The dragon's roar launched flames towards him, and Arthur jumped to his right to evade, rushing forward at the beast. The dragon turned its mouth, breathing fire onto Arthur, who disassembled the spear, turning it to a shield.
He braced himself, and was met with a painful impact. The blood itself was beginning to burn terribly, hurting him and not fully protecting him. However, no creature can exhale forever, so when the fire stopped, Arthur transfigured it to a spear once more.
Naturally, spears were the most dominant weapon on the battlefield for a reason. Before guns and nukes, of course.
Arthur plunged the spear into the dragon's chest, which was covered with scales. The scales acted as a sort of barrier and protection, so the attack itself wasn't too deep, causing Arthur to redo the strike, turning it into a sledgehammer before swinging the tip at the dragon's chest.
The attack knocked the dragon back a few inches, before it swiped at Arthur's chest itself. The difference in power was amazing, and it absolutely cleaved into him, causing what was akin to a pot of blood being chucked out.
Arthur immediately healed, and just in time to evade the second attack which wouldn't have been able to be dodged if he was working with an injured body. Arthur leapt over the second swipe of the claws, before turning back and seeing an orange glow down the barrel of the dragon's mouth.
Arthur stepped into the puddle of his own blood, attempting to transform it but failed. He jumped up and turned the sledgehammer into a spear.
'If I get hit by the fire, I'll die for sure!'
With a tired body, Arthur chucked the spear down the throat of the dragon, halting its flame production. The dragon roared in a manner that did not expel fire, and he finally touched the blood with his own hands, turning it into a shield.
Immediately, he felt the difference in the integrity of the weapons. The constructs formed by the blood of Pyro were noticeably superior to that of the weapons formed from himself.
Arthur grinned and jumped up, looking the dragon dead in the eyes before making a change, turning the shield into a spear and thrusting it into the eye of the monster. The dragon shook its head with great force, completely throwing Arthur off of it.
He spun around in the air, completely disoriented as he was seeing up and down, left and right, both milliseconds after the other, before his rotation slowed enough for him to get a grip on existence, seeing a ledge.
Arthur, who had refused to let go of his spear, turned the tip into a hook, latching on before he plummeted to what may very well have been his death, as his regeneration was greatly halted.
Arthur swung down to the floor below the roof, taking deep breaths and crouching to conserve energy. He wiped sweat off of his face, feeling quite exhausted before sitting down.
'Oh shit, that's tiring… ah, phew. That felt so cool, though, even if it burnt like a son of a gun…'
"MOTHERFUCKER, GRAH! STUPID FUCKING FUCKFACE, I'LL FUCKING KILL YOU, I'LL KILL YOU AND FUCKING DESTROY YOUR STUPID FUCKING CORPSE, OWGHH!!"
'Naturally.'
Arthur disassembled his hook to create yet another sledgehammer, but there was a problem. His hook, when it shattered to reform into something else, did not transform, but rather stayed broken.
'What?'
Just like most things, they have a certain amount of "uses" before they're no longer good. Bottles need to be refilled before they're usable to drink after being emptied, and the same applied to the blood.
The better the blood, the more uses of transfiguration it had. For Arthur, whose blood wasn't good enough for his own ability, he only had a certain amount of uses, while blood from other dragons had many more uses, perhaps even in the hundreds.
'Why won't it… no, not right now, I should just focus on the fight.'
It was then that a loud crashing was heard, and Arthur jumped forward in fright, seeing the dragon falling through the floor of the building, fire already charged up.
It was an instant attack which allowed no room for evasion or interruption; Arthur was scorched and launched backwards, as if he'd been faced with an explosion.
His screams were silenced by the overwhelming noise of flame.
Falling, descending, collapsing, loss of movement and overwhelming pain all over. It intensified, intensified, intensified, intensified intensified intensifiedintensifiedintensifiedintensified—
Stop. A sudden stop.
The smell of burning flesh and hair permeated the atmosphere, and his ears rang terribly so. He groaned in pain, moving around. When he rolled over, he felt something pull on his back, but he ignored that and rolled anyways, feeling only a slightly different pain, akin to losing something.
He healed his eyes, taking away stamina, before he saw what that pulling sensation was.
It was his skin.
In rolling over, his skin, the leftover skin, which hadn't been torn off when he'd slammed into the ground several stories down, was then pulled off from his own movements. He slowly moved his hand, seeing the trembling of his limb and his immediate impression was that his skin was like that of an old man.
His throat burned with great intensity, from opening his mouth to scream when bombarded with intense flames from a dragon. He was dying.
"Ow, ow, ow… ow… ow… ow…"
Those were all the noises he could make. His head hurt, probably because it slammed into concrete hard and bounced off the ground. What resulted was a pile of blood, as his weak and damaged skin and flesh splatted like a syrup covered pancake falling to the kitchen floor after a poorly timed flip.
Though, who was putting syrup on pancakes still on the pan?
That didn't matter, as, to put it lightly, Arthur was not having a good time.
He tried to stand, and failed, wobbling and falling down. With this, he had no choice, healing himself at the cost of all the stamina he had.
Burn damage wasn't too hard to heal for the supernatural methods of dragons, at least when it came to flesh. They were considered just nerve, skin and flesh damage, not broken bones or damaged organs.
However, it was still very expensive due to his internal burns from screaming and the damage done to his body from the fall. He collapsed, completely unable to move. He gasped for air, receiving little of it.
And then the dragon descended. The building under construction was somewhere in a somewhat populated city, but due to the noises, people fled, thinking it was a bomb of some kind.
"Told ya I'd fuck you up, you fucker," Pyro said smugly. "Ya had me on the fucking edge for a minute, but then I remembered I could turn into a fucking dragon. It healed me pretty nicely, but it turns out that if you use transformation to heal your fucking wounds, it costs even more stamina than it would if you didn't. But it's not all bad. Hah! I was able to fuck you up pretty nicely, eh?"
His words were sometimes paused with huffs and puffs of breath, as he was already quite exhausted.
Arthur couldn't move, as any attempt would make him feel as if he was drowning, or being strangled. All he did was sit there, belly to floor and look up at the youth.
"Gettin' y'er ass beat by a fucking 15 year old's embarrassin! Ah, but it doesn't fucking matter. You lost to the coolest fucking 15 year old ever."
Without further delay, Pyro went over to Arthur and grabbed him by the collar, dragging Arthur inside in order to finish him off. "You still reek of that fuckin' traitor smell."
"You gotta learn the meta."
Naturally.
That was what David told him when giving him advice in the game. To learn how the combat mechanics work, and the best weapons to use.
Arthur's head turned to that of his dragon self, and he chomped into Pyro's leg. Pyro yelped in pain and shook his leg out of Arthur's fangs, bleeding onto the floor.
"GRAH! The fuck's y'er problem?! I'll fucking scorch ya!" Pyro yelled, before Arhur transfigured the blood on his teeth and formed a long spike which impaled Pyro in his thigh.
Arthur sprouted his tail, and in doing so, pushed forward naturally, without having to use his body to move, relying sheerly off of the force produced by his tail coming out. He was moved forward, where the spike on his teeth was driven further, being transfigured, shattering to pieces.
Then, they sprouted, aiming further upwards, and penetrating him in the lung. The boy reeled, ripping the blood out of his body and healing the wound.
This led to him being quite exhausted. Healing the brain damage from the brass knuckles, the stab wound which impacted his intestines, the fall which broke his body, both of the latter bits costing even more due to healing via turning into a dragon, and on top of all of that, healing his eye and chest from the stab wound, which cost even more stamina due to having to heal a fully sized dragon while doing so, made him tired.
He healed his lung, which made him even more exhausted, before Arthur got to his knees, wielding the spike as a spear.
'A sword can't be as effortless, a hammer is too exhausting to swing, so naturally, a spear is the weapon for now.'
As stated previously, spears were the dominant weapons for a reason. With their long reach, they could be used by less trained soldiers to attack at a distance. Simply getting past a spear wasn't much of an option unless one wore armor or had a shield.
Unless there was a very good reason not to, it would be a mistake to choose almost any weapon but the spear.
In his weakened state, exhausted with just a tiny bit of stamina in the tank, Arthur chose a spear as his beloved weapon of choice.
Pyro himself didn't want to turn into a dragon. This was because they were on the first floor, and his dragon wouldn't fit. So he could really only use his fire.
"Ohhhhh shit, round… er, I dunno, but the music's coming back!" Chad exclaimed from the top of the stairwell leading to the second floor, turning on the music once more.
Pyro leapt back, summoning fire in his palm and chucking it at Arthur. Arthur evaded, rolling to dodge as he was still in the floor and ended up behind a pillar of support. Arthur took deep breaths, in through his nose out through his mouth.
'I need as much stamina as I can get. I'm always running out, damn it… once I get rid of this kid, I'll have to thoroughly train my stamina.'
Did he have intention to kill? Arthur wasn't sure. He hadn't made up his mind on whether to fight with intent to kill or not. So, he left it to chance.
'If he dies, he dies.'