Chapter 205: Chapter Two Hundred Six

Next up for combat was Benny. Where I'd been fighting the werewolf,  Benny was up against the metal man. An appropriate match up considering  that iron hide was his original power. I was sure this Mountaincrusher  person was able to synergize some more skills in to make himself even  tougher, but Benny was going to have a tough time taking the man down  based on what Alden had said. I was looking forward to the match, and  based on his fidgeting I was pretty sure Benny was too.

My  best friend leapt off the seating he'd been perched on and dropped into  the dirt ring. Instead of plummeting and landing hard, he drifted to  the ground. Not slowly, but not nearly as quickly as he should have. I  was pretty sure he had altered the density of his leg again making it  lighter than air to provide a bit of resistance. He landed on the other  leg, strolling out to meet the absolute beast of a man who emerged from  the other side of the circle to fight.

Mountaincrusher was  a large man. Like...about as tall as Fang in his wolf form large.  Rather than a mask, Mountaincrusher sported a bare upper face and a  massive bushy beard that joined his tangled and matted hair in tumbling  down his chest and back, covering his otherwise bare chest and making  him look like some sort of ancient warrior savage or something. His wide  green eyes were fixed on Benny, and his lips were pulled back in a  manic grin that exposed white teeth from between the bushy plumes of  beard and mustache.

"So, you're my opponent. Bit scrawny,  aren't you?" Mountaincrusher rumbled in a voice that was appropriately  deep and booming. Unlike Fang though, his voice was less growl and more  crash, like an avalanche rather than an animal. I wondered if that had  anything to do with his name and size. It seemed like the kind of thing  people might subconsciously attribute to someone and then affect through  recursion.

Benny glared at him. "Asshole, I'm six foot  three, I am NOT scrawny, you're just gargantuan. I will not be made to  feel inferior because people are taller than me." He turned to glare at  me. "Especially if they fucking shouldn't be!" I grinned under my mask,  Benny had been enraged about Callie paying off one of her wishes with an  inch of height because we had previously been the same height and now I  was taller than he was.

I'd expected Mountaincrusher to  be offended by getting snapped at, but his grin just widened even  further. Benny rolled his eyes, muttering something about 'crazy battle  maniacs' before turning to give Alden the ok to call the match to a  start. Alden smirked at their antics before holding up both hands.  "Alright, once again, the fight goes until either someone gives in or I  call it to a stop. No attempts on anyone's life of course. This is just a  friendly match, so have fun with it."

Benny stepped  forward at his indication, and the match began. The spider legs extended  from his back, gleaming wickedly in the low light of the pavilion, and  his turtle shell formed behind him in preparation for attacks.  Mountaincrusher looked intrigued at the devices, shifting his body into  his metallic form as the fight started to make sure he could handle it.  His pale skin rippled, becoming the rust red of old metal as his body  converted from one of flesh to one of iron. He raised his fists in what I  recognized as a boxing stance and stepped forward.

Benny's  spider legs lashed out, and Mountaincrusher raised his guard to tank  the hit, deflecting them off his forearms with the boxing stance, the  ground beneath him cracked at the impact, and my eyes widened as I  realized what had just happened. I turned to Callie, whose own eyes were  just as wide with surprise. "Wait, did he just density shift those  spider legs?" Benny didn't have nearly the strength to strike with that  much force, which meant he'd done something else. Add in the cracking of  the ground under his own feet, both of them mind you,  and density  shifting the spider legs was all I could think of. His effects were  supposed to be limited to a single body part last I checked, sometimes  able to spread, but the leg that allowed that move was a completely  separate limb. We turned to Jessie, who spent the most time with Benny  lately, something I felt guilty about.

She gave a wide  grin. "Yup. Clockwork figured out that his embodiment makes the items  part of him, so he can use their properties like Skills and not just  trigger them. He can't use more than two at once yet, but even that is  pretty impressive." She gave a small sigh. "He's been training hard when  you guys aren't around. He feels like you're leaving him behind, and he  doesn't want to be useless. Even though he acts like nothing bothers  him, he came here to support you. Well, he also wants to become stronger  so Celine will be impressed, but still."

I had no idea." I  knew my voice was hoarse as I spoke, but my head was just spinning. I  knew how hard mastering Skills like that was. Benny must have been  completely exhausting himself trying to get better, and I hadn't even  noticed. I pushed that day off with my best friend up even higher on my  list. I was definitely going to talk to him when we hung out. I wanted  to find out more about where his head was at. Jessie was right, he'd  come here for me, and while I wouldn't go so far as to say I felt bad  about spending time with Callie, especially when he had been off with  Celine just as often, I did feel like shit I hadn't noticed all he'd  obviously been doing to get better.

Meanwhile, in battle,  Benny was kicking ass. While he wasn't able to use more than one extra  skill on the same limb, it did not, apparently, affect his ability with  the others. His brain was clearly overclocked based on the speed and  precision of the weighted spider limbs striking the metal mans arms.  Mountaincrusher was on the defensive, holding up under a barrage of  ultradense strikes with the wicked metal arms. He was also laying into  the bigger man's guard with his own fists, and while even the triple  strike punch wasn't managing to do as much as the obviously much more  powerful spider limbs, it was doing something.

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I didn't  see any obvious effect from the tranq punch, but he was still managing  to put his opponent on the back foot. Finally though, the attacks  stopped being enough. Mountaincrusher got his footing and started  lashing out with quick but obviously powerful blows. I was worried Benny  might be hurt (though with his F rank gear even the stat disparity  shouldn't be enough to do serious damage) but even that turned out to be  an unfounded concern. As the fist approached him, Benny activated the  ranged attack attraction effect through one of the spider limbs, pulling  the punch off course.

The attraction was used perfectly,  pulling the bigger man up and forward with the offending limb, pulling  him off balance and leaving him open on one side in a way that made it  clear Benny was using that cognitive speed boost to best effect. He  stepped in and smashed a series of powerful attacks into  Mountaincrusher's torso while he was open, before drifting back out of  the way and avoiding the recovery attack in a way that made me pretty  sure he'd lightened most of his body to pull off the move.

Mountaincrusher  stepped back, guard up and not willing to attack, but I was sure he  wasn't giving in, just trying to find gaps. Benny's demonstration of  multiple abilities of Skills was worrying, but Skills could do lots of  things. My DS Mastery was unique, but it wasn't the only unique Skill  out there. Benny's combat style wasn't perfect, but being able to stack  his effects was devastating in a direct fight. I was absolutely  flabbergasted in how much improvement he was showing here. I'd kind of  been starting to think of him as mainly an inventor, but this new trick  put him on the same level as Callie and I in terms of potential,  probably higher if he could get some better gear integrated.

Despite  what Mountaincrusher might want, he wasn't capable of just standing  there and waiting for the attacks to show a weak spot. Those spider legs  were G rank, and with the density increased, they were heavier, denser  metal than his body was, which meant he was essentially getting beaten  up with baseball buts as far as actual inflicted damage went. It was a  brilliant counter to his strengthened form, but then, iron hide had been  Benny's first ability. I was pretty sure he'd considered how to get  past it well before this match.

Despite  all that, I truly believe without his armor Benny would have been  broken by this guy. F ranked gear was pretty much the best possible  safety measure against serious injury in a fight between G rankers. It  wasn't some impervious invincible shield, granted. It covered the parts  of the body that were directly protected, and it mostly stopped piercing  damage. Even my gear, which was enchanted with the same sort of impact  absorption that I'd had on my last set, wouldn't fully nullify blunt  damage, just siphon off some of it to store.

When  I wanted it to. It became clear we could somewhat manipulate the  effects of our gear, since Callie wasn't constantly nearly impossible to  see, mostly saving that for combat situations. Regardless, the powerful  gear gave Benny a chance to make mistakes without paying for them in  blood, and a few broken bones wasn't the end of the world. He was  improving at a noticeable rate, managing to switch between secondary  abilities on each limb much more quickly as time wore on. He even got a  opened up a slice on Mountaincrusher with one of the spider legs,  presumable with the three times damage ability.

As  they fought on though, it became clear what the deciding factor would  be. The tranq punch. It wasn't exactly all powerful, and even augmented  three times (I suspected he had the triple fist and the tranq fist both  augmenting each other so he got both effects on each hand) it was taking  ten or fifteen minutes, but I could see the metal man beginning to look  a little unsteady on his feet. The amount of buildup needed was  staggering, but it was working over time.

They  traded blows for about a half hour in total, Benny looking like he was  about to pass out from pushing himself hard and fast enough to keep up  with the much stronger man. Even being lighter he had a serious  disadvantage, and if not for the ability to attract punches with the  spider limbs and Mountaincrusher's slow descent into dizziness and  eventual unconsciousness, I doubted he could have lasted the whole time  with just the Vitality stat he currently had. Eventually though, the  bigger man slipped out of consciousness with on final hammering tranq  triple punch, and fell over backwards.

There  was a massive thud as the big metal man hit the dirt, and Benny dropped  to his own knees after, groaning in discomfort and cradling his hands,  which had been punching actual G ranked metal for the last half hour,  even with the gloves taking the worst of it. Alden grinned down at him,  and called the match. "Clockwork WINS!" He walked over and knelt down,  offering Benny a swig from a flask, which he took, and giving my best  friend an approving slap on the back. "Well done lad. That was a hell of  a fight to watch. Go back to your friends and get healed up." He  needn't have said anything, Jessie was already headed over to heal them  both. Once that was done we all settled in to wait. Callie had the last  match of the night. After that, we would see if we'd earned enough  respect to get in deeper and finally learn what we came here for.

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