Just above the hilt made from the thick forearm bone of a wild creature, there was the wide lower jawbone of the same creature. Then came the cutting part, starting three fingers wide and tapering toward the tip, while the mysterious symbols right in the middle of the sword emitted a cold glow inside the metal.
The weapon Pehlivan used to take one of Savage's arms by making his first move looked exactly like this. The attack speed was good considering the size of the sword, and it found its target within a few breaths, but the man targeted managed to dodge this by simply stepping aside.
"My favorite, opponents who only defend by dodging. Look now, I'm starting to warm up to you."
He was both talking and sending his sword, whose length slightly exceeded five handspans, at the enemy from different angles. His muscular build didn't seem to have affected his agility; the successive swings resembled the easy flow of a river.
It was as if the sword wasn't a weapon he acquired later, but a limb that had been with him since the moment he began to exist, but when the waters crashed into a massive rock in the riverbed, Pehlivan leaped back two paces for the first time.
"It's high time you showed your teeth anyway!"
When Savage pulled back the weapon consisting of iron in the shape of three sharp claws that appeared on his right hand, there was a little blood on it.
"You talk too much, I don't like people who talk too much at all!"
Savage, wiping the blood sullying his metal claws onto his clothes, brought the claw that appeared on his other hand forward without feeling the need to hide it. He bent his knees, his back hunched, and after his neck jutted out a little, it hid between his two shoulders as if it would never extend again.
"Come on Savage, I want to play with you!"
The mercenary, who maintained his cold demeanor up until that moment, lunged forward with Pehlivan's last word, and in a matter of seconds, not much, he was right next to the half-naked spirit animal. His right claw was right on the wound he had just opened, but this time his left claw wasn't idle either. Simultaneously with the attack targeting the enemy's head, as he attacked the abdomen, his body twisted in the air and started spinning.
It was clear his goal was to keep attacking non-stop until he succeeded, not just once, but Pehlivan didn't look like he would allow this. He raised his foot adorned with leather boots into the air and planted a solid kick onto Savage's body trying to gain speed by spinning.
"You, you touched me!"
When the man, spinning away like a top, set his feet on the ground, the clothes covering his chest were torn, and in their place was a footprint. While Savage couldn't take his eyes off this mark, the owner of the masterpiece chuckled and asked.
"What's wrong, is it your first time?"
He was waiting for an answer, but Savage did nothing but shake his lips from side to side. Seeing this, Pehlivan raised his sword above his head and shouted with a voice that even those hundreds of meters away could hear.
"My name is Conan the Barbarian, I cut anything that bleeds!"
It was a blatant challenge; he was calling out not only to Savage but to the entire enemy army, but the name he used for himself was strange even to his allies. Bookworm turned to his father, and before he could ask anything, Alyon started speaking.
"It all came from Nafız. Don't look at me like that because I said something about your master, this time it is completely her fault. Look at this guy Pehlivan, this guy used to be someone who covered his body with his fur even in his bear form, but when Nafız started telling one of those weird stories of hers, our guy went completely nuts.
You just said Cimmerian King to hype him up, did you ever wonder where that phrase came from, or did you just repeat it because your master addressed Pehlivan like that?"
When the question came from a place he completely hadn't studied for, Bookworm couldn't speak, but his father didn't seem like he was going to shut up at all.
"Right after one of our classic fights, Mr. Pehlivan took off his clothes, and Nafız said, 'you look so much like Conan the Barbarian, why didn't I notice this before,' and she stretched her lips in two different directions to form that sneaky smile of hers.
You can probably guess the rest; without being lazy, she told one of her famous stories from dinner until the sun came up in the morning. From the clothes of the guy she called Conan the Barbarian to whatever feature came to her mind, she engraved it completely into our guy's mind. Well, Pehlivan didn't need to be forced much; I can't be unfair, there were great similarities between the guy she likened him to and my power animal.
Their fondness for women, their love for fighting freely, living only thinking of themselves, and being fearless while fighting were the same. The other features were easy to copy too; through his connections, he had Master Abarran make a sword, and along with the pelt from his bear form acting as his clothes, there you have Pehlivan turning into Conan the Barbarian!"
Truly, Bookworm had only heard the Cimmerian King part, and seeing that it made his father's power animal proud, he hadn't hesitated to use it, but after learning the truth of the matter, he would no longer settle for just this.
"Conan the Barbarian, separate the head of this Savage who dares to stand before you from his body!"
After slapping his right palm against his forehead, Alyon took a deep breath. What did he expect anyway, even if he was his son, he was more of Nafız's student, and he stopped watching this fight and turned to the side of the man he was worried about just a moment ago.
Hammerstriker, the son of the master of the man from whom he inherited his powers and his own son-in-law, knew how to meet his expectations. Even though it had only been a few minutes since their battle started, he was managing to take deadly blows from his opponent.
Arrogant was completely in his element; while his spear eroded his opponent's heavy armor every second, Hammerstriker was barely protecting his head. If he had a regular orc axe instead of the abnormally sized sword Nafız gave him as a wedding gift, the struggle between the two could have ended almost as soon as it began.
"Are you planning to do anything about this?"
Alyon, who had previously received a cryptic answer to his question about Hammerstriker, didn't know what awaited him this time either, but Bookworm was going to say something that would surprise those eavesdropping on their ongoing conversation.
"Dad, you are right in what you told me about power animals. Out of my fear, I am suppressing the King Cobra from transitioning to its second form, and I still don't exactly know what I need to do about this, but believe me, there is someone even unluckier than me regarding power animals."
He didn't give a name. He turned his gaze to the point where the person he mentioned was practically being crushed by his opponent, and completed the last part of his answer after this.
"You know that fear is of no use against death; perhaps this is exactly the place Hammerstriker needs to be in order to make a decision."
Depending on the decision he would make, one of the paths stretching before him led to death, and this possibility made Alyon do something he only did when he was very bored: he ground his massive teeth against each other. His worry was great; Hammerstriker's fate concerned not only himself but also the highest echelons of the Orc Empire.
His wife was the Commander-in-Chief of the Orc Empire Armies, and his son was the Supreme Khan of the mentioned empire. Living apart from him and leaving him alone with his fate when they knew he was alive might have been normal for orc traditions, but no one, including themselves, could know what they would do when they received the news of his death.
Watching Hammerstriker with this pessimism, Alyon looked like he wouldn't hesitate to intervene when the final point of the struggle was reached, but the cry rising from the other end of the battlefield suddenly made him turn there.