"No, I don't want your help!"
When the spear hit the last few metal pieces trying to protect his ribcage, Hammerstriker's feet left the ground and he was tossed meters back, but his mind was focused not on the blow he took, but on silencing the voice echoing in his mind.
"Let me help you!"
The others couldn't know, even his opponent growling a breath away from him wasn't aware. Ever since things changed and General Alina hyped up her slaves, Hammerstriker had been struggling with the harassment of the voice inside him.
"I don't want it, you never helped before. I had to do everything myself, and even if I die, this will not change!"
It was unknown who he was talking to, but if he didn't come to his senses, it was certain he would die as he said. Twenty seconds after the first minute passed, Arrogant wanted to end the game he had been dragging out due to the weakness in his nature. He battered Hammerstriker's armor and body until he was satisfied, and now he made his move towards his opponent's heart.
The place he started his move from was far, but thanks to his boots, it would take him two seconds to close the distance, and the voice occupying Hammerstriker's mind had one last chance to save him.
"Let me teach you, my son!"
When there was a handspan of distance left between the shining tip of the spear and the heart beating like crazy, Hammerstriker said a word he had never said before.
"Teach!"
After the sword created by Abarran's hands hit the spear along with the dirt it kicked up from the ground, the area where the two warriors clashed was covered with a dust cloud. In the moments when visibility dropped to zero, there was tension on top of the walls and joy in the Golden Leaf Guild army, but five breaths later, everything would change dramatically.
The spear thought to have pierced the orc warrior's body was lying on the ground a few meters behind Arrogant, and Hammerstriker, who was expected to be in its place, was standing tall. While examining his weapon, which he took from his right hand to his left, from end to end, with a swift movement he bent his wrist and started spinning the massive weapon around his body. The sword, going back and forth between his two hands, sometimes passed behind his back, sometimes spun above his head, not hesitating to show all its majesty to the battlefield.
"I knew this sword was truly special, but taking it in my hands now, I was able to understand more clearly what a terrifying thing it is. Would you look at this? When it's in my hand, I feel like I could do anything!"
They had seen the weapon in Hammerstriker's hands many times, but they had never witnessed him making these moves with it. It wasn't just his relationship with his weapon that changed; the back of the orc, who always stood slightly hunched, was as straight as a board. His neck seemed to have lengthened, his head was held high, and there wasn't the slightest fluctuation in his energy against the enemy picking up his spear from the ground.
"Who, who are you?"
Arrogant was about to grind his teeth to pieces in anger; he was a moment, a breath away from victory, but now he had to start everything all over again. It was impossible for him not to notice the change the orc went through, and he would be the first to understand that he had turned into a completely different person.
"To dare to talk so much with so little talent, what great insolence!"
What he heard weren't the things Arrogant expected; closing the distance in the blink of an eye, he wanted to slit the throat of the orc who had moved his sword slightly away from his body. He thought he had found an opening, but this was just his opinion; the orc warrior, shifting his clunky-looking body to the side where his sword was, brought down the sword he spun over his left shoulder onto the shaft of the spear.
With the blow, the solid metal weapon vibrated so much that the parts holding the thumbs of Arrogant's two hands burst open. The orc warrior didn't stop; sliding his sword over the cold metal and advancing it, he swung to take the enemy's head.
When Arrogant's neck surrounded by fur was illuminated by the cold gleam of the metal, the man, raising his spear upwards with a final effort, let go of his weapon with one hand after making the sword cut the air and swung it toward the orc warrior's exposed upper body.
When the sword, longer than the height of a normal human, missed, the orc warrior had lost all his defensive capability; how would he respond to the short sword that suddenly appeared in the enemy's hand while both his hands were on the long hilt of his weapon?
Arrogant might have been thinking exactly this, but a smile rarely seen on an orc warrior's face appeared. Intertwining his arms, he spun his feet in the same direction a full turn, and spinning along with the massive sword, he ripped the short sword out of its owner's hand.
The spear on the ground, the short sword in the air, and Arrogant was completely exposed; after completing his spin, the orc warrior swung his weapon from top to bottom once more. Death was coming, Arrogant wanted to use the boots on his feet, his body blurred, and at that moment, the sword passed through the same spot.
Everything had happened in the blink of an eye; while Arrogant's lower half lay next to the orc warrior, his upper body was a hundred paces away. One of General Alina's three slaves was torn in two in seconds, right when he was about to kill his enemy.
How could the opponent he had been fighting for almost an hour kill him so easily?
After destroying his opponent, the orc warrior looked at where General Alina was, and seeing that the woman in clothes barely covering her reproductive organ showed no interest in what happened, he relaxed. After spinning his sword around his head once, he thrust it into the ground with a hard move, and without wasting time, went behind it and sat cross-legged.
"Hammerstriker, my son! Are you afraid of me?"
The orc warrior was talking to himself; his words echoed inside his mind, and even though a few breaths passed, an answer didn't come.
"I understand you, and I will wait patiently until the time comes!"
The old voice slowly lost its presence; the echoing and fading words could no longer be heard. Hammerstriker opened his eyes and wanted to stand up, but he couldn't. His body wasn't listening to him; he was so tired it was as if he had been fighting for centuries, not an hour.
When he looked around, he saw that the battles of his other two friends were continuing; there was no movement from the enemy front either. It was a good opportunity to gather his strength; pretending to cough, he popped the medicine prepared with the prescription Nafız gave to the command echelon into his mouth and started taking deep breaths.
Everything had fallen into place for him, but Alyon, who still couldn't put down his one foot he had put on the battlement of the wall, and the others were thinking about what they had watched in a brief minute. Gazes turned to Bookworm again; he was the least surprised by this surprise among them, and again, he was the person with the highest probability of getting an explanation from.
"Don't look at me like that at all; I really don't know exactly what happened, but even if I knew, you don't think I would tell you, do you?"
If you were asked to paint a picture of disappointment, painting the current state of the eastern wall would be enough. While the nine members of the Nameless Ten, Master Leonardo and his apprentice, Sasha, and Merchant Dimitri eagerly awaited this explanation, they were suddenly crushed. Only Alyon, because his son showed the tattoo on the inside of his right wrist, understood that the matter was related to a Power Animal.
When orcs used their power animals, it was usually obvious who they were and what they were doing, but Hammerstriker could be an exception to this. A new creature hadn't appeared, nor had there been a tremendous change in his body; if Bookworm hadn't pointed it out, not even Alyon could have understood this was the work of a power animal.
Hammerstriker wasn't the only person using a power animal on the battlefield; Pehlivan too, with the advantage of moving to the second level, was able to fight without revealing his owner's identity. With his golden blond hair, his bare body, and his sword covered in blood, he looked like mythological gods.
It wasn't only their allies who realized this; hundreds of paces away, a person lying inside the palanquin surrounded by tulles on three sides had brought her right hand to the most intimate part of her body while watching him.