(Yes the titles are getting repetetive, but please bear with me X_X)

Zard flipped backwards arching his back, and before his feet had touched the ground, he had pushed himself off the ground with his hands, and in mid air, he had thrown all 9 coins on the ground next to the mages feet. His feet fell to the ground, and he started to run towards the mage, setting off all 9 coins as a distraction, and slid under the mage, throwing up the 4 wads of cash, setting them ablaze. Zards feet had hit the base of the door and he abruptly got up. He felt a sharp pain in his left hand, and then tremendous heat against his back. He pressed his body against the door, to avoid the explosion. After the heat had died out, Zard turned around to see a black mark on the ground, with a pile of smoky soot in the circle. He looked at his left to see it had been burned. He tried to clench it, but it felt like driving a rusty screw driver through the palm of your hand. He ripped off the left sleeve of his leather jacket with his right hand, and wrapped it around his left hand as a makeshift bandage.

With that, Zard continued walking on towards the door, to his next rival….

He proceeded onto the next door, careful to avoid clenching his left hand, to avoid any unnecessary pain. As he walked through the door, he eyed the room walls slowly closing the door behind him. He dropped his bulging bags of money as he continued to stare at the walls, and two other rivals at the end of the room. He knew what was going to happen next…

One man and one women stood at the end of the room, one with a blood red crossbow with golden etchings in it; the other with a bow blood red but with a golden hawk head at the top of the bow. Zard glanced at their weapons and back to the wall. They each wore blood soaked cloaks, with red bamboo hats on, covering all facial features. Something was keeping up their hats though, just enough to see their chins.

“Hawks!” he thought to himself, making sure not to sweat. This would be a very difficult fight….
He knew that all 2000 hawks on each wall were somehow linked to the two archers, and he knew this wouldn’t be a pretty battle, especially for him.

Zard made the first move, he ran across the room; screaming as he pried some throwing stars loose from his pocket bag and throwing them rapidly. The archers took out each throwing star with…air…

They were firing golden arrows made of nothing but energy and air. They quickly relatliated an attack while each of them shot 8, yes 8 arrows. Zard jumped, and clung to the ceiling of the roof to avoid them, but they started turning around and coming back.

“Dammit, homing!” he quickly thought to himself as he ran towards the archers. He had a plan to get rid of the arrows, and hopefully get rid of the archers before they could summon the hawks on the walls. As expected the bowman fired again, except firing 4 bomb arrows each. Zard fell to the ground on purpose and rolled away before the bombs and homing arrows could make contact. BOOM! A massive explosion echoed throughout the room. Zard got off the floor, to see a horrifying sight. The explosion had blown apart both of their hats, revealing faces painted with blood, and…horns sprouting from the tops of their heads.

They merely chuckled as Zard stared in disgust as a loud ripping sound was heard, and a few cracking sounds, and 4 large SWOOSH sounds. They had both sprouted devil like wings, massive, bigger than his own body.

“What the hell are you!” he shouted as he kept his right hand on a dagger.

They merely chuckled loudly and made a loud screeching like sound…like a gargoyle/ hawk…

Zard looked around the room looking at the statue hawks around him. They slowly starting to change shapes, like gargoyles except they maintained hawk wings. Slowly, the rock gargoyle/hawk statues started to crack. Zard quickly tried to avoid being to close to the wall, but it was too late. The statues were now hawk-winged gargoyles in the flesh screaming for a meal. Their eyes all fell upon Zard, and he had the feeling that he was being watched like a prey. Before he could get a dagger out, the gargoyles attacked, moving faster than light, he couldn’t even see them, they were just blurrs spreading massive cuts on his body. When they were done, he was nothing more than a bleeding human. His armor had blocked out many attacks, but he still managed to get many cuts.

A tiny pouch had fallen from his belt. It fell to the ground to reveal the warrior pills he had received from the mage girl. He quickly took one, not knowing what it would do, but as soon as he swallowed the pill he saw that a cut on his finger had closed up and healed. With that, he took the whole pouch and poured the pills down his throat as he chewed and swallowed. (Woah pill-popper eh? xP) All his cuts slowly starting to heal, and he could feel energy flowing through his veins. He got up from the ground promptly compeltely healed. He dropped the empty leathery sack, and in its place he gathered hundreds of coins in both hands. The gargoyles watched intently licking blood off their beak like mouths. Zard merely threw all the coins in the air, muttered an incantation, and watched as all the coins exploded creating thousands and thousands of fireworks within the room. To avoid being scorched he muttered another incantation that turned him partly invisible. After the smoke had cleared up, the only trace of the gargoyles were burnt crusty feathers that fell to the ground.

The archers screamed, “OUR PETS! YOU WILL REGRET EVERYTHING THAT YOU’VE DONE TO THEM!!” they both shouted at the same time as the continued firing 8 arrows at a time.

“Perfect, I won’t need to waste any of my weapons now that they’ve attacked first.” He promptly started running towards the arrows, sliding under them, and getting back up while running towards, and through the archers. They didn’t know what he was doing, but after he used Dark Sight they knew. It was to late though, thousands of barraging arrows had hit the archers, as Zard stood safely with Dark Sight on. He heard two falling carcasses, and than a ghost like whisper as they vanished in a smoke. Zard walked to the end of the room, picked up his bags of money and headed to the next door but he looked at his armor. The leather jacket he was wearing was torn to shreads, and his sunglass were long gone, in one of the gargoyles stomach. He ripped off the leather jacket, revealing his Dark China Suit, picked up his money bags, and walked on…..

**Sidenotes** (Bear with me and my crazy imagination people. Yea I knew I made up alot of stuff, but it was for the better >_>. Anyways theirs like one more chapter to this story *well 2 if you count the lost chapter about Zard’s history*. Anyways comments, are always welcome, and of course, enjoy!)