The Fight

Arnold laid is lower body on the ground with his upper body resting against the wall. He was panting heavily, wiping the sweat from his face. His t-shirt was torn due to Lewis' onslaught of attacks, revealing his defined abdominal muscles. The sweat that dripped downwards from his upper body cause his body to glisten lightly, revealing the large circular scar at the center of his abdomen. The long scar on his side was also revealed, giving Lewis a slight surprise.

"This kid..." He thought as he saw the nasty scars that was on Arnold's body. He stared at Arnold with a complicated gaze. "It seems like he is not one of those sheltered second generation rich kids after all."

Arnold gave Lewis a menacing gaze and stood up. He was slightly angry that his t-shirt which was painstakingly brought back from his father's laboratory was now dilapidated. It seems that even if he wanted to sell it now, he would not be able to. As he stared at Lewis, who was still completely unscaved, and taunted, "How much spiritual energy do you still have? After using your esper power multiple times, I bet you have almost used them up."

"That's none of your concern." Lewis replied to Arnold's taunt nonchalantly. "I think you should be more concerned about yourself." He narrowed his eyes and, with a burst of spiritual energy, immediately rushed over to Arnold's side.

Arnold dodged Lewis swiftly and held a defensive stance. He was currently at a disadvantage since he had no esper powers. Therefore, the only thing he could do right now was try and drain all of Lewis' power before counterattcking. Lewis, on the other hand, would need to finish this fight before his power is used up.

Arnold continued jumping backwards, using the spiritual energy on his feet to propel him further away.

"Are you only good at running away?" Lewis sneered. Suddenly, he coalesced some spiritual energy on both of his hands. He slapped his palms together and extended them backwards, revealing a long semi-transparent blade made of highly excited energy particles. "Not good!" Arnold immediately thought.

The heat and energy from the excited particles were prevented from escaping due to the coating of spiritual energy around it, making it highly dangerous if one were to be in contact with the blade. Arnold was once on the brink of death due to a similar blade made by a zombie back in the cave near the laboratory. He subconsciously felt fear down to his very bones as he ran.

Lewis did not give Arnold any time and immediately released the blade, slashing it through the air. The blade swung forth and suddenly shifted to the right, heading right towards Arnold. Arnold had no choice but to make a larger burst of energy from his lower ankles, causing both the bones of his ankles to break, damaging his ligaments. One of his Archilles' tendon was torn as well. Although Arnold managed to dodge the blade, he now seemed to be much worse off than before.

Lewis was surprised that Arnold had such a quick reaction. He nodded slightly and thought to himself, "It takes a lot of courage and conviction to do what Arnold just did. Not only must you prepare yourself for the searing pain from breaking most of the bones in your ankles, you must also have a quick reaction and make such a decision on the get go. I think Captain King will be satisfied with him."

Arnold was limping from one foot. His other foot was rendered completely inoperable. However, with all the weight of his body concentrated on his other food, it held undue burden on his ankle, making him wince from the pain. Arnold panted and tried to endure it, distracting himself by asking Andy, "Hey, now would be a good time to tell me what I can do to win this fight!"

Arnold had asked at the beginning of the spar for Andy to scan for any weaknesses in Lewis' body. However, using the same excuse with his brother, he said that he did not have enough information to make that deduction. Therefore, he simply asked Andy to observe Lewis and update his information bank. He should now be able to formulate a strategy against Lewis with all the information he got from their fighting for the past half hour.

Arnold also asked if Andy could shut off the pain receptors on his body, but Andy said it was a no can do. "This AI is completely useless!" He thought to himself while gritting his teeth, enduring the pain. Arnold had to wrap softly around his ankles with spiritual energy in order to dull the pain. However, that would distract him from using his energy elsewhere.

"Why can't I just send a particle blade back towards Lewis?" Arnold asked Andy, clearly feeling disgruntled.

"I'm afraid that wouldn't be possible, master." Andy replied in a monotone voice. "To use a particle blade, you must generate electromagnetic fields to accelerate and direct charged particles along a predetermined path, and electrostatic lenses to focus these stream of collisions at the same time while wrapping these particles around with spiritual energy. Using this technique would require high precision and tons of practice, which Master do not have. Also, preprogrammed slits that generate electromagnetic fields were installed in Lewis' wrists, allowing him to easily control his particle blade since the slits are directly controlled by either himself or the AI chip within his own brain. You would need to install something similar in order to generate a particle beam by yourself."

Arnold clearly did not want to hear all of these science mumbo-jumbo and simply replied irritatedly in his mind, "Okay! Okay! Fine! Just find me a way to beat this guy!"

"Reporting to Master. There is a way. However, it might cause undue burden on your body. Please note that this is a spar, Master, you can always surrender. In fact, under my analysis, the best way to end this situation with no more harm done to you is to surrender." Andy replied in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Don't tell me what to do." Arnold furrowed his brows. "Tell me about the way to beat him."

"Reporting to Master..."

*

The conversation in Arnold's mind lasted for less than one second since the neurons within one's brain operate much faster than one's actions. After receiving Andy's plan, he immediately tried to bring it to fruition. Allowing Andy to control his limbs, he immediately switched to walking upside down with his hands.

Lewis raised an eyebrow in curiosity. He created another blade with his hands and said, "I think this spar is about to come to an end. You should surrender now before you get hurt even more."

Arnold clearly ignored him and immediately started running towards him with his hands acting as his feet. Suddenly, he bounced up from the ground, using his spiritual energy released from his palms and flew towards Lewis. Lewis immediately changed to a battle stance and waited for Arnold to come near him before releasing his blade for a second time.

This time, Arnold immediately propelled himself back to the ground by creating a wall of spiritual energy on top of him, allowing him to slam against it with his shoulders, breaking more bones on the way. Andy timed the release of spiritual energy exactly right. Almost his entire body managed to dodge from the blade. However, Arnold abruptly did something that caused Lewis to widen his eyes in surprise.

Instead of dodging his whole body, Arnold allowed the wind blade to tear his right upper arm off from his body, causing Arnold to gasp from the pain. In that second right when his arm was severed, Arnold have condensed a whole lot of energy into that arm. The arm was set in a direction so that once his arm was sliced, it would fly towards the direction of his opponent.

Lewis was caught entirely by surprise. He did not expect that Arnold would do such a drastic move! Breaking his own body just so he could get an advantage was unheard of even from the people he have fought to the death before.

As Arnold hand flew towards Lewis, he immediately tried to dodge to the side. However, the arm still managed to slice through the upper part of his left wrist, nicking one of his artery.

Lewis held his bleeding hand and watched as Arnold fell to the ground, completely rendered unconscious from the shock of losing an arm. Lewis stared at him with a complicated gaze. He stood up from his battle stance and started walking towards him. Suddenly, he found a piercing pain in his heart, causing him to spray out a gigantic amount of blood from his mouth.

"What the-" He did not manage to finish what he was saying before falling head first onto the ground as well. Before he lost his consciousness, he still had no idea what Arnold had done to him.