"Why? Why do I suddenly…. feel so, cold?" Gaileo thought to himself as he suddenly felt a chill.
"Why? Why? Why?" The thoughts swirled in his head as his consciousness slowly faded away.
Meanwhile, Shion was leading the Gaileo Army full speed towards Shuangfeng.
"Shion? Is there really anything that we'll be able to do once we get there? After all, we only have 18,000 men. They have over 200,000 and more importantly, they have a Great General leading them. If he really did start a fight with Great General Mutembo then he he's probably already dead." Elara said.
"Did you know that I've served with Gai for 11 years. Since we were both just boys. He's always been so desperate to prove himself. Desperate to grasp some sort of vague concept of acknowledgment and accomplishment. Like a rose trying desperately to grow in the concrete. He was so unsightly, yet somehow tragically beautiful. We were fast friends and we always fought side by side. We would spend the day training and stay up all night sparring together." Shion said, recalling the past.
"Alright, but what does that…?" Elara began to ask.
"It's not beautiful to interrupt a story before it's reached its conclusion." Shion said cutting here off. "We've been sparring together for all these years, do you know how many times he's beaten me?"
"No?" Elara replied, still unsure what the point of this story was.
"Not once. Not once have I ever lost to him."
"If that's the case then all the more reason he's in trouble." Elara said.
"No, no, you misunderstand. So with that being the case, why do you think he leads this army over me?" Shion asked.
Elara still didn't understand the point that Shion was trying to make.
"It's because, even though he could never beat me, I knew that he had a great power deep inside of himself. If he's pushed to the brink he can wield power far beyond his normal limits. That's why I'm not worried about him." Shion explained.
"But sir, if that's the case, then why are we rushing the army over?" Elara asked.
"Because it's more beautiful to make a grand entrance such as this." Shion responded as his flung his hair out of face and to the side.
"WHY?"
"WHY ARE YOU JUST LYING THERE?" A voice said from somewhere in Gaileo's subconscious.
"YOUR ENEMY IS STANDING BEFORE YOU!"
"FIGHT!"
"SHOW HIM YOUR TRUE POWER!"
Mutembo had finally managed to stifle his laughter and had gripped Eliza by the hair and was forcing her face first into the ground and was about to grip the back of her clothes to rip them off, but for some reason he found himself unable to get a grip on the back of her blouse.
"That's strange. Did I have too much to drink? My hand feels numb. In fact, I can't feel my whole arm. Wait, I didn't even start drink yet." Suddenly a sharp pain in his upper arm cut off his train of thought. It wasn't that his arm was numb, rather it had been completely ripped off. "What? My arm is gone? How? And it happened so fast I didn't even feel it."
Suddenly, Mutembo felt a cold chill crawling up his spine, and he got the feeling that something was standing behind him. He turned around and saw a giant white wolf holding his arm in its mouth.
"What is that? When did it get here? There shouldn't even be wolves like that this far south. I don't get it." Mutembo thought, and as he blinked his eyes. When he opened his eyes the wolf was gone, and in its place, Gaileo was standing with his arm in his hand.
"What? When did he get over there? What happened to the wolf? Was that a hallucination? An illusion? Some part of his special ability? No it can't be that, a person can only have one special ability and he doesn't have any ability like that. I must have just been seeing things. But still, He's clearly different than before." Mutembo thought.
Before Mutembo could move, Gaileo landed a punch to his gut that shattered his armor and sent the jewels from his breastplate flying. It brought Mutembo to his knees and made him vomit blood. As he struggled to his feet, it was now Mutembo that was on the receiving end of a furious barrage of strikes from Gaileo.
Gaileo was moving too fast for Mutembo's eyes to keep up. He couldn't use his ability on Gaileo at all. Now he was the one who was powerless to defend himself.
"Whatever happened, his power is on another level now. I have to get out of here. Once I get away and meet with the Emperor I'll be fine." Mutembo said trying desperately to think up a plan to make his escape.
"His power comes with a trade off, it's clear that he's lost the ability to think clearly, he's something like a wild animal now. I may not be able to defeat him but I can get away from him, if I use my brain." He thought. "Men surround him!" He said.
He knew that most of his veteran troops would have already ran away after seeing him be so badly beaten. But still the grunts that were left would be enough to slow him down long enough for him to make his escape.
"While he's distracted, I'll switch my horses to me so I can get away as quickly as possible. Once I get away I know the Emperor will protect me. He told me before when that justice freak had me on death's door, that I was valuable to him and that I couldn't be killed before I achieved my purpose. So I have nothing to worry about here!" Or so he thought.
In an instant, his men were cut down and Gaileo was standing in front of him. He grabbed his sword that had been stuck in the ground and cut Mutembo in half.