Ulrich and Edluar were getting trashed.
Both were dual wielders. Both fought with two blades as naturally as breathing. Against most opponents, that alone was enough to overwhelm—angles multiplying, pressure never relenting. Against Armada, it felt pointless. Like trying to drown a storm.
It felt less like fighting a man and more like fighting someone with six arms.
Every movement Armada made was relaxed, almost lazy, yet his dao was everywhere at once. He wasn't chasing their blades. He wasn't reacting late. He was already there, steel meeting steel before their strikes had fully committed.
They tried to coordinate.
Ulrich stepped in first, his cutlasses snapping outward into a pincer slash meant to trap Armada's torso from both sides. At the same instant, Edluar lunged low, thin blades driving forward in a precise double stab aimed for the gaps beneath the ribs.
Armada didn't even shift his footing.
He turned his wrist.
The dao moved in a short, brutal arc, its flat smashing into Ulrich's right cutlass while the spine of the blade clipped the left, redirecting both with a single motion. The force behind it wasn't explosive, but it was absolute—the kind of strength that didn't need follow-through. Ulrich's arms buckled as the vibration rattled up his bones, fingers screaming as he barely managed to keep hold of his weapons.
In the same breath, Armada's free hand snapped out.
Two fingers struck Edluar's blades aside with contemptuous precision, knocking the stabs off-line just enough that they skimmed past harmlessly. The dao followed immediately, the edge stopping a hair from Edluar's throat before flicking away again.
Both men staggered back.
They were breathing hard already.
"You had to have made plans," Armada said, rolling his shoulder slightly, dao resting loosely in one hand. "And in all that planning, you thought just you two were enough to beat a Demon Lord?"
He chuckled. Not loudly. Just enough to sting. "That kind of overconfidence gets you killed, you know?"
Ulrich and Edluar didn't answer. They couldn't. Sweat ran down their faces, arms trembling from the sheer strain of blocking him. It hadn't even been a minute, and every exchange felt like smashing their blades against a wall that hit back.
"How long is it going to take him to find us?" Ulrich muttered through clenched teeth, swallowing hard. "I thought he was meant to be hunting this guy."
"It will take time," Edluar replied quietly, eyes never leaving Armada. "They said he left as soon as he got them to the coliseum. He is probably searching somewhere else in the city right now."
Armada tilted his head.
"What are you two whispering about?" he asked, genuinely curious. "I'm standing right here."
He lifted the dao, drawing it back just enough for the weight of the blade to promise violence. "It's rude to leave me out, you know?"
He swung.
Not once.
Not twice.
A storm of cuts tore forward—horizontal slashes that forced them back, vertical chops that split the space they tried to retreat into, short snapping arcs that came too fast to track. Every block felt like catching a falling beam. Each time their blades met his, the impact drove them backward, boots skidding, shoulders screaming, bones aching as if they should have shattered outright.
Ulrich barely ducked one cut, felt another shear past his chest close enough to tear fabric. Edluar twisted away from a downward chop, only to be forced low by a backhanded sweep that split the air above him.
Then Armada stepped in.
The dao flashed.
Ulrich felt a sudden, weightless absence.
He looked down.
His left arm was gone—from the elbow down, severed cleanly. For a heartbeat, there was no pain. Just disbelief. Then the shock hit, and he screamed, dropping his remaining cutlass as he clutched the bleeding stump and collapsed to his knees.
"Ulrich!" Edluar shouted, scrambling toward him.
Armada's grin widened.
He pointed the blood-slick dao at Edluar, the blade steady, unhurried. "Worry about yourself."
The dao rose.
He aimed for Edluar's head.
He never got the chance to swing.
Armada's arm was severed cleanly at the shoulder in a single, precise cut. The force sent both the limb and the dao spinning up into the air, blood arcing behind them.
"Found you, bastard!"
The voice came from behind him.
Before Armada could even process the fact that his entire arm was gone, a longsword slammed into the ribs of his plate armor with brutal force. The impact folded the metal inward and launched the Demon Lord through the air, his body tearing across the street and crashing through dozens of buildings before finally disappearing from sight in a storm of stone, dust, and shattered beams.
"Everyone's in the arena safe now!" Wolf shouted, already moving, his voice sharp with fury. "Means I don't have to hold back, you piece of trash!"
He knew Armada couldn't hear him from that distance, but he didn't care.
Wolf turned back to Ulrich and Edluar. They stared at him in shock, frozen in place. His clothes were pitch black from head to toe, and the wolf mask covering his face made him look more like a nightmare than a man—especially since neither of them had ever seen him before.
"You two head back to the arena," Wolf said flatly. "Kids shouldn't be doing an adult's job."
With that, he pivoted and dashed across the rooftops, his movements sharp and fluid as he took off in pursuit of the Demon Lord.
Behind him, Armada's dao—still clutched in his severed hand—fell back down. It struck the rooftop between Ulrich and Edluar with a heavy thunk, the blade biting into stone and standing upright, blood dripping down onto the tiles.
"Goddess…" Ulrich hissed, clutching his arm, his face pale. "Couldn't he have come earlier? My arm…"
Edluar tore his eyes away from where Wolf had vanished and dropped down beside him. "At this point, we should just be glad we're alive," he said grimly. "Come on. We need to make sure you don't bleed to death."
He moved quickly, already working to apply a tourniquet to Ulrich's arm.
Ulrich nodded weakly, gritting his teeth. "Yeah… and after that, we check on how the others are doing…"