Chapter 186: Dueling the Great General
On the ground below, Drai had stopped moving around and was standing meters away, facing Alancho. He was now shirtless and wore a pair of baggy shorts.
"Done with your warm-up?" Alancho asked. Unlike Drai, he was wearing a full set of training garb, leaving only his feet bare.
Drai nodded in reply. Unbeknownst to the others, he hadn’t actually been warming up but had been consulting his System regarding his essence supply. Ever since he left Siyeun Mountains, gathering essence had become way harder, which was why he never utilized it even once for skill or health recovery.
Even now, Drai intended not to use any essence for this fight if he could. From his assessment, he knew he only had around four extra max-recoveries left outside the ones he had put aside for emergencies. He suspected it would take days to replenish even one instance of recovery unless he started draining humans, so he thought the expense wasn’t worth it.
"Like I said before, don’t worry and just go all out from the beginning," Alancho said. "The walls here are not only made of highly sturdy materials, they’re reinforced by an array too. It would take a lot just to dent them."
"What about the injuries?" Drai asked.
"There’s an emergency kit complete with several doses of top-grade healing serums nearby. If the injury is bad enough, we’ll rush you to our usual healer—her clinic is just around the corner."
"Any rules?"
"We stop when either of us surrenders, is knocked out, or is fatally wounded. Aside from that, there are none. And to motivate you further, I’ll also add a reward from my personal stash if you do well enough."
Drai felt that he was motivated enough, but nonetheless, he still nodded, as he didn’t want to miss any potential memento.
"Tom, is everything set?" Alancho asked loudly.
Yes, Master.
"Oh—do notify Helga too. Tell her we might drop by soon."
As you wish.
Turning to Drai, Alancho asked, "Ready?"
A white aura burst out from Drai and the floor beneath him creaked a bit.
"Yes," he replied.
With a grin, Alancho gestured, "Then come."
Under the spectators’ gaze, a white streak crossed the arena, closing the distance between the two fighters in a flash.
Alancho was caught off guard by his opponent’s speed, but his quick reaction time allowed his eyes to lock onto Drai’s fist that was just shooting out.
’What a speed... But that won’t be enough,’ Alancho thought as he prepared to parry the punch.
Just then, Drai’s fist abruptly accelerated and punched through Alancho’s unprepared hand, landing on his chest.
A huge boom reverberated the arena, startling the three ladies in the spectator area along with Tom, who was monitoring the fight from the control room. At the same time, Alancho’s figure shot out like a cannonball, slamming against the wall more than a dozen meters away.
Instead of following up his attack, Drai deactivated his skills to refresh their cooldowns. Despite his successful first strike, he refused to pummel an unprepared Alancho who hadn’t even transformed. What he truly wanted was to get a taste of the famed general’s full power, which might be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
Meanwhile, Auri and Natalia couldn’t help but glance sweatingly at Angel, increasingly convinced of her words regarding Drai’s ludicrous potential.
"Stupendous," Alancho muttered smilingly as he stood up, blood dripping from the edge of his mouth.
If anyone else were in his boots, their chest would’ve at least caved in from the punch, especially since no active skills were used to soften the blow—he had only shifted backward slightly to reduce the impact. However, Alancho’s ruined garb showed that he merely sustained some cracks on his scarlet scales and a horrible bruise beneath them. Just his raw stats, physical traits, passive skills, and a subtle defensive technique were enough to somewhat withstand Drai’s maxed out Nexus punch—such was a sixth-stager’s might.
As Alancho made his way back to the center, Drai suddenly remarked, "Please do your best too."
Hearing this, Alancho chuckled before saying, "Sorry to disappoint you, Drai, but I’m afraid I can’t do that. I don’t want to accidentally destroy the arena and bury everyone here alive."
Just as Drai’s face drooped, Alancho continued, "The most I can do is show you how I usually handle things in the frontlines."
Having said these words, Alancho let out a faint growl and his body instantly trembled. The countless scarlet scales covering his skin emerged, forming an armor that covered him from head to toe. His face also deformed slightly and began to resemble a lizard. At the same time, fangs protruded from his mouth, and claws also grew out from his hands and feet. Lastly, a pair of scarlet wings and a tail emerged from his backside.
Drai’s cheeks inadvertently turned rosy and a faint moan slipped out from his lips, for the magnificent sight he had only witnessed through the screen was now before his very eyes.
From her seat, Auri anxiously murmured upon seeing the spectacle, "D-Drai won’t die, right?"
Gulping nervously, Natalia replied, "I hope so..."
A terrifying howl filled the arena as Alancho bellowed to the ceiling. Shortly after, he lowered his head and growled, "Here I come."
The battlecry managed to wake Drai up from his stupor, and he instantly reactivated Nova Flux and Nexus Augmentation. In a blink, a scarlet blur struck him.
Hovering before Drai, Alancho raised a proverbial eyebrow after watching his simultaneous strikes fail to stagger Drai. Both his right hand and foot’s claw strikes had been defended, whereas the left ones merely grazed Drai, leaving long white marks on his skin.
Drai struck back with a right hook, but Alancho’s wings quickly flapped, propelling him away as he narrowly dodged the fist. He then zoomed back toward Drai, this time focusing all his strength into one hand.
Like a javelin, Alancho’s claw drilled into Drai’s shoulder. But to his surprise, instead of backing off, Drai decided to spring up and latch onto his arm.
’This boy really doesn’t give a damn about his body, does he?’ Alancho inwardly remarked as he kept flying forward, piercing Drai’s shoulder harder while attempting to pry him off.
Unfortunately for him, Drai stubbornly held on. In fact, he even began to squeeze Alancho’s arm, slowly cracking the scales that covered it.
The squeezing barely pained Alancho, but he felt his arm numbing, so he twisted his body and began flying upward. Halfway to the ceiling, he suddenly opened his maw and spat out a gush of scarlet flames at Drai.
Drai gritted hard as he withstood the heat, still squeezing Alancho’s arm. Just from their brief confrontation earlier, he had realized that Alancho’s agility was way higher than his, so he didn’t want to waste this chance lest he end up never getting to touch the general again.
Even with Drai’s altered organs, he still wasn’t impervious to this much heat. His skin slowly charred under Alancho’s flames, blackening and curling all over. If Max were watching this, he would definitely burst out laughing at the prospect of witnessing another rare spectacle—Drai’s burnt crotch with its blackened sausage.
However, just when the searing pain was getting slightly unbearable for Drai, the flames enveloping him abated before disappearing completely. In exchange, a powerful shout rattled his insides, loosening his grip.
Not wasting the opening, Alancho swiftly pried Drai off with his feet, sending him plunging into the ground.
’Does he have a death wish?! If I hadn’t stopped my dragon breath, he would’ve turned into barbecue!’ Alancho bafflingly thought after sighing in relief. Watching Drai’s plummeting figure, he secretly wished that the boy would pass out from the fall, as Alancho feared that he’d end up murdering his daughter’s suicidal friend if the fight lasted any longer.
But to his surprise, the white light suddenly took a 180-degree turn and headed straight back at him.
"Flight too?! Why weren’t you born a Skyward, Drai?!" Alancho growlingly exclaimed with excitement before flapping his wings hard as he dived to meet Drai’s charge.
Immediately after, another deafening boom resounded as the two figures simultaneously got blasted away before slamming against their respective walls, trembling the arena.
Drai’s charred skin was shattered by the impact, leaving the underlying layer exposed. His whole body was now reddened as if he had just been boiled. However, looking at his figure that hovered out of the dented wall, there was no indication that he had been injured by the clash.
On the other hand, Alancho coughed out more blood as he plopped out from the wall. Flapping his wings, he realized that they had been slightly deformed, causing him to wobble as he hovered in the air.
Just then, a tremendous pain came from his right side. Looking at his right shoulder and arm, he found that they were covered in blood while the scales that should’ve been there were either missing or embedded in his flesh.
"I lost in brute force...?" he muttered in disbelief before shifting his gaze toward Drai’s relatively unscathed figure across the arena, his feelings complicated.
What Alancho didn’t know was that Drai’s current strength and constitution were around 1200 points each without even taking account of the percentage increase from his passive skills, which were truly ridiculous figures even by sixth-stagers’ standards.
If Drai hadn’t been bogged down by his immense weight and density, his speed would’ve been many times greater as well, though such a scenario would be highly improbable since his altered density was the main reason he could wield such unreasonable strength and toughness in the first place. Unless Drai could somehow defy gravity, it would be unlikely for his overall speed to increase a lot.
The two fighters proceeded to hover toward each other until they were just a few meters apart.
If Alancho hadn’t been this wounded, the sight of the freshly boiled, practically naked young man before him would’ve probably amused him a lot. Yet, as things stood, he merely stared at Drai in silence, his thoughts unclear.
Meanwhile, in the spectator area, Auri was blushingly peeking through her fingers due to the vulgar sight, whereas Angel seemed completely unperturbed. Natalia, on the other hand, was neither blushing nor covering her eyes—she simply stared blankly through the viewing wall, too muddled to focus, with Alancho’s excited remark prior to his charge still echoing in her head.
