Although Moloch and Jin tried to provoke King Baal into action, they really did not expect their opponent to respond to it. King Baal felt that they knew this was their only chance to fight him when he was not in his tip-top form.
Alas, as a King in the midst of battle, he could not ask for the opponent to come back tomorrow after he had a good night’s sleep. Hence, in order to at least bid some time, he purposely put on a grandiose manner by telling his imps to don his extra armour on while taking the spare time to recover.
On the flip side, Jin was actually a little flustered now that it worked too well. “You have something up your sleeve against him, right?” Jin asked Moloch who had already returned to Jin’s hoodie.
“What?! I thought you provoked him because you had some sort of edge against him!” Moloch retorted in the System’s channel.
“Huh?! I thought you had something in mind as well! Isn’t that partially the reason why we came to confront him?!”
“NO! I came with you because you needed a bait! That’s all! Otherwise, I would not have stuck myself out for this!”
“What the hell? Weren’t you the one who kept telling me that we would have to eventually go against King Baal?! We’ve been building defences all those weeks, but you had YEARS to come up with stuff!”
“Well, I DID, but only against King Baal’s army! If I had the power to take him out by myself, don’t you think I would have done so before you capture me? Besides, I thought that Master, you would be capable of fighting him… isn’t that why you wanted to go for this counterattack assault?!”
“My whole plan revolved around us beating him down like adventurers do against a Final Boss. Do you see any Pandawans around? How was I supposed to know he could just teleport them all away, leaving us alone!”
“Hey, this is the battlefield. You cannot blame me that things go south, but at least the System gave you that particular gift. Just use it!”
“That’s called a trump card for a reason! I can’t be using a trump card so quickly!”
“The Mass Teleportation cast earlier appears to have affected those send away. For the time being, it is not possible to bring the Pandawans back as reinforcement. System recommends User to use your so called ‘Trump card’ immediately. Statistically, there is no way User is able to defeat King Baal with his current Cultivation Grade.”
“And whose fault is it, that I keep having other things to do instead of cultivating?! Besides, someone once said I am growing a little too fast?”
“System has no recollection of saying such things.”
“What…” Jin suddenly felt an immense stare and he ‘woke’ up from their little game of shifting the blame.
“It seems like you are courting your death, human. Give me Moloch, and I will make it a painless one. Beg for your life, and I might even let you keep it.” King Baal laid out his demands as he pointed at the cotton toy hiding within Jin’s hoodie cap.
“That request does not sound very kingly. From your past actions, you have been rather dominant and assertive. What happened?” Jin questioned, and Moloch felt like killing him. He trusted Jin enough not hand him over, but did he have to provoke King Baal even more?!
“You mad?! What are you thinking about goading him further?”
“Would you prefer me to give you to him instead? We got to buy some time, and since he hasn’t attacked yet, a conversation seems to be our best choice, right?”
“Who the hell taught you this was any way to hold a conversation?!”
Moloch felt the urge to hit his master with something for being so incompetent in speech. “No wonder, you still don’t have any girlfriends at all despite being surrounded by girls around you!”
“Since when is this about me?!” Jin’s expression darkened in an instant because of his conversation with Moloch instead of King Baal, making the latter instinctively reach for his frog tongue-whip sword at his waist.
The rest of the Royal Guards knew how powerful their King was, but when Baal did that one small action, they suddenly picked their arms as well, as if they really needed to protect their King from Moloch and his human companion. Only when Baal realised his actions, he turned his head to the side and told the rest of the guards to stand down.
“This will be purely my fight. No one is to interfere! I will personally defeat the two of them and end this invasion.” He shouted, and the rest quietly acknowledged it.
“Oh boy. Now if we call others out to help, it will be considered as a dishonourable fight.” Moloch sighed in the System Channel.
“Since when does that matter? We already have Ayse and Weslie fighting against Kiva in a two on one match. I was ready to group against him, so if he decides to take on a handicap, I won’t mind.” Jin said until he caught a glimpse of the battlefield at his left. He was right about the fight having developed into an unfair situation… only the advantage now lay with Kiva.
The Archduke had been busy summoning more of his chimaera soldiers to pit against Jin’s scientists. The Sand Golem had merely been a defensive summon to protect him while his true powers came from his chimaeras.
“See! Even the enemy is fighting unfairly!”
“Normally, I’d agree. But this is different, Master. If we engage in a fight with the owner of the invading Dungeon Core, our own Dungeon Core will create a special engagement arena between the involved parties. If the System already had problems teleporting back the Pandawans, I doubt it will be able to circumvent that sacred arena. Nevertheless, even if we do manage to win against him, we can get him to back off.” Moloch explained while Jin placed his hand on Bam’s hilt.
“Involved parties, you said? Then so be it.” Jin smiled as he now looked directly at King Baal’s eyes. “We accept your challenge.”
Only then Moloch realised what Jin was talking about and gave a heavy sigh. “I hope the Dungeon Core recognises what you mean by the ‘involved parties’.”
“Why not?” Jin asked as he squatted a little and went into a battle stance as taught by Zeru.
“Very well.” King Baal relished hearing those few words from that human companion of Moloch. He believed it was all words and no strength to back up his talk, especially when there was no menacing aura coming from him.
With enough experience in the Dungeon World, he believed sometimes judging the book by its cover was more than sufficient. Even with his injury from the crown’s power, he mentally calculated that he would need less than 30 seconds fighting at his best to take him down and subsequently subdue Moloch.
“Alright, let’s do it,” Moloch said as he shouted a command aloud.
“Dungeon Core of Pandapolis. Both parties have accepted the duel!” Suddenly, a magical counter appeared right between King Baal and Jin, causing the ground to shake a little. Jin realised that the Dungeon Core was demarcating the fight area by lifting a piece of land up from the ground.
“Rules of engagement: To win, kill or force your opponent into submission. If your opponent is out of the ring for more than 10 seconds, you win. Ready? In 5, 4 , 3…”
