10 Snakes

<<< Few weeks earlier >>>

In an underground hideout located somewhere near the mountain base of Otento and his lackeys, a slender yet busty young woman was sitting on a sofa. She somewhere in her late teens or early twenties, had aqua-blue wavy hair, and wore glasses over her emerald green eyes as well as a form-fitting dress to further accentuate her curves. She had recently picked a habit of enjoying a glass of wine every once in a while, and now was one of those times.

"Hm?"

She had been spying Otento's group for a while now and was aware of his attempt at capturing Tatsumaki today. At first she didn't meant to look inside since she knew Otento was vigilant and observing the whole hideout to avoid any unnecessary trouble, but she now noticed that he had retracted his senses.

Not knowing the reason, she couldn't help her own curiosity and decided to take a peek. What she witnessed next was a fight between Otento and Boom.

"Hooh, how interesting." She smirked while playing with the glass in her hand.

The more she watched, the happier she got. And when the martial artist ended up assumedly dead, she seemed to become even happier, excited even.

"If he somehow survives from that, he could be an ideal sacrificial candidate. This is truly a welcome surprise." She smirked contently.

She then watched as Tatsumaki freed herself from her bounds and questioned Otento who was at his wits end. Soon the young woman saw Boom lifting himself to stand and her eyes shone in excitement.

"Huhuhu. I'll look forward to when you two get to meet." She snickered ominously.

***

<<< Present >>>

The young woman had observed Boom for a few weeks now and was not disappointed. She had seen that he had recovered from his injuries way faster than what was normal.

That usually indicated that his strength had grown from the near death experience, which in turn meant that he might have the potential to grow into a strong monster.

He was currently stronger than her current subject when she had found him as a human, maybe even stronger than his current monstrous form. She couldn't tell as she hadn't seen him utilize his full strength in a clear way.

Either way, he was incredibly strong for a human. If he was this strong as a human, just how strong could he be as a monster? After having observed Boom enough, she could come to the conclusion that he was talented, but didn't possess the monstrous talent in martial arts that her subject did. He didn't have the ability to learn a new style with just a glance.

Fighting strength wasn't all she was looking for, however. The most important thing one needed was to have a certain kind of mentality for her to be able to turn him against humanity. Her current subject was ideal in this manner, so she hoped this one would reach to unprecedented heights

She did see Boom spend large amounts of time, everyday, just standing in place and looking into nothingness, which made her question his sanity to an extent though.

She decided to pit him and her current subject against each other and see how it goes. She would be there to help her current subject to prevail if need be, and reach to even greater heights of strength.

If her subject somehow perishes, she could console herself with the fact that she might be able to convert Boom to her cause. It wasn't impossible. It would just take time and a lot of effort.

She told her subject to be ready while she was luring the young martial artist to him with her half-broken meat puppet. Their appearance would soon be on the news, so it was very possible that someone strong could show up to help Boom. That was an unnecessary risk she'd rather avoid and would only lead to more complications. Hopefully this fight would be over before then.

When she had managed to successfully make the two face each other, she moved the puppet to a high spot to spectate this lovely encounter.

***

Boom was looking up at the purple, ominous-looking monster before him. Its big, yellow eyes were round and full of emptiness. Several flexible spikes were pointing up from its black round face that seemed to lack a mouth.

The humanoid monster had a long tail that ended in what seemed like mandibles and it had snake skulls as decorations on its shoulder and knees. Its fingers and toes ended with big and pointy claws. Other than that, the monster's exterior reminded Boom of exposed muscles, only they were different shades of purple and had scales on them.

The young martial artist was about to talk but was interrupted by a deep voice that seemed to be coming from behind the monster's mouthless face.

"I see, so you shall be my next sacrifice. May you struggle and die in despair."

Boom knitted his brows as he stared back at the monster.

"...Alright, cool." He said while cracking his neck.

He could feel that he was physically about as strong as this monster, maybe stronger, even with their difference in size. As such, it'd only make sense that with the addition of his martial arts he could easily beat this monster.

However, when looked at his energies, he could see that they were more stable than what monsters or normal humans usually had, which suggested that it may have had a good control of its body. At a quick glance, he couldn't see it that accurately, but its 'chi' and his own seemed to have about the same amount of stability. Still should be a win though.

Next thing he knew, one of the monster's horns extended and attacked him at great speeds. Boom widened his eyes in surprise but nonetheless managed to easily parry it. It was immediately followed with a flurry of other horn attacks but he could deal with them the same way as the first one.

'They can extend...? And this guy seems to have perfect control over them.' Boom thought with interest.

"Mm, good. This will not be boring." The monster nodded in acknowledgement. It then moved the rest of its body for the first time, taking a stance.

'Martial arts?' Boom questioned in his mind and responded with a stance of his own, keeping a close eye on the monster's every movement.

After a short standoff, the monster once again attacked with its horns, and this time Boom advanced to attack while parrying them.

When Boom got near enough, the monster started using its own martial arts to clash against Boom's. It used a rather advanced form of martial arts that almost rivaled Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist in terms of offensive ability, though instead of precisely striking the opponent's weak points, it focused more on grabbing certain parts of the body in order to immobilize and crush them.

However, in terms of defense, and consequently overall ability, Boom's martial art style was much more advanced and he managed to smoothly deflect all of the monsters attacks. Even when the monster was utilizing its long tail as an additional limb.

Boom quickly managed to land a series of blows, leaving a bunch of dents, even a couple of holes, in its body. However, right after he witnessed the monster regenerating back to its heathy state and continue its attempted onslaught on him.

After the clash had lasted for a couple more seconds, while the monster tried one of its usual attacks with both hands, what had previously reminded Boom of being exposed muscles, separated themselves and split the hands into several serpents that moved to wrap around his whole body to restrain him.

He was about to react when he felt his body stop with a familiar psychic force. Boom glanced at the sky and saw a familiar ball of eyes. The force was weak enough for him to almost immediately break free but it was already too late.

The snakes that had previously formed the purple monster's hands managed to wrap around him with a vice-like grip and bare their fangs into him.

'Ouch!'

He exerted all of his strength to struggle his way out of the nest of snakes and retreated a few steps back, but was followed by horns which he deflected like usual.

Boom felt a strong sting from all the bite marks left on his body. He had clearly been poisoned through those bites but had to put that aside for now. He needed to focus on the fight to end it as quickly as possible.

Having no time to lament about forgetting the psychic monster and letting his guard down, he used 'Awakening Breath' and saw the ball esper extending its psychic energy trying to contain him once more.

Before it could do that, he leaped out from his place at maximum speed, cracking the asphalt floor in a spider web pattern and leaving behind an after image that was immediately pierced through by a bunch of spikes and snake heads from the purple monster.

Boom landed on the concrete wall of an apartment building on the side of the street and immediately leaped again straight toward the flying ball of eyes in the sky, leaving similar cracks that wall without completely destroying it.

He mounted the esper monster by piercing his feet into its body so it could not escape, and finished it off with a flurry of hand strikes. All of this happened in the blink of an eye, and the ball monster couldn't do much to react before turning into mush with little resistance.

*Huff* *Huff* Boom could feel the poison already affecting him and seeping deeper and deeper. He was becoming weaker by the second, adding to his rush to finish the fight quickly. It seemed to be an extremely strong poison, as his body would be able to resist normal poisons to an extent.

He had made a mistake in completely destroying to ball monster, leaving him no foothold to propel himself back to the ground. Thankfully the monster seemed to have a limit in how far it could extend its appendages, so he had a short moment to prepare for the eventual onslaught he'd experience while falling back to its range.

He looked down wondering what the other monster was doing, and what he saw made him widen his eyes in confusion and disbelief.

The monster had taken the exact stance the he had made at the start of the fight, as if it was about to perform Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist too.

'Nuh-uh. Oh Boom, you silly goof, what are you thinking, of course it couldn't do that.' "Ahaha." He shook his head and laughed to himself, refusing to believe that the monster could actually match his style.

This was before the purple monstrosity divided its hands into serpents again and started to attack the still falling young man with them and its horns, all of them performing Water Stream Rock Smashing Fist. This made his already widened eyes almost pop out of his head.

Sure, it wasn't your traditional way of using it, but the attacks mimicked the style perfectly and had the same energy behind them. It was actually much more impressive than what Boom had initially expected.

He quickly slapped his cheeks and used 'Awakening Breath' again to rid himself from all the useless thoughts, and started parrying the incoming attacks.

It was as if he was fighting many martial artists at once as the monster's extended limbs surrounded him and attacked from every angle at the same time. The saving grace was that his movements carried much more weight behind them, even without a foothold, as the monster had sacrificed strength for numbers by dividing it limbs.

Their speed hadn't decreased, however, so it was far from easy. While still in the air, he used all four of his limbs to defend himself, resembling a nimble monkey.

And when he landed to the ground, he immediately rushed at the monster with full force. He was already looking quite ghastly from the poison and would soon fully succumb to its effects. He had to finish this fight before that or his death was all but assured.

Now that he was on the ground, he couldn't defend with his legs as he was using them to catch up to the monster that was trying to keep its distance. In addition his strength had already diminished quite a bit.

As such, he failed to block a few attack while chasing, leaving a few additional bite marks on him, as well as a pierced shoulder from one of the horns which made his left arm unusable. Fortunately by then, he was already near enough.

He used his last remaining strength to leap at the monster's head, too focused to care or be surprised about the giant mouth with rows of pointy teeth revealing itself behind the monster's round face.

His lunge was too fast, and so the monster was a bit too late in forming its mouth.

"Haaah!!!" Boom landed a fully powered fist on the monsters forehead, backed by a spirited shout, resulting in the monster losing half of its head.

*Thud* It slowly fell on its back, left motionlessly lying on the ground.