Diedrick's head lurched violently, followed by the rest of his body skidding sideways. A normal man might as well have assumed him possessed and thrown by some invisible force, yet that couldn't be further from the truth.
Alain's shin struck home, rattling Diedrick's brain in ways he previously considered impossible. Like a whip of mercury, it accelerated to superhuman speed while simultaneously imbued with deadly proficiency.
Alain made sure to twist his hips preceding the collision, planting additional force to what was already a terrifying attack. The knight errant remembered it shattering concrete, wishing to see Diedrick's skull collapse in on itself the same as ripe watermelon would. A killing blow for sure, capable of felling strongest warriors under the right circumstances.
Alain gambled, all-too-keenly aware of his strength. If he could crush a stone pillar with a kick, then, sure enough, Diedrick's cranium would fare no better.
Diedrick's frontal bone fractured, consequentially damaging the multitude of highly sensitive blood vessels located in that area. The sticky liquid quickly invaded one of his eyes, obscuring the field of vision as it created an exploitable blind spot. Diedrick used every ounce of energy to stay on his wobbly feet. Had Alain not struck him with the shin, perhaps the situation would be less threatening. As of now, it felt like his entire nervous system froze up, turning into a static mush.
It was unsettling to see Alain approach at slug's pace, taking step by step as he nullified the distance between Diedrick and himself. He grasped the taller man by his wrist, careening him forward. For once, it was Alain who found himself living more slowly than his opponent. What happened couldn't have lasted longer than a few milliseconds, but it seemed like an hour.
He cocked back his arm as if he were winding a watch. With a tremendous force, he released it, and it arced forward, headed straight for Diedrick's chiseled face.
Much to Alain's horror, he felt his grasping hand failing mid-pull. It was the injured shoulder that betrayed him, straining against its own biology to cement Alain's victory. Alas, it could not deliver on his desires. He let go of Diedrick prematurely, but it was far too late to abort the right cross. The strike was two-thirds through when Diedrick's neck bent, placing his temple in the fist's immediate trajectory.
*CRACK*
A sickening sound echoed throughout the room's boundaries, scrapping the ears of all onlookers. Alain's attack connected, but not in a way he wanted it. The bones of his hand shattered against Diedrick's reinforced forehead, doing minimal damage.
Alain had little time to register the agony shooting into his wrist. He looked at his damaged digits, nearly mangled beyond recognition. There was a splintering, leading down the length of Alain's angular knuckle. The flesh tore, exposing the whites of his bone in all of their grotesque glory.
*SMACK*
Diedrick's elbow landed with a thud on Alain's left cheek, sending ripples of fat cascading back towards his ears, then back forward. He looked like a sputtering seal. As it continued to travel leftwards, it took out several upper incisors and made a loud THWACK! with his nasal cartilage.
Alain went limp, rolling with the elbow to mitigate the damage. He tried using the momentum to throw a spinning back fist, yet his hand rent the air without landing on anything solid. Diedrick was already behind Alain, wrapping his bear-like arms around the smaller man's torso.
Diedrick squeezed, forcing a hefty amount of air out of Alain's lungs. Alain attempted to resist, but his attempts were futile. He was simply in an unfavorable position. When trying to hit and injure his attacker's forearms, he found them rigid as steel. And even if they weren't, the pose his body was in didn't allow him to generate much force due to innate biomechanical restrictions. Diedrick wasn't dumb either. He made sure to pull back, setting Alain off balance and, therefore, making sure that he couldn't retaliate.
Suddenly the room began to spin, surprising the worn-down knight. It spun and jittered at great speed, turning faint lights into glistering balls of radiance. Alain figured out that he was being suplexed a split second between the back of his head banged into the hardwood below. His nape thumped the unwelcoming surface, sending ripples cascading across the entire arena. The wood gave out in many places, sending dozens of airborne projectiles in a hailstorm of shrapnel. Many took cover behind the sturdy tables in fear of being injured b the oncoming debris.
Alain's skull bore through several inches of woody, organic material, remaining largely undamaged. Much to Alain's dismay, he hadn't expected a concrete platform located just underneath the pretty exterior. His brain rattled from the force, sandwiched between Diedrick's descending frame and rock-hard material.
Had it been anyone else, he might've pulled through. But no, the two of them weighed roughly three hundred kilograms when put together. Add Diedrick's subtle augmentations allowing him to accelerate to such breakneck speeds, and you got a nearly fatal technique.
Diedrick straightened out, but Alain didn't. The knight's body rested limply against the planks, unmoving, unresponsive. Diedrick's gaze rotated to meet Alain, noting that his head was literally buried in the arena floor, leaving him in an uncomfortable, if not dangerous, position. It took Diedrick a herculean effort to bend down and pry Alain's passive form from the ground's unwelcoming clutches.
One glance told him that Alain was alive, muscles stirring on reflex. Alain's eyes had rolled into the back of his head, and his scalp was severely busted. The jagged concrete sliced it up into shreds, removing much of the man's ginger mane.
Alain was heavy as hell, and Diedrick made no further attempts to drag him out of the arena. Instead, he slid over the ropes, limping and swaying to keep himself stable. Any uncontrolled movements could have very well lead him to trip and fall face first, much to the delight of the onlooking crowd.
Diedrick lurched himself forward, rubbing at his buzzing head. There was a ringing in his ears. Almost as if a colony of angry hornets had invaded the sanctity of his mind. Diedrick tried to drown it out to no avail. Then the headache set in, the kind that stopped all other traffic in the brain, as suddenly all had met with red lights. His footfalls grew heavier with each step taken, alerting him that something was awfully wrong. Diedrick touched his side, where the spleen should've been. The tissue felt lumpy, gelatinous even like a fluid-filled sac had formed just under its surface. "Likely ruptured," he mumbled absentmindedly. He completely ignored the blood dripping from his nostrils onto his bare chest, staining it.
The Tyrant kept him informed of bodily ailments. It was currently processing Diedrick's injuries before feeding his brain with raw data. The thing was, Diedrick couldn't think straight at the moment. "Mild concussion too..." His voice turned into a drawl, half smothered by the crowd's uncouth roaring. And then he slumped forward as if his body had given up.
Diedrick was fortunate to reacquire control mid-fall, landing onto his knee. "Perhaps not mild." He urgently necessitated a place to sit. Anything would work, even a musty old chair.
Diedrick's gaze scanned the masses, trying to find the baby-faced priestess. He knew her to be a healer, but not for himself. Once locating her, he did his best to shout,
"HEY!" at the female, hoping that she would hear him. He'd much rather have Alain treated now that he was unconscious. Gods knew that letting him near women was dangerous. He was a well-known rapist and a murder. Diedrick hadn't acquaintanced himself with
Eilerias. In spite of that, he wasn't prepared to see her get assaulted or, worse yet, killed.
Eilerias
Urchin
