Bear School Astartes

Chapter 931 - 913: Going Hand-to-Hand, Huh?

It was a rare sight: even after undergoing several Interstellar Warrior enhancement surgeries, with his now more-than-human physique and weight, Lann was still sent flying like a rolling gourd by that kick!

The last time he was knocked flying was in front of the Extinct Dragon, when that ferocious and insidious Ancient Dragon caught him off guard. The result was Lann being smashed away by the broken bones bursting out of its body.

But this time, it was a humanoid creature only a head taller than Lann that almost sent the Demon Hunter flying off the cliff with a single kick!

This ring-shaped ritual arena wasn’t a complete circle; one side of the edge seemed to have collapsed with the mountainside, taking part of the structure down with it and turning into a sheer drop.

Lann’s body, kicked into the air, scraped against the ground with a harsh "skriiik skriiik" several times as he flew backward, yet still couldn’t fully negate that massive impact.

In the next instant he was about to be kicked right out over the abyss beyond the cliff.

But just as his body completely left the ground of the mountainside, at that hair’s-breadth moment, the mechanical assembly on the Demon Hunter’s left arm bracer began to whir into motion.

With a "click," the hook claw of the Projector latched precisely onto one of the rare solid footholds on the rock wall.

The rope, tanned from the mane of a Fierce Jackal Dragon, went taut as a board, finally letting Lann completely offset the impact that had slammed into him.

Riding the arc traced out by the Projector’s hook and cable, Lann swung and tumbled down onto the ritual arena’s shattered stone-brick floor.

Kneeling on one knee and bracing himself with a hand, he finally came to a full stop.

"Pff!"

A mouthful of blood surged up his esophagus and was spat out by Lann, the crimson liquid spreading across the cracked stone bricks.

Heroic Gudah’s one kick had literally blasted his stomach into bleeding!

And this was after he’d had the [Holy Chant Gland] implanted and undergone full-body reinforcement!

If this had been before that... his intestines would probably have snapped in two!

"Martial arts?!"

The Demon Hunter found it slightly absurd—Heroic Gudah’s unarmed combat, to his senses, was actually even smoother than his weapon technique!

Yet after that initial shock, and after the pain in his chest and gut subsided a little, Lann instead grew steadier, calmer.

At the same time... his fighting spirit and excitement only burned hotter.

Heroic Gudah—a hero worthy of becoming a Lord of Cinder.

Weapon technique, unarmed technique... the hero’s goal was to become a perfect existence.

At least in the realm of the Warrior, he and Lann were the same kind of person—both pursuing perfection in their own combat systems.

And nothing provides a sense of achievement like defeating one’s own kind.

Lann wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth with a finger; that smear of red stained his lips bright scarlet. Under that mane of molten-silver hair, the crimson looked even more striking.

By rights, he now had gastric bleeding, and his intestines had been kicked out of position; by a Demon Hunter’s usual combat logic, he should be whipping out a Magic Potion and downing it immediately.

But Lann did no such thing. Instead, he used the Lady of the Lake’s Sword to lever himself up off the ground, got to his feet at the fastest possible speed, and reset his stance.

Because he knew perfectly well: the enemy had just gained the upper hand using body technique, and also understood that the Demon Hunter held the edge in speed and agility.

So Gudah would definitely seize this opportunity to press in and tangle him up, and would never allow the Demon Hunter a chance to catch his breath until the fight was over.

Lann’s reading of the battle situation was dead on.

The only reason Gudah hadn’t rushed over the instant after the kick seemed to be because he was waiting for the Demon Hunter to pull out some recovery item.

If you want to pour a potion into your mouth, or use some other recovery method, your combat stance naturally falls apart.

If he caught that timing just right, maybe he could finish the battle in a single instant.

But Lann obviously didn’t give Gudah that opening.

So, seeing that his enemy had no intention of healing, Gudah stopped waiting as well and charged straight in!

And Lann just as naturally reset his guard and met him head-on!

Though he had no chance to use a Magic Potion, the little Shield Emblem at his waist, in the middle of that abstract white-wind pattern,

the [Quick-Heal Talisman] produced by the New Continent Expedition Team was flashing with a faint light.

Like sweet dew, like a cool mountain breeze, vigorous Life Force was continuously nourishing Lann’s injured body.

"Boom!"

Perhaps because he had changed his fighting style, even Gudah’s footfalls now shook the heart.

Body technique often values a stable lower stance even more than weapon technique does.

He still opened with an upward flick of the butt end of his war halberd.

Knowing that his weapon technique couldn’t match Lann’s, Gudah had already decided to abandon using the halberd’s blade—which made quick shifts of balance difficult—and instead rely more on the more manageable, though less lethal, long shaft of the war halberd.

It’s just that "less lethal" only holds true when we’re talking about Warriors of their level.

"Boom!"

The halberd shaft stabbed into the ground, then simply levered up!

Gudah’s war halberd pried up a boulder from beneath the ground that was larger than a man!

The boulder couldn’t even withstand his strength; as soon as it was lifted, it was smashed to pieces by the halberd shaft!

It burst apart into a spray of stone shards, which fanned out to blanket Lann!

The crackling impacts blended into a single roar.

A golden Magic Shield flickered in and out of sight.

Under Lann’s control, the Quen Rune became a sphere, fixed around his body.

The curved convex surface could significantly lessen the force he took.

So even in the face of Guta’s rock shrapnel, which hit far harder than any crossbow, the Quen Rune actually hadn’t been blasted past its endurance limit on the spot.

And Lann, who burst out from that storm of stone fragments, was carefully watching every movement of Guta’s body.

Last time, after that upward sweep along the war halberd’s shaft, this bastard had lifted a leg and kicked Lann flying at least twenty meters!

But this time...

"Ha! I knew you were a sneaky bastard!"

Lann’s blood-red lips hooked up slightly, then his body dipped low as he flashed toward the side and below Guta’s torso!

The other side did not, like in the previous pattern, follow the upward shaft-sweep of the war halberd with a raised-leg side kick.

Instead he directly dropped his shoulder, pouring all his weight and strength onto it, and drove forward in a short, explosive shoulder slam!

If it were someone whose brain had been rattled by his earlier body techniques, this tactic of deliberately keeping the first half of the movement the same, then mutating the second half of the move, would, without a doubt, be enough to pit them to death.

But not only was Lann’s head not rattled, his mindset was actually getting more excited the longer he fought, and his thinking was getting clearer and clearer.

He could feel that Heroic Gudah’s body techniques flowed even more smoothly than his weapon skills.

But he still couldn’t, from just a move or two, judge exactly what level his body techniques had reached.

So Lann’s strategy was decided in the instant he just barely caught his breath.

In battle you usually seek a quick decision; that’s to cut down the risks during the fight.

And now, Guta had been the first to reveal part of his body techniques, so Lann’s best choice was not to respond to each move as it came...

But to finish him in one go by exploiting the flaws in the moves he’d shown so far!

So this time, Guta had deliberately made the ’first half of the movement identical’ with the intent of creating tactical misdirection.

But in Lann’s eyes, that was his ’opening’!

Seize this chance and take him down in one shot!

Lann deliberately closed in on Guta; his shoulder practically brushed past Guta’s shoulder slam!

And Heroic Gudah, whose shoulder hadn’t met its target, clearly realized that he had, instead, been tactically deceived.

But at this point, the move had already been committed, his center of gravity was already driven forward... too late for anything!

Lann, who had ducked and slipped to the side, set a solid horse stance, and his knee ended up right in front of Guta’s shin as he went in for the shoulder slam.

"So we’re doing hand-to-hand now, huh?"

Lann’s blood-red lips curved into a vicious arc.

To prevent this hero—whose body techniques, weapon skills, and physical attributes were all superhuman—from coming up with some response even at the last second, Lann did far more than just ’stick out a leg’ to trip him.

Alder’s Rune blasted out from behind Heroic Gudah’s leg, its impact further guaranteeing his forward momentum.

The Projector’s hook-lock also snapped to life with a ’click’, and the claws at its tip clamped onto the back of Heroic Gudah’s ankle.

Lann’s left hand gave a shake, and the strange force of his grappling arts traveled along the hook-lock, winding around Guta’s leg and foot.

Iwami Yixin’s grappling techniques had once let him, with an old and failing body, toss Lann around like a rag doll.

And now Lann’s technique was nothing if not stronger than his!

"Ugh!"

Beneath that bizarre, human-faced helmet, Heroic Gudah let out a startled grunt.

The next instant, this hero who blocked the way before the Fire Transmission Altar slammed down onto the ground with a thunderous ’thud’!

Ever since he had stood guard at this ritual site, and even throughout his entire Warrior career, he had always been the one treating enemies like rag dolls, ravaging and wrecking them. This was the first time he had ever been ’knocked down’ by someone!

For ordinary people, the human body is, of course, extremely fragile compared to the ground, so when faced with a throw, a single slam is usually enough to injure them.

But to Guta, the ground was the least of his worries; whether rock or soil, to him it was about as fragile as butter.

The real threat... was the enemy still standing after he’d hit the ground!

Lann, who had orchestrated this throw from start to finish, was of course already prepared.

Almost at the exact same moment Guta went down, Lann, whose footwork had long since been set, stepped in at once!

With a ’bang’, he stomped down on Guta’s back!

Relying on their own absolute strength and precise experience, the two of them needed only that single point of contact to understand what the other intended to do.

Guta could feel that the powerful enemy stepping on his back already had his sword hand twisted toward the side of Guta’s face. All it would take was for him to swing through in the next instant, and that keen blade would carve a cold and gorgeous fan-shaped arc through the air.

And at the very tip of that fan of blade-light would be the back of his own neck!

Lann could also feel that the hero beneath his foot, the one he’d just thrown down, was driving power through his hulking body.

The position he’d landed in was undoubtedly very passive, and now he was trying to shift out of that passive posture.

His thick arms dug straight down into the depths of the earth.

Soil and rock were, before Guta’s arms, no different from congealed lard!

He intended to forcibly change his own body position right there in the ground to face Lann head-on.