Murkel looked at the shadow he could see by his side on the floor. He could tell someone was incredibly close, but by the shadow alone, it was impossible to say if what was approaching him was human. The words of Amir struck him deeply, and immediately Murkel spun around. He did so with his fist spinning along with him, and a string of visual Dark Qi lingered in the air.
Two arms were raised, and the hit had been stopped and blocked. Murkel was slightly surprised that his attack could be stopped, but the fact that it took two arms to block his single attack meant he still had an arm free to finish off the person who dared to creep up behind him.
When he threw a second fist, though, Murkel saw another two hands grabbing on and stopping them. He paused as he looked at what was in front of him because it didn't quite make any sense at all. Looking into the person's face, there were features of the young warrior named Dame. His forehead and his eyes, they were the same, but the mouth was that of a creature.
His mouth was opened wide and detached with two strange claw-like substances. This was where the string-like substance, similar to that of a spider, would come out from. Murkel had already seen this before when the young warrior had transformed, but now there was even more that had changed about the man. For one, the amount of limbs the person had.
Coming out from his back, there seemed to be six extra limbs in total, three arms on either side, and with the two regular hands, that meant there were now eight arms right in front of him.
Many didn't have much experience fighting against Hybrids, and it was the same for Murkel. He didn't even know this was possible. Both of his arms that had been stopped had been stopped by the extra limbs, and before he knew it, two fists with the special gauntlets struck Murkel right in the chest, pushing him back.
Immediately, Dame continued to charge forward. First, he threw two fists before even reaching the man; the Qi blasts were there and were blocked by Murkel, who was still recovering. Just before Murkel could even attack, white substance wrapped around one of his arms, and two of the limbs from Dame ended up pulling the arm away, forcing it to avoid a strike.
His other limbs were concentrated on blocking, allowing for a pounding to proceed from above by the several arms. They were bashing into Murkel's head left and right. When Murkel tried to break free or move away, the string substance would come out from Dame's mouth and wrap around Murkel, pulling him back. Before he could break free, another flurry of punches was delivered by Dame.
'The extra strength that a Hybrid brings, the skills and Qi of the Demonic Faction, and also the special items made by the Dark Magus, along with the extra powers from my new form. With all of these things, I will beat you and start my own legacy!' Dame thought as he continued to fight.
Thinking back, before he had been turned into a Hybrid, he could never imagine doing such things. His test was to go against one of the Clan Heads in the Demonic Faction. Using all of his strength, just like he was using now, he was able to defeat a person who would have taken him perhaps a century to beat, yet he had succeeded back then and learned the true power that Hybrids had.
"Now I will do the same!" Dame wrapped around the waist of Murkel and pulled him forward up in the air. He had all of his arms ready and started to punch Murkel one hit after the other.
Alba had gone to Amir's side to help him. She felt at fault for him taking quite a hit in the first place.
"Don't worry too much about me," Amir said. "I will heal fairly quickly, just be ready to help him when you can."
Seeing the situation, she wasn't sure she could, though.
Those watching in the Light Faction were shocked by the turnaround. They were sure in their minds that the Dark Faction had the upper hand. It was practically a war with the strongest of the Dark Faction against a bunch of students and people they had never seen or who had yet to build up their legacy.
Now it felt like they were watching several legacies in the making, a new era that would occur in the world of Pagna.
"I don't understand, are Hybrids really that strong?" Hannah asked.
"I'm not sure about Hybrids in general," Beatrix replied. "But the fact that he has extra limbs while fighting will be a huge advantage. In our Pagna martial arts, there are only so many points of attack we have."
"Now there are many points of attack that Dame can choose from. It would be like going against four warriors at once, all as skilled as the last, and from what I know about Hybrids, their physical strength is nothing to laugh at."
"There is more to that," Ricar added. "Firstly, although their physical strength is strong, it is just that, physical strength and not one's Qi. If you watch closely, he can only channel Qi from his real limbs rather than those extended limbs, but the strength of the Hybrid is helping him out."
"The Light Faction has done some studying into Hybrids, and we have learned that there are two types."
"There are those that people are more aware of, those that seem to be combined with the body of a beast. They look as if their bodies have melded with a beast itself. Then there are those that we have seen today. They can look like a regular human yet are able to transform their bodies and bring out their inner beast from them."
"As for the latter, we have also been able to do further research into these things. The latter Hybrids, when they transform, seem to have different colors on their body. You see the black substance that forms up the outside of his body. Depending on these colors, the difficulty of the hybrid or strength is increased."
"White-colored Hybrids seems to be the weakest, forming its body of strange substances. I don't know if you saw, but on Mantis, when parts of his body were forming, a strange white color had appeared."
"Black substance seems to be rare, and as we can tell today, quite strong. Although we have no idea why there are differences in strength between these since we don't know how these Hybrids are created."
"And is there another color?" Beatrix asked. "You were speaking as if there was."
"There is a red-colored Hybrid," Ricar answered. "Which has only been seen in the world of Pagna once."