"Hopefully he can manage going forward." Lily still sounded worried.

Caeden looked down into the arena below, seeing Erik standing triumphantly pumping his fists to the crowd's cheers, overshadowing his opponent's collapsed form. "He's got another round in him."

"Let's hope." Lily continued her negativity.

Erik made his way back over to the other side of the massive arena in preparation for the next member of the Metal Knights that would come out to fight him. This was where Caeden and Lily's planning grew more nebulous. Since the Metal Knights could send out any of their members, they could only make general predictions.

There were no guarantees about who the second pick would be, especially since Erik knocked out David so easily, completely destroying the rhythm the Metal Knights had set up. David was meant to either defeat a few weaker members before being knocked out by the other faction's leader or face the other leader immediately. Erik was a wildcard, as always.

"We have our next fighter from the Metal Knights!" Elune announced as a figure emerged from the tunnel facing Erik, "The Burning Witch, Yuma Steenkool! She's ranked fifteenth in the Academy. Her shroud is Coal, with an Ignition splinter!"

"Shit," Caeden swore.

"I told you." Lily sighed.

“AAAAAAND BEGIN!”

Yuma was actually a modifier, not an object, despite her shroud's domain. She could turn other things into coal and use her splinter to light it on fire. Erik's shroud was especially vulnerable to energy-based attacks, and chunks of burning coal would certainly be a challenge.

The second the start was called, Yuma flicked her fingers through a series of gestures, her black, red-streaked shroud wrapped around her hand. This began turning the air around her into black, shiny rocks. She let them drop to the ground around her. Within moments she had hundreds of fist-sized rocks.

From here, she diverged from her strategy in all previous rounds. Before, she would use her splinter to ignite the coal and throw the burning chunks at her opponent. This time when she switched to her Ignition splinter, she held out one hand with her open palm facing up and slammed her fist into it. All the coal around her floated into the air before visibly heating up, then compressing rapidly. The rocks began bubbling and morphing under the heat and pressure.

Erik wasn't idle this whole time. He sprang from his starting position the second Elune announced the beginning of the match. Sprinting toward Yuma, he had various strands of Stitch circling around him, ready to intercept any attacks. He was cautious, maintaining his defenses instead of going for an all-out attack.

Unfortunately, it appeared that that small time frame was all Yuma needed to complete her series of mnemonics. Spreading her hands wide with fingers splayed, the coal, which she had rapidly converted into oil, flung out in a massive arc, covering a huge swath of the arena. Then, she lit it on fire. Suddenly there was a twenty-foot radius of burning oil in between Erik and his opponent.

To make things worse, Yuma started creating even more coal and constantly throwing it onto the oil, ensuring the fire wouldn't be going out any time soon. Erik stopped charging when the flaming oil slick appeared and was currently observing it, hand on his chin. Meanwhile, Yuma continued to fuel the flames, creating a true inferno separating her from Erik.

"That's not good."

Lily nodded. "She created a theoretically unassailable position. Erik's going to have to use airwalk."

Something the group had learned from Erik was that true shrouded martial arts was about incorporating your shroud into your attacks and movements. That was why all martial arts were essentially self-created by each individual. Each technique resembled a mnemonic, but where the mnemonic was directly incorporated into the attack itself. For example, Erik's airwalk.

Finally deciding to do something about his opponent's ever-growing pyre of coal, Erik kicked his foot off the ground, covered in white strands of shroud. That kick boosted him fifty feet into the air. This was Erik's airwalk. A kick technique that allowed him a form of pseudo-flight. It was impressive to watch as he hovered in the air, kicking to keep himself afloat. However, Caeden could see a slight twinge in Erik's face for every kick through his aura sense.

"He's overdrawn." Caeden frowned.

"Of course he is. He used flashblast as an opening move. He's done." Lily scowled. Flashblast was the martial technique Erik had used at the beginning of his fight against David. It was actually one of his finishing moves. Using it put enormous strain on Erik's limbs, something that would take him half an hour to recover from, even with his shroud's latent healing. Continuing to fight in his state was only worsening that damage.

"He'll take out Yuma at least. Then he can drop out." Caeden reasoned.

Lily just looked at him like he was stupid.

"Yeah, I know." Caeden sighed.

Erik dived out of the air, using another technique from the Binding Fist, dashdive. He streaked toward Yuma's position, passing over the flame barricade she had put so much shroud into. For her part, Yuma started hurling head-sized chunks of flaming coal at Erik's descending form. Several managed glancing blows. Erik had a barrier of Stitch in front of him, but the flame ate his shroud up swiftly, constantly cutting through his defenses. He couldn't use freewalking to deflect all her attacks while using another technique.

Finally, Erik slammed down in front of her, coming up with a strike heading right to her face. Yuma stumbled back. She was no close-quarter combatant. Immediately capitalizing on her fumble, Erik's arms were surrounded in shroud before he flung them out, reams of cloth looping off his arms to surround Yuma. Then he dropped them down, crossing his wrists. The cloth snapped back together, completely wrapping Yuma up in the process. She fell to the ground, unable to move an inch.

Once more, the crowd went wild.

Caeden and Lily were both frowning. Erik was panting, and his legs twitched occasionally. He must have used over a thousand shroud at this point. Spring stitching was relatively shroud-intensive, and every one of his techniques used it. At this point, that wasn't much of Erik's true capacity, but they had other fights today. If he emptied himself out in his first series of matches, that didn't bode well for later. Still, he had already taken out two Metal Knights, one of them being the faction leader. He had done well.

"Get up here, Erik. Just tap out." Caeden muttered, willing his friend to forfeit out of the next match. This was the problem with Erik. Caeden and Lily had a joke, 'Erik never met a plan he didn't want to ignore.' If their ideas included more than five steps for Erik to follow, he inevitably deviated onto something entirely different.

He didn't leave the arena. After letting Yuma out of the bindings once she surrendered, Erik walked over to his starting position. His robes were definitely singed from the flaming coal chunks, and he was probably more than a little bruised. Those were hefty rocks hitting him at high speed. Even through his infusion and Caeden's gear he was wearing, those would have hurt. More troubling was his obvious level of physical exhaustion. He was tired. Binding Fist techniques were physically intensive to use, and he had used several consecutively. Including a highly taxing one.

"He's going to wear himself out," Lily growled.

"Of course he is." Caeden sighed. Erik could be over-enthusiastic at the worst times.

"Our next match will be the Metal Knights' Ron Blackston, The Black Blade! He's ranked twenty-second, and his shroud is Obsidian with no splinters!" The man in question exited the tunnel following Elune's announcement.

“AAAAAAND BEGIN!”

Ron wasn't waiting. He created an obsidian greatsword and charged for Erik's position. Along the way, his body formshifted into a black, craggy surface with a glossy sheen. Unlike the last two Metal Knights, he was wearing several pieces of armor, though not full plate.

Erik rushed to meet him, even though he wasn't fully recovered from the last fight. Meeting in the middle of the arena, the ensuing brawl was an absolute mess to watch. Ron was proficient in martial arts himself, throwing out attacks that produced sprays of obsidian shards off his sword's edge or created lines of sharp obsidian spikes covering the ground along the direction of his swings.

Erik wasn't going to be outmatched, even as tired and hurt as he was. He evaded every hit with minor, precise applications of spring stitching and little tugs and pulls from his shroud. At every opportunity, he attempted to wrap Ron's sword in his cloth and wrest it from the Knight's grip. Ron caught on quick though, and managed to avoid every attempt Erik made.

It was obvious that Erik was being pressed much harder than his opponent. The added range of a true greatsword was difficult to overcome, and Erik was running out of stamina, both mental and physical, to overcome the disadvantage. Despite all that, he managed to slip the Obsidian shrouded's guard several times and land devastating punches and kicks. The fight dragged on, with Ron unable to pin Erik down well enough to land a solid hit and Erik unable to do much damage through Ron's gear and infused body.

The stalemate ended when Erik went to take a step back. His foot slipped just a little, barely enough to throw him off. At the same time, his worn-out leg caved in just a bit. Just enough, combined with the slip, to throw off his balance. If he weren't in a fight against such a skilled opponent, even that much wouldn't have been enough to be harmful. Ron was a skilled opponent.

His eyes sparked seeing Erik slip, and he capitalized on that moment perfectly. He had been moving to follow Erik's backward step, but he shifted that into a heavy upward slash heading right for Erik's center mass. Erik couldn't properly respond due to his wonky balance, but he tried anyway, pulling himself backward with lines of shroud, trying to fall out of the way of the blade. He almost made it. It even looked like he made it.

Then Ron's sword grew a few inches.

The very tip of the blade carved across Erik's chest, cutting through his robes, his infused armor, and finally his skin, ripping a line of gore across his chest from his left hip to his right shoulder. It cut to his ribs, a deep wound.

"Shit." Caeden slammed his fist down on his leg. "That armor wasn't meant to take a hit from a shroud-reinforced obsidian greatsword! Fuck!"

"He's triggered now." Lily sighed.

Immediately after the blow landed, massive, arm-thick lines of Stitch exploded out of Erik's back and flung him across the arena to the far wall. Thick rivulets of blood ran down his chest, soaking his slashed robes.

Erik started laughing. "Hehehehehe. AHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

It was not a healthy, happy-sounding laugh. It was an unhinged, crazy laugh.

Erik had lived a life on the edge of a knife, constantly exposed to unreasonable, inexplicable amounts of constant danger. His fight-or-flight response was keyed up so high, a normal person would go insane from the constant stress. So when he took a certain amount of damage, his mind got…weird.

Despite his carefree attitude, Erik was always an efficient, meticulous fighter, never spending more shroud than he felt he had to. When his switch flipped, that went out the window. Erik would use every last ounce of shroud he held to end his opponent as fast as possible.

That showed up in spades. Another BOOM rang out across the arena as Erik exploded toward Ron, the cut across his chest already covered in a mass of shroud sealing it shut. He had a vicious smile covering his face as he slammed an attack into the sword Ron raised to block his fist. The shroud-reinforced, unnaturally durable obsidian shattered in his hands while hardly slowing Erik down.

Eyes going wide, Ron flung his arms out, producing a massive wave of obsidian spears flying out in all directions. Several hit Erik dead on. He hardly reacted as finger-thick lines of Stitch blunted the blows before pushing the spears out of his flesh and knitting the injuries back together.

He was hemorrhaging shroud at a tremendous rate. Erik couldn't sustain this pace for another minute, using his shroud like this.

It didn't matter. Even though Ron had taken the brief moment the wave of shards bought him to conjure another sword, that one shattered as swiftly as the last trying to block another bone-crushing hit from Erik. The attack was immediately followed by another hit, just as powerful. BOOM. Ron's body was flung across the arena, just like Davids. Except, it didn't get too far. Thick bands of Stitch yanked him back, right into another hit from Erik. BOOM.

At this point, Erik's own hand was a bleeding mess, his body unable to handle the damage he was dealing. In whatever state his mind was in, that fact seemed to register. Instead, he leapt into the air and folded his legs back. Another BOOM shot him down into Ron's chest at astronomical speeds, connecting with another BOOM, rattling the teeth of everyone watching. Caeden could hear infused ribs snapping like sticks inside Ron's chest.

The whole fight had gone from zero to one hundred incredibly fast. The entire audience was stunned as a casual example of martial prowess between a bare-handed brawler and a swordsman turned into a bloody mess that left both opponents lying on the ground in heaps of broken bones and bloody bodies.

"Ugh, he fucked himself up again, didn't he?" Cat called from where she was lying on the bench as the stunned crowd started roaring their approval even louder than before.

"Pretty bad this time." Caeden nodded. "He won't be any good for the next round. Possibly the one after that."

"Dumbass." Cat snorted. "I'll go get him cleaned up. Stupid needs to figure out how to control that crap. We're good for me to handle the next two, right?" She said, getting up from the bench and grabbing her staff from where it leaned up against the wall.

"Yup, knock 'em dead. Erik taking out three was way better than what we wanted, though this mess wasn't worth it." Caeden sighed.

"Yup yup." Cat left to go clean up their overly enthusiastic friend.