s direction and unleashed a force blast so powerful that a shock wave got released upon its launch. The Sonic Hero gritted his teeth and raced out of the way while Natsu and Asura leaped away from the blast, which came forward and struck the ground where they stood, causing the ground to shake violently as well as an explosion of dust and debris that flew everywhere.

After dodging the attack, Vikram, using his tremendous speed, dashed towards Climax as fast as he could. Thus, he covered the distance between him and his enemy in a matter of seconds and was within striking distance. However, as he pulled his fist back and brought it forward, Climax shifted his shoulder sideways and Vikram found himself racing past him while punching empty air.

“Ah!” The Sonic Hero exclaimed in frustration at his miss.

Suddenly, the sound of a rapid firing was heard as Maxwell had summoned forth his Hero Weapon, which took the form of a machine gun. He was firing rapidly in quick successions at their enemy, however, the bullets flew through the air at an unbelievable speed only to stop within centimetres from the God of Calamity’s body.

William joined in, summoning forth his Hero Weapon, a bow and a quiver of arrows, he began launching arrow after arrow at him. However, they too flew forward and were forcefully stopped like the bullets before they could touch their target.

“A barrier!” Natsu said, realising what it was and aiming his hand at him. “Vanish!”

With his shout, he activated his powers that caused a strong wind to blow towards the God of Calamity. Climax was momentarily surprised when his barrier was destroyed and the bullets and arrows suddenly came flying forward. Even so, they seemingly flew right through him as if he was not solid.

“What?!”

“They went right through him!”

Both Maxwell and William exclaimed in shock and disbelief at the unbelievable thing happening before them. Even after firing countless bullets and arrows, they could not pierce him and instead seemed to fly by as if he was never there.

“Such attacks would not harm a being like me even if my barrier were to be taken down,” remarked Climax sardonically.

As he continued to look down at them all, he suddenly sensed the use of magic coming from somewhere nearby. He turned and saw a man holding book in his hand, chanting the spell written on it while his body glowed brightly while exhibiting particles of light.

“Lightning Tiger,” Ward’s voice said telepathically.

In that moment, lightning began exhibiting around him before it took the form of a tiger that ran towards his enemy.

“Hmph!” Climax said, unimpressed by the level of magic. He simply waved his hand and said, “Begone.”

The lightning tiger was about to reach him when there was a strange disturbance in the air before the lightning dispersed and vanished from sight. When that happened, the ground beneath Climax suddenly seemed to lose its strength, and he felt as though it was sucking him in.

“Quagmire.”

The spell had created a bog within the small area that Climax was in and was acting forcefully to bog him in.

Appearing to have captured his target, Ward looked down at the book for another spell and muttered telepathically, “Drown.”

In an instant, the strange substance of the bug suddenly rose into the air all around Climax like a wall and moved forward in a way to completely submerge him.

As Climax raised his hand to cancel it out, Ward quickly acted by using another spell from the spell textbook he held within his hand.

“Zero Force.”

Zero Force was a spell that did not allow the target to use any kind of magic while within spell zone. In this case, the zone was the quagmire and this made the God of Calamity unable to use his magic. For some reason, this made him look at it the situation with a sudden interest as the wall of the strange substance fell down on him and seemingly buried him inside the quagmire.

“Wow!” Vikram said, looking amazed while the others watched in amazement at how quickly the fight was over. “That was rather quick.”

“Don’t be dumb!” Asura scolded him with an annoyed voice. “The fight isn’t over yet!”

As Vikram blinked in surprise, and Natsu agreed by saying, “I quite agree. He’s fooling us.”

“But…! We saw him go down! Where else could he be hiding?” Vikram asked, looking confused.

At that moment, they heard the God of Calamity’s voice say, “Alright, mortals. I’ll humour you for a bit as I haven’t had much fun in a while, but you’ll have to find me first.”

“Stop playing games and come on out, coward!” Vikram bellowed into the sky as his voice was filled with frustration.

Asura had his eyebrows narrowed and was thinking of the same thing when he sensed something. He immediately turned towards where Ward stood and fired of a powerful energy wave so strong that it held the possibility to destroy the hero.

“What the hell?!” Vikram exclaimed in shock while Ward watched the wave come towards him in astonishment.

Vikram acted quickly by racing forward to where Ward stood, then he grabbed him and took him away to safety. As he did, the rest of them saw their enemy reappear into visible light as if stepping out from invisibility and smack the wave aside.

“Firing off an attack at your ally. Don’t you care?” Climax asked with a hint of curiosity in his voice.

“I’m not stupid enough to take your words seriously,” replied Asura while glaring at him. “Obviously, you were going to take possession of one of us and make them attack us, making the rest of us think you had kidnapped the real person and then have us kill our comrades one by one. That’s your form of entertainment, isn’t it?”

The others were shocked by what he said, but the God of Calamity looked interested as he nodded, smiled, and said, “Very good. You’ve certainly read my moves.”

“I hated you from the very beginning, Climax. Of course, I would know to read the moves of my greatest enemy!” Asura replied, glaring menacingly at him while the others got ready to continue the fight.

“Yes. Well, you ruined my fun, and I’m feeling bored. How about you dance for me?” Climax asked with a smug look on his face. As they looked at him in confusion, he raised his hand into the air and said, “Chaos Spheres.”

In an instant, a small black sphere formed in his hand before numerous spheres began flying towards all of them. It pumped out sphere after sphere in quick succession at them, making the warriors become taken aback by shock. Everyone ducked, dodged, and evaded the initial storm, but the black spheres continued flying towards them.

Realising what the attack was, Asura yelled at his comrades, “Don’t touch them at any cost!”

“Why?!” Vikram exclaimed as everyone continued to dodge. “What do they do?!”

“You don’t want to know!” Asura warned him in a deadly voice.

As a demonstration, Asura fired off several energy blasts at the black spheres. Everyone watched as the energy blasts flew forward and made contact with several of the black spheres. They were horrified when, instead of an explosion occurring, the blast seemed to get sucked in before the black sphere closed in on itself and vanished from sight.

“Holy crap!” Vikram exclaimed in horror.

“That’s bad!” William stated anxiously.

“We’ve got to dodge it no matter what!” Maxwell announced fiercely.

“Yes, but… we can’t fight back like this!” Natsu said, looking frustrated as he glanced at their enemy while dodging the barrage.

The God of Calamity watched them dodging and nodding in satisfaction, but he felt this was not enough.

“A little bit of injury should add pleasantry to the scene, I think,” he said casually as if he was out gardening. “Downfall.”

The moment he uttered those words, a heavy magic suddenly occurred where they all were before an intense gravity suddenly bogged them down. It made things worse as the black sphere flew towards them, causing them to struggle with all their might to dodge this ruthless attack.

“Good. Very good. You can still dodge, but for how long?” Climax asked with a sadistic smile on his face.

Vikram, growing frustrated, did his best to charge forward through the black spheres. Sadly, he could not get past a few of them before he suddenly found himself surrounded. It was Ward who came to the rescue, who telepathically said, “Dodge,” that made his body reflexively dodge the mass of spheres and escape with his life.

“Thanks, Ward!” Vikram said to him and smiled. Then he yelled in shock, “Dammit! This isn’t the time to be smiling!”

Natsu kept continuously using his powers to destroy the spheres that flew towards him. But because there were so many of them, even he could not simply stand still and had to evade. Even Maxwell attempted to try and take a shot at their enemy with his rocket launcher that he summoned during the scuffle. Still, he found himself having to need time to get a good aim to fire the missile and so, he had to keep dodging them.

After several minutes of this, the God of Calamity finally grew bored and said, “I was expecting a show, but instead I’m faced with a letdown. I’m done.” Then he aimed his hand, that was conjuring the sphere, at the warriors and said, “Chaos Rupture.”

In an instant, a powerful black pulsating sphere formed in front of his open palm before he unleashed it towards them. It was a medium sized sphere, but for some reason, they felt as though it was sucking them towards it. Added to that was the heavy gravity that was still affecting them, making their attempt to escape almost zero as they would have to fight both the heavy gravity pulling them down and the strong gravity pulling them towards this latest attack.

Both Natsu, Asura, and Ward aimed their hands at it and unleashed their strongest magic spell they knew of.

“Destroy!”

“Maga Distrab!”

“Cancel!”

The three attacks swept forward and smashed into the incoming sphere, but nothing happened. They soon realised that a powerful counter magic barrier was in place surrounding the deadly sphere, protecting it from any and all kinds of external interferences.

“We can’t dodge it!” Martin wailed in a fearful voice.

That was when Fred shouted, “Everyone! Get behind me!”

They saw him summon a large shield and stand in front of the incoming attack and understood what it was he was about to do. Heeding his call, they immediately moved to stand behind him as he activated his powers as the Bulwark Hero.

“Defender!” He shouted in a fierce voice, stabbing his shield into the ground in front of him and holding it firmly in place.

In an instant, a barrier like magic formed around them as the gravity pulling destructive sphere flew towards them. Upon impact against the barrier, they felt that a powerful wind got unleashed as they all got buffeted by it as Fred held his shield firmly in place. William and Maxwell moved forward and supported in holding the shield in place once they saw that it was shaking as the force from the enemy’s attack was immense.

“If we can keep this up, we’ll survive this!” Maxwell shouted in a very loud voice.

“Yeah, but that’s a big ‘if’!” William exclaimed as the three warriors tightly gripped the shield.

Soon, Asura, Natsu, Martin, and Ward came forward to support them in holding the shield in place. They were truly in a corner, but they had each other’s backs and channelling their powers into the shield, they were able to keep the attack at bay. However, they did not realise that the attacking sphere’s control was in the God of Calamity’s hands, who grew tired of watching their struggle and simply closed his hand.

As he did, his deadly sphere suddenly closed in on itself. For a moment, it looked as though all struggle was over and that they had won. In the next moment, however, an explosive destructive force of attack was unleashed upon them. The magnitude of the force of the attack was so immense that it blasted everyone off their feet, including the shield, and threw them into the air.

Screaming in shock, horror, and pain, the eight warriors soared through the air and crash landed in different places, away from where they were fighting moments before. A huge cloud of smoke spread in all directions, clouding the view and making it impossible to see what was happening. Amidst the smoke, William and Fred had crash landed together and were moaning softly from the pain of hitting the ground, hard.

William pushed himself up and shook his head to clear away the dust while moaning, “Ow. That hurt.”

Just then, he felt his hand was touching something strange, almost soft and a little squishy. Feeling troubled and unable to see clearly through the drifting smoke, he squeezed his hand around the strange object. He was shocked when he heard a squeal of a familiar voice, but the tone was done in a strange manner. A moment later, the smoke cleared where he was pushing himself up and saw that Fred was beneath him with his hand on the other man’s chest.

“Fred!” He exclaimed and jumped in shock as he saw that Fred’s face was beat red and appeared to be flustered.

He quickly got away from the person in question, but remained sitting on the ground. The Bulwark Hero took this opportunity to push himself into a sitting position while clutching his chest. That was when the Titanium Hero caught sight of something unbelievable protruding out of Fred’s chest area as well as wrappings of what appeared to be long bandages.

“Uh…!” He said nervously as sweat began forming on his face.

He looked at the lumps sticking out and then glanced down at his hand, which he squeezed reflexively. Remembering what he did, and recognising the sensation, he looked back at Fred with a shocked look on his face.

“Fred! You… You… You’re a… girl?!” He exclaimed finally.

Fred recoiled in shock and then glanced down at his shirt, finding her clothes slightly torn around the chest area and her bandage wrappings untied. She went very red in the face and quickly brought up her arms to cover herself while squealing, “Hiya!”

William stared at the girl, whom he believed to be a man until now, and muttered, “You’re a girl. I don’t believe this.”

He instantly thought, “Wait! Could it be because of that attack that caused this strangeness to happen? Can it? I don’t know full well about all these powers and stuff! Maybe that could be it? Something strange happened, and his gender changed.”

The Titanium Hero was nodding in satisfaction at his chain of thoughts, but then the absurdity hit him, and he exclaimed out loud, “Like hell that’s possible!”

“W-Will?” Fred asked, looking at him anxiously.

“Oh. Sorry for scaring you,” he told her apologetically. “I’m just a little bit absolutely taken aback by finding out that you’re not a man, but a woman!” Then, as if to verify this, and that he was not seeing an illusion, he asked her curiously, “Are you a… girl?”

Fred hesitated for a moment before beginning to say, “I… I’m—!”

Just then, a powerful explosion went off from somewhere nearby, causing the wind to blow in their direction and buffet them in the process.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, heroes. I grow bored of this hide and seek game of yours,” said the voice of God of Calamity, who seemed to be approaching them slowly.

William turned back to face Fred and saw that the recently discovered woman was looking troubled due to her destroyed clothes. That was when he took off his jacket and passed it to her, making her look at him in surprise.

“Wear it since your clothes are ruined,” said William while resolutely looking away.

Fred looked at him and then at the jacket she caught before smiling sweetly at it. She quickly donned the jacket, and the two quickly moved away from there in order to find their other comrades.

Meanwhile, Asura was nursing an injury he recently sustained from the crash landing he had from the earlier attack. Blood was trickling down his face and other parts of his body that were badly wounded, and he was breathing a little quickly as if he was out of breath.

“Man…! Is this the end…?” He asked weakly.

“You can’t give up now!” Voiced the fairy that was inhabiting in his and Lakshman’s shared Unconscious World.

“I know, but… he’s just too strong!” Asura stated, gritting his teeth and looking frustrated.

The fairy woman, who was watching the scene unfold and could sense his tiredness, looked at the frozen state that Lakshman was in. She believed that if the original owner of the body returned, then they might be able to unleash all of the true strength that dwelled within Lakshman. However, as it was currently, it was impossible to do because the owner was trapped in a never-ending cycle of fear born from the fears of his heart.

“There’s only one thing to do; I must free him by force,” she muttered and looked at him.

“Don’t do anything stupid! It’ll be bad if something happens to him!”

She heard Asura’s voice echo inside the Unconscious World, but she smiled confidently.

“I know, and believe me. I’m not going to do anything dangerous. I’ll just go into his soul and free him if possible.”

“You can do that?”

“Of course, I can! I’m a fairy after all!” The fairy replied, speaking proudly as if it was an obvious thing.

She turned her attention back to Lakshman and brought her face forward until the tip of her forehead touched his.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” she muttered and activated her powers.

In an instant, there was a blinding flash of light and everything turned white as it became hard to see.