"Leave it to me boss," the towering mountain of a man said stepping forward as he stretched out his muscles. The young man Trisk favored him with a nod before turning and walking away, leaving the two of them alone.

  "Why do they call you the Butcher," Banks asked as he stepped backwards, mana coalescing in his body, his defense rising to the max.

  "It's my job, isn't it," the man said. "If I was a bartender or a gardener I would just be called that."

  "That's a lot more wholesome reason than I was expecting to be honest," Banks remarked a moment before he immediately raised his arms to defend, before white hot pain shot straight down his arms as a punch with the force of a train slammed into them. His feet left the floor and he was flung backwards through a nearby window.

  "Fuck, fractured," he said wincing as he crawled to his feet noticing that he just entered a fish and bait shop, and had very nearly just missed landing in a box containing an distressing amount of hooks. "Hey you ever do any fishing."

  "Sometimes when I have caught enough game in the mountains I would dive into the flowing waters of the river Luxanim and catch fish with my bare hands," the man said as he walked into the room, a single flex of his hands causing the door to fly off it's hinges and shatter on the far side of the room.

  "That's so cool," he said. "Wait Luxanim is the river that I crossed on the way to the old town."

  "You don't really pay attention to your surroundings," the man chuckled as he reached and grabbed a stand containing a selection of baits.

  "I tend to avoid water sources in these times," Banks said as he sidestepped the sand before ducking beneath the another fist and nailing a punch into the stomach of the large man...and doing absolutely nothing as his fist sunk into a mix of fat and muscle. "You people tend to dump to much shit in the waterways."

  "What do you mean by 'you people'," the man said as he slammed his fists down, cratering the floor and causing Banks to close his eyes as shrapnel shredded the air, before a single kick shattered every one of his ribs.

  -0.5 seconds

  He tilted his head, avoiding the shrapnel as he sidestepped the kick, and launched his own counter kick towards the soft part behind the knee. Like lightning Gustane contracted his leg, catching the kick between thigh and foreleg and forcing him to awkwardly hop on one foot before a hand grabbed him by this shoulder and then another, and he was lifted off the ground, like a doll.

  "You know, primitive barbarians," he said as he raised his mana defense to counter the increasing pressure. His legs were free now and so he drew on his faded core strength and pulled his legs upwards before landing a double kick right into his face. The large man barely flinched tanking the hit, before dropping him into a kick that sent him rocketing into a pile of fishing rods.

  "And you, do you ever fish," the man said as Banks pulled himself out of the tangle of rods and lines.

  "No, but my sister does," he admitted as he picked up a fishing rod, pumping it chock full of mana before launching it forward like a spear. The rod pierced into the body of the man, before exploding like shrapnel as it could no longer bear the quantity of mana. "She normally just draws a picture of the fish before releasing it though. Giving her cooked fish just stresses her out."

  "Your sister is very strange," he said, before a full force mana pulse took him in his big fat stomach causing him to nearly double over. Banks leapt backwards shaking his crushed knuckles as he lowered his hand. At least the mana pulse didn't blow off his hand this time, a spike of anger seemed to be a very good stimulant for his ever wavering focus.

  "Don't insult my sister," he warned, as the zombie straightened up, despite the movement there appeared to be no damage to the man.

  "That's my bad," the massive zombie said balling his hands into fists. "But now you're finally starting to actually punch. I thought my nerves were dead for a few moment there. I was going to go and tell the boss that there were problems with the revival. Boy would I have ended up with a whole egg on my face if that wasn't the case."

  "You're about to get a whole lot worse than egg on your face in a minute," he said, before he paused as the zombie regarded him strangely. "I meant blood, don't tell me I said something weird."

  "I wouldn't worry about it," the man said, and Banks jumped to the side as he slammed into the wall behind him, tearing through it like paper. He barely landed on his feet before he caught a casual sideswipe from the mountain of the man and knocked backwards off his feet again. Landing on the ground he slid back half a dozen feet, before his back hit a display of typical fishing apparel. He was given no time to rest as a swing that bisected the display nearly took his head off and he punched upwards with his half destroyed right hand. His mind went with with pain as his already aching hand further broke as it connected with the chest of the zombie. That brief moment of hesitation due to pain was enough as the next second a fist the size of a dinner plate slammed into his chest causing very bad things to happen to his sternum and launching him again through the air.

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  Barely a second later Gustane the Butcher let out a gasp as a red line appeared on his right index finger before the entire digit was severed. For a few moments, the zombie stared in disbelief at his now three digit hand before he turned to look at the man now stumbling up from the ground, his entire chest caved in as he coughed up hunks of blood and flesh. Surrounding him were dozens of fishing wire, that seemed to curl and loop around like stingers around a jellyfish, they pulsed with small bursts of mana flickering to the Butcher's sight, like a heartbeat.

  "Fuck yeah," the man coughed spraying further amounts of blood. "Sorry, your boss got me nostalgic. It's been ages since I've used wires. Thought I almost forgot how to do so. Shall we continue."

  "How are you breathing," the Butcher said, a mix between admiration and confusion in his voice. There was actually no way that his ribs didn't go through his lungs. Even speaking shouldn't be possible right now.

  "I'm not," he said, slowly walking forward as he approached the much larger man. "You quite literally got my lungs. It was an amazing punch. It's been such a long time since I felt so close to death." His voice was eerily calm as he stepped forward balling his ruined right hand into an approximation of a fist. He threw out a haymaker which caught by the larger man who winced at the sheer force behind it, before strings wrapped around both of their arms and he pulled him downwards before striking out with his left hand and catching him on the chest. The tough flesh barely rippled before a blast of mana exploded outwards sending him stumbling backwards before he was pulled back by the strings and he hit again, and again, each blow smashing into the ribs of the bigger man.

  Suddenly his feet left the ground as he was slammed into the roof of the fishing shop and the remaining air rushed into his lungs and the blackness encroached into his vision. Forcibly jolting himself awake, he aggressively pumped more and more mana into his lungs filling in the damage with mana that replicated the original structure. It was an extension of the mana defense skill, replacing missing or broken parts with mana and forcibly welding together parts instead of just reinforcing them. As long as had money and his head wasn't destroyed he could keep forcibly running his body.

  He punched through the ceiling, with his right hand untying the wires from his hand and attaching them to the beam in the ceiling before he swung down launching a kick at the head of the Butcher. Right before the impact his foot was caught by the man's untied hand and he was slammed into the floor. A second later he sat up before a massive chunk of the ceiling was pulled down, crushing the floor where his skull was. With his left hand that still maintained some mobility he grabbed a handful of the ceiling tiles before throwing it in his opponent's face, before using that moment of distraction to land a kick on the wrist holding his ankle and then he pulled himself to his feet, before he stumbled.

  He was dying slowly, this level of mana defense only delayed death, but didn't heal his wound. With each second he was throwing away mounds off mana just to prevent him from keeling over dead. It would be far better to use it on taking down the Butcher, who needs to breathe anyway. The man had just finished wiping away the debris from his face before the stump of his right arm slammed into his face and exploded sending him stumbling backwards before he let out a cry of agony as hooks attached to lines pierced his skin before pulling him back in. Even despite the pain, he dug his heels in to resist before an explosively powered kick landed on his shin and then another on his kneecap.

  The big man hit the ground hard before trying to stagger to his feet and Banks sacrificed his left hand in order to land a punch on his sternum, in retaliation for the blow. He folded in on himself before a fully powered knee straight to the chin, put him on his back. Banks stumbled forward as his body continued piling up error messages and he slammed the stump on his right arm down on his face, and then his left and then right again, and then left again, until eventually the man stopped moving, and then he continued until the muscles in his arms failed and then...

  Banks regained consciousness on the floor and then immediately wished he hadn't. His body wailed in agony and despair, he couldn't move a single muscle, and his mana reserves were finally running on empty. Next to him the body of the Butcher lay motionless, it was a mutual kill and he took some small satisfaction, as he looked up at the grey skies, now visible through the part of the roof that had collapsed.

  "That was a good battle," Gustane the Butcher said, causing Banks to sigh in disappointment in frustration as the body of his enemy stood up, before he widened his eyes as the body continued to go higher and higher and higher tearing through the ceiling until the height could no longer be measured in meters but in storeys. Banks watched with eyes wide open as his skin took on a bluish tone and his wounds healed, clothes tore off and his body got bulkier, a mix of fat and muscle that spoke of power and indifferent cruelty of an ancient race.

  "Sacred Body of the Oni," he tried to say, only for his words to come out as gurgling. The active form of the Sacred Body was an insurmountable obstacle he would never be able to overcame with his pitiful body and magic. The Butcher stared down at him, smaller than even a finger before he clutched his hand into a fist and brought it____

  In an instant the head of the Oni was severed from the neck, the next instant it was diced into thousands of bits and the third instant a rain of blood fell upon the earth. A shadow fell over Banks and he raised his head, blinking as the greys blended together. He squinted, but everything was turning into a mix of black and grey. Even trying to supplement his eyes with mana proved pointless as his life continued to drain away, faster and faster and he tried vainly to hold onto the dregs of his life, but it was like water running through his fingers.

  "Banks, you dying?" a familiar voice said, sounding like he was talking through a thick pane of glass. "Then I guess this timeline won't actually exist very soon. That's great. I suppose it means I can go and do all the things that I want to do without consequences if that is the case. Look Banks, a job I took recently has turned suspicious and I'm deeply concerned. I really would like to talk to you soon or even earlier than that, if you catch my implications. I have a room..." he strained his ears to hear, but it sounded as if his voice was coming from miles away. Blind and deaf, Banks lay on the ground as his remaining senses and organs slowly shut off one by one and then he died.