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"Go and face them."
It was midday. The clouds slowly began to clear from the sky, and something bright drifted down.
A little dust rose, partly hiding the silhouette of a man. When it settled, he turned out to be a cyborg, his gaze showing nothing but a palpable unease.
He raised his eyes and set off toward his main objective: defeating the heroes. On the way, he didn't hesitate to kill anyone who crossed his path and failed to step aside.
A young man bumped into his chest. Without a second thought, the cyborg seized his head and ripped it off. A splash of liquid stained his face, and a robotic hand unfolded from his back and wiped it clean with a napkin, as if he had just finished dinner.
His gaze settled on a distant laboratory. He pointed his fingers toward it and fired a powerful, glowing projectile.
"Nothing gets destroyed in this place," the scientist said, pressing a button.
An energy shield rose around the laboratory, and the projectile slammed into it. The force was so great that it pulverized the nearby cities, leaving nothing behind.
The scientist watched the destruction on a screen.
*Lives were lost. I won't let you take any more of them just to kill the heroes,* he thought.
Without hesitation, he hid multiple cities from various countries underground.
The scientist turned to the protagonists and pointed at the door, telling them to go face the threat.
Sone was the first out, his expression grave and colder than usual. Kiro, Worh, and Eduin followed right behind him, while the hybrid stayed in the laboratory.
When Sone arrived, he saw the cyborg. Their eyes met, and neither of them said a word.
A golden aura began to wrap around Sone, and he launched himself at the cyborg at once. But a sudden blow struck him and slammed him hard into the ground. Sone looked up. Boss 25 had arrived, and it was instantly clear that the cyborg was Boss 24.
Boss 25 had a robotic eye and a red weapon on his arm.
Sone's breathing turned ragged. Facing both bosses would mean defeat. He knew that a single boss had been enough to leave his friends nearly dead.
Sone did a backflip and curled into ball form the instant he touched the ground, gathering all his momentum.
The cyborg analyzed the technique and stored it in his memory.
"Greetings, Sone. I just want you to know that I stole two 'strike' techniques from Kiro," Boss 25 said.
Kiro and the others arrived and took up positions beside Sone.
Boss 24 looked each of them over, raised his hand, and fired a blast of bluish energy.
Sone hurled himself forward in ball form and deflected the blast into the sky, but an explosion instantly knocked him back.
His body plowed through part of the ground. Kiro didn't hesitate. He lunged at Boss 25 and landed a punch, but, as expected, it did nothing.
"You already fought someone below my rank and couldn't even hurt him. Did you really think you could do anything to me?" the boss asked, without so much as turning to look at him.
*Damn it, I think I'm going to have to force my transformation,* Kiro thought.
He quickly backed away from the boss, only to be hit by a serious strike, his own.
Kiro was blasted backward, digging in his heels and narrowing his eyes. He knew that technique was his.
"I stole your technique while you were cooking, after you all beat Boss 15, who, if you ask me, could have been far more dangerous, but oh well, he died a long time ago," Boss 25 explained.
A mark shaped like a sun appeared on his cheek, and without hesitation he fired a fire attack at Kiro, launching him into the air. The protagonist shielded himself with his arms.
Boss 24 turned his gaze to the sky, but a slash struck his back, followed by a punch to his side. His feet slid a few centimeters sideways as he turned toward the protagonists. Eduin stood with his sword in hand and Worh with his breathing under control, both of them grim. This time they would coordinate better.
Boss 24 took a step toward them. Instantly, Sone in ball form slammed into his back. Boss 24 reacted quickly, but a flurry of punches and slashes from Worh and Eduin met him.
Boss 25 turned around, but Sone had started gathering more of his power. The golden aura grew brighter and more intense, 80% of his transformation wrapping around him. He held on at that stage and launched himself at the boss.
When Sone got close, the boss threw a flurry of consecutive punches, and Sone instantly shifted into ball form. The boss felt tiny needles prick his fists. Sone was knocked backward, but with inhuman agility he recovered his balance, pressed his hands together, and in that same microsecond fired a continuous beam of yellowish energy. It slammed into the boss and drove him back, his feet sinking deeper into the ground the longer the beam kept hitting him.
Meanwhile, Boss 24 took a clean punch from Worh that threw up a sudden cloud of dust, but he reacted in time and hit Worh in the abdomen.
Worh spat blood as his body hit the ground and rolled like a wheel at top speed. Eduin took advantage of the distraction to hurl a hundred slashes at him in two seconds. They struck the boss, and his cyborg half instantly raised an artificial shield to protect him.
The boss, faster than Eduin, hit his arm with an ice attack and broke it. The boy stepped back, but he was seized by the throat and spun around. At that moment Kiro came back and threw a punch, not realizing he had hit Eduin.
The punch knocked the wind out of Eduin, and Kiro's eyes went wide. The boss threw Eduin into the protagonist, shoving them both backward.
Eduin drew a deep breath, trying to steady himself. Kiro gave him an apologetic look, but then Boss 25 appeared in front of them and curled into a ball, just like Sone.
The attack hit them...
The air around them compressed.
Kiro and Eduin bled without even realizing it, time around them seeming to blur.
Worh reached the boss's side and landed a punch to his face. It didn't move him, but it made him turn his attention to Worh at once. Boss 24 grabbed Worh's wrist and yanked him in. When Worh was close, the enemy opened his mouth.
A massive metallic screech filled Worh's ears. He tried to break free, but his body weakened and he dropped to his knees, his wrist still held firmly.
His ears began to bleed, his mind overloading. Everything turned suffocating. He started to hallucinate, his brain searching desperately for anything that could stop the noise. Inside him, his ribs began to crack.
Eduin reacted at once, raining slashes on the boss with his good arm.
The enemy turned his gaze, and the sound hit Eduin with greater force and sent him flying.
He landed far from the scene, his brain hemorrhaging, but he drove his sword into his own kidney, through the skin, impaling himself. He waited for something to happen, but at first nothing did.
*DAMN IT, IT'S WORKING! I don't care if it isn't stable yet,* Eduin thought.
Dark energy engulfed his body, then faded. His face stretched into a wide grin, and his pupils turned red. His berserker transformation was complete, and it healed his broken arm.
Boss 24 noticed quickly, but Eduin appeared above him and rained slashes down on him. The boss stopped making the sound, gritting his teeth. The slashes left only superficial marks on his cyborg body.
Boss 25 finally broke through Sone's continuous beam, and Sone stared him down.
Slowly he closed his eyes and forced his body to complete the transformation. A powerful golden energy wrapped around him completely, then faded, and he had become Super Sone.
Far away, a bright white cylinder of light shot into the sky. Kiro had forced his transformation. The ring that used to be invisible around his wrist was now visible, and it fell to the ground with a dull thud.
Bosses 25 and 24 turned their gaze toward the protagonist. His sky-blue eyes had deepened to a medium-dark blue, and his pupils were yellow. A bluish mark circled his left wrist. He had transformed again, a second time. His intense gaze fell on the bosses, and he clenched his fists.
The real battle was about to begin...