Combat Skill

Elder Naoki growled. "You? Take my head? The arrogance of youth never ceases to amaze me. Prepare yourself pup. I'm going to leave you without a body to bury!"

Oji had bragged a bit just now, but the fact was that this Elder Naoki wasn't bad. A fused Essence and a technique filled with Lightening that could paralyze the instant responses that Oji preferred to depend on. This was several steps above the curve, and Oji was already fighting up 3 stages. True, Elder Naoki was no Nabaha, and Oji had beaten worse match ups. But this guy had the ability to flip the tables in a couple good hits. That meant no margin for error.

No margin for error meant Oji couldn't enjoy himself the way he'd started out goofing off. While turning the blows slightly aside as he blocked while backing up meant he was facing less than half the strength of each attack, it also made his defense even slower compared to Elder Naoki's attacks, which eventually meant Oji wasn't fast enough to block and had to ride the wave. The good thing was that Oji had placed himself at the limit of Elder Naoki's attack so that not only was Oji dragging out the time of contact, Elder Naoki was overextending from lack of expected resistance. Further dragging it out and actually lowering the total force that went to Oji himself. Elder Naoki and the Cifer probably thought he was pretty decently hurt, but Oji had taken more damage to his pride than his body.

It was easy to tell Elder Naoki was coming. His arms started to glow with that dull reddish lightening and his legs tensed while his eyes locked on his target. Oji found it equally easy to lead him to believe that he'd dodge to his right when that had been the direction he'd circled the entire time he was blocking the attacks. Then, right as Elder Naoki exploded into movement, Oji instead moved his left foot to his left and forward. Planting his feet firmly as his palm regained the Essence of Oji's many layered Technique. The ultimate level of it which gave the Technique it's name was Devil's Palm and was a Arterial Circulation level Technique that he had stolen before being kicked out of Emor. He'd only learned two layers, the Dark Palm and the Black Palm. Both were Origination level Techniques, but Dark Palm was Bottom Tier, while Black Palm was Peak Tier. Up until this moment, he'd been using Dark Palm which had barely been enough to fend of Elder Naoki's attacks.

This time, when hitting Elder Naoki with a counter as the Elder attacked past Oji's right side in a charging madness, while Oji's feet were firmly planted on the ground to maximize the strength he could bring forth in an instant, Oji used Black Palm and targeted the Elder's face.

The result was devastating. Elder Naoki took the full force of Oji's best attack under the worst conditions and added the strength of his own charging assault just to make matters worse. He stopped dead and his remaining momentum slung his feet from under him as his consciousness vanished for a couple seconds.

Oji never allowed Elder Naoki to regain consciousness, taking his head off while he was defenseless with falling chop of his left palm after spinning back around from delivering the first blow. It was an easy matter to sharpen his Essence to cut through the neck of the an Elder Naoki when the later wasn't defending himself. He'd have gone for that directly if not for the fact that his blood lust just before such a lethal move would have given him away. That's why he went for the non lethal opening, which was easier to disguise for a split second longer.

Oji bent over and picked up Elder Naoki's head from the ground, retracting the aura of his Essence. He'd used up almost a third of his Essence in those two attacks with Black Palm and the few dozen Dark Palms before that. If Elder Naoki hadn't been so dismissive and aggressive, but had treated Oji like an equal, things would have been far harder. But with 7 or so Black Palms in addition to constantly using his Dark Palms, Oji was still confident he would have won in the end.

"Idiot. You really thought I was bluffing." Oji said to the head in his hand. Then used his Essence to start a fire and set Elder Naoki's body alight. "Since he wanted to leave me without a burial ground and said such in the midst of all here, such will be his own fate instead."

The fire was extinguished by a force so overwhelming that the crowd felt themselves sweating and Oji himself thought he might be crushed under the sheer pressure. Oji knew who this kind of Essence had to belong to. In a pissant Clan like this, there would only be a single Broken Skeleton Foundation. The Clan Leader had decided to show his face after losing an Elder.