Chapter 77 - Practical Test [11]

A/N: sorry for delay, uni applications are killing me. My applications go in this friday😭😭

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I looked down at Reinhardt, pulling my sword out of him, giving him a moment to regenerate.

'Learn from your mistakes, come back stronger.. Come on.'

As time went on, his torso was slowly but surely regenerating. However his guts and some of his internals organs had already spilled out. Perhaps it was because of this that his regeneration was slower than before, or... perhaps it was an adaptation occurring?

And so, I carved a whole into his chest, carefully removing the skin and muscle hiding his ribs, heart and lungs. However, upon closer inspection, I noticed something almost terrfying. His bones were coated in an odd substance that I hadn't really noticed before.

But, what was scarier were his organs. His heart definitely wasn't that of a human. He also seemed to be.. forming new lungs? I didn't even understand what I was looking at. Reinhardt was taking a step towards becoming more monster than human.

'Four lungs? If it makes you stronger... then who am I to judge how far your body will take you.'

As his body remade itself, I could hear squelching and cracking, his bones were fusing together and his muscles and blood vessels were being made rather quickly, compared to a few moments ago anyways.

Soon, his white flames stopped wrapping around his body and instead sprouted from his back in the form of almost angelic wings. His cloak of darkness moved and wrapped around his waist, and covered his body which had once been covered up by his flames, resembling a pteruge or a barbarian's waist cloth, or even a loincloth.

Reinhardt stood up, his eyes clouded, clearly unaware of his surroundings. He was still in that half conscious state.

His brilliant, flaming wings flapped, releasing a wave of hot air.

'Wings..? Really? What's the point of wings when he can already fly. Well, I guess it looks kinda cool. To be fair, he's at the age where this sort of stuff probably seems cool as fuck.'

Then, from those almost dazzlingly bright wings, a burst of flames sent him flying towards me. And so, I swung my sword, aiming for his throat in an attempt to test his reactions speed now that he wasn't being burned alive.

However, I saw blood leak from his mouth and wrap around his teeth as he bit on my sword and stopping me mid swing. I was kind of shocked,to a point where I didn't even move just out of pure confusion.

And in that moment where I let my guard down, he struck my stomach, the sheer power behind his attack was great enough to nullify the shock absorption of my armour to some degree.

'This bastard actually bit down on a holy sword??'

I said, looking at those blood coated teeth of his, feeling a sense of confusion that was alien to me. I thought I had seen it all in my lifetimes, but apparently not.

I then grabbed his face, sending a giant surge of lightning through his body before thrusting my thumbs into his eyes and crushing them. However, he didn't even bother regenerating, instead those flaming wings of his wrapped around his arm, burning it.

However, compared to burning his entire body, this was a significant improvement. And so, he performed a palm strike, the compressed flame exploded outward and exerted a gigantic force on me, sending me into a nearby tree.

'If it weren't for this armour.. I'm not sure if I'd be able to withstand such hits very many times.'

Taking direct blows from Reinhardt was difficult. The guy had an already innately powerful physique, then his body got stronger with each wound it regenerated from, adding to his base physical prowess, his power was further multiplied by that Arcane Enhancement, along with that he further increases his power through Blood Manipulation. Finally, there's those flames which exert a physical force.

Pairing that with his inhuman movements that ignore the physical restraints of the human body due to his use of Arcane Healing, taking that monster on in close quarters was so unbelievably difficult.

However, all this isn't nearly enough to beat me, probably.

And so, I stopped moving, and closed my eyes. Slowly, I surged my body with Lightning Magic.

"Mana Art, Overclock."

Without a moment's delay, my body got itself up. Through the use of Overclock, I essentially removed the need of electrical impulses in my body, and instead I manually controlled each and every action my body took through the use of my own, minute, output of current with the use of Lightning Magic.

The time taken to react was drastically shorter for Awakened, our brains were simply better after all. However, we still had a reaction time to consider. Using Overclock, the concept of reaction time wasn't a thing for me, and not only that, but it served as a thought accelerator.

Overclock was an incredibly difficult skill to use as it required me to think about every single action I wanted to take. For example, if I wanted to throw a kick, I would need to send a current through to every muscle needed in the process manually, as opposed to 'just doing it.' It also created a large margin for error as most people simply wouldn't know what muscles were actually used in a movement and the order in which muscles had to be activated on top of needing to consider the time that needed to pass before the next muscle wad activated.

And this was for every movement the body took, aside from things that were passive, like a heartbeat. Though, this could be manually accelerated or decelerated through this Mana Art.

'Now.. how do I take this beast down?'

Though Reinhardt's physical prowess and flames were both very dangerous, what made this monster so fearsome was his ability to regenerate from mortal wounds in an instant. Killing him was impossible for me, as was dealing enough damage to overwhelm his regeneration.

So, the only viable way to take this man down was to knock him out. But that was far easier said than done. His instincts, combat sense and intuition were out of this world. It was obvious he hadn't been taught how to fight, but instead all he did was move that blessed body as he thought was best.

'How enviable.'

I thought to myself before firing a blast of lightning from the palm of my hand. He dodged it, almost as if bored by how slow it was. His flaming wings burst, and released a huge amount of fire, burning the ground and launching him toward me.

Using those wings, he could fly as fast as before without having to sacrifice his body. Even if he wasn't totally awake, he was certainly learning. As he flew towards me, the air around us became dry and I could feel the moisture on my skin dissipating bit by bit.

When his fist collided with my blade, I felt as if I was clashing with a sword rather than a human. Sparks flew as I sent a kick into his liver, which was countered through the use of that blood armour of his, almost nullifying the force behind my attack.

His white wings flapped before compressing and entering his body as a red mist began to spray out of his body. The red mist spread as he breathed, and when it came in contact with me, it felt as if I had been submerged in a cauldron of boiling water.

'Boiled blood. Is he using it like a smokescreen?'

Then, I felt his shin crash into my face, cracking my jaw. The red mist seemed to have burst out from his calf.

'You have to be fucking kidding me. He's boiling his own blood and creating a huge amount of pressure in his body to enhance his power, that red mist is the release of that boiled blood.'

Blow after blow came at me, I was barely able to dodge them. The red mist made it impossible to see and his newfound strength wasn't something I had fully adapted to. His fists were moving so absurdly fast that even whilst reduced my reaction speed to a value infinitesimally close to 0 seconds, I could barely fight back due to my actual speed being so much lower than his.

Soon, I could no longer dodge, and instead I had to bear the brunt of his blows. His fist repeatedly slammed into my armour, cracking the bones beneath it as my eyes began to burn from the sheer heat exuded from that bloody mist.

'I might actually lose...'