Facing The Outer Sanity [Hebi vs Akat] [The Black World Arc Series]

[Chapter Three: Escalation]

The battlefield was filled with slashes, scars, holes. The Great Tower that rose from the ground was filled with gashes, and the sound of moving air and clashes of extreme force were echoing across the now barren plains. Great tears of earth littered around the area, and in the far distance a mountain had lost half of its peak.

Within the stewing mess of pure energy, two figures could be seen. Well, not seen. More like felt. One of them was no longer using his eyes to follow his opponent, depending on his combat experience and sensing of reiatsu. The other was using his eyes, and was keeping up largely because of them, using them to ensure that he was not overwhelmed as this stupendous combat continued.

There was one large difference between the two men with screws in their heads: one was bleeding more. Minute scratches covered the Doctor's body from his head to his feet, causing quite a volume of blood to drip from every part of the front of his body. His opponent was a bit worse for wear: great slashes had joined the initial one across his chest, and with the addition of each his rage had only grown. As this rage had grown, so had his reliance on his instinct, and thus the marks had began to appear along the Doctor's form.

"Damn… it…" The Doctor's panting voice let out between strikes, another two hundred of them passing between the two men in only a series of seconds. The Doctor was well aware how long of a haul that the two were in for. This eternal combat which they had entered into was a dance of who would give out first; who had the stronger endurance. The problem was that as far as the Doctor could tell, they were evenly matched.

"JUST… DIE!!!" The choked voice of his opponent called. His voice had gone out hours before, after nearly a day of this intense back and forth combat between the two of them. Several of times he had wished that the man he was fighting would simply run out of energy, quit, and die. He even knew how he would kill him; the gold that was encompassing his body would totally and utterly eradicate his opponent's mind, body, and soul… if only he could kill him!

"I… REFUSE!" The Doctor told his opponent, before at last the moment came. The moment which he had been waiting nearly a day for. Akat's mouth began to open, and in that single moment his hand was not moving at its normal speed due to the mental facilities required to both speak and attack. In that moment, the Doctor's left hand suddenly shot out, as he allowed for his striking hand that had not once been used to come forwards.

Up until this point, the Doctor had been taking his opponent's ruthless two handed attacks directly by deflecting them with his scythe, thus causing his body to become filled with small scratches as his opponent's intensity of attacking increased. At last, his moment had come to use his other arm, which was still at its prime. As it shot out, the Doctor met the eyes of Akat for an instant, and in that instant a kind of mental grapple occurred, as the Doctor's eyes fired a hypnotic blast.

Akat's mind was both entirely engaged in their conflict as well as prepared for any sudden attacks by his opponent; it was why he had been keeping constant awareness of his own body. Especially after all the hits he took; but he did not learn from those attacks. At last, this moment had come, where Akat had planned to take his opponent's feint and use it to cut his head off. However, there was a problem; that blast crippled his mind for a moment, causing all faculties to shut down as his physical mind attempted to process the data it was being sent. It was like a computer which had too many processes running; for an instant, he paused.

Inside of that pause, the Doctor's left hand struck. His entire left side of his body went into the attack as speeds that would allow for a space shuttle to leave orbit entered into his left arm, smashing his attack directly into Akat's right side. In that moment, the Doctor launched himself backwards with the returning force, using it to his advantage as he gained distance from his opponent.

At last, he took an intensely deep breath. His modified body began reacting as his cells automatically began to replenish the energy that they had been conserving and desperately saving. The Doctor was anticipating victory, having prepared for it meticulously for this point…

A splatter of blood appeared in front of his body then, surprising him. ...What…? His strained mental faculties wondered as he looked behind his body, seeing Sir Akat… without a screw in his head… standing behind him. Instantly, the Doctor's left hand came down, faster than the Selve could even see, but the damage was done. His opponent's clone was rapidly dispatched, being rendered into nothing by the blast of pure Dust Element, leaving nothing where once had been an artificial man.

"...Damn… you…" The Doctor breathed as he grabbed the back of the weapon, smoke appearing from his hand as he screamed in pure pain, removing it from his body and throwing it to the side, his body falling to its knees as he looked up at the approaching Akat.

Akat, for his part, had been horrifically damaged as well. The entire right side of his body had been badly damaged, terrific scarring from the sheer outpouring of force and Dust Element rending it into a horrific appearance, much worse than it had been before. And it hurt. It hurt so incredibly, incredibly badly; Akat had honestly thought that he might have been killed by that attack. But it was not to be. "...Haha… you fool… die there, staring at the ground…" He said, his left foot raising into the air as the Doctor's Stein State began to disperse from his body.

...This… is bad…! The Doctor thought, as in that moment time seemed to stop. The Doctor's body could not move, but in this instant he ramped the mental faculties mind to a near infinite amount, causing a huge expulsion of smoke the next moment from his mind after the burned calories escaped his body in the form of heat.

Akat's foot was met by a long tongue, which grabbed him and threw him, hard. His body went flying into the side of a crevice created through the clashing of scythes, his mouth opening wide as his wounded body was furthered damaged.

"In attendance… The Four Paths of Pain."

A solemn voice declared, as around the Doctor's body, the four pieces of his 'inheritance' formed a contingent, protecting their master from his assailant. The Animal Path lowered her hands to the ground as a sprawling series of Japanese text swirled around her body, before a colossal beast like a dog with terrific black rods sticking through its body and the white-ringed eyes of the Rinnegan emerged after Akat, smashing into his body as it attempted to bite down hard onto his head….

And in that moment, Akat's blade emerged before his body, the Dog approaching him as he wrote 'characters' in the air. As he finished, a series of earth cracked out of the sky before his writings as a terrific bird, far larger than the tower that was barely standing, emerged from his writings, smashing into the great dog with a terrific cry, grabbing onto its body with its talons, several times greater in size than the prey which it had just secured.

As the Doctor witnessed this, his eyes closed, his right hand reaching over the hole in his body as the screw completely left from his skull, allowing him to access his other abilities as he healed the hole in his body, though he could still feel the wound inflicted by that 'purified' attack. Lowering himself onto his knees, more characters like that generated by the Animal Path rapidly appeared, though this one was much larger. Extending several meters around the Doctor's body, a ring the size of a football field emerged, the edges of which touched against the once magnificent tower in the distance.

Out of this ring a terrific cloud of smoke emerged, and out of this summoning circle a positively gigantic serpent emerged. Reaching its head out, Victor II shot its head forwards, the Doctor sitting and the Paths standing along its back as it raced towards their opponent, clashing with a tremendous noise, creating so much force from the collision that the Doctor had to be held down by the Hungry Ghost path to prevent from flying away, and Akat's body was thrust several meters farther into the earth.

At last, the great snake began to coil its gigantic body around its target, beginning to squeeze the life out of the bird as its head then began to go downwards, wrapping its jaws around its dinner before biting down hard, creating as much force as their initial clash had. The bird flailed against its opponent, causing terrific gashes through its body which spawned fountains of blood, staining the ground all around the battlefield entirely red.

"...VICTOR!!" The Doctor suddenly cried out as he felt the sudden sensation of pain in his neck. Pushing his hand, [i]hard[/í], against the body of his beloved pet, it vanished in another terrific expanse of smoke, the blood which had been rapidly and terrifically exploding out from its neck that had been ripped and gashed through like a tunnel splattering over the Doctor's body as he was knocked a bit back, his hands being thrown up in front of his body.

However, the Path's couldn't move fast enough to stop it. The Doctor's eyes, the Path's eyes, all of them could see it. They could witness the male that was slamming into the Doctor's body, his hand wrapping around his throat. The Deveta Path threw its right hand out, and that was the only action that they could collectively make as it gripped Akat's right wrist, preventing it from moving forwards as the gravity all around Deveta Path's body thrust away from where the two were flying. The Doctor was being choked by his opponent, feeling his windpipe being objectively crushed as he struggled against the bindings from his opponent, his mind beginning to go white…

[End of Chapter 3]