Chapter 21 - Jose

Pulling out two pre-made daggers not from the circle from his left palm but from his Inventory's subspace, Jose dashed forward to attack Zero who's currently impaled by the long spike. 

'I'll finish this…!' Jose thought to himself.

This made Zero anxious, "Dammit! Damn you!!" He then grabbed the spike with both hands and outputted the strongest electricity he is able to do to disintegrate it, making his lightning look white in the process. Since his own lightning have no effects nor does it damage him, he is perfectly fine. "Gaaaaahhhhhhh!!!" He completely disintegrated the part of the spike that was embedded on his shoulder, leaving a gaping hole on it as Jose continued on advancing.

Jose arrived in front of him and began a flurry of flowing attacks and movement using the daggers, Zero who had no martial arts training before and is having a hard time keeping up and his forearms get getting cut left and right while defending.

"Now this is amusing!!!" The Moderator laughed by himself while atop the tree, munching even more on some grapes from a small bowl that never seem to run out.

While using his mana to try to heal his shoulder bit by bit, Zero now tried fighting against Jose's flurry of attacks after further strengthening his lightning armor which greatly decreases the damage done to him and passively repels metallic object, hence there are moments that Jose's daggers seemed to bounce off of him. 'Fuck!!! Why can't I hit him! He's always intercepting my attacks! Just how the hell…?!' He's deeply frustrated by Jose's movements since they are so efficient and such minimal movements are able to fight against his barrage of punches from earlier and now that he's trying to fight back, Jose is able to easily predict his counters and even counter attack most of them, slashing him all over with the dagger despite the repelling effect of his armor.

He slowly heals during the fight, which is way faster than most humanoids' natural healing process that he can further augment by expending mana to the wounded area, which is a special trait of all God-Kins that humanoids don't normally possess and is one of the reasons why God-Kins are classified as its own race. 

Further enhancing his speed even more, Zero began keeping up, using his sheer speed to try to overpower Jose's skilled movements despite the latter's eye powers. 

'My eyes aren't keeping up…' Jose thought worriedly. He's exhausting himself now because of him keeping these two eye powers for far too long since the beginning. Because without it, he'll be too overwhelmed by Zero's speed and power.

Secretly activating his absorption circle on his right palm concealed by holding a dagger with it, he began absorbing nearby energy from Zero as their exchanges continued on, since all the energy he absorbs all goes to replenishing his stamina and not his mana, this is a viable solution to his dilemma right now. 

'It's not penetrating anymore…!' He panicked. Even when coating his daggers with mana to boost its effectiveness, Zero's simply just strengthening the lightning armor on his body and right now, his daggers are simply just bouncing away, furthermore, the paralysis slowly but surely are building up even more now, hindering his movements and slowing him down somewhat. As his stamina problems are slowly being alliviated, he activated one of the two short lines on his right lower leg. 

He have a total of four of these from behind both of his lower legs and each of them boosts his speed by double, activating all of it will boost his speed by eightfold, but it's too draining to use all and just one is already enough to give him double his current speed to keep up to about 65% of Zero's speed.

He retreated two paces away by hopping and threw his daggers towards Zero, on his third hop, a blue, circular energy platform formed on his left foot which he kicked towards the enemy.

He began kicking with his left foot and with each kick, a platform forms and hurled at Zero. He adjusted the edges to be sharp and the maximum limit he can make of these platforms is five, which are all fully able to be controlled remotely. Since these platforms are imbued with his mana too, he deactivated his speed boost and now activated two dashes on his shoulder, making his strength now tenfold. As the platforms encircled and confused Zero with their attacks and movements, Jose began teleporting all around, attacking Zero before disappearing and reappearing then doing the same again. 

This fucker keeps teleporting all over the place…! How would I… Zero then though of something, all the metal spikes laying around all then suddenly levitates, startling Jose. This is one of the effects Zero can achieve by imbuing mana into his natural lightning manipulation, which is Magnetism, he can freely control metallic objects with just a thought due to this.

"Now! I'll use your shit against you, You fucker!" Zero then began hurling the spikes towards Jose who is currently attacking him, but despite that, Jose never stopped attacking and is just parrying and dodging the spikes that are coming into his way. 

Now seeing a pattern to Jose's teleportation, Zero began anticipating his next appearance despite being visibly injured with bruises all over him, Jose's attacks greatly damages through his lightning armor despite all the fortification he was doing. 

"There!" he then opened his palm to blast Jose which the latter managed to absorb just in time. But instead of punching or kicking him, he was grabbed by the collar and thrown to the floor with such force that he spat blood upon impact and the floor formed a crater, kicking up clouds of dust. He desperately tried getting back up, continuing to punch despite being downed which Jose skillfully parried or blocked and then returned hits on his downed face,

'Fuuuuccccckkkkk!!!!' Zero is incredibly frustrated on the inside, he's nearly at his limits now, there is a rule that killing is strictly forbidden in this trial site so he can't use his most powerful and destructive power, but if he were to be allowed to, he would've killed this bastard already.

He tried blasting Jose with the strongest lightning he could muster point-black at the moment but no, Jose just absorbed it with his right hand and with his left, he punched Zero on the cheek so hard that one of his tooth fell out then continuously punching Zero with his left hand while pinning him down on the chest with the right, while continuously absorbing his energy as he did so. That punch almost knocked Zero out, making him dizzy but Jose still continued attacking his face.

'I have to end this...!' Jose thought to himself, he recalled one of his grandfather's teachings when he was teaching him and Andres in the art of Kali.

"Remember, you two. Now, I don't want you two getting into any fights. If possible, I would love for the two of you to just remain here. We can continue as the farmers of this small town for hundreds of years until we die and reincarnate! If possible, I would have love to just be a farmer again after reincarnation. 

I somewhat regret being a climber, it was hard and full of loss. If only I have found my love for farming earlier in my life… But enough of me! If ever, if just ever, you two were to be caught up in a fight, remember, focus on the face. 

That's the fastest ways for them to be knocked out, focus on their vital organs to weaken them, and when they are down, focus on the face to knock them out. I'm teaching you these for self-defense, please, don't use my teachings to hurt somebody else deliberately but just use it to protect yourselves, got it? My little delinquents?" He then smiled enthusiastically with his old, wrinkled face and white but lustrous hair, as per Jose's memories of him.

'Sorry, grandpa, I'm really sorry that I'm using your teachings right now for my selfish reasons to bring Andres back, I'm hurting someone else to get what I want, I'm so sorry… I… I'm just so lost without you here right now.'

Jose is tearing up on the inside but remains stoic and quite emotionless on the outside as he continued hitting Zero.