The pain radiated through his body like electricity, causing him to grit his teeth sharply. The last time he felt pain like this was when he faced the mauler, and he would have died if not for Kael's intervention.

And now he had been dealt great pain by a man-mauler, pain that was ravaging through his body and driving him to a point of near insanity.

He couldn't imagine how painful the hit would have been if it had landed fully, not absorbed at all. And even now that a whopping seventy percent had been absorbed, the remaining thirty was driving him insane.

The hit to that particular region of his body was now making him ache everywhere, his head throbbed, everything around him was filled with pain.

He raised his head slightly, looking at Mub, who now raised both of his axes up, not to hit him but just to bask in the praises coming from the crowd. They chanted his name:

"Mub!"

"Mub!"

"MUUUUB!"

Mub was letting his moment of victory look dramatic. He would have hit him again, but he wanted Tatehan to feel the pain.

Mub wasn't someone who would just kill his enemy quickly, although when he tore Drexon apart, he had done so very quickly, and that was because he couldn't control his rage and vengeance.

Normally there is no pain in a quick death. Death would simply happen and the person would be gone. If there was pain, it would be very little.

But a painful death was what Mub truly enjoyed, one where he would savor every moment, watching his victim gasp for breath, for life, while he brutally damaged them.

He only did this if he wanted his victim to really suffer before dying; otherwise, he'd be ripping the person to shreds immediately.

But Tatehan was a foul enemy to him, someone who had almost ruined his reputation with that insult, and now Mub was taking vengeance, in a painful way.

\Shit… how impactful was that hit./ Tatehan heard Riven say.

"I'm losing my mind from the pain," Tatehan said very softly, below a whisper.

/I'm surprised you're still alive,/ Riven said. /Perhaps a special ability…/

Tatehan said nothing as he tried to catch his breath. His partial regeneration was slowly doing its work, and if he had broken a bone, the process of healing it had already started.

"No one!" Mub shouted. "No one has ever challenged me to a duel or even fought me and walked out alive!"

He struck the axes together.

"I fear nobody…" he paused and then bowed, facing the direction of the commander. "Except the almighty commander!"

He now turned to Tatehan, pointing an axe at him.

"C'mon! Get up and fight," he roared. "Let's give these people a good show. Die a noble death, Mauler Slayer. Die trying."

Tatehan slowly rose to his feet, lingering on his knees for much longer before he stood up. He looked Mub in the face, seeing the monster of a man he was facing.

How was the crowd even okay seeing a man-monster talk to them like this? Mub was now hideous as hell.

Tatehan honestly panicked at this point. He didn't want to die. He hadn't flown the spaceship, he had not explored the cities of Mars, he had not heard good music for a long time, nor had he watched a movie since coming to Mars. He had lots of things he hadn't done on this planet.

He originally thought Mars was just a wasteland, filled with nightmarish monsters and creatures, a place where humans lived in makeshift shelters, huts, and caves.

He never knew Mars was this civilized.

He was in civilization! He was right there, right now, and what was his life about to become—a past tense?

He should have never doubted that Mars would be this civilized to live in. One of the first things he heard while arriving here, back at the spaceship, was that Mars had been terraformed to meet human conditions. He didn't know how, but he was more than a century in the future, with neon-lit cities, crazy motorcycles and vehicles, and flying cars.

And he wanted to die?

He wanted to die to a man-monster in front of a crowd, people who had whispered his name in reverence and praised him?

He was about to die in front of the guards who looked at him in high esteem and even took the time to fear him.

Tatehan was about to be brutally beaten to death in front of them all by a monster-man.

He could not expect a noble death from Mub, like the ones from the Knight Brutenecks. The Knight Brutenecks killed nobly, with grace and precision, but he couldn't expect that from Mub.

Mub would kill him like a lunatic Carapace Bruteneck would, but with some touches from the Hexapod Mauler.

Tatehan looked at the commander. He could see some hints of worry on her face. Did she really want him to win? Did she secretly, in her heart, hope that he came out on top?

Tatehan summoned the sword in one hand and held both of the chakrams in the other.

He didn't seem to know how he knew this, but he whispered:

"Audio output: mute."

The armor seemed to respond, and he heard a low hum and a system in the armor shutting down. With it down, Tatehan tested it by shouting very loud:

"HAAAAAA!"

But no one responded, not even Mub standing in front of him.

Tatehan nodded. It worked. No sound would be able to go out.

He said to Riven through the earbud-like device:

"Predict Mub's movements for me but don't tell me what to do."

/Ok,/ Riven replied.

Tatehan thought back to when he first awakened his first ability. The description was:

[The ability to manipulate gravitational forces within a localized field. User can increase or decrease gravitational pull on objects and living beings, affecting their weight, movement, and trajectory. Advanced applications include creating gravitational wells, anti-gravity fields, and gravitational crushing forces.]

He was on to something here…

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