Seeing me approaching him, unscathed without even a wound mark, the tired team leader hurriedly went and brought something out of his spatial storing equipment and wasted time drinking it .
I still walked leisurely as before since it didn't matter to me much what he was doing or what he was about to do, but i did see him regaining some of his vitality after drinking the elixir he held a second before, so i guessed that it was really a healing elixir of some kind, i was momentarily surprised that's all,but after my initial surprise, i once again continued to walk towards him .
The moment i get to be a bit more closer to him, i saw his aura once again flared to the point that it was a bit difficult to look at him directly because of it, another special move of his i guessed .
When the flashes of light subsided, i was able to see that the team leader body have changed completely, he become taller and much more muscler, his body was flashing with lights, the moment he appeared the area around him completely lit up as a result, i thought he was going to say something like, you have forced me to use one of my trumps cards or just boast about becoming much stronger than me or something like that but he directly came at me without uttering a single word .
The team leader dashed directly at me in inhuman speed, i can't even see where was he going, or where will his attack come from, but i wasn't that much worried about this, after all if he did decide to fight me in close combat after failing miserably to do much or any damage from long-ranged attacks, then i do believe that he was more of an idiot than i thought him to be initially .
I won't say that i'm more experienced in fighting than him, but in a close combat fight, i did have an ace up my sleeves .
The attack came from the back, i felt a sudden heat signature coming from behind me but i was unable to react fast enough to dodge, so the attack did land .
As before the moment his hand came in contact with my armor the armor shattered on the spot, he was aiming at my chest, he probably wanted to dig my heart directly, but i guess he didn't expect what might come to him next .
His attack successfully landed on me but the moment his hand shaped like spearhead came in contact with my skin, his piercing attack came to halt, i saw his weird eyes shook slightly at this discovery, but i have to give it to him, he easily regained his composure and i was able to barley turn around my head with the help of my Ace card to see that once again his eyes began to boot up in harnessing power for another kind of assault after this one failed as well, but just before that attack came, my counterattack had already begun .
With Hunter's Instinct i was able to turn around and directly raised my left hand and gave an elbow to the chest of the team leader, i felt the bones in his chest crackled at the attack, as he was sent directly flying in the distance looking like a broken kite, with a shocked expression all over his face, what can i say, endorsing me in a close combat fighting even though you are much weaker than me and with my Hunter's Instinct skill in effect, was a foolish move .
The exchange between the two of us didn't even go on for more than 3 seconds, before a victory has been decided, thanks to my Hunter's Instinct skill, as long as my opponent was weaker than me he will have no chance of escaping my attack the moment he turn this fight to a close combat .
Even though i dealt some considerable amount of damage to him, i can already tell that he have more experience in fighting than me, but thanks to my skills i can make the difference between our two sides fighting experience appear to be non-existent .
This was another advantage i have over him, but that was only possible to work under the condition of being stronger than my opponent, so it might be more disadvantageous to me on the long-run, i can tell from the way he unleashed both of his previous attacks on me that he must have honed his battle prowess in combat by fighting in numerous battles, he still got one shotted by me yes, but that's only because the difference in both of our strength was huge, so him being beaten like this was a matter of fact no matter how many times he tried to repeat this kind of attacks the result would still be very much the same nonetheless .
Me on the other hand, i wasstill mostly dependingon the bits of fighting experience i had in my previous world, not to mention the fact that i had most likely won all my battles thanks to my absolute advantage of strength over my enemies, which have alwayshelped in securing my win .
I can't be blamed for that, after all i believed that this world was runnig on the use of each individual skills, so it was the same for everyone whether you have fighting experience or not, but the skills themselves forced individuals to work hard to acquire them and to strengthen and upgrade them to be as strong as possible, but i guess in my case, it was the same no matter what ido .
The moment i got a skill, it will bemore stronger than even if it was upgraded to the max leveland most of skills did actually grant some fighting experience, like my swordsmanship skill, but now i accidentally met with a new power systemthat was partly or even completely different than the skills system, which could possibly mean that i have to take it into consideration that my huge advantage instrengthcould most likely be rendered useless if i were to meet enemies that will be much more stronger than me, or even the ones even to me, without Hunter's Instinct, i will be in for quite a long time of suffering .
Not to mention the risk of the skill itself might get destroyed or sacrificed like what happened with Armord Hide before, then my ability to even being able to counterattack my opponents would be pretty much done for, that and the fact that i pretty much sooner or later going to change my power system to be like their and if by any chance my skills got really destroyed then i would probably need to adapt a bit more and try to gain as much as i can of experience in fighting, or else i might find myself unable to even decide my fate, not to mention challenging the entirety of the demon race .
That is exactly why i believe that my current way of fighting, will turn be quite disadvantageous on the long-term, so increasing my fighting experience have become a must do, but it's not like i have an idea on how to actually do it, after all no matter how much i tried to adjust my strength to be equal or even a little bit lower than my opponent, the existence of my skill will render the whole process of acquiring more fighting experience, completely and utterly useless, especially my ace passive skill Hunter's Instinct, it isn't like i can willingly turn them on or off .
Wait, why do i need to turn them off, especially Hunter's Instinct, instead of turning it off why not use it as a guide of some sort, think about it, it have a 100 percent chance success to counterattack, if i succeed in using this to my advantage, i may have no need to turn it off, more importantly i may benefit even more by keeping it on .
Memorizing and getting accustomed to the different ways of attacks and counterattacks could pretty much enrich my fighting experience and style with more than i have ever wanted to achieve in this particular aspect, the absence of the life threatening element in the process, could be considered pretty much a disadvantage in learning how to fight, but i guess this situation is merely me trying to take a few steps in a new direction .
Now that i think deeply into this, i felt that my strength impact on his chest just now didn't deal that much of a damage to begin with, it cracked his chest bones yes, but with the strength i used in the elbow thrust, i was quite sure that it would have dented his chest directly at least or even directly pierced through all the way to his back with quite ease, something felt off about this, it was as if there was something wrong that had interfered with our fight, it felt as if something absorbed most of the power of my thrusting elbow .
He crashed to something in the far distance and as i was going to go and check where he landed when he came dashing towards me once more but this time it was head-on confrontation, i also was able to finally what went wrong with my previous attack .
The flashing muscled team leader, didn't even take time to recuperate from his injuries and with his disheveled hair and the blood traces on both his mouth and clothes and still came at me with a punch with his right hand, i thought this was a bit weird, since i already believed his left hand to be his dominant hand, but my bewilderment didn't go on for long, because i noticed the actual reason for this, it also was as i said before enough to clear away some of my doubts .
His left hand was limbed and twisted in a strange angle from his hand all the way to his shoulder while dripping blood, so that what happened, his rich fighting experience allowed him to pull such a move, if i'm not wrong at the last minute before my attack lands on his chest, he actually put the palm of his hand in front of his chest as if trying to make it absorb as much power as it could .
I guess that didn't go as he planned from or maybe it did, but with how much he was currently staring at me with daggers in his eyes i don't believe that he believed that it may indeed have, but there wasn't only hatred in his eyes as he stared at me, there were also quite shock and bewilderment and maybe a few insults in his eyes as well, but why wasn't he saying them, knowing him it wouldn't have done anything to make things any more worse at this point whether he said those insults out loud or not .
Weirdly enough, he also didn't mutter any single word since he got into the weird state of his, could this be a side effect to the use of such a state, he looked to be already at his limit before so i couldn't help but link the dots and come with the most logical explanation or at this point it was utmost a mere speculation at best .
His fist landed on my head from above and just as i thought, the speed of his attack was still quite a problem for me to cope with, i tried to parry the strike since him losing the ability to use one of his arms effectively, made parrying the punch a lot easier, or so i thought how it should go, but the moment i adjusted my strength and struck back at his incoming punch, i discovered that what i struck was nothing but a feint and his attack changed his angle and aimed at my chin other than my head .
The moment that his hit landed on me i felt a burning mark appeared where his punch landed and noticed that his his fist was more brazenly lit than other parts of his body, then came my counterattack i lunched a punch towards his jew but as if he already anticipated this, he instantly retreated back, parrying my counterattack before once again lunching his own, but i didn't falter much at this happening, i might have actually rejoiced it a bit .
After all i have to a certain extent verified the viability my idea, i instinctively able to choose the best way to counter attack my enemy if he decided to engage in close combat, but without the parrying effects of my previous Frozen Edge sword, i'm still a bit at a disadvantage if he decided to attack me from long distance, but the experience gained is worthy of celebrating no matter how small it was .
I involuntarily smirked in my opponent's direction, i can already tell that i somehow triggered him even more from the fact that he suddenly pulled out a bottle of nowhere and gulped all of its remaining content in his mouth, the previously flashes of light on his body that were appearing to have began to fade once again flared a bit more than even before, i guessed that he swallowed something similar to stimulants, or maybe it was the same previous recovery pill he swallowed previously, but it didn't really matter much to dwell on that currently .
After all, the moment his aura flared up even stronger than before he wasted no time and directly attacked me head on, intending to finish this as quickly as possible .
I involuntarily blinked due to how bright the light surrounding him was as, but this small action of mine was a grave mistake, i already anticipated that i would be in a bit of disadvantage if i waited for his attack to come due to the gap in his react speed and mine, so i outstretched my hand forward and stood in a punching stance in which i would be certain to be able to counterattack, maybe even landing the first hit would have been possible too .
But no the moment i blinked, i saw the guy leaping on top of my punching fist and directly appeared in front my eyes, his body was flickering with light as he voiced out the name of his attack " Fist Of Piercing Light " and as the attack name implied, he directly delivered a punch to my current unguarded head and for the first time since arriving in this world, i felt a clear agonizing wave of pain rush and wash over me .
His punch would have not made that much of a damage normally, but the weird state he was currently in allowed him to make enough heat to allow his fist to pierce through my huge normal body defenses, which resulted in a hole appearing in my forehead, leaving me a bit disoriented at first but then the cruel reality hit me mercilessly, luckily my passive skills kicked in and i out of instinct used Healing Magic, so that's too helped me ease my pain a bit, but the passive skill related to pain nullification not taking effect what left me a bit unsettled .
All the exchange and my recovery took up to 3 seconds at most and even with still psychologically remembering the painful feeling of having my brain fried and my head being holed, i was still able to get my chance of taking revenge on the still unguarded in the air opponent in front of me .
I was able to influence Hunter's Instinct to allow me to execute a bit more optimized effect of the skill effects, i found influencing the skill to allow me a direct intrude to be quite easy, so i was able to use the timing of the skill coming in effect to devise a plan that won't allow my enemy any more escape road like before .
The team leader looked at the rejuvenated me with shocked face, but i can't blame him, he saw me recovering from a fetal attack just now so it's a justified reaction on his part .
I willed the earth beneath me to cover both me and him in what i visualized in my mind to be like the dojo, i used to attend and work part-time in at least the layout of the building looked the same, also i shackled his legs using earth shackles i made which should have forced him to land in the ground and become unable to move away .
But no plan is set to be executed flawlessly, he was able to destroy the earth shackles with quite ease, more like they evaporated the moment that they tried to come near him, i already anticipated that this was going to happen, so i proceeded with the second half of my plan, in a friction of a second, i willed the earth once again, but this time i willed it to bury that guy together with the building that i built .
I was really thankful to the effect of time dilution that Hunter's Instinct allowed me to exploit, everything was perfectly set in motion and aligned accurately thanks to this, now begin the last part of my plan .
As i willed the whole place to collapses on him, i got myself ready and focused on allowing my counterattack to finally begin, i already know that the shackles won't stop him if he wished to escape, but they weren't meant to do so in the first place, my target was actually just to force him to go through all of that, just to create an opening and a situation where it will be difficult for him to dodge or parry my attack with his spead .
And i believe that i'm going to succeed, just from the fact that the plan of mine is already ongoing and he was still clueless about what was he about to go through, i moved to a far distance using my ability to influence earth, for the first time i felt as if i have grabbed something close to the actual feel of teleportation, it was a bizarre yet an amazing feeling and all that was done secretly without him even knowing that i'm already waiting for him to surface from under the rubble, so that we can wrap up this farce .