Barry and Puck, against McGuinness's towering mechanized knight of mayhem. The metal construct mimicked McGuinness's movements, most likely because of the magic-tech suit he was wearing, as he stood above the bridge tower in the comfort of his energy bubble.

  McGuinness cackled at the two down below, believing them to be in awe of his creation. “Haha! You both must be shitting yourselves in the presence of my latest prototype that I call, ‘The Killmonger 1000!’. So without further ado, let’s commence your funerals!”

  The robot charged at them head on, its footsteps shaking the battlefield somewhat. It twirled its glaive around a few times before pausing and extending one end of the glaive towards Barry and Puck at head level.

  Both of them avoided the attack with a forward roll and split up, dividing McGuinness’s attention to both sides of his robot. Puck spewed flames, while Barry attempted to strike from behind at the legs with his warhammer.

  “Hoho! Trying to make me pick between one or the other, I see…” McGuinness spoke a few words into his earpiece and grinned.

  Suddenly, the backpack that was attached to the robot began to sprout tentacle-like appendages with various deadly weapons and attacked Barry from behind, who then had to back off and avoid getting struck. “That’s right! I’ve got something special for people like you!”

  Barry was too busy evading each tentacle trying to inflict harm, while the robot approached Puck with its round shield layered with a magical barrier in front of it so that Puck’s fire couldn’t melt it. Another strike with its glaive was thrown out, narrowly missing the little Kobold as he leaped out of the way. “Grr! Just hold still!” McGuinness growled.

  ‘Fuck these damn tentacles, why the hell are there so many!?’ It was difficult for Barry to get close to the robot’s legs, since he had to constantly evade appendages striking from nearly every angle. But even so, he was able to weave his way through with some effort and land a couple of hits on the robot’s legs…but was shocked to realize that he was only able to dent the metal just a tiny bit. ‘What!? This robot’s durability is a lot stronger than those I’ve been fighting.’

  McGuinness noticed that Barry was able to get past his tentacles to take a strike at his robot and started break dancing. Despite his short and chubby body, his performance was immaculate. This caused the robot to do the same thing, to which Barry had to double-jump backwards to avoid getting kicked. “You like my moves! I’m a killer on the dance floor! Oooh yeah!”

  Puck started launching a double-round of fireballs at the robot, directly impacting the legs. His attack managed to burn the metal to a dark red, but not enough to melting temperature. Puck’s move did however regain McGuinness’s attention to get back to eliminating Puck.

  ‘The trident…use the trident, you fool…’ One of Thalia’s brother’s urged Barry inside his head to use it in place of the warhammer. ‘Listen to me…’

  His suggestion was insane to Barry, he didn’t believe a spear would do much good against metal given its toughness. ‘I’m better off using a hammer against this thing, I can eventually wear down its armor with enough strikes, compared to a spear that’s only going to deflect off.’

  ‘Eventually. That sounds to me like it’ll be too late, you dense fool. Listen to me!’ The guy pressed him again.

  Shaking his head, and choosing to ignore the spirit, Barry went right back into the fight. He planned on smashing the robot’s backpack as best he could, since it was giving him the most issues.

  “Take that! And THAT! Oooh, how about one of these!” McGuinness had been swinging multiple times at Puck with his glaive, before deciding to unleash one of his hidden gizmos, which was an installed wrist-laser. The robot swept an arm as it extended a gadget that fired a stream of red energy in a line attempting to hit Puck, leaving a trail of seared destruction behind.

  With so much pressure being piled up on Puck, he started fogging up the area around him by unleashing a smokescreen just as he dolphin-dived to duck under the laser. “Blasted! The rat is cowering within smoke now…well…maybe I should- what! Get off, you bastard!”

  Barry had activated ‘King’s Commanding Presence’, boosting his physical prowess by 25%. Managing to stand on top of the robot’s backpack after swatting away the tentacles with a heavy swing, and proceeded to strike his hammer against the protruding tentacles to destroy them.

  Frustrated with how annoying Barry was getting in his way of eliminating the bigger threat that was Puck, he decided to unveil another trick up his sleeve. “Fine! You wanna see something cool! I’ll show you!”

  The robot channeled the red energy within itself and emitted an intense pulse of red energy that knocked Barry off and tumbling to the ground. Barry quickly recovered his composure, looking back at the robot to see it begin flexing his body like a bodybuilder. “Pretty sick, am I right!? Well, that’s not all I have to show, so let me introduce you to some FIREWORKS!”

  In a dramatic pose, the robot began flexing its arms like how a bodybuilder would show off their biceps. Barry witnessed its backpack unleash a compartment of what seemed to be loaded micro-missiles. ‘Are you fucking kidding me-’

  Almost instantly, the missiles fired off into the air, raining down upon him. No longer about to catch a moment's breath, Barry got back to moving, bunny-hopping, combat rolling, doing everything possible to avoid getting hit by one of them. He could feel the explosion of all these missiles narrowly missing him, brushing against his skin with the wind breezing past. ‘Are there any more surprises from this toaster?’

  Suddenly, he was caught in the explosion of a few missiles intercepting his path. “Damn it!” His body rolled back from the force, slamming against a couple of storage crates to stop him.

  “Finally gotcha! What a spectacular show that was, and that’s only just the beginning! You vermin.” McGuinness made his robot do a couple more poses to flex on Barry, loving how much his robot was performing for its first test run.

  Getting himself together, Barry got back on his feet and looked at where he had last seen Puck. The smoke that Puck had made to conceal himself had disappeared, showing no sign of him. ‘Perfect, he’s gone to get inside the bridge tower while McGuinness was distracted. I just have to keep stalling, if only I wasn’t inflicted with a debuff from my contract, I might have had an easier time dealing with this hunk of scrap.’

  ‘How many times do I have to tell you!’ Thalia’s brother spoke again, Barry knew what he was going to say. ‘If you had swapped to your spear, not only would you be able to penetrate this construct’s armor, but you would also have a broader reach of attacks! Just trust me!’

  Barry saw his opponent searching for Puck, wondering where he might have gone too after noticing the smokescreen vanish. Gritting his teeth and swallowing his stubbornness, he decided to give in to the spirit’s suggestion. ‘Gah! Okay, I’ll use the damn trident. But I’m telling you, I don’t have that type of strength to punch through metal like you think I do!’

  He stowed his warhammer back into his inventory, swapping to the trident like the spirit wanted. Barry then rushed at the robot from behind, preparing to strike against its backpack with a vault and thrust of his spear.

  McGuinness saw Barry making another attempt to strike his precious invention again from behind, and turned his creation in time to swing his glaive out at him. Barry double-jumped out of the way, twirling his body clean past his foe’s attack, thrusting against the head of the bot with his spear.

  A look of disappointment would form on his face when he saw how ineffective his weapon was, listening to it only scrap against the cold hard metal. ‘Just I thought; if I had used a hammer, at least I would have been able to make a dent.’ Barry complained to the spirit before landing back on the floor past the robot.

  ‘Oh, shush up! My grandmother has better technique than you. And she was handicapped back in her day, so I don’t want to hear you complain.’ The spirit belittled Barry, making him irritated. ‘I’ve watched you practice with my sister in your dreamworld, I get it that you haven’t practiced much with a spear, but even still; throwing a half-ass thrust like that makes me want to vomit.’

  The robot turned around, this time using its wrist-mounted laser to blast at Barry, making him run around to avoid getting hit. ‘That wasn’t half-assed! Every attack that I throw out at my enemies is full of rage, why the hell would I never take anything seriously!?’ Barry barked back.

  Barry moved in, dancing around the field of laser beams and the constant pressure of deadly tentacles. With his agility, Barry was able to close the gap between each other and reached the legs of the robot. He would then leap up into the air to target the robot’s wrist-mounted laser.

  “I am! Telling! You!” Barry jabbed at the wrist-laser three times, each one with increased central force than the last. “THIS ISN'T GOING TO WORK!”

  And with his last precision thrust of his spear, pouring every bit of anger into it, he was able to do something that astonished himself. The trident was able to puncture halfway through the robot’s wrist, utterly destroying and disabling it completely. ‘How in the…’ Barry was bewildered.

  “NOOO! That was one of my favorite features! How could you!” McGuinness cried out loud like a kid whose toy had been damaged.

  Landing back on the ground and backing away, Barry was surprised by how he was able to penetrate through the robot’s wrist with the trident. ‘No way…I don’t believe it.’

  The spirit was amused by Barry’s reaction to what he had just done. ‘Still in denial, are you? Although the attack you’ve just done wasn’t anywhere perfect, I’ll admit, your anger is something to behold. It should be impossible for someone to do it with your given hatred.’

  McGuinness was fuming at how Barry managed to break his magnificent robot and stomped on the floor like a toddler. “That’s it! No more messing around, you’ve angered the Marvelous McGuinness and I will have your head!” The dwarf then flexed his body. “Increase maximum performance up to 100%!”

  Suddenly, the red energy that coursed around the robot’s knight’s visible mana circuits began to emit an intense glow. The glaive it wielded was split into two blades each for both hands to use; its round shield discharged the same red energy around the rim as it spun rapidly around. Slight flames of ignition shot out of the exhaust ports, possibly being set to overdrive for maximum power. Finally, the robot’s backpack fully morphed into two medium-sized mana cannons, ready to blast away at Barry.

  ‘This guy is one hell of an inventor, I’ll admit. This is going to be rough…’ Barry thought at first, but got back in his battle stance with his trident ready. ‘But I welcome a challenge.’

  Barry could sense Thalia’s brother smile at his response, as if he was intrigued by his reaction to something menacing at the robot. ‘I couldn’t agree more; now pay attention as I guide you to victory against this metal golem.’

  Now in belief that switching to the trident was the right move, Barry became open to Thalia’s brother giving him instructions on how best to move in accordance to defeating McGuinness’s creation.

  The two opponents stared down at each for a moment, with McGuinness making the first move by igniting his thrusters, which propelled his robot forward to do battle as it fired red beams of energy. Barry charged ahead as well, weaving through the shots and kicking off the ground, into the air, to avoid getting bulldozed. Both sides taking the fight as seriously as ever this time around compared to before.

  And while their battle continued to resume, sneaking his way inside the bridge tower was Puck, who had burned a hole through its metal structure big enough for his small figure. There were a couple of droids inside that were guarding the stairway leading higher up.

  He did his best to remain hidden for some time, but his efforts to stay quiet would be all for naught because eventually one of the droids spotted him and that led to a whole fight while he travelled upwards.

  Puck fought using hit-and-run tactics, melting away through the heads of one of the robots each before disappearing in either a smokescreen he would create or by utilizing the environment around him. His small figure and nimbleness proved to be difficult for his opponents to land any accurate hits, making them struggle the majority of the time.

  Through the window of the bridge tower, Puck was able to take glances of the fight going down between McGuinness’s robot and Barry. ‘Puck needs to hurry before Barry gets hurt badly.” He was concerned for Barry’s safety and moved faster.

  Ambushing and taking down droids as he climbed up higher, Puck would come across locked doors every so often that tried to keep him out, requiring him to burn his way inside with his draconic fire acting as his skeleton key inside. Eventually, after consistently fighting against more droid guards, Puck arrived in front of the last door leading to the top of the bridge. Every other room that he entered didn’t have the prism that Barry told him to look out for, so this last room had to contain it within.

  It took Puck about a minute to make his own entrance, ducking through the hole he made. There were four non-combat droids maintaining control of the ship’s systems and course, along with four knight droids standing guard.

  Wasting no time, Puck took them by surprise before they noticed, firing a volley of fireballs that exploded and damaged the robots caught within. All the non-combat droids were destroyed, but the knights were still intact, albeit still harmed by his attacks that crippled them somewhat.

  Puck filled the room with smoke for concealment, ambushing each knight individually by burning a hole through their chest where the source of their battery was at, powered by highly concentrated mana crystals. The smoke settled down, with Puck remaining the last one in the room standing.

  His eyes shifted around the room to locate the prism until he spotted it floating on a pedestal behind some sort of mana barrier to prevent him from getting to it. He touched the mana barrier, which felt smooth but sturdy, Puck then attempted to breach it with his fire. His flames splashed against the barrier for a couple of moments before realizing that it was having no effect whatsoever.

  ‘What should Puck do!? Puck can’t reach blue rock…’ The Kobold looked around the room for a solution, maybe a way to turn off the barrier. And upon looking at the ship’s controls, he figured that maybe messing with them would help solve his issue.

  Puck pulled a chair and stood on it, he also had a clear view of Barry and the large robot fighting against each other, which made Puck even more anxious to find a way to disable the barrier. He began pressing random buttons, flipping switches, pulling levers, eating the cups of banana pudding that were sitting on the counter next to him to calm his nerves.

  The battle music that McGuinness had set outside was shifting to different songs, lights from both inside and outside flickered, the airship began blaring loud horn noises that alerted the two people outside, many random things began happening outside for every thing that Puck touched.

  Barry and McGuinness had similar thoughts as to why these bizarre events were happening during their battle. Barry figured that it might have had something to do with Puck, since he believed that Puck made his way inside. As for McGuinness, he wondered if his ship controls were acting funky, but couldn’t exactly abandon the fight he was having against Barry. Although, he could always set it on autopilot.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Puck happened to grasp control of the ship’s steering wheel and turned it to the far left until he couldn’t anymore. This caused the ship to make a sharp left turn so strong that he made everyone and everything lose balance or slide down in the direction.

  The robot outside wasn’t able to maintain its footing, especially due to it being connected to McGuinness’s movements, and fell on its side. Barry would take advantage of this fortunate event and get a good couple of hits in before it recovered. McGuinness’s robot had already suffered a couple of punctured holes in its armor, due to the guidance of Thalia’s brother. Barry’s condition wasn’t terrible, but he did sustain some bruises.

  McGuinness got back up and made his robot thrash at Barry for a moment with consecutive energy beams and swings with its twin-glaive. Which made him retreat before he decided to put his robot on autopilot. “I can’t believe I have to abandon my fun! What could be going on with the ship’s controls, is it a blasted bug in the system!?” The dwarf pressed a couple of buttons on his suit, descending himself back below into the bridge tower.

  Puck was standing on top of the controls, stomping and kicking everything, until eventually one such button was able to disable the barrier protecting the blue prism. “YES! Puck found right button!” He was overjoyed.

  That was when McGuinness’s platform arrived from above the ceiling with his energy shield still active, his eyes widened with astonishment when he realized that it was the little Kobold that was screwing with the ship’s controls. “Y-YOU! I was wondering where you were!”

  Scurrying with no time to lose, Puck dashed towards the prism and snatched the prism off the pedestal before shattering the glass window viewing outside. “WAIT! NO! THAT'S MINE!” McGuinness shouted at Puck, as he watched him jump out.

  Barry flipped over the robot’s thrown shield with energy saw-blades and ducked as it retracted back to avoid getting struck from behind. His eyes caught sight of Puck jumping out with the prism in his clutches, using his own fire-breathing to slowly halt his descent. ‘Good work, buddy. I knew you could do it.’

  Puck ran along the sidelines towards Barry, but halted due to a red energy blast intercepting his path from one of the robot’s mana cannons. McGuinness had resumed control of his robot. “How dare you take what is mine!” McGuinness screamed from the bridge’s control room. “None of you will be leaving here alive! You hear me! NONE OF-”

  A rumbling was felt all throughout the ship that made McGuinness stop mid-speech. At first, he wondered what it could be this time, but glanced at his hologram of the ship’s layout. “This is unbelievable, the engine room is blown up! But how-” He then remembered the rest of Barry’s group that had invaded his glorified airship. “You…you…WHY CAN’T YOU ALL JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!”

  As Barry was fighting a bit ago against the robot before Puck had stolen the prism, he had received a call from Ron telling him that they had rigged the engine room with explosions and were planning on taking some escape pods before setting them off. Barry urged them to detonate the explosives and leave immediately, ensuring them that he and Puck would be fine because he saw Abe riding a griffin in the skies as their ticket out of there.

  The ship began to tilt to the left, slowly taking a dip downwards since it no longer had any power to keep it afloat. The rumbling of explosions also continued to persist around the different sections of the ship for some time, possibly the cause of a chain explosion.

  Frustrated with everything happening so fast, the prism now in the hands of a red rat, and his first ever functioning airship plummeting from the skies. All because these contestants just wouldn’t let him have an easy victory and invade his ship like a disease. McGuinness resumed his assault; now directing about 70% of his focus on Puck, with the other 30% keeping Barry at bay until he pulverized Puck.

  Puck tried moving behind crates for cover as he made his way towards Barry, listening and feeling the impact of the crates getting blown to smitheries.

  Rushing to his aid, Barry took off sprinting towards the robot and chucked his trident at one of the laser-cannons. He managed to push the laser-cannon just enough to shift it away from targeting Puck and recalled it. McGuinness threw his saw-like shield at Barry, while also firing blasts at him with his other cannon. Although tight and difficult to avoid, Barry managed to vault over the shield, twirl through the shots, and double-jump to the side to avoid getting hit from the retracting shield.

  But even after closing the gap between each other, when Barry tried to go in for another centralized thrust of his trident, the robot had preemptively charged up a defense pulse of red energy that sent him tumbling backwards.

  “I’ve had it up to here with you both! HERE!” McGuinness yelled out, jumping up and down as he raised a hand up as high as he could, signifying how short he was. “If my beautiful airship is going down, I’M TAKING ONE OF YOU DOWN WITH IT!”

  Suddenly, one of the robot’s arms dropped their glaive as it began stretching it outward towards Barry and detached them. The arm then propelled forward, restraining Barry down onto the floor while he was trying to recover himself. Barry struggled to squirm out of the hold he was in, but could not manage to free himself.

  The robot’s chest began to expand outward a bit, shaping a barrel of a cannon that began to hum and radiate with red energy, as did the two laser-cannons on its back. It was now utilizing as much power as it could from the red mana orb that powered the entire robot. “Hope you enjoyed your tour here, contestant. Because I will personally be taking you on a trip to the afterlife! GAME! OVER!”

  Witnessing Barry's doom being brought down upon him, Puck ran out from cover and started firing fireballs at the robot in an attempt to stop McGuinness from obliterating his best friend’s life.

  But despite being struck multiple times by Puck’s fireballs, even though they could melt through his robot’s armor at a certain point, he did not care and unleashed the full force of his tri-cannon blast. “BARRY!” Puck cried out, believing that it was too late.

  All three lasers combined into one huge destructive beam that zoomed at high-speed, as Barry looked up to see a bright flash of red death approaching him head on. Everything that was there at the point of impact exploded, producing a large cloud of smoke to conceal all that was very much likely to be destroyed.

  “MWHAHAHA!” McGuinness howled in the air, finding joy in obliterating someone that was a thorn in his side. He was still saddened about the inevitable crash of his ship, but decided that he could always another and take this kill as a win.

  Completely devastated after witnessing Barry’s demise, Puck collapsed to his knees, barely grasping onto the blue prism with one hand. “Barry…Barry no…” Tears poured out of Puck’s eyes, weeping at his death.

  He started to experience both heart break and rage at the same time, Puck looked up at McGuinness with pure hatred at the one responsible for taking away the person changing his life. “You...YOU KILLED PUCK’S BEST FRIEND!” The little Kobold then rose up and charged at the robot to unleash his incredibly hot draconic flames upon it.

  “Ack! That’s right, you still need to be pulverized as well. Curse your stupidly hot flames…” McGuinness then tried to turn his robot towards Puck so that he could fight back before his robot melted anymore. However, he would experience a technical issue with it responding to his own movements. “Gah, the robot’s been pushed too hard. It’ll need to be rebooted, but the damn rodent will have melted it by then…”

  Puck spewed his flames directly at the robot’s exposed core, eating away at the cannon first before it could even reach the heart of the metal construct. Something shocking began to happen, Puck started to notice that his flames were dying down so much that it eventually would become nothing more than small embers. “Wha- What!? No! Puck out of mojo!?” All of his mana had been used up.

  McGuinness caught sight of this and flashed a sinister grin, he realized that he still had time to get his construct started back up and kept trying to reboot it with his wrist-controller.

  No longer having the firepower left inside to melt the robot, Puck was unsure of what to do then. The mana circuits of the robot began to flicker red lights until they illuminated completely, turning the robot back to life again once more. “YES!” McGuinness was excited, standing his robot back on its legs again.

  Puck then tried to turn around and run, but was plucked off the ground by the robot’s arm by his legs. “Hoho! Where are you running off to now? Are you sad that I killed your pathetic friend? Don’t worry, I’ll send you packing along with him. How bout you squeal one last time!” McGuinness taunted, teasing the poor Kobold.

  It was then that the most astonishing thing occurred, something that neither of them were expecting to happen after what had just happened. Flying out of the smoke, hurling towards the robot’s hand, was the same trident that Barry was using. The weapon clashed against the hand so hard that it dropped Puck back down before retracting back into the dissipating smoke.

  “What the-” McGuinness was confused, completely shocked by the sudden phenomenon. His eyes honed in on the smoke, squinting his eyes, only to be dumbfounded because of the next thing he saw. “How…how! HOW ARE YOU STILL ALIVE!”

  Looking in the direction of where Barry had been utterly destroyed, Puck couldn’t help but form a look of happiness on his face. A wave of relief flowed throughout Puck because of who he saw emerging out of the cloud of smoke. “Barry!” The Kobold cried with joy.

  Standing tall and making his walk over to Puck, was Barry, alive and filled with a burning desire to break McGuinness’s lovely toy just so he could see him cry some more. “I’m too stubborn to die, McGerbil. My tenacity is about as big as your ego.” Barry taunted the dwarf inventor.

  He had used the “Unicorn Lover’s Shield” achievement skill in order to block the deadly tri-cannon attack while he was being pinned down. It had also restored 25% of his HP and stamina during the momentary protection he was given.

  With a face as red as a tomato, McGuinness was fuming with anger because of how he was being disrespected by Barry making fun of his name. Immediately, he resumed taking control of his one-armed robot and charged at Barry, ignoring Puck. Although his robot’s power reserves were low, especially after overloading his laser cannons, he did not care at all.

  Barry twirled his trident, activating “King’s Commanding Presence” and taking a stance in preparation for what would be their final duel. But Thalia’s brother made a suggestion in his mind, something that he wanted Barry to experience as a lesson. ‘Hey, how bout you let me take over and finish off this metal golem. This place is falling out of the sky, and I really want to show you the potential you could have with learning how to use a spear the right way. What do you say?’

  Giving it some thought, Barry would have wanted to defeat McGuinness’s toy all on his own. However, the airship was inevitably going to crash, and he needed to escape before that happened. ‘Alright, you can have your fun, and I’ll pay close attention to every detail.’ Barry agreed.

  He felt shivers all across his body for a moment, the spirit taking hold of his vessel while placing Barry’s in the back seat of his mind to observe the demonstration he was going to be given. The color of his eyes shifted from their usual hazel color to those of greenish/yellow.

  “Ah! How good it feels to be alive for a while.” The spirit stretched out his arms and legs for a bit, rolling his neck before realizing that there was a large metal construct approaching him at high-speed due to its propulsions. “Gah! I can’t even get a moment to myself, just so I can get used to this body. Alright, let’s get this over with.”

  McGuinness threw his saw-shield at Barry while also lunging in for a swing of glaive, two attacks that pressured him to answer one or the other. The dwarf was sure that he would not be able to respond fast enough, but would be proven wrong. Instead of making any attempt to even dodge his attacks, Barry simply twirled his trident around his body before knocking the shield and the glaive away using the tip of his weapon with total precision in rapid succession. The central force was so strong that it even destroyed the top half of the glaive into bits. All of this done with a snickering grin on Barry’s face.

  The robot then released its weaponized tentacles from its back upon Barry, trying to overwhelm him with more attacks than he could process. But even so, the spirit within Barry’s body continued to fight back with pure enjoyment on his face. “What a classic move I see; too bad it won’t work, little man.”

  With complete concentration and a sense of thrill flowing in his body, Barry counterattacked against the numerous weapons by unleashing rapid fired jabs of his trident. Each attack that struck, destroyed every single tentacle. McGuinness, Puck, and even Barry himself were surprised to see how swiftly they were eliminated. He would then rotate his trident around full circle, carrying the momentum until he released it all with a thrusting attack that landed center mass of the robot. It was so strong that it even staggered the robot back a bit, embedding a medium-sized crack in its armor.

  As Puck was watching Barry fight, he felt like there was something different about Barry now compared to how he was a while ago. He didn’t know that it was Thalia’s brother that was temporarily in control during the time, but he still thought it was cool how Barry was fighting back now stronger than ever.

  The dwarf was sensing the same thing, he found it odd how Barry was suddenly so much stronger than he was before. Nerves were crawling up his spine, believing that one of his greatest creations was going to lose to a mere contestant. ‘This can’t be happening!’ McGuinness panicked.

  “I think that’s enough warming up for me. Oh! How about I try out this beauty’s special feature while I’m in control.” The spirit spoke, deciding to activate the trident’s special effect. Water manifested and swirled around the trident, empowering the first three attacks made with it. The spirit began chanting as he orchestrated his final few moves that would end the fight.

  “Forward, always true, never turning back…” McGuinness tried going for a swing with his glaive, but was retaliated with what seemed to be an effortless parry by Barry, which destroyed both the glaive and the only arm of the robot entirely.

  “Pressing on, despite the great dangers one faces, is something we all should strive to achieve…” The robot tried kicking Barry but was quickly dismembered with a single strike from his empowered trident, now making it barely stand on one leg alone without any arms.

  “And like a righteous spear of valor, we all…” Both laser cannons from the robot began to charge up, using every last remaining mana within its reserves to kill Barry. “CAN PIERCE THROUGH THE ABYSS!”

  A spiral of water whirled around the trident, as it had reached the final stage of its skill ability. And before McGuinness’s robot could fire off any of its cannons, the spirit twirled and whipped the spear around his body for a moment, then poured all his power and passion into his last move that would disable the robot for good. With the combined strength of the weapon’s special skill and the spirit’s formidable skill/technique, the robot’s chest not only punctured a wide-gaping hole from the front, but also throughout the back. The mana core that powered the robot blew up entirely, ending the metal beast once and for all.

  There was a mix range of emotions festering inside McGuinness, in dismay and anger of what he had just witnessed. Puck, on the other hand, was cheerful and amazed at how easily Barry defeated the robot. ‘Well, that was fun.’ The spirit commented with a smile on his face. ‘Think you can reenact every single thing I did?’ He asked, referring to Barry.

  ‘Uh…maybe?’ Barry was still taken aback by how much potential a spear could have, being able to penetrate a large hole through solid metal was unbelievable to him. ‘I’ll practice later, but for now we need to get out of here. Now.’

  The spirit agreed, giving Barry back control of his body. Exhaustion was the first feeling that Barry had when he returned after being given a demonstration. He assumed that it was like the wind blade technique that Thalia taught him, this would be the next move in his arsenal that would require him getting used to.

  Barry looked up to confirm if Abe was still flying above, observing his battle, which still remained true. Everyone then felt the airship’s inclination tilt so much that they had a difficult time maintaining their balance. He then rushed towards Puck with an arm sticking out towards him. “Grab on, Puck! We’re getting out of here!”

  The Kobold took Barry’s hand and held on to his back as they continued rushing towards the edge of the airship to jump off.

  “Hey! Where are you going!? I will have my revenge, you damn pests!” McGuinness shouted at the top of his lungs before seeing them vault over the edge. He would sight what seemed like specters of a human riding on a griffin taking a dive. Moments later, the dwarf saw Barry and Puck picked up on the back of the griffin.

  McGuinness started throwing a tantrum for a bit before having to grab on to something to maintain his composure because of the tilting ship. “Grrr! Fine! It’s time that I go as well…Barry and Puck, huh? Next time those two won’t be so lucky.” He then started evacuating his beloved airship.

  After getting a lift from Abe, the three looked back at the airship. The direction of travel it had taken was over the vast ocean, out of the island. They then later witnessed it crashing deep into the ocean before erupting into an explosion. All of its debris would continue to sink in the deep waters.

  However, that would not be the only thing they saw because the next occurrence that happened was something tiny in the distance. Barry increased his vision’s focus and zoomed in on the object, a bit surprised to see what it was. “Yup…I was kind of hoping that would be the last time we’d see him. Guess he had his own escape planned out…”

  In the distance, Barry identified that it was McGuinness flying in what was a small X-winged aircraft with an orb in the center where McGuinness was piloting the machine. It went off flying in the opposite direction.

  “So how was your tour on that whatchamacallit? That fight you two had looked pretty intense against that…er…metal golem?” Abe asked, unsure what the term would be to describe the intriguing things that he saw.

  Barry replied, recalling their visit. “That ‘aircraft’ was like a maze, filled with a bunch of metal heads. And that giant ‘robot’ you saw me fight was a pain in the ass. Everything there was made by some nut job called McGuinness, and he spilled a lot of useful information I probably shouldn’t be knowing. Regardless, I’m fucking exhausted.”

  “Well, both of you sit back and enjoy the view. Our friends made it out of that place just fine as well by using some of those inventions to escape.” Abe informed them, pointing at a part of the island where there was a beach. “Should have landed near there, last I saw.”

  Puck looked at the blue prism in his hands and back at Barry, he thought that he had lost Barry to McGuinness but was glad that was not the case. He tapped on Barry’s shoulder, getting his attention, before handing off the prism to him with a smile. “We did it, Barry! We got blue rock!”

  Rubbing the mesmerizing blue prism in his hands, feeling one step closer to completing the main quest, Barry looked back and rubbed Puck’s head generously. “Damn right, good job getting it Puck. I’m sure you were scared for me, but like I told you, I’m pretty stubborn to keep down. Am I right?”

  “Yeah! You rock Barry!” Puck cheered out loud with his arms in the air.

  The three then soared through the skies, diving below to regroup with the others. From there they will plan their next form of action.