Through its baleful eyes the manticore seethed. There was nothing else on its mind but the fierce Garmr before it. Snarling, its lips pulled away to reveal the uneven rows of cruel fangs that had devoured countless prey in the past. Flesh was a delicate thing that it could tear easily and though bone was tougher, it would still be easily crushed once caught in its mandible.

The beast roared. The sound of its voice was thunderous and caused everyone's chests to shake as though they were before a set of powerful concert speakers. Then, with ferocious agility that nobody could have expected from something as massive and lumbering as an elephant, it pounced onto Garmr.

"Huph!" Garmr heaved. With her feet digging into the blackened and charred earth, she widened her stance low and sturdy. Then, at the same moment that the manticore reached her, she swung her sword straight up past its claws where it smashed into the bottom of its jaws with tremendous force. She felt firsthand the strength of her own blow as the impact shot through her wrists like a swing from a sledgehammer. For only a moment, she felt her arms buckle– no doubt the consequence of her earlier skirmish– but she knew her body was sturdier than that. Rather, she only doubled her effort and bellowed as she followed through with her swing, snapping the manticore's mouth shut like a clamp and batting its entire head up like a ball.

Yet, she could not stop its momentum and neither was she able to stop its claws. It was a manticore, and despite the fact it was more wyvern than it was lion, it fought with the tendency of a big cat. When it pounced, it always brandished its claws and moved with the intention to grapple. When Garmr struck at its face, she chose to ignore its claws, and she paid for that mistake when they tore into her from both sides immediately after—

Only, how could it be a mistake when she never considered defending herself from them in the first place? Nemeadas came hurdling in then. His bulky frame whistled by her like a gust of wind before he twisted his entire body and launched a devastating kick to the manticore's mouth. Crack! The teeth fractured and his heel drove in with such extraordinary force that it stood the entire body of the beast up before it slowly flipped over on its back like a felled domino.

"You didn't have to come in. I was planning to take that hit." Garmr said as Nemeadas landed with a graceful thud. At the same time, she kept her eyes focused on the manticore as it finally crashed into some of the gravestones littered across the ground. She felt a tinge of guilt for the people whose graves were being disturbed by their battle, but in the end, it was something that was unavoidable.

"I know, but I just did not want to see you put yourself in harm's way." Nemeadas shook his head and answered as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

"It would have been fine…" Garmr pouted decently, but Nemeadas's genuine concern had gotten through to her.

"But… I love you." she whispered.

"Yes, love," he whispered back, "I, as well."

…

Dirt, grass, and stone slipped under its weight as the manticore scrambled to get back on its feet after being tossed yet again. It was able to regain its bearings quickly– quicker than the last time it had been knocked over by Nemeadas. The first time had been unexpected, but it managed to brace for the kick this time. Nevertheless, receiving the combined strikes of both Garmr and Nemeadas had left it disorientated and its face partially numb and stinging. Though still seething, it was particularly on guard now. It had no desire to be blown away a third time. It kept its distance as it circled around the duo.

Iteza however, saw this as the opening he needed and acted upon it with impunity. To begin with, there was something to be said about a person who chose to pick up a bow instead of a gun in this day and age. Swords and shields were one thing, but a bow? It was 22 AR for god's sake. Even prior to the permanent rifts opening up and the introduction of aethertech, firearms technology had grown substantially compared to the century of the past. Through the aid of advanced exoskeleton supports, practically anyone of any build could full-auto the highest caliber guns without having to even worry about the recoil. The only ones who continued to use the bow and arrow were either hobbyists or the antiquated.

But… when skill was eliminated from the equation, what was the point of talent and excellence? Iteza had a big issue with this. Man's ultimate equalizer? He hated it from the start. Despite the fact he was born on Earth, he was an Arcanian through and through. The blood of Arca Archa ran true through his veins and there were things that he was capable of which no human could ever hope to achieve, with or without the aid of technology.

With a low mechanical click, his fingers unlocked and the air cracked loudly as his arrow was unleashed from its restraint. It took just one thirtieth of a second– an instant in his perspective– for the arrow to traverse the distance and plunge straight into the side of the manticore's chest. At the same time it impacted, the spot where the arrow penetrated exploded with a sharp, but muted, clap, and the only traces that remained of it after was a sliver of blood as it trickled out of the wound.

Iteza clicked his tongue in displeasure as he quickly prepared a second arrow. That was unexpected, he felt, and it soured his tongue in a not at all pleasant way. Though he had expected for his shot to be met with some level of resistance following Nemeadas and Garmr's display, this was really just too much. He thought that as long as he managed to get under its tough hide, it would be a treasure trove of soft tissues and organs underneath, which was precisely the reason why he had ladened the previous arrow with numerous explosive artes which would detonate into shrapnel rods upon impact.

In all his past experiences, just one of these explosive arrowheads would have been enough to mortally injure a creature the size of a rhino, and a couple more would take care of something the size of an elephant. Reality opted to give him the middle finger tonight and the most this shot seemed to have done was to give the manticore a difficult itch to scratch.

Iteza changed his plan, and before he could find the seconds worth of time needed to prepare the second arrow, a small and rapidly moving figure darted towards the manticore. It was their Lagos fighter, Jackie, and using all her speed as a weapon, she tore into its hind legs while bearing a dagger in each of her small hands.

"Ack!" she yelped out in surprise as she felt her arms nearly tear off from the unexpected resistance. Pain shot through her shoulders as her joints popped and her hands numbed under the pressure. Was that really flesh she had just struck? As far as she was concerned, it was as though she had just struck a pillar of solid iron, and she nearly got clotheslined as a result of it.

Still circling around with its guard up, the manticore felt something bite into its ankles. It felt like the sting of an insect and it reacted in accordance to such. It quickly shifted its legs in an attempt to kick away the nuisance. Seeing this happen right over her, Jackie was forced to retreat quickly to avoid a fate of being flattened by its powerful legs. But that was fine, she thought, and she threw in several more opportunistic, and futile, slashes as she fled. She really needed to reevaluate her plans.

At all times on the field, Jackie carried a wide assortment of combat daggers, each with their own strengths. The tearing daggers she had been using had a notched tip that was perfect for catching and hooking onto flesh as it cut. It was also what allowed her the best leverage to use with her speed. But in this case, the manticore's fur was too dense, its hide too thick, and its tendons too solid, for her to be able to cut through even with the use of such a specialized dagger. Due to this, she knew that this fight would be a bad matchup for her.

She was small and her speed was the only thing she had to her name. She lacked the precious firepower that the others had for her to be able to land any kind of a debilitating blow on the manticore. In spite of knowing this, it did not discourage her from trying. From the start, she was not someone whose job it was to take out her enemies. She was an ankle biter at heart. And true to that, she did her best not facing her enemies head on, but by crippling them so that the others could pick them off easily afterwards.

So, from her remaining repertoire of hacking daggers, slashing daggers, stabbing daggers, parrying daggers, and even a pair of precious aetherblade daggers, she quickly assessed which ones to use.

As she continued to think about her next move, Iteza fired off his next shot, which plunged straight into the manticore's hindleg. And a few moments after that, his third shot, fourth, and fifth shot, all landing in a spread right next to each other. However, none of them exploded like the first arrow had, though it still bothered the beast enough for it to swing its tail to snap the arrows.

Nonetheless, this was the opening that six armed Krakjen had been looking for the entire time. The Arunian's eyes had been dead set towards one goal since the start of the battle, to sever the manticore's deadly tail and take it as a trophy worthy of sacrificing. However, it had been remarkably difficult to approach while the tail and its spines were furled up like a finger. So when this opportunity arrived, Krakjen charged in.

For a warrior monk such as him, he had no use for petty daggers to hunt a beast. For a hunter, there was nothing better to use than a blade with reach and heft. And for that, there was nothing which suited the task better than a blade on a stick!

"For Great N'gothla!" Krakjen clacked his mouth with unbridled joy as his legs took him high into the air. His mechanical arms gripped onto both halberds tight enough to make the metal creak, and then with both of them wound high above his head, he swung down.

**Thud!**

The axe heads simultaneously wedged into the manticore's tail with a resounding thud, but as Krakjen quickly discovered, much like the efforts of the others that night, his deepest strikes left barely the shallowest wounds. Oh he could see that the blades definitely cut, unlike the case for Jackie, but it failed to clear the bone.

Had it been Garmr who capitalized on this opportunity, the result might have been different, but alas. Yet, in spite of the futility of his strikes, Krakjen only clacked louder with glee as he landed on the ground. How long had it been since such a wonderfully resilient foe had appeared before him? Too long, that was the answer. Perhaps not since the spawns of Great N'gothla descended upon his home. This was just perfect. There was nothing that made his blood boil more than a trial with exceedingly difficult hardships to overcome.

But what could he do? It would be difficult to hack at the same spot multiple times in the chaos of this fight. His answer to the problem was quite simple really. He needed not overthink the issue like Jackie. If a strike using two arms was not powerful enough to meet his needs, then he simply needed to wield his weapon with the combined strength of four! And if one strike was still not enough, then he simply needed to strike it even harder!

There was not an ounce of hesitation in his blood as he tossed aside the second halberd and gripped the remaining one with four arms. However, he still adeptly left two of his other arms holding a barrier shield each.

"Krakjen, watch out!"

"Ngh?!" Krakjen spat out in surprise. As he tried to take his second strike towards the manticore's tail, the tail cracked suddenly. One moment he was standing, and the next, before he knew it, he was hurling backwards through the air. He crashed into the dirt, his back slamming the ground so hard that it knocked the breath out of him, and his head hitting so hard that he saw the spontaneous bursts of stars fill up his vision.

"Are you okay?" Jackie ran up and asked worriedly, her hands shifting left and right as she was unsure of what she could do to help. Then she noticed it. "Krakjen, your hand!"

Still dazed, he coughed hoarsely. The smell of damp grass and dirt was all around him now. Then he struggled with his neck just to barely lift up his head. He saw it then, the part of his hand that Jackie was urging him to look at. One of the manticore's tail spines had dislodged itself when the tail hit him and it punched a hole straight through one of his left hands.

"Nooo!" she wailed loudly, with alarm, tears, and snot running down her face. "Sheng said that the pain would be worse than dying a thousand times! Krakjen, don't die on me! I'm not prepared for this! You can't go yet!"

Conversely, Krakjen's expression was calm as he grabbed the spine with another hand and pulled it out with minor difficulty. Though, Jackie's cries made his head ache.

"Is fine. Nothing to worry about," he said.

That stopped Jackie right in her tracks. Wiping her snot and tears away, she had to confirm, "Wait, really?"

"Just mechanical damage. See?" He showed off the hole in the punctured hand. It was true, there was no blood seeping out. In fact, how could it when it was purely mechanical on the inside? It was a little known secret since he always wore the mechanical arms but his real limbs were actually tentacles which were safely tucked further down the arm. Still, the mechanical damages were severe from just that one hit. As it stood, it left the grip strength of the hand at less than half of its working capacity. It was impressive given the damages, but it was still lacking.

Groaning, he pushed himself back up with three of his arms. A sharp stab of pain shot through his back as he stood. His entire back was bruised probably, but he would survive. He started to look for his dropped weapon. When he found it though, the metal shaft had been completely bent out of shape. He would not be able to use it in this battle any longer. But fortunately, he still had the second halberd which he tossed aside earlier.

"What truly formidable beast," he praised the manticore honestly, but it would not block him a second time. As he picked up his speed to recover his other halberd in the distance, he put his hands on the gravestones and tore them from the dirt as he ran. He threw them. He threw the gravestones like projectiles without even a hint of consideration or pause. In this battle, everything was fair game and it was going to be either him or the manticore. Then he spoke to Yajinn through the comms. "I need more halberds!"

"Aye aye! I'll airdrop them with the drones!"

And the battle continued, ravaging the cemetery with every passing stroke of time.

…

…