Kaizen was dancing on the edge of a knife.
Clang.
Multiplier: 5x
He took a step back, his boots sliding in the muck. Sir Cassiel wasn't just fast in the way normal people were fast. He was a whirlwind of sorrow and steel. Every swing was aimed to kill, but every swing was also slightly off target.
Kaizen saw it. His Intelligence stat of twelve was finally paying dividends.
This wasn't the Prime Sir Cassiel from his glory days. This was the Fallen Cassiel. He was reliving the worst day of his life, which meant he was already injured when the fight started.
He was dragging his left leg. There was a demonic claw wound in his side that was leaking black smoke. He was bleeding from a dozen cuts that existed before Kaizen even threw the first blow.
He's hurt. Kaizen realized this while ducking under a horizontal slash that sheared the top off a stone pillar. He's strong, but he's broken.
"Is that all?" Kaizen shouted, forcing a grin despite the terror gripping his heart like a fist. "You swing that sword like a broom! My grandmother hits harder!"
"DO NOT MOCK ME!"
Cassiel roared, lunging forward with a thrust that screamed through the air.
Kaizen didn't dodge. He caught the blade with the flat of the pan.
BONG.
The vibration rattled his teeth so hard he tasted blood.
Multiplier: 6x
"I'm not mocking you!" Kaizen grunted, pushing back against the steel with everything he had. "I'm critiquing you! Your form is sloppy! You're letting your emotions drive the car!"
"I WILL PURIFY YOU!"
Cassiel spun, delivering a flurry of strikes that blurred together.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
10x, 15x, 18x, 20x.
Kaizen's arms felt like jelly. His bones were screaming at him to stop. He was F-Rank. He shouldn't be surviving this. The only reason he was still standing was because the Pan absorbed the kinetic energy, sparing his body from the worst of the impact.
But the Pan was getting heavy. It was humming with stored violence. It felt like holding a live grenade with the pin already pulled.
'I need to hit him. Kaizen thought frantically. But I can't get close. His reach is too long. If I step in, he cuts me in half.'
There had to be another way, because if this was all he had, then he was already dead.
The thought hit him so suddenly that it almost made him laugh, and then immediately want to cry at the same time. An idea burst into his mind with the force of a lightning strike, and Kaizen nearly cursed out loud when he realized how obvious it was.
Why hadn't he thought of this earlier.
He was such an idiot.
With shaking hands and a mind screaming at him to hurry, Kaizen tried to activate Blink, pouring everything he had into the command.
'System! Blink! Get me behind him!'
The response came instantly, cold and merciless.
[ERROR]
[Target Line of Sight is Unbroken]
Kaizen's heart dropped.
Cassiel was staring straight at him, his black, tear-filled eyes locked onto Kaizen with the intensity of a laser-guided weapon. He did not blink. He did not glance away. There was no hesitation in that gaze, only absolute focus and the unshakable intent to erase Kaizen from existence.
'I can't teleport if he's watching me.'
There was no time to think further.
Cassiel brought the katana down in a brutal overhead smash, and Kaizen barely managed to raise the pan in time to block it.
CRACK.
The stone floor beneath Kaizen shattered violently, chunks of rock exploding outward as the impact drove him down to one knee. Pain shot up his arms, and the force rattled his bones like they were about to come apart.
Multiplier: 28x
Kaizen knew instantly that this was the limit. His arms were screaming, his hands numb, and the pan was vibrating so violently that it blurred in his vision.
If he took even one more hit like that, his arms would snap like dry twigs, and after that, he wouldn't even feel the killing blow.
Cassiel loomed over him, towering like an executioner as he raised the black katana high for the final strike.
"Rest now," Cassiel wept, his voice thick with a twisted, misplaced mercy. "Return to the light."
Kaizen looked up and saw the blade descending, saw the certainty of death reflected in the Paladin's eyes, and then, strangely, his gaze dropped to the ground beneath them.
The floor was slick with blood.
Thick, black demonic blood mixed together with the Paladin's own gold-tinged ichor, pooling across the shattered stone like a filthy, uneven mirror.
Kaizen did not think like a knight in that moment. He did not think like a hero, or a chosen one, or someone meant to win fair and square.
He thought like a desperate student fighting for his life in a dark alley.
Honor was for people who could afford it, and Kaizen very much could not.
He released his grip on the pan with one trembling hand and plunged his fingers straight into the warm, sticky puddle of blood.
"Rest this!"
He whipped his arm upward with everything he had left.
The blood sprayed through the air in a thick, disgusting arc, splattering forward without grace or dignity. It was not magic, and it was not a skill. It was just filth, weaponized by desperation.
SPLAT.
The sludge hit Cassiel directly in the face, coating his eyes and flooding into his mouth.
"GAH!"
Cassiel recoiled on instinct, jerking back as he squeezed his eyes shut.
[Line of Sight: BROKEN]
[Conditions Met!]
[Proceed with Blink?]
Kaizen did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second. He mentally slammed the YES option so hard it felt like the interface itself rattled.
ZIP.
The execution strike came down with unstoppable force, but it only smashed into empty stone where Kaizen had been kneeling moments earlier.
Cassiel staggered, frantically wiping blood from his eyes as he slashed wildly through the air.
"WHERE?!"
He looked left and saw nothing. He looked right and saw nothing.
He did not look up.
High above the altar, gravity finally reasserted itself.
Kaizen materialized in mid-air, ten feet above the Paladin's head, his body already falling as panic and resolve collided inside his chest. He tightened both hands around the handle of the Rusty Pan of Doom and pulled it back over his shoulder like he was winding up for the most important swing of his life.
The pan glowed red hot, humming violently as the stored energy of twenty-eight D-Rank strikes screamed to be released.
And Kaizen was coming down with it.
"EAT!"
Kaizen roared at the top of his lungs, his voice cracking as tears of fear, adrenaline, and pure desperation streamed down his face while he charged forward without a single coherent thought left in his head.
Cassiel looked up just in time.
His eyes widened as he took in the entire situation all at once, the pan raised overhead, the wild look on Kaizen's face, and the unavoidable, mathematical certainty that this was about to go very, very badly for him.
"THIS—!"
Kaizen swung with everything he had.
The pan smashed into the Paladin's helmet.
What followed was not a simple metallic clang like logic suggested it should have been, but a full-blown explosion of sound and force that felt like reality itself had taken offense.
The impact shattered the sound barrier with a deafening BOOOOOOOOOOM, and a violent shockwave of pure kinetic energy erupted outward, blowing out the temple's stained-glass windows and sending cracks racing up the ancient stone pillars like spiderwebs.
Sir Cassiel did not fall to the ground.
He was launched.
His armored body flew across the temple like a ragdoll fired straight out of a cannon, crashing through a stone pew, pulverizing a marble railing, and finally slamming into the far wall hard enough to carve a crater into it with a thunderous, bone-rattling CRUNCH.
Kaizen landed awkwardly on his feet, staggered forward a step as the adrenaline finally started to fade, and then collapsed backward onto his butt with a dull thump, his arms trembling uncontrollably.
He sat there, breathing hard, chest heaving as he stared at the massive dust cloud hanging in the air where the boss had been just seconds ago.
"Round one," Kaizen wheezed weakly, wiping his face with a shaking hand as his voice cracked from exhaustion. "Trash wins."