Blaze vs Rhino

"How am I meant to fight this beast!" Mako shouted out but was muffled by the cheers of the crowd as the giant mutated beast snarled at him.

Mako had no choice as all he could do at this point was to make sure that he didn't get a direct hit from him which would most likely be the end for him as his Fortitude was still locked and didn't have any points.

Rhino slowly started to walk toward Mako with each step causing the ground to quake as Mako just took a defensive stance and looked for the opportunity to escape. According to the system, this was a fight that Mako couldn't win so in his head he looked for opportunities to get knocked by his attack so that the fight would end.

Rhino arrived in front of Mako and before even Mako could blink, a fist bigger than his entire head was headed for his chest at lightning-fast speeds. Using Phantom Shift, Mako was successfully able to dodge Rhino's punch which completely obliterated the concrete floor behind him into small pieces.

The crowd and Rhino were both surprised to see that Mako was agile enough to evade his blow as in all of his previous matches, Rhino only had to punch once or twice in his partial transformation form and he would easily knock out his opponent leaving them on the verge of death.

Rhino had only utilized his partial transformation skill in all of his previous matches to conserve energy but now that it was the final match, he decided it was time to go all out and reveal his trump card right off the bat which was his complete transformation.

The only reason that Mako was able to dodge the punch was that he had a boost in perception which was enough to detect the punch before it came so Mako could use Phantom Shift in time. Now seeing that Rhino was stunned by his Phantom skill, Mako started to conjure fireball after fireball and started chucking them toward Rhino while skidding backward to the other side of the ring.

Rhino quickly recovered from the shock and confusion as from his point of view, he had hit Mako, but then that image of him disappeared into thin air.

Rhino started bolting towards Mako while all the fireballs made contact with his body causing small explosions and faint burn marks to appear on his skin but he was still unaffected by them as his speed didn't waver for a single moment. In only a few moments, he was on top of Mako again as he once again threw out a punch toward him.

Mako decided to use Phantom Shift again to dodge the punch but what he didn't expect was that Rhino was able to adapt extremely fast and instead of throwing a single punch, he threw out a barrage of punches which made contact with Mako as soon as he reappeared from his Phantom Shift.

*BOOM!* *CRACK!*

Bone-cracking sounds resounded in the arena as Mako was launched to the other side of the arena with a fountain of blood leaking from his mouth. A single punch that made contact with Mako was able to cause many external injuries and bones to fracture and crack.

Mako's almost lifeless body limped across to the corner of the ring while the crowd once again started to cheer wildly. It was taking all his energy just to breathe air as multiple notifications kept on ringing in his ears causing a massive headache.

[-180 HP]

[User has broken their Skull, 8 Ribs, Left Femur, and Pelvic Girdle,...]

[User has multiple sources of internal bleeding]

[Emergency healing has been activated]

[Injuries too great for Emergency healing]

[Find external medical assistance quickly]

[User will lose an additional 1HP per minute due to internal bleeding]

[Estimated time till death: 20 minutes]

Mako could barely get his thoughts straight as he gazed at the system notification and then at Rhino who was charging toward him again with the intent to finish him off.

Mako stared at Rhino as he thought these were his final moments in life as he had blown his once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by being overconfident. As Rhino approached Mako with intense bloodlust oozing out of him Mako closed his eyes as if he had accepted his fate when suddenly he remember the vow he made to his great grandfather.

He had made a vow on the day he had discovered the system and learned of his family's sacrifices and vowed to continue on their path to bring peace wherever they went.

'I can't let it end here!' Mako yelled at himself as his eyes opened again only to see Rhino inches away from him.

Gritting his teeth Mako used one of his broken arms to conjure a fireball and proceeded to throw it at himself.

The crowd, the commentators, and Rhino himself were shocked to see this unexpected and sudden move as they thought he was trying to kill himself rather than die at the hands of Rhino.

Although the fireball did cause some damage; however, since he was the one that conjured it, it didn't have that big of an effect other than knocking his body a few feet to the side and causing smoke to rise.

This was all part of Mako's plan as what the others didn't see was that Mako had secretly used the smoke as cover to open his inventory and eat two High Tier Healing Pills which instantly took effect and started to mend his bones and stop his bleeding, but they were still going to take an hour to finish which Mako didn't have as the smoke had already cleared and Rhino was once again running towards him.

[*SYSTEM OVERRIDE*]

[Do you wish to instantly use the effects of the (2) High Tier Healing Pills?]

[Cost: 250 Energy]

[YES/NO]

Without even thinking about it Mako selected 'YES' and felt a moment of weakness as the energy was sapped out of him and then a cool and refreshing feeling which was the instant recovery of his body to its peak state.

Just as Mako's healing was complete, Rhino arrived in front of him with one of his legs up in the air intending to squash Mako into tomato paste.

Using Phantom Shift, Mako was able to dodge Rhino's attack and appear right behind him.

The commentators and the spectators were speechless as they couldn't fandom how Mako was able to recover so quickly and continue to dodge Rhino's assault.

Rhino was completely enraged at this point as he didn't expect it would take this long to finish off a simple fire ability user and now he was taking it personally.

Turning around Rhino saw that Mako was crouching with his hands planted on the ground and before he could take another step.

[Flame Pillar has been activated]

An inferno of flames erupted from underneath Rhino's feet as it was the first time the crowd got to see him get hurt. A painful roar came out of his mouth as he endured the pain for the coming few seconds while Mako continued to back away as far as possible.

As soon as the time for the Flame Pillar was over, the flames disappeared and Rhino was still standing although it looked like he was hurt this time as he was breathing heavily and steam and smoke were coming off his body.

"BLAZE!" Rhino yelled angrily as he was done playing around and was charging at Mako at full speed.

During the time Rhino was dealing with the flame pillar, Mako used another Boost pill to increase his Perception to 55 and also took a High Tier Rejuvenating Pill to recover a lot of the energy that he had just spent.

The reason for him to do this so secretly was that any type of pill or power weapon was strictly not allowed as before Mako went to participate in the battle royal, they had him scanned three different times to make sure he didn't have anything that would give him an unfair advantage.

However, what they didn't expect was that Mako would be able to store items in his inventory safe from any kind of scans or searches.

Now that his Perception was over the fifty mark, Mako was able to sense a lot of things from every direction almost everything began to move in slow motion.

Rhino rained down a barrage of punches, but this time Mako didn't make use of Phantom Shift right away as he was just using his Perception and Agility to dodge the incoming attacks.

Speechless was not even a word that could be used to describe the faces of the commentators and the spectators as they watched with pure awe as Mako dodged every single one of Rhino's punches in a fluid motion that was almost mesmerizing to watch.

For the next five minutes, Rhino wasn't able to land a single punch on Mako as he continued to dodge everything whilst making use of Fireball, Flame wheel, Phantom punch, and Phantom Kick every once in a while to deal a bit of damage. Since Mako's perception was very high, he began to notice that Rhino's attack speed as well as his size was reducing.

Within a few minutes, Mako was again facing the muscular man who first entered the arena. Rhino had used a lot of energy to transform completely into his mutated rhino form which backfired. If he had used partial transformation, he still would have energy to fight Mako but it was looking grim for him now.

The entire online fanbase and the spectators watched with horror as the person who they thought would dominate the final round was getting weaker and weaker by the minute.

Enraged by the situation Rhino, threw out one last Punch which Mako easily avoided by ducking down, and now he was right in front of his bare body.

[Ten-Palm Strike has been activated]

Mako unleased his ten open palm attack which made sounds akin to gunshots when struck against Rhino's body and the latter finally couldn't handle the fatigue and Mako's attacks as he went unconscious and fell to the floor.

*Silence!*

Utter and absolute silence reigned across the entire floor after a couple of seconds as no one, not even Mako was able to register what had just happened to him. Weirded out by the awkward silence, Ash came out of his daze as he addressed the online viewers and the spectators.

"The winner of tonight's Rookie Brawl is... BLAZE!!!"