4 Spar and Attack on The Mountain

Opening my eyes, I smiled across the courtyard at gramps as I began to flex my muscles, getting some blood into them. It'd been four years since the day I figured out my defective physique wasn't defective at all. Not for me. I was now 16 and I was getting ready for a proper fight with gramps.

"You sure you wanna do this, old man?" I shouted across at him, "We're only allowed to use physical strength and martial arts - none of your cheat-y Senjutsu techniques!" I teased as I revolved my Ki through my body, wiping away any exhaustion the earlier physical training had brought me and restoring my stamina to an extent.

Scoffing, gramps cracked his knuckles while he replied, "You've gotten cocky because of your physical ability, Ban--It's time I show you what a century of martial arts training can do!" he replied with an equally boasting tone and I just smiled wide at him.

Gramps was an Ultimate-Class Being but that was only with his Senjutsu. Without it and just relying on his physique, he was a High-Class Being. A very strong High-Class Being, sure, but well within my physiques limits.

I was currently at a gully, I guess you could say. Or crossing an impossibly wide ravine.

I was at the High-Class level...but to cross over to Ultimate-Class was harder than you'd think. It wasn't easy and it required decade after decade of training to even catch a glimpse of Ultimate-Class. At least for humans, anyway. But because of my unique physique, I was trail blazing along the road to Ultimate-Class. But that didn't mean I was anywhere near it yet.

But at the very least I was a High-Class Being purely with physical strength and martial arts. Senjutsu pushed me to a top tier High-Class Being. Yet other High-Class Beings didn't hold my level of physical strength or prowess - Why? Because most other High-Class Beings become High-Class through their amount and purity of their chosen energy rather than their physique's toughness and strength. They can enhance their body with that energy (through Body Strengthening Magic) but even then they probably can't hold a light to my muscles and my overall strength.

The only person remotely like me would be Sairaorg or a Dragon. They both follow the same type of power system as me - and that power system is physical power instead of magical/demonic power.

Still, Dragons can at least use Mana/Draconic Energy for spells and whatnot but most of them use physical strength when the going gets rough or whatever.

Why am I thinking about all of this? Because despite both me and gramps being High-Level Beings when not using Senjutsu, gramps is incredibly outmatched on the physical strength side and I'm outmatched when it comes to the martial arts side. What I'm getting at is that despite me being on the same level as some people in the series, I hopelessly outclass them in both attack potency and overall physical strength.

Basically, the power levels in this world are incredibly bloody vague and until you fight someone, you don't really know how strong they are and what they're strengths are.

For instance, you could meet a High-Class Devil who focuses on Magic and he'd be physically weak enough for a Middle-Class human to beat him down given the right conditions and the next day you could find a High-Class Devil who focuses on close combat and he could physically overpower dozens of High-Class Exorcists.

So despite beings being on the same level, it could be a completely unfair fight.

Like right now.

"Ready, Ban?!" gramps shouted and I nodded with a savage smile, to which gramps charged forward, his thickly muscled body unleashing all the taut up tension like a spring as he lunged toward me.

But without Senjutsu backing him or being used, he was too slow and I dodged his leading fist by stepping to the side and whipping my leg around toward his face.

Gramps dodged under it and grabbed onto the leg, trying to pick me up and slam me into the ground. But it didn't go his way as I forcibly broke his hold by flexing my leg muscles just that little bit further, using a mixture of brute force and technique to get through his grip. He let go of the leg as it tore itself away from his hands and instead sent a knife hand at my exposed side.

I couldn't find balance quick enough due to my overextended leg, but I could use that momentum to throw myself out of the way, which I did.

The knife hand barely missed my side, leaving a thin cut from the air pressure surrounding the old man's hand. Barely perceiving the pain, I continued with my spin and threw the back of my hand around with the spin, aiming for where gramps' head was.

I didn't go full throttle because a part of me didn't want to hurt the man who'd raised me - he was already suffering from old age, what could a full-powered blow from me do to him? I could flatten 5 meter tall boulders with casual blows--A normal blow would leave a sizable building in ruins, let alone a full-powered one.

But I soon realized my arrogance as my casual swing was easily dodged by the old man as he ducked under it and slipped in close enough to me that I could see his gray and blank eyes behind his blacked out glasses.

I instantly knew the move he was going for as he brought his shoulder to the front of his body. I'd seen what this technique could do to an opponents internal organs...and I wanted no part of it.

So I instantly flexed and hardened my abdominals, making them harder than metal as I braced myself. Just as I thought the attack would never come, gramps' should made impact with my stomach and I felt like I'd been hit by a train. This was what technique could do. This is what a master martial artist who'd dedicated his life towards martial arts could do.

He had less physical strength? It didn't matter. His technique multiplied his physical strength's affect in this fight and put him on equal--no, it put him on higher ground than me.

'...Holding back? Who do I think I am?' I wondered to myself as I was blasted back with speed that easily broke the sound barrier. I flew through a few walls until I hit the outer wall of the compound that'd been specially empowered by Senjutsu. Even then, my impact caused countless cracks and fissures to appear.

Within the next moment, gramps appeared with a frown on his face, "You little upstart...holding back against me?" he asked, his volume normal but his tone obviously a mixture between anger and disappointment. Shaking his head, he continued, "Get up and--" he didn't get to finish that sentence as I appeared in front of him, poised for a punch. I threw my everything behind that punch and it showed.

My fist broke the sound barrier. The air around me and my fist went haywire, flying all over the place like there was a hurricane currently ravaging the mountain. My fist went so fast that the air friction caused by it going through the air damn near set the air around my fist on fire.

Gramps looked shocked for a split second before a wide smile broke out on his face.

Hey, I wasn't born a battle maniac.

...Not a full one, at least! I learnt a lot of it off of this old monk, you know!? I'm not inherently a weird battle maniac, you know?!

Useless thoughts aside, gramps held up his hands in a 'X' guard and the fist collided with the guard and then everything went quiet for a split second before another shockwave went off as gramps went flying back.

But his feet never left the ground. The proof of that was the two tracts of broken tiles and dirt he left behind as he flew back through the holes in the walls I'd caused.

I followed after him, a blur, as I continued to pelt him with more and more hits.

It felt like I was hitting cotton or rubber...so I just kept hitting harder and faster. The sound barrier was broken over and over again, sending shockwaves in all directions and tearing up the ground and breaking down walls as I pelted gramps with fists and sometimes even kicks. But he never left the floor. Nor did he lose that wide smile of his.

By the time I stopped attacking, we'd reached the other side of the compound and were at the Senjutsu reinforced wall.

Taking a few deep breaths after exerting myself so heavily, I felt my stamina crawling back up at an extremely fast rate. 'Only problem with my muscles is they use up so much goddamn stamina when I go all out...' I complained to myself as I just looked at gramps.

Gramps looked back through the gap in his guard. His arms were incredibly heavily bruised but I could instantly tell he hadn't a single crack on his bones.

He'd pretty much mitigated all my damage...and seeing that made my blood boil with excitement. 'I guess I do have a bad case of battle maniac, huh?' I laughingly thought as I took a few steps toward the old monk who also started walking toward me.

I wasn't gonna hold back at all now that I knew he could take so many hits and come out relatively fine.

. . .

Breathing heavily, I looked over at the old man as I wiped my brow of any sweat and blood that had collected there. We'd gone at each other with ferocity you'd only see from animals and the only thing stopping the two of us from being unconscious from the injuries was the Senjutsu we were applying inside our bodies to heal ourselves.

Well, for me it was less the Senjutsu and more my robust physique and it's healing ability but my Ki helped somewhat.

As we sat around, I turned my sights inside myself and watched my torn muscles and fractured bones slowly stitching themselves back together and healing back to full health. However, my attention was quickly torn away from this when I heard shouting and explosions from outside the walls.

By the time I opened my eyes, gramps was already standing up and his full Ki was flaring around his body. His veins bulged and popped and the air around him warped and cracked under the pressure of his power.

This was an Ultimate-Class Being...and he seemed really fucking pissed.