Instincts once again saved Korr when, through his blurred vision, he sensed the sadistic enemy in front of him seemed to be blurring. Without a second thought, he launched himself into the air, managing to avoid a thundering blow that made the wind roar beneath him.
They had nearly taken him down.
Desperate, he traced a spiral that took him behind his opponent, desperate to try and maintain some distance.
"Da-dammit," Korr thought, feeling his body tremble, but upon landing, he immediately raised his guard, using his head, the new Viltrumite super-memory neurons to at least remember how to act in such a precarious situation.
Boxing, use boxing. Move when your opponent moves, don't stay still, use angles, always the angles.
His own mind barely saved him. As soon as the boy managed to get a guard up, the hound was already on him.
He dodged a descending claw-like strike; one of his gauntlets grazed his guard. He made an inertial leap towards the alien's flank to avoid a violent kick, and endured the tearing lash from one of the tentacles, which left a horrible gash on his neck.
The madness in the eyes of the demon he had to face filled him with irrational fear. He panicked, almost tripped, but curled into a ball as he rolled to the side, barely surviving another violent kick that seemed to tear up a chunk of the plain.
Seizing the opportunity, Korr stood up and, desperately, threw a straight jab at the hound's nape, but he sidestepped it.
He also deflected a wide blow that made his body shudder and hollowly opened his skull to another hook punch from Korr.
Each blow was intended to deliver the last gram of his strength, causing Kaelus to stagger, though only for a moment. The amount of energy absorbed was too much; they couldn't absorb as much as believed, and the Native had already overloaded him with a few punches.
The Natives in the stands held their breath, excited. It was incredible to see the class oddball move like that, fighting against warriors of other races and holding his own.
"Yeeessss, fight, smash that weak octopus's head, or else don't even think you'll get to conceive a Native with my genes, haha!", the rowdy girl shouted with excitement, causing Vexa to laugh in bewilderment, while Nouwlan shook his head.
"Haha, this Native," Vexa said amusingly, while Nouwlan shouted in her direction.
"Native Vespera, if you don't remain silent, you will be punished with twenty thousand steps on the plain."
As soon as he threatened her, the girl fell silent immediately.
Vespera brought a hand to her mouth, but she still couldn't stop trembling with excitement.
These Natives, Nouwlan shook his head. The kids came up with extremely strange craziness. And this one was the most delusional of all. It seemed she had developed a weakness for this rebellious Native, something she would make sure to fix as soon as possible.
Until then, he just hoped he was educating him on the right path according to the empire's interests.
Kaelus straightened up quickly, his cephalic appendages writhing with fury.
When he spoke, his voice turned into a dangerous whisper.
"Not bad for just a rebellious Native. Who taught you to fight like that, pup? It doesn't seem like an imperial style. Introduce me to that slave; I'm interested in knowing what it feels like to taste his entrails."
Korr didn't respond to any of the frantic threats from this diabolical thing. Instead, he decided to stay moving, his feet tracing circles on the ground, while remaining on guard.
Faced with Korr's silent refusal, the hound just smiled maliciously.
"It doesn't matter," Kaelus continued, doing something he seemed to have held back for a long time. From those sinister eyes, an incandescent gleam illuminated his face with malevolent intentions.
"With your caretaker's permission, I want you to learn, little Native, why we Venatici are the empire's most ruthless dogs."
His eyes lit up, eager for the chance to harm an imperial Native.
In just an instant, two blinding rays of light emerged from the hound's eye sockets, as white as the heart of a star. The two beams of pure energy dissipated, crossing the space between them in just a fraction of a second.
Korr didn't think for a moment. He doubted he could think much faster than those eye rays hurtling towards him. Simply, by sheer instinct, he moved.
His flight capability became a priority at that moment, and with pure inertial force, he launched himself to the left. At that same instant, he felt the ray burn the air centimeters from his cheek. The impact against the wall behind him was deafening, and a rain of molten material splattered the ground.
"That fucking energy projection," Korr recalled, his heart in his throat.
But the hound wouldn't let him escape that easily.
Kaelus turned his head, sweeping the ray in an arc that forced Korr to keep moving, flying in an ascending spiral to avoid being hit.
The heat was searing, even from a distance. His recruit uniform began to smoke on the edges that were almost reached, until the suit itself forced him down to the ground after three seconds, restricting his flight ability.
"Move, recruit!", Nouwl-an shouted from above, harshly instructing Korr's escape attempts. "Viltrumites do not flee from our enemies! Turn around and face him like a warrior."
Korr heard him, but could only curse him. He felt so powerless that he forced himself to shout loudly.
"Haaaaaa!" With a yell, Korr's fists clenched tightly and, without thinking, against his instincts and fears, he launched himself straight at Kaelus, flying in a straight line like a cannonball.
The Hound cut the ray to let his eyes cool down, while sensing through his appendages the reckless advance of the Native.
His right fist, loaded with all his inertia and strength, impacted directly on Kaelus's wrist.
Crack.
That sound made all the Native spectators of the fight shudder.
"Grooooaar!"
Kaelus howled with pain and fury. The Native had truly managed to hurt him.
His left hand fell to the side unnaturally, hanging at an impossible angle. His cephalic appendages thrashed like maddened snakes, stretching to try and scratch the one responsible for that pain.
"Fucking pup!", he roared, and this time there was no playfulness in his voice. "I'm going to kill you!"
His eyes lit up again, but this time, the incandescence of the energy in his eyes was even brighter.
The rays that came from his sockets seemed to widen, as wide as a tree trunk, sweeping the entire central section of the circle in a forty-five-degree angle of annihilation.
And Korr, who couldn't escape to the sky because he had been held by the suckers, and during that instant, Korr was engulfed in all the projected energy of the hound.
"Aaaargh!"
Korr's scream was heart-wrenching from within the flames. He felt pain, intense pain, more than he had ever felt in his two lives.
This time he was in hell, this time he felt like he was burning alive. He only saw white, and his body burned, like being splashed with hot oil.
He burned for what was 10 seconds, and by the time Kaelus ceased his attack, there was only a charred trench, turned to lava, with Korr in the middle, his entire body covered in a superficial, fetid crust of his own skin.
Nouwlan frowned, but didn't interfere in the slightest. But he also didn't dare look at Verax, as she did not agree with his decision.
She had warned him, nothing could happen to that Native. However, it was already too late.
Korr, despite feeling his charred skin, didn't stop feeling the pain, the burning, as if still being on fire.
He let out another roar, but it only seemed to fuel the hound's joy.
He felt the suit melt onto his skin. He was dying, dying horribly, he had to escape.
But when Korr tried to launch himself flying into the air, Kaelus had been faster than him.
Despite his bulk, he moved like a torpedo, cutting through the air, swinging his healthy right hand to snag the Native's ankle.
With a brutal movement, he slammed him into the ground.
Korr hit with a crack of bones, his back meeting the molten slabs.
The pain was absolute, but there was so much pain that he simply couldn't faint or pass out.
"Little insect," Kaelus spat, shaking him a few more times, until the substitute Native's ankle itself was destroyed.
After dropping him on the ground, he spat his toxic saliva onto the Native's body, making the charred skin sizzle.
Without any mercy, he raised his foot, the size of Korr's torso, ready to crush him.
But at the last moment, Korr rolled quickly.
The foot hit the ground centimeters from his head, and the slabs splintered like glass.
Korr, despite the feeling that life was slipping away, seized the moment to push himself up, to stand, to float to be more precise, as one of his legs was a wreck.
Kaelus was on him once more, and his cephalic appendages extended, trapping Korr's arms, immobilizing them, squeezing, and tearing off his flaky, charred skin. Blood began to spill, and it seemed like it would all end.
But Korr had come to one conclusion, no, one instinctive answer.
He wouldn't die alone for the second time.
He still couldn't see anything; his eyes only saw white. But the appendages held him, meaning his enemy, that misbegotten demon, was in front of him.
Raw, pure, unfiltered hatred filled his heart, and reason had been hijacked by vengeance a while ago. He had only one desire, the desire to kill.
Kill his father, kill Nouwlan, kill Verax, kill the Viltrumites, the Emperor, and all races, whatever, he just wanted to kill whatever his hands touched first.
Just kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, and his mind just turned into slaughter.
He didn't remember much from that moment. In fact, he remembered absolutely nothing.
Everything that happened next was what Verax explained to him after he had regained consciousness.
Instead of trying to free himself from the suckers, Korr actually hugged the hound. He lunged without thinking and simply decided to use superior strength to tear apart everything his fingers grasped.
The suit had stopped working long ago, so the ground shifted to the ceiling of the arena, as if gravity were inverted.
The hound felt everything change when he felt the Native he considered easy prey treat his body like clay. The Native squeezed his shoulder and with a single grip, tore off skin, flesh, and bone, mashing them to pulp in his hands.
Kaelus barely had time to raise his healthy arm to throw some punches, but Korr's hand managed to grab the arm and tear it off from the shoulder, leaving a bloody scene in the process.
Kaelus screamed, screamed as if he were being eaten alive. In fact, the way Korr ruthlessly tore him apart was not far from that possibility, and everything else went from bad to horror.
Korr didn't stop and started punching. The hound tried to push him, throw him, and escape his grip, but the Native had grabbed his appendages and, without a second thought, bit him on the neck, tearing out a piece of his jugular.
The hound's screams were pitiful. It was disconcerting for the Natives in the stands, even shocking for the instructors watching all the events with interest.
The hound tried to use his broken arm to break free, but the Native's charred hands had already torn off the remaining arm.
Then they fell back to the ground, where Korr started punching the dismembered hound. His fists sank into Kaelus's chest, his stomach, his face. Each impact sent shockwaves through the Hound's body, fracturing ribs, tearing muscles, breaking whatever was organic in the Venatici's body.
Kaelus tried to counterattack, tried to escape, but Korr wouldn't allow it.
If he wanted to kill him so badly, it was only fair they go together in their mutual suffering.
Korr punched so hard that at some point, his fists began to pierce the hound's skin and muscles, pulping the entrails of the demon that had forced him into this.
"Stop!", roared Kaelus, but his voice was no longer threatening. He was just begging, begging to survive. "Stop, you damned pup!"
But Korr couldn't hear anymore.
In fact, he wasn't even conscious at that point. He had just entered a frenzy of death.
Killing was all he thought about, destroying until nothing remained the one who had decided to kill him.
And the massacre continued, continued until nothing was left of the hound but a pile of viscera and thick, dark blood all over the platform.
The hound, one of the most feared slave forces in the entire empire, had been turned into nothing but pulp, flesh, and viscera.
Kaelus was dead, the fight was over. As soon as Nouwlan saw that he had seen enough, his voice resonated over the still-functioning loudspeakers.
"Korr-add, that's enough!"
Nouwl-an's voice cut through the air, expecting the Native to stop, but Korr didn't hear him. His arms kept rising and falling, a meat machine, destroying the hound's unrecognizable remains.
"Enough, recruit. THAT'S AN ORDER!" Nouwlan exclaimed, but Korr simply didn't seem to respond at all.
Verax moved, worried about the protégé she had taken under her wing. What happened today, she would remember, and Nouwlan would pay for it very soon, and they both knew it.
When the sub-commander of instruction tried to touch him, the Native turned towards her, in a quick movement, intending to attack her. But she, even faster than the Native, grabbed him by the neck, holding him at the end of her extended arm.
Korr's hands clung to Verax's arm, and he tried with all his might to destroy it, but he simply couldn't. It was like holding steel, and the young woman only watched as the Native's fingernails peeled off from the effort.
"This... this should not have happened, Nouwlan," she said, but no one said anything.
Nouwlan turned around and levitated, not wanting to have this discussion with his subordinate.
"Take the little berserker to a recovery chamber, induce a coma, so he can repair his body by nightfall," he said while looking at the rest of the Natives, who simply remained silent. "You, follow me. The practice must continue." He said, but seeing the children, all with completely fearful eyes, he hesitated in his actions. Then, after seeing the charred Native in Verax's hands, who had to knock him out, he chose to change his decision. "Correction. Go to your barracks, you have the day off just for today." And without further ado, he flew off without saying anything to anyone, though no one wanted to say anything anyway.