“Taste, drink some intangibility blood and run south until you reach a town, when you get there look for the captain and tell her what’s happening, got it?!” Lawrence said loudly while looking at the enemy.

“Ye-yeah, okay,” replied Taste in a nervous voice as he opened a pouch on the side of his belt.

“Forge! Wall, now!” Lawrence yelled.

Rusty, who was looking at Taste, looked forward to see the man in front of them surrounded by a large group of floating icicles. The icicles launched at their group with such a high velocity that Rusty was only able to put up a wall in front of them within a split second before they hit the group. As the icicles hit the wall each one making a large smashing noise as they hit the wall, leaving large dents, Rusty’s right hand, which was on the outside of the group was struck by something hard enough for Rusty to cry out in pain, as Rusty clutched his hand in pain he reabsorbed the wall he had put out moments before. Rusty looked behind at the ice wall to see a large icicle impaled on the wall. Positive the icicle was what hit his hand, Rusty was quite thankful for the blood gauntlet on his hand, which was the reason he still had said hand.

“Blocked that one too eh?” Said the man trying to kill them, “That’s fine, it just means that this will be more fun.” The man then proceeded to start laughing coldly for a few seconds, which eventually turned into him laughing hysterically for an even longer amount of time, for Rusty it was a strange sight.

“I don’t think Taste knows what way South is,” said Lawrence to Rusty’s left, “that idiot went North, dammit!”

Rusty looked to his left to see that Taste wasn’t there anymore.

“Rusty, I want you to put up another wall and wait for my signal, I’m going in,” Lawrence said as he began to walk forward while Rusty put up a blood shield in front of himself with a peephole so he could watch.

“Oh, so you’re approaching me? That makes this a bit easier,” The man said as icicles formed around him much faster than before and fired at Lawrence. Lawrence managed to dodge the icicles, although one ended up cutting his cheek and was now dripping blood, Rusty was pretty sure that Lawrence had let that one hit on purpose.

“Rather sly for a barbarian, but let's see if you can dodge this wave!” The man said as a large amount of smaller icicles formed around, “If I can’t hit you with the big ones then I’ll hit you with the smaller ones, death by a thousand cuts,” he said with a crazed smile as he sent the icicles around him flying at Lawrence who’s limbs began to fold in on his body and eventually disappearing into a single drop of falling blood which Rusty didn’t see hit the ground as he covered his peek hole so that the smaller icicles wouldn’t fly through it and stab him in the eye. After the icicles hit the wall Rusty reopened the peephole to see the man walking towards Rusty’s wall. After the man was halfway to his wall Rusty started to panic wondering if Lawrence had abandoned him, when an arm only a meter behind the man shot out of the ground into the air with his hands covered in blood.

“Hey!” Lawrence shouted from behind the man. As the man turned around to face Lawrence he was slapped in the face by Lawrence’s bloody hand, which caused him to take a step back, the impact of the slap echoing through the town. After the slap, Lawrence landed on the ground and went in for another attack.

The man raised his sword and shouted, “Enough!” as the sword glowed a bright blue and a giant sharp spear looking scorpion tail made of ice shot out of the hilt of the sword along the blade and headed straight for Lawrence's chest to which he managed to dodge with his body to the right, but his left forearm wasn’t so lucky as it was torn off as the tail passed him. Lawrence didn’t even have a second to cry out in pain as the tail slapped him hard through the window of the building to the right. Based on the velocity that Lawrence was sent flying through the window, Rusty wasn’t even sure if he would still be alive after that, not even mentioning his torn off forearm.

“Now then,” said the man turning to Rusty’s wall with a menacing look, “One down, two to go.”

Rusty at that moment realized three things, the first was that he was probably gonna die, the second was that he was thoroughly scarred and third, was that he had actually had come up with a plan. As the man continued to approach Rusty’s hiding spot, Rusty checked his pockets for something that he had been saving for later, after not finding it in any of his pockets Rusty remembered that he had put it beside his blood bottle and grabbed a small vial of blood from his belt, took off its lid and gulped down the blood within. As he drank the blood, Rusty retracted his wall into his gauntlet and then formed knives with which he cut his own skin. As blood came out of the multiple cuts at a rapid pace Rusty sent the blood from his gauntlet around his body and over his clothes and armor, although not his fur coat, and made himself a suit of solid blood armor, with the blood coming from his cuts adding to the overall volume and density of the armor. When Rusty had cut himself and started creating his suit, the man who had been approaching Rusty stopped walking in his tracks.

“Oh, a power-up eh? Sounds like fun, I’ll allow it,” he said with a slight maniacal laugh.

After a few seconds, Rusty had finished making his armor, even though Rusty was still making cuts across his body because he was still under the effects of donor's blood which was still adding to the density of the armor. Rusty didn’t care about the design of the armor so it all looked pretty basic, it simply looked like a lighter crimson variant of the armor he had seen the guards wearing at garrison A in West-Rixon.

The man raised his sword and formed a large amount of smaller icicles around himself as he had done when Lawrence had been approaching him, “Let’s begin,” said the man as he lowered his sword and the icicles went flying. Rusty closed off the visor of his helmet and started walking forwards, taking the icicles head-on, after two steps the last icicle shattered on his armor and Rusty reopened his visor. Rusty reeled his arm back then shot it forward and extending and enlarging the glove of his armor at the man, but moments before grabbing him the man's sword produced the ice spear-like tail that had thrashed Lawrence which proceeded to hit Rusty’s blood hand, but because the hand itself was solid with the line connecting it to Rusty’s hand being the liquid, the tail wasn’t able to destroy it heads on, but as the man jumped backward to put some distance between himself and the hand the tail frighteningly quickly smashed down on the and forcing it to become embedded in the ground.

"Is that the best that you ca-" Suddenly the man stopped his words as he felt a sharp pain in his right shoulder. Although he didn't stop his words because of the pain, as it was a feeling that had left him long ago. The man had stopped his words out of pure anger out of the fact that he would let his guard down while an enemy was still alive in front of him.

When the man had looked to his right shoulder to see what had caused the pain he had found that there was a crimson spike protruding from the large hand that he had slammed into the ground.

"Fek, I missed," Rusty whispered to himself, "I'm not gonna get him with something like that again, dammit!" He said as he tried to manipulate the blood spike in the man's arm through to his vital organs but the man's seemingly living sword shattered the spike into pieces, severing Rusty's connection with it. In a last-ditch attempt to make use of the blood hand near the enemy, Rusty turned the hand into a liquid then sent several solid spikes from it to attack the man, but the man's living sword shattered each and every spike into pieces, after which Rusty retracted all the remaining connected blood that he could.

"I'm getting tired of these games you barbarian," the man shouted towards Rusty in anger, "I think it's time I gave you a taste of my true power."

The man raised his arms as a large sculpture made of ice began to form above the man's head, which after two seconds turned into the head of a dragon. Rusty had never seen an actual dragon before as it was one of the creatures that had gone extinct after the great altering, but Rusty had seen enough drawing's of them to know that the sculpture above the man's head was definitely that of a dragon. As the man lowered his arms the ice dragon head began to fly at Rusty at an incredible speed. Rusty quickly manipulated hi boots and sent himself into the air, several meters above the dragons head. As Rusty extended his gauntlets so that he could give himself a controlled landing, he glanced behind himself to see the dragon head once again flying towards him.

"Fuck!" Rusty shouted as he sped towards the ground thanks to his gauntlets, narrowly avoiding the dragon head. As Rusty hit the ground hard, even though his legs were not in pain from the force of the landing, he looked up to see the dragon head that should've been flying into the distance turning around and coming at him once more.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Rusty said aloud as the man responsible simply laughed at the situation. With barely any time to respond Rusty made a giant blood hand in front of him and as the dragon head collided with the hand, Rusty spun the hand around and threw the head at the man who was still laughing. Just before the dragon head hit the man he looked up in surprise, but not defeat and the dragon head shattered into snow before it hit him.

"This just got interesting," the man said, as Rusty took a step back, feeling as though he had already been defeated.