“It’s true that I might not have been good enough to beat you even with a working right arm.” William nodded, then twirled his staff to bring the halberd over and away from him. With the followup motion he brought his staff around and into the side of Lord Neroni’s head, causing his helmet to ring. “However, do you think I’m equally strong now as I was then? That was more than a year ago!” WIlliam shook his head, “Besides, I know something you don’t know.”

Lord Neroni staggered back to a better position and began a series of thrusts, which William deftly avoided.

“Not going to ask?” William frowned, “How boring. I’m going to tell you anyway though.” William punctuated his sentence by thrusting Chris directly against the spear tip of the halberd, snapping off the point. “You see, I recently learned… that I’m left handed.” William followed up his statement with a series of blows to the sides of Lord Neroni’s arms and legs, denting some of the armor and driving him back.

Lord Neroni looked on slightly confused, but didn’t let that stop him from focusing on the combat. He swept at William’s legs, but William merely tumbled over the haft of his halberd. “So what?”

“Well… you got me there.” William shook his head, “To be honest I’m only a little bit better with my left hand than my right.” William almost casually thrust out with Chris, hitting Lord Neroni directly in the chest… and buckling his armor. “Isn’t it more interesting than telling you that I broke through to the sixth layer of my personal cultivation technique?”

Lord Neroni would have blinked in astonishment… but he couldn’t. His eyes wouldn’t move… his body wouldn’t move. He hadn’t realized it as it slowly crept up on him, but his body was freezing from the inside out. No… his body was fine- but his control over it was gone. In fact, he could barely even manage to think.

William grinned, “Anyway, that sort of thing is just a natural progression, right? Not particularly interesting. However, finding out I was left handed when I had assumed I was right handed again? That was really something.” William looked over Lord Neroni, “Nothing to say? Ah well. Don’t worry about it.”

William’s face grew serious as he started gathering ki and chanting at the same time. Power from inside and outside gathered around him and William took every strand and twisted it with another. Each strand was then twisted with another of the same size, over and over until all of the mana and ki was twisted together into a single indistinguishable form. Then the mass of energy thrust out like a spear, sinking into Lord Neroni.

The resulting explosion was only a dozen meters in radius, and barely even left anything resembling a crater. That was the influence of the magical version of soul destruction, and William was glad for it. He really didn’t want to wipe out his whole army- and he wasn’t particularly fond of being seriously injured either.

-----

Tiburcio was waiting on the ground, watching the lord approach… but then the lord stopped. He began chanting magic again instead. Tiburcio sighed. He figured it out. Tiburcio wasn’t sure what he was going to do when the enemy lord got close enough to stab him… but it would have been something good. Something involving his one good arm and leg, probably.

Now, he could only wait as he saw mana gathering again. The enemy lord somehow managed to continue to use magic with a somewhat broken jaw, broken horns, a concussion, and a cracked skull. Tiburcio supposed that was what made him one of the good lords, and not just a chump. Like Tiburcio himself, apparently.

Tiburcio didn’t have anything better to do but watch the mana gather. It was really rather pretty. If it wasn’t going to kill him, he would probably have appreciated it better.

Then, something weird happened. The mana started moving somewhere else. That… was not how the spell went, right? Was he sneaking it around behind Tiburcio? Why would he even bother?

Tiburcio turned to see where the mana was flowing, and then his ears picked up the sound of the King. His self-caused head injuries and the way his helmet worked had made him unable to notice the sound except when he looked directly at it… but he could hear it now.

All of the mana was moving that way- even though it was very far away. Tiburcio couldn’t even see the King, only hear his voice and see the gigantic mass of mana gathering. Then there was a bang… but it was pretty faint from where Tiburcio was. It barely registered over the other sounds of the battle.

Tiburcio looked back at the lord. There wasn’t any mana nearby anymore… and so his magic was no good. That spear in his hand, however, still looked quite threatening. Especially as it was getting closer and closer.

Then, the lord was standing over Tiburcio. Tiburcio could barely even keep his eyes open, but he did. He watched as the spear thrust down toward his chest- at a hole in his armor he didn’t even remember getting. Not that it mattered. The spear was sharp enough to pierce his armor in his position whether or not there was already a hole. He knew that, because it pierced into his belly.

Tiburcio wasn’t a master of anatomy, but he knew there were a lot more important things in his upper chest than in his belly region. Thus, he had forced the tip of the spear downward with his right arm.

His good leg kicked out, toppling the lord forward into Tiburcio’s fist. It wasn’t really an optimal hit… otherwise the lord wouldn’t have been able to jump back afterwards and would instead have just been knocked out or dead.

Tiburcio rolled onto his side… and from there pushed himself up to a knee. He looked down at the spear in his belly. Bleed to death… or have no weapon to defend himself? He didn’t like the options, but decided to pull the spear out. Tiburcio saw the soldiers behind the enemy lord keeping allies from coming to help- either side. He hoped the same was happening behind him, because he’d really rather not be stabbed in the back. It was hard enough to stay awake and holding the spear.

Somehow, he managed to use it to hold the lord at bay, thrusting toward him as he approached and deflecting the weapons he threw from the bodies around them. Unfortunately, Tiburcio was out of energy. He didn’t want that to be true, but the spear fell out of his hand instead of moving to block the other spear thrusting at him.

There was the clank of metal… but no additional pain and no sound of flesh being pierced. Even so, Tiburcio fell over backwards merely from the idea of the attack. He was flat on his back… looking up at a blue staff and robes. “Ah…”

“Good job, Tiburcio. That was… exactly as long as you needed to last.”