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Chapter 272: Battling a Leonine
🕑 Added 2023-09-28 17:36:00 +0000 UTCThunder boomed in the distant clouds. Lightning crackled, illuminating the profiles of the eight cultivators after Jack. Six of them gazed at him warily; the elef healer stood at the very back, while the leading leonine’s body was wrapped in lightning, his fur standing and his muscles ready to explode with power.
The leonine dashed.
The air shivered in his wake. The winds parted. Sonic booms carved the forest underneath as the leonine instantly appeared before Jack, who raised his arms to block. It was fruitless. The force of the impact launched him backward, but the leonine was already there, weaving his fingers together and smashing both hands into Jack’s abdomen.
All air left his body. He hurtled downward at extreme speed, crashing into the ground like the meteors he often threw. A crater was formed underneath, and the earth shook for hundreds of feet.
The leonine stood proudly in the air, looking down on Jack. It didn’t seem like his lightning-based combat form had a time limit.
“Did you think you could just waltz into our territory and start killing people without repercussions?” he asked. “What naivete. Have you had enough, or should I keep humiliating you?”
Jack forced himself to stand. The regenerative properties of Neutron Star Body were already knitting his cracked bones together and repairing his bruised organs. Before long, he was in top form again—though his exhaustion crept upward at a frightening pace.
The enemy cultivators raised their brows at his recovery. Even the leonine seemed confused.
“Had enough?” Jack replied, spitting out a mouthful of blood. He grinned. The blood around his mouth only made him seem crazed. “Even if I die, it still won’t be enough.”
“Very well. Let’s test that.”
The leonine dived down. Lightning sparked around his body, amplified by the electrical presence of the clouds above. His punch came at Jack’s face in an instant.
Jack had already realized he could not match this guy in speed. However, speed had never been his strong suit. Right as he glimpsed at the punch coming for his face, he fired back. All sound was sucked into his fist, and the world lost its luster.
“Meteor Punch!”
An upward meteor met a thunderbolt. The impact shattered everything in a mile radius. The ground under Jack’s feet sank downward, but he remained steady, channeling the entirety of his considerable strength upward.
He crashed through the enemy. The leonine was flung backward, his hand shaking as the meteor exploded on him. Jack acted instantly. He didn’t go after the injured leonine, for he knew that this enemy wouldn’t go down easily.
Instead, he set his sights on the remaining cultivators.
With a step through space, he appeared behind the healer. His eyes were red and spitting fire. His fist was bloody and hard. Before the elef could turn around, he smashed a punch into the small of her back, breaking her spine and bending her body at an odd angle. He followed up with a second punch from the side, breaking her neck as well.
Before anyone could respond, he teleported again. This time, he appeared in the very middle of the enemy cultivators and started blasting. Meteors flew. Explosions filled the air. Jack had become a beast, an animal of violence, and his Brutalizing Aura made that painfully clear in the enemies’ minds.
They defended with all their might. Domains sprang up, momentum turned and twisted, blood flooded the air, and the despair of cornered animals filled them all with power.
Jack was indomitable. He broke through everything, smashing back the combined might of his enemies. One goatee was dragged into an explosion and incinerated. Another had his face caved in. The third raised her halberd to defend, but Jack’s fist broke her wrists before penetrating her chest.
Without their healer, with reduced numbers, and caught off guard, these cultivators were nothing but lambs to the slaughter.
Lightning whipped through the air. The meteors’ explosions were overshadowed by sonic booms, and the leading leonine appeared before Jack, his eyes wild and furious. He snapped out a kick on Jack’s side, sending him flying far away from the weaker cultivators.
“Support me from a distance!” the leonine commanded. “Let’s teach this human his rightful place!”
He darted forward, a streak of lightning crossing the sky. Jack tried to defend; he swiped his fist upward but only met air. A foot met his head from behind, violently rocking his neck, and a punch dug deep into his chest. He shot down like a missile, only to land on the leonine’s raised knee and get launched back upward.
Jack spat blood. His ribcage was breaking faster than it could be repaired. He forced himself through the pain and into a teleport, narrowly dodging the leonine’s claw which swiped right where his neck would have been.
When he reappeared three miles away, he was reeling, almost puking. He couldn’t straighten his body. Several of his organs were pierced, and he simply lacked the intact musculature to stand up straight.
But the enemies wouldn’t give him time to recover.
Thick claws flew at him, courtesy of the two surviving bearfolk. Despair locked him down, and the sharken appeared below him, fin-blades swiping upward and looking to sever his legs.
Jack’s instincts kicked in. His life-or-death battles came to the forefront, as did his many afternoons sparring against the immortals of Huali’s estate. His pain disappeared. He registered everything clearly through bloodshot eyes. Stubbornness filled his mind.
He refused to fall.
Coldly, he calculated that he could not dodge all the attacks. He let the claws rake his back to lean downward and smash a fist at the sharken. His own blood spurted up—but the sharken tumbled down, crashing hard into the ground.
The leonine reached him then, flying elbow-first. Jack threw a Meteor Punch. The leonine dodged with the barest of movements, reaching under Jack and punching out. Jack’s mind worked in overdrive; he met the punch with his own, knuckles meeting knuckles. The leonine was pushed back, but he used that momentum to wrap around Jack and smash an elbow into his back.
Jack took the hit and held his ground, using his own Dao to keep his body still. He let his domain erupt at full force, suppressing the leonine’s speed. Brutalizing Aura filled the air, fueled by Jack’s intent to absolutely massacre this opponent. All thoughts of fleeing had left his mind—he would win or die trying.
Supremacy erupted from the leonine’s body. He was a God, and Jack was but a man. The Dao Domain of the Fist was pushed back, held at bay by the combined forces of the leonine and the two bearfolk, who were now the only other cultivators remaining.
Jack turned to the leonine and started pummeling. A storm of punches filled the air. His knuckles were hard as steel and fast as vipers, but the leonine matched him in kind, retaliating with kicks, elbows, and punches of his own. Space ruptured as they exchanged a hundred blows in the blink of an eye.
This man was nothing like Rufus Emberheart. Rufus had been a sheltered man, faltering at the first sign of danger. This man only got fiercer in the face of death, his strikes sharper, his eyes narrower. He was a trained, experienced warrior, and he was strong.
Far stronger than his level would indicate.
The two bearfolk flanked Jack. Their claws swiped at his back. In despair, he took an elbow to the face to unleash a Meteor Punch right in front of his body, pushing both himself and the leonine away. He teleported yet again, enduring the hellish strain to appear behind one of the bearfolk.
There was not a hint of mercy left inside him. His fist rammed into the bearfolk’s skull and shattered it before teleporting near the other bearfolk. Claws came at him. Jack slapped the first strike away, dodged the second, and threw the third himself. His punch carried the essence of Brutalizing Aura; a strike of certain death.
Before his strike could land, the leonine flew at Jack elbow-first. He was lightning-fast. Jack had to pull back or get hit hard.
With a crazed glint in his eye, he carried through with his attack. His fist dug into the bearfolk’s chest, obliterating his ribcage and sending him flying into the distance. Before Jack could feel the satisfaction, an elbow smashed into his cheek. Half his teeth flew out. His head shook so hard it almost broke his neck, and he was launched away so fast he broke the sound barrier before smashing through an entire thicket of trees and into the ground.
Instinctively, Jack teleported away the same instant he landed.
The leonine smashed after him almost immediately, nailing his foot into the ground and piercing deep. Cracks spread across the earth. Trees collapsed just by being in the general vicinity.
The leonine looked up, meeting Jack’s steady, exhausted gaze. He slowly flew to the same altitude. “You are persistent,” he finally acknowledged. He raised his proud head, mane fluttering in the wind and emitting lightning sparks. “My name is Conrad Lightning. Though you are an inferior species, you have earned the right to fight me. Be proud.”
Jack raised his head to the sky and laughed. He was ugly; half his teeth were missing, and his face was covered in blood. His body bent oddly where bones were broken. Due to his many injuries and several back-to-back teleportations, his regeneration had slowed down significantly.
Yet, iron flowed in his veins, and his fury was encased in steel.
“What big words!” he exclaimed, shouting at the sky. “I defeated all your soldiers, and now you are willing to duel me? Now that I’m exhausted and heavily injured? What a joke you are, leonine! I spit at your entire bloodline! Fight me if you dare, and I will prove that no matter what kind of blood runs through your veins, a coward like you will never be anything more than a coward!”
The leonine’s gaze was dark and stormy. With a roar that shook the heavens, he attacked. More lightning descended to augment him.
The two warriors met in mid-air. Jack sank fully into the battle. His injuries and exhaustion played second fiddle. The opponent became his entire world. Punches flew out, lightning cracked, explosions rumbled. Time slowed to a crawl as they exchanged ten strikes, a hundred, a thousand. Jack became the Iron Fist Style. Knuckles met elbows and forearms, sank into soft flesh. The leonine’s rapid strikes slipped past Jack’s defenses, pummeling his already strained body.
The two were equally matched. As the fight dragged on, lightning discharged in the air and explosions filled the sky. They did not move, only exchanged strikes ceaselessly. The forest under them, already a wounded patchwork from the previous bouts, was now completely demolished.
The more they fought, the graver their injuries became. Jack did not care; he was an avalanche of power, a well of violence. Destroying his opponent came first, and everything else could wait.
But the leonine, as hardened a warrior as he was, did not want to exchange his life for Jack’s.
Under the shockwave of an explosion, he pulled back, panting and bleeding. The lightning around him had grown weaker but remained potent. “Take this!” he shouted, pouring all of his remaining energy into his Dao Domain. His eyes had a wicked glint. “With those injuries, I refuse to believe you can command your Dao!”
A curtain of lightning spread out. Supremacy was infused into every spark, every crackle, every air particle. The domain flew at Jack and surrounded him, trying to suffocate him in his weakness.
However, Jack only laughed. “How pathetic you are!” he exclaimed. “A true cultivator does not command their Dao—he embodies it!”
Instantly, his own domain erupted—and as it did, the supremacy was completely drowned, the lightning was extinguished. The leonine’s domain could barely resist Jack’s, cracking and shattering in a few instants until the entire world bowed to the Fist. The proud leonine spat out blood as his Dao Tree suffered. He was completely engulfed by Jack’s domain, and he was also unable to comprehend this.
“How!?” he roared in desperate disbelief. “How can your domain defeat mine? How can you even muster it in this state!?”
Jack kept laughing. Each peal of laughter boomed like thunder, echoing across the entirety of his domain. Suddenly, the supremacy in the leonine’s heart was gone, and all that remained in its place was fear.
“I told you, leonine,” Jack finally replied, raising a fist. All color and sound disappeared, leaving only his voice. “A coward like you could never be a warrior.”
“No!” the leonine screamed. He looked around, scrambling to escape, but everything was darkness. “NO!”
“Stop!” another voice boomed out. Its mere sound shook Jack’s domain. Raising his gaze, Jack saw a beam of light shoot out of a distant part of the forest and head towards him at breakneck speed. He inspected it.
Turtler, Level 249
Faction: Animal Kingdom (B-Grade)
“Stay your hand!” the distant figure shouted, still approaching but not actually close enough to stop Jack.
Jack laughed with bitterness. “Time and time again, your Kingdom disappoints me,” he shouted back. “Could you be any more shameless? Do you not have a shred of honor!?”
An aura of anger reached him from the rapidly approaching figure. “I am a Deacon of the Animal Kingdom!” the turtler shouted. “And I command you to stay your hand! Do not dare strike!”
“Command me? Who the hell do you think you are? I will do whatever the fuck I want!”
“STOP!” the deacon shouted.
“WAIT!” the leonine screamed, still trapped in Jack’s domain.
“Watch me break this coward!” Jack shouted back, smashing out a full-power Meteor Punch. The world went purple and exploded. The shockwave blew his robes and hair back.
The leonine crossed his arms to defend. Both were broken instantly. The power of the meteor carried on and dived into his chest, where it exploded. Strands of golden hair filled the air. Bits and pieces of the leonine flew everywhere. Where he used to stand, there was now only a misshapen mass of flesh and bones.
The approaching deacon saw red. “How dare you!” he shouted, the mere sound of his voice enough to dissipate the clouds.
“Why wouldn’t I dare!?” Jack shouted back. “He tried to kill me, so I killed him back. Where exactly am I wrong, deacon?”
“When I tell you to do something, you will fucking do it!”
The turtler was upon him by now. He shot out a palm strike, seeming to fill the sky. Jack saw death. He smashed out a Meteor Punch.
His domain cracked further and collapsed under the pressure. His Meteor Punch barely managed to delay the palm attack, evaporating the instant it made contact. Jack barely had time to teleport three miles away, further straining his already pushed-to-the-limits body, but the shockwave of the attack was enough to make him spit blood and reopen all of his wounds.
Even if he was in top shape, he could never, ever hope to defeat this person. And he wasn’t in top shape. He was close to death.
There were several treasures on his body that he could use to escape. However, he wanted to save them for as long as possible. This deacon was strong, but he was a turtler, which meant he was slow. Jack might be able to outpace him.
Therefore, he borrowed the remaining force of the shockwave and ran.
