Chapter 32: First Fight Against A Cultivator
If this remained a simple battle of ego, Uhtred would have been free to do whatever he wanted to Scorpion after winning, likely apprehending him and making him face severe repercussions from the angry camps. There were no functional prisons in the current Earth right now, but the crowd would have handled him somehow at least.
However, now that Scorpion had formalized the rule of "the loser vacates the sector," it meant that even if he lost, he could just pack up and go terrorize a different sector.
The refugees only heard that Scorpion might leave, so a wave of excited murmuring rippled behind Uhtred. That was the particular thing they wanted anyway, so they were now banking entirely on Uhtred to win, missing the underlying move Scorpion had just made.
Only the smartest people in the crowd picked up on the trick. Dennis, the young Pioneer, the old politician, the other Pioneers, and a few random people in the crowd shared a knowing look.
"You are not speaking, Pioneer?" Scorpion mocked, trying to press his psychological advantage. "Or are you suddenly terrified now that the real fight is here? What happened to all your big talk from before?"
Uhtred cracked a genuine smile in response, then nodded. "No problem at all. I agree to your terms."
The moment Uhtred agreed, Scorpion’s expression eased slightly. Then his face instantly hardened back into a cold mask of concentration, and he stared Uhtred dead in the eye, bringing his fists up to eye level.
Uhtred mirrored the movement, raising his hands into a loose guard. Through his inspect skill, he could see Scorpion was sitting firmly at the middle stage of Level 4.
Uhtred was much higher-leveled. Enough that this wasn’t even a fight. But he still intended to put on a believable show. He wanted to make it seem like their levels were somewhat similar to avoid revealing his true strength to the crowd. It was always better to let them guess, rather than give them certainty.
Just as Uhtred was thinking, Scorpion suddenly burst forward in a flash.
Hmm... Fairly decent speed, Uhtred noted as he readied himself for Scorpion’s incoming fist.
However, the moment the attack landed, Uhtred couldn’t help but let out a short grunt of surprise. The physical force of the blow was completely average, but a vibrant flash and a burst of heat erupted on contact. Without his specialized fireproof garment, the thermal discharge would have felt scalding hot on his bare skin.
Fire magic? Uhtred thought, his interest piqued.
He tanked the first hit, and Scorpion immediately followed up with a fast combination of punches and kicks. Uhtred blocked all of them easily, even though every single strike packed that same concussive fire effect on contact.
Seeing that his elemental attacks were doing nothing, Scorpion switched gears instantly. Right after throwing a heavy right cross, he used the momentum to drop low to the ground, scooping up a handful of sand and grass to fling it directly into Uhtred’s face.
Uhtred instinctively closed his eyes, but his heightened perception and senses easily tracked Scorpion’s movements regardless.
He shifted his weight and leaped backward nimbly, slipping just out of the way of a sudden ambush.
Out from his waistband, Scorpion had drawn a sharp, jagged shard of animal bone, aiming a vicious horizontal slice directly at Uhtred’s knee tendons to ruin his mobility. But Uhtred’s reaction speed was too high, and the weapon cut empty air.
Scorpion’s eyes widened in disbelief, but he pressed the attack anyway, driving forward into a frantic pursuit. However, a distinct sense of dread began to bleed into his movements.
As a man who was intimately familiar with violence before the integration, his survival instincts were razor-sharp, and they were screaming that he was outmatched.
He definitely knew he was losing this fight. Now his strategy shifted entirely to maintaining face. He wanted to ensure his inevitable defeat looked like a close, hard-fought struggle rather than a total beat down.
Uhtred opened his eyes and calmly watched the desperate barrage. Scorpion kept pressing, mixing fire-enhanced punches with quick thrusts of the bone dagger.
But as Uhtred continued to defend effortlessly, a profound sense of disappointment washed over him.
Is this seriously all he has up his sleeve?
When the battle first started, especially after that first fire attack, Uhtred had felt a genuine curiosity. This was his first fight against another human cultivator, and a pioneer who had adapted quickly enough to begin gaining levels before everyone else.
But thinking about it more logically, Uhtred realized he was setting his expectations based entirely on his own impossible standards.
The System had stated clearly during integration that choosing a class permanently attunes the core to a single aspect of cosmic essence. For Scorpion, his core was bound strictly to the flame element, meaning he could only perceive and refine fire essence.
If Scorpion had been in Uhtred’s position, despite the essence cores he had gotten from his fights, all of them would have been completely useless for his cultivation.
The fact that Scorpion had reached Level 4 already proved he was genuinely talented. How exactly he reached that level remained a mystery, though, since Uhtred hadn’t even encountered any fire-attuned creatures on his march downriver...
But then again, his blatant passive essence draw at the time simply scared all beasts and animals away from him, anyway, so he couldn’t be too sure.
"All right, that’s enough," Uhtred muttered to himself, deciding to end the farce.
He raised his hand for the first time to strike just as Scorpion’s fist came in for another blow. Before Scorpion knew what was happening, Uhtred’s hand shot forward in a blur, parrying Scorpion’s wrist away cleanly with one hand and jabbing straight at his sternum with terrifying force.
The impact forced the air out of Scorpion’s lungs entirely, lifting him off the ground and sending him tumbling backwards like a broken ragdoll before he crashed heavily into the sand ten feet away.
The sudden turn of events shocked the thousands of watching survivors, leaving the clearing entirely silent.
The grand fight that was supposed to decide the future hierarchy of the sector had been settled in a second by a single, effortless strike from the young man in black...
