Seth's body laid draped across the counter of the local butchers shop, his back against a half cut slab of meat while one of his legs was held in the air by a string of sausages that had been hung up on display.

He laid there for a few moments, before coughing up a mouthful of blood and letting out a long, whining groan as his bruised lungs tenderly drew in a fresh breath of air, a sensation that tingled his chest with slight spattering of pain. Lovely.

He had almost forgotten what this sensation felt like, after fighting through his puppets for so long, it was a painful reminder of what a true fight was like, And what it felt like to be hit by a bus. Well, he had never actually been hit by a bus before so it was more of a guess than a reminder. But it felt fairly accurate. In fact, the bus would probably be less painful at this point.

Seth groaned as he rolled off the counter, the beast meat squelching underneath him with every movement, before he landed back on his unsteady feet. Leaning forward, Seth spit his mouthful of blood onto the ground, before rolling his neck and letting out low groans as it popped and cracked.

His Blood armour had protected him from the punch, for the most part. He still felt the blow, but it definitely hadn't made it completely harmless and it seemed to have taken most of the energy of the blood.

It had eventually given out around the fourth wall, or maybe it was the fifth... It was hard to keep track when you were smashing through them, so I'm sure you could forgive him for not knowing the specifics. But for now, the black blood had retreated back into his body to suckle at the teet of his mana, eager to recharge itself before he got smacked around again. Hopefully.

On the bright side, the blood retreating had released his skin from the curse of that deathly pale complexion and returned him back to his handsome, naturally pale skin colour. So that was something, I guess.

As Seth stretched slightly, testing to see if anything was broken, objects around him began to rise into the air like an enchanted orchestra of death. Cleavers, Chef's Knives, those strange two pronged forks, all of the butchers tools rose into the air, wielded by invisible threads. They might not be the most effective weapons, especially with this behemoths irritating regeneration, but he had revealed a weakness in his defence.

He might have been tough and hit like a bullet train, but he was squishy. Most beasts at his level would have tougher hides, especially the ones as big as him. But this dwarf could easily be pierced by Astra's magnetic scales, something she usually used for defence or against weaker enemies.

It made sense with his regeneration capabilities. His body didn't need to be tough if it could just heal every injury. But even when he was ignoring other attacks or throwing himself into them to gain an advantage, he always made sure to guard his head.

Ultimately, he was no better than a big, even uglier, zombie. Destroy the brain, Destroy the dwarf.

Seth clambered through the hole in the wall, stepping over the broken and shattered bricks as he punched the wall. Huh? Punched the wall? He didn't mean to do that. Why the hell did he do that?

At that moment, Seth paused and turned his attention to his arm. Not his flesh arm, that was doing perfectly fine. It was his metallic prosthetic he was paying attention to, the arm that had punched the wall seemingly at random and was currently twitching like crazy. His metal fingers twitched and fidgeted endlessly, as if they were full of energy and didn't know what to do with it all.

The sight confused him for a second, as it would for anyone if they saw their own arm convulsing and rebelling against the orders of their mind, whether it was a real arm or not.

Seth frowned softly, before looking down at the centre of his chest, where the crystal core that powered his arm resided in its metal cradle. With his non-rebelling arm, he touched the delicate surface of the crystal, as his fingertips brushed against the multitude of fractures that had appeared along its glittering surface.

Even as he was touching it, another crack manifested itself as more of the energy stored within leaked out, causing chaos with the intricate machine he had crafted with it as the core.

With a lamenting sigh, Seth pried the core from its cradle as the rebelling arm fell limp once more, Completely inert and useless without its power source. Clearly there were some design flaws he'd have to address in the next version of his harness, if he got the chance to work on it, that was.

As Seth gazed at the core in his hand, which was still spawning more and more hairline fractures and cavernous cracks with every passing moment, a truly wonderful and utterly idiotic idea sprouted in his mind and quickly took root, refusing to leave until the idea was carried out to fruition.

Sighing again, he pointed forward with his one good arm, sending forth his army of butcher's equipment before charging after them. His fingers wrapped tight around the crumbling core, as the light within started to grow steadily stronger and gradually brighter with every step he took.

***

Astra leapt backwards, performing a fairly impressive backwards hand spring to avoid the cleaving axe, before sending out another streak of lightning into the Dwarf's face, but he was quick to bring his axe into the lightnings path to block it.

Clicking her tongue, Astra landed back on her feet and immediately side stepped a downwards chop, which carved deep into the ground where she had once stood.

Thrusting her hands forward, she quickly generated an electromagnetic force, with her own body acting as the magnet that was trying to affect the axe. However with it being buried in the ground, instead of the axe being blasted away it was herself that lifted off of the ground and soared backwards through the air.

Honestly, not a bad result if she had to say so.

As she flew, she waved her hands and conducted the swarm of metallic scales to slice at the Giants body once more. By now she had figured out that he regenerated, she would have to be brain dead not to figure that one out after he regrew a hand, and that his head was his weak spot.

Unfortunately, it seemed he caught onto her repeated attempts to target it, and had quickly donned a helmet crafted of the bones of some creature, instead of metal that she could manipulate. How irritating.

At the very least, she was not alone in this brawl. She wasn't referring to Seth, since he was still making his way back from his express trip through the market place, but the pair of guards that had arrived under the Lord's control.

They had been working hard to keep the pressure off of her, as well as taking blows initially intended for her. Thankfully, although they had taken some serious beatings, they hadn't been launched like Seth had, they intentionally dodged blows that would result in such things.

Ducking under a wild, bone shattering punch, Astra was about to send out another retaliatory strike, hoping to find a way around that damn helmet or at least if his regeneration had some sort of limitation around it, when the Giant Dwarf let out another roar of pain and fell to one knee. Although even in such a state, he was more than a head taller than her.

A butchers cleaved tore through the back of his leg, severing the muscles he needed to properly stand, as they kept hacking away at those tendons. Desperately working like a coked up lumberjack, trying to fell this tree while his regeneration constantly repaired the damage as fast as they could make it.

From behind the Giant, she saw Seth sprinting over to her while holding some kind of incandescent bulb. Whatever was in his hand, it was glowing like a miniature sun, giving his skin a red glow and perfectly silhouetting the bones within his hand as the light forced itself through his flesh, as well as dazzling rays that slipped between his fingers.

"Get his mouth open! I need it open!

Astra frowned slightly at the request, but didn't question it. The oddity of it simply meant that it was of the most absolute importance, and had to have some kind of reason for it. There were many ways that she could get his mouth open, but without knowing what kind of plan he had, she didn't want to use a method that could mess things up for him.

Thus, Astra went for the most effective and foolproof method she could think of. The swarm of metal scales swam through the air, turning onto their side so that their edge was vertical as they flew.

They darted past the Dwarfs head, which he quickly covered with his hand, before diving between his legs. Under her command, the scales began to rapidly spin. Whirring in the air like circular saw blades, as they plunged directly into his crotch and began to tear it to shreds.

Feeling his precious little warrior being attacked by a swarm of blender blades, turning his meat into a puree, the Dwarf through his head back as the most bloodcurdling scream of absolute agony escaped his lips.

His once gruff voice becoming the most shrill, high pitched scream possible as his manhood was reduced to shreds.

Trying to repress the thought of the same thing happening to himself, Seth leapt into the air and slapped his hand onto the dwarfs mouth. It wasn't a powerful slap, in fact it was pretty weak by all standards. But it had succeeded in his true goal, as the light exited his hand and the crystal core was slam dunked into the dwarfs screaming mouth. The core that was glowing like a sun, as Seth had poured as much mana as he could into it.

It was time to see what happened when he overloaded the cores.

Before he could even think about spitting out the unexpected deposit into his mouth, a two pronged fork flew through the air towards his head. Yet as the dwarf covered his head and face, the fork swerved underneath his hand and plunged through the underside of his jaw.

The prongs of the fork weren't long enough to reach his brain, nor was the mortal steel enough to puncture his tough bones. But it was enough to carve through his flesh, such as the gap in his jawbone, and when the prongs hit the roof of his mouth those same prongs bent outwards, hooking themselves around his jaw. Keeping his mouth shut and the core safely inside.

Sheer panic etched itself upon his once cocky face, as his arms were held at bay by the pair of puppet guards.

The last thing Astra saw, was the pleading expression on his face, before Seth wrapped his arms around her, uncaring of whether or not she truly could control her electricity, and spun their bodies around so that he was shielding her.

At the very last moment, Astra retrieved the metal scales from the shredded groin and quickly formed them into a floating shield behind Seth, just as the world turned white and silence descended upon the land around them. A silence that was soon replaced by a deafening, ear rupturing explosion.

RAAKOOOOOOOOM!