When Michelangelo, who was sent flying with the impact of the blow and then could stop by hitting the wall, reached the ground, all the torches in the area had lit up. The ceiling was still dark; even though Leonardo and those next to him could see where they were, they didn't have a command of the details on its surface.
Master Leonardo seemed to worry about his apprentice; the sound coming out exceeded the load a normal human could bear. Alis must have sensed the situation, as she appeared next to the young man in seconds; she was pouring the potions in her hand both into Michelangelo's mouth and onto his body.
Alis was the leader of one of the two Holy Sects that managed to survive on the Hell Realm. She had both equipment for spatial storage and potions for the situations Michelangelo experienced.
"You were like this in the past too. You managed to attract the flies to your scent, Leonardo!"
Seeing his apprentice being healed by Alis, Master Leonardo breathed a sigh of relief, but Fritz Todt continued to pressure him with his words.
"Yes, there have always been little flies around me, but among them, you were the smallest and the ugliest, my old friend! No matter how much you try to become a giant, in my eyes you are the same little thief!"
Master Leonardo was a polite man, but when his sore spot was pressed, he could put the other person in their place without losing his composure. Fritz Todt didn't speak; in response, the giant robot lifted one foot and moved it forward, and the ground tremor showed it could do this job instead of him.
"Let's see then, how do you plan to resist my invention, Leonardo?"
The right arm of the blond-haired man speaking from inside the head of the robot he created twitched slightly, and simultaneously the mechanical right arm rose into the air. Its palm was facing Leonardo and his group, but a careful person could see the target was somewhere else.
"It's time for a bug that should have died a long time ago to step off the stage!"
Metal rods surrounded by yellow elemental energy shot out of the opening hole. Each of them was slightly longer than two hand-spans, and in seconds they appeared in front of Michelangelo.
"Not while I am here!"
The wide area built underground was covered with metallic clinking sounds and then plunged into silence. The rods, strengthened with the earth element, which should have pierced Michelangelo, were hanging from the ceiling.
The orange light scattering from the torches hit them, making that part of the ceiling visible. When the matte black metal appeared, Leonardo's group also understood what the thing between the ground and them was. The texture, color, and feel of the ceiling were the same as the material in Michelangelo's limbs.
Then a breeze was felt in the enclosed area. When the cries of joy coming out when metal met metal reached their ears, a shadow was wandering around Fritz Todt's invention. The swords, one white, the other black, were nicking the bright gray-colored metal with each landing, but no one had yet seen them being able to cut it.
"A bug from the lack of civilization called the Hell Realm! How stupid is it of you to think you can damage my flawless invention with the things in your hand?"
The leader of the Machine Empire forces, not activating the energy shield, was practically conducting a field experiment. After seeing the precaution he took against Michelangelo worked, he was now testing the durability of the metal torso.
"The intensity of your blows is weak! As far as I understand, your trick is your speed and attack frequency; encountering my invention that doesn't have any weak points will bring your end."
Perhaps we were thinking wrong; Fritz Todt wasn't testing the durability of the metal, but the robot's defense feature against versatile attacks. We wouldn't be lying if we said he was successful; Alis, an expert in using the techniques of the Third Sheikh of the Holy Blood Cult, hadn't yet been able to inflict a considerable amount of damage.
"Let's see what you will do when I counter wind with wind?"
When Fritz Todt spoke, the metal plates on the robot's torso moved and grilles appeared. This was where the storm broke out; the power of the wind was so violent, its attitude so tyrannical that Alis had to be sent flying a few dozens of steps.
"To chase away the flies, one must speak the language they understand!"
Fritz Todt was having fun, but it was hard to say the same thing for the person whose hair turned completely black. Alis, after uniting her two coal-black swords in front of her, appeared in front of the grilles that sent her flying.
"Wind Domain; Black Void!"
Leaning the hilts of her swords against each other, Alis began to spin. She was like a small tornado appearing and disappearing, and she was slipping through the winds practically bursting from the giant robot's torso.
Her spin was accelerating every moment; that wasn't the most important point either, the green wind element energy was covered with black lines, and with every strike of the swords to the metal torso, a palm-sized piece broke off and flew away.
"She did it; she managed to damage the invention Fritz Todt boasted about so much!"
Holzmeister was shouting; if one of the Sand City residents could see him, they would be dead surprised. This state of the man, who always attracted attention with his secretive attitude and calm smile, was beyond belief.
"Nothing has happened yet! Look carefully; can you see the regeneration speed of the damaged parts?"
Alis was breaking off a palm-sized piece with every blow of hers, she had maintained the same pace for about five minutes, but the robot's torso stood intact. How could the structure, which should have melted away under normal conditions, sustain its existence?
The human-based robot in the duels taking place during the daytime was using the life force of the human inside it, and it was obvious this giant robot wasn't doing this, because if it were a structure operating with the same logic, Fritz Todt would have decomposed down to his smallest molecules long ago.
"He found it; he found the solution to the biggest deadlock!"
Leonardo's eyes shone, but the tone of voice he chose while speaking contradicted his bodily reaction. While his mind was celebrating what he realized, his body was crying lamenting.
"What happened? What did this man find the solution to?"
Michelangelo, coming to the brink of death with the blow he received at the beginning of the struggle, spoke. The first things he heard at the place he came to with limping steps forced him to do this. The color of a human could only turn this white in such a short time due to blood loss. Let alone the damage to his limbs, the wounds on the parts of his body not protected by metal couldn't be hidden by his clothes.
"Michelangelo, you can understand this best. You always say humans are fragile, unnecessarily complex, and cumbersome structures, and you boast about the functionality of your mechanical limbs, don't you?"
Master Leonardo spoke without looking at his apprentice standing a step behind him, but he was the target of his words. After explaining the ideas of the young man, whose limbs were replaced with mechanical parts, in a way the others could hear too, he continued intertwining his hands.
"Tell me my dear apprentice; could you activate two different element types at the same time in the mechanical arm you finally succeeded in making and tested on Chief Alyon? Let me even ask this, could you safely store two different element types together?"
While the cold winds blowing to protect from Alis's attacks passed over the group, Michelangelo raised his head and looked at the giant robot. Not like before, he was looking to understand things; since he didn't want to miss the smallest detail, he managed to watch the battle without blinking his eyes for a minute.
"Yes, my dear apprentice Michelangelo; this man has achieved the thing you or many of you ignored, perhaps rejected for certain reasons. He has managed to combine the human body, the most suitable vessel for the Elemental Energies in nature, with a mechanical robot.
Not a semiotic dependence or a master-slave relationship, he has practically united two different worlds in a single body. I say this with regret, but if they can produce more of these, the sole ruling power on the World of the Six Civilizations will be the Machine Empire!"