"I think it's time I end this." Gripping Dam Son's neck, Red Bull picked him up from the rubble and brought his face closer to his. Next, Red Bull pulled down his blindfold and stared directly at Dam Son with his radiant Loser Eyes. "Look into my eyes. Embrace the compulsion to lose."
"Huh?" Dam Son felt drawn in by Red Bull's Loser Eyes. The previous sense of enthusiasm he had was completely waning. Witnessing this spectacle, the audience knew it was only a matter of time before Dam Son succumbed to his losing desire.
"There it is! That's the skill he used to defeat me." Cinder Burn was slightly happy that Dam Son was getting the same treatment as her. "It's about time someone knocks that Dark-Human off his high horse." She desperately wanted to see Dam Son lose, and by the way the situation was going, her wish would most likely come through.
The crowd began to rave upon seeing the last Drunken Brat falling prey to Red Bull's Loser Eyes geas. Xuan Li and Sugar Bun tried calling out to Dam Son to snap out of the trance, but of course, Dam Son couldn't hear them. Within his psyche, he was fighting a losing battle with the strain of negative thoughts pouring in. Red Bull's voice was well pronounced in his mind saying:
"Give up, you're no match for me."
"You're not fit to be my opponent."
"In every way, I'm your better. Not even the speck of dust on my feet is good enough for you to lick."
"I'm better looking. Girls adore me. My classmates revere me, they shower me with respect. You are the complete opposite of what I'm about."
"Underachiever! Loser! Weak prey! Failure! Dud! Incongruous worm!"
"I'm a dinosaur and you're a mosquito. Trying to suck my blood with your nozzle? Don't bother. Your suctorial proboscis is too much of a loser to keep up."
As the strain of negative thoughts continued to bombard Dam Son's consciousness, he became less and less inclined to stand up to Red Bull. The strength in his knees became weaker. Red Bull smiled upon seeing this. He thought for sure that he had compelled Dam Son to an utter repressed state of mind. Shortly, he heard Dam Son speaking in a low voice:
"Yes, I am a loser. I've failed so many times in the short amount of time I've existed." Dam Son's head started to rise slowly while he spoke, "I do admit that you are more skilled than I am; stronger even. But, it is because of that driving force of failure that I desperately want to win right now!" Dam Son clenched Red Bull's forearm. "I'm going to beat you to a bloody pulp!"
"What? Where is this determination coming from?" Red Bull couldn't believe that his Loser Eyes had backfired against him. "But it worked so easily against that Leaf Widow chick and she was way stronger than this kid. What the heck is going on here?"
Feeling befuddled, Red Bull couldn't think straight to shake himself from Dam Son's grasp; Dam Son wasn't about to give him that opportunity because he knew that Red Bull could page teleport at will. Still holding onto his opponent, Dam Son reawakened the potent Natural Verb Force he had bottled within. This time, his entire body was encompassed in NVF darkness.
"No! Let go of me!" Red Bull now realized what was about to befall him, thus he tried shaking himself loose but to no avail.
"I want to win!" Boosting his motivation to defeat his opponent, Dam Son formed a fist with his right hand, still holding onto Red Bull's arm with his left hand. Moments later, he began unleashing a barrage of consecutive hits on Red Bull's face.
Red Bull was getting smashed all across the broken arena. Dam Son wasn't giving him an ounce of opportunity to activate any of his Powered Scripts. The audience was watching in utter bewilderment; Sugar Bun and Xuan Li included. They too were amazed by the unbelievable proceedings taking place on stage.
Another minute passed and Dam Son was still smashing Red Bull's face in. He became so disfigured that I doubt even his parents could recognize him. For the finishing blow, Dam Son decided to execute the technique he learnt from his golden memories with the application of Natural Verb Force.
Twisting his feet 360 degrees, Dam Son garnered enough impetus to make his technique execution close to perfect. "Smashing Blue Mantis!" Dam Son delivered a deadly around the world kick to Red Bull's chin. His head almost twisted off his body as he fell unconscious off stage.
"This is insane! Did that jerk just defeat the badest badass, Red Bull using only his physical attributes?"
"No Guide in use? This is unreal! I've seen it but I still don't believe it."
The crowd went wild with confusion. None of them could accept how the battle had ended. The most dispelling and hurting person among them was none other than Cinder Burn. She refused to accept that Dam Son had defeated a strong opponent that she failed to defeat even with the application of her Guide and Hyper Blaze Mode.
"No! No! No! This can't be for real! My eyes must be malfunctioning. How can he defeat him, how?" Cinder Burn drowned herself in wonder and despair, trying to wrap her head around what took place on stage. "I still can't figure it out. That bastard must have cheated somehow. There is no possible way that he's stronger than I am!"
Unlike Cinder Burn who was constantly disbelieving of Dam Son's capabilities, Xuan Li and Sugar Bun weren't. They were tossing positive thoughts and cheers towards Dam Son. "Yeah! You did it, Dam Son! You defeated that blindfolded brat! I never liked how he acted so cocky. I bet that mighty ass-whooping will teach him to be more humble!"
"Right… I won." On stage, Dam Son settled his potent Natural Verb Force, thinking that the battle was over. As he was about to respond to his teammates' cheers, he felt a blasting force crash into him from behind.
"Repulsion!" D.Zypher waited until Dam Son was distracted before striking from his blind spot. Her surprised attack completely knocked him off stage. Dam Son was startled to find himself lying metres apart from where Red Bull was unconscious.
"We have a winner!" Moments after the last contestant was knocked out of bounds, the referee showed himself to announce the winning crew. "Team Losers win!" Even with this shocking revelation, many members of the crowd still felt like the Losers had lost despite them winning the tournament.
"Dam Son, you okay?" Sugar Bun and Xuan Li came along to help up their teammate from the ground. "You were amazing out there."
"But we lost the match."
"That doesn't matter. All that matters is that you beat up that blindfolded brat. If you were a bit attentive near the end then probably you could have avoided that chick's sneak attack. But anyway we're happy for you."
"Sugar Bun is right." Xuan Li intervened, "What you did up there proved to us Word Fu practitioners how strong our mastery is. We don't need fancy Guides and Powered Scripts to go toe to toe against powerful Word Mages. Our bodies are more than enough."
"Is that right?" Dam Son considered what Xuan Li told him. "I guess you are correct."
"Of course I am right, and it appears the geezer's training wasn't at all useless. Now that we've earned enough Q-currency let's go search the markets for plenty of tasty wine to appease Master Jin's thirst."
"Yes, let's get out of here."
After visiting the infirmary one last time to mend any sort of injuries they had, the Drunken Brats exited the Page Coliseum together. At the same time, the Losers were standing on a revamped stage collecting their award for winning the 3-man team tournament. Though they emerged the victor thanks to D.Zypher's surprise attack, everyone could see that Red Bull wasn't pleased to have been defeated the way he had. He swore to enact his revenge on Dam Son for humiliating him in front of the student populous of Caromine Institute.
Reaching the outside of the Page Coliseum, Dam Son took one last look at the gigantic ethereal complex before saying to his teammates. "Despite the rough battle we had inside. I think it was a lot of fun."
"Me too and I've learnt a lot of things about fighting without Guides." Said Sugar Bun elatedly.
Xuan Li joined in by saying, "I too had a lot of fun. My martial arts skill has also been sharpened. More than anything else I want to learn about that Natural Verb Force thing. Hey, Dark-Human, do you think that Master Jin will teach me?"
"I'm positive he will if we do what he asked of us. When I see him again, I'm going to have him teach me more about controlling my Natural Verb Force. The short time I spent using it inside the Page Coliseum had me realise just how lacking I am. It took all of my mental fortitudes just to keep me from going wild in there."
"Is that so?" As Sugar Bun listened to Dam Son's speech, he felt more cautious about learning Natural Verb Force. "I'm sure Master Jin has his way of teaching us without much harm being done."
"I don't care about the harm. I just want to learn it and become extremely powerful." Xuan Li admitted eagerly. Out of anything, he wanted his big toes to be as strong as Jin Hennessy's.