We landed opposite each other. My arms stung from the direct collision with him.

“So I can’t defeat you in strength, huh?” I mumbled to myself as I turned toward him.

As soon as he landed, he launched himself at me again, his claws striking my sword in rapid succession.

“Is this the only move you’ve got?” I shouted, deflecting his barrage of attacks. In between, creating a minor opening, I thrust my sword forward, and touched the leech on his chest for just a split second.

“Lightning Bolt,” I mumbled.

Cracks of lightning surged from my hand and channelled through the blade of Vajra. It formed a compressed sphere of golden lightning at the tip, which struck directly at his chest.

“How’s that? It stings, doesn’t it?” I spoke as Jambavan howled, taking a few shaky steps backward.

“Alert! Jambavan has used the skill Battle Cry!”

I shouted, sprinting at him, “I already told you—same tricks won’t work on me twice.”

“Battle Cry failed due to skill Unshakable Mind.”

When I reached closer, I swung my sword in a diagonal slash aimed at his shoulder.

From my first encounter with him, I had noticed one peculiar thing about him.

Jambavan wasn’t affected by pure physical attacks. Even Nymeria’s sharp and precise sword didn’t leave a single mark on him. Only after she used her Soulforce did her attack get through.

She also said that Jambavan was using Soulforce to protect his body.

So with the diagonal slash, I wanted to confirm this theory.

As the blade reached closer to his shoulder, an invisible barrier slowed down my sword, and he instantly clenched his fist, throwing an uppercut aimed at my belly.

“Oh shit! It is true,”I whispered.

In a single breath, I twisted my hand, redirecting the blade toward the incoming asteroid of a punch.

The moment Vajra and his monstrous fist reached a hair’s length, I shouted again, “Lightning Bolt.”

A loud and thunderous boom, followed by a searing flash of golden light, shook the nearby trees, balding them of their leaves from the shockwave, and turned eternal night into day due to the impact.

“What a… monster—cough… cough…” I muttered, coughing out blood.

I was on one knee, grabbing my chest with one hand and the hilt of my sword with the other, as it stabbed into the ground beneath.

Jambavan stood tall a few feet apart in front of me, blood dripping from the hand he had attacked with, turning the ground crimson.

“Haha, so you aren’t unscathed either,” I smirked looking up, wiping the blood off my face.

He groaned, lifted his leg, and struck the ground like a bomb, forcing various chunks of land to rise, defying gravity.

I barely managed to hold my position by grabbing the Vajra, otherwise the shockwaves would have sent me rolling across the ground.

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He grabbed the chunks of land mid-air and began hurling them at me.

I grunted as I got up and stared at the two chunks of land coming at me like cannonballs.

I turned my back against them, and at the precise moment the first one reached me, I pushed off the ground, my legs leaving the land in a backflip. The chunk passed just beneath my back mid-air, and I landed once more on my feet.

I turned and instantly bent backward as the other passed, lightly brushing the chain of my jacket.

However, the attack didn’t stop there. He hurled one piece of debris after another at me.

I began running towards him, jumping on one, skidding down the next, and deflecting the rest with my sword.

When I reached closer, he switched to throwing hands again.

Passing by him, I placed one hand on the ground, rotated my body, and swung my sword, aiming at the back of his knee.

“Lightning Bolt!”

Without stopping, I slid between his legs and swung the sword again, focusing on his ankles.

“Lightning Bolt!”

He fell to his knees and growled in pain but still tried to bite off my face with his massive jaws.

I halted the attack by sticking my blade horizontally into his mouth, holding the hilt with one hand and the blade with the other.

“Lightning Bolt!”

I whispered again, directly launching the bolt into his mouth.

His cornea rolled up under his eyelid, and smoke rose from his half-burnt mouth as he collapsed to the ground.

“Skill Lightning Bolt leveled up”

My Lightning Bolt skill wasn’t this powerful. It didn’t even leave a mark when I used it in the previous battle.

The reason was—my poor control over the skill. The lightning that came out of my hand was intense, but as soon as it left my palm, it became unstable, and most of the lightning dispersed from the bolt before reaching the target.

However, when I learned Thunder Slash, it also taught me how to channel my attribute through Vajra. And since this sword was specially made to conduct lightning, the loss became negligible, and the power of Lightning Bolt increased significantly.

“Huff… huff… I did it. I really—huff…—did it,” I shouted, breathing heavily, leaning onto my sword.

“Now it’s time… to absorb his Soulforce,” I whispered, my mind relaxed a little but then;

“Alert!!

Jambavan has used the skill Berserk

—His offense is increased by 200%

—His defense is decreased by 80%

—His pain tolerance is increased to infinity”

“Im-impossible,” I muttered, my eyes widened with incredulity.

I instantly turned my face, but before I could defend myself, his fist crashed into my side like a meteor, sending me flying hundreds of feet into the forest.

Branches snapped and cracked as I tore through them in the air, each slashing my skin like a whip. I slammed into the ground with a loud thud, bounced off again from the momentum, and crashed shoulder-first into a tree.

“Aaaghhh!” I screamed in agony, holding my sides.

My liver was completely crushed, dozens of ribs were broken, and my left shoulder was dislocated from the crash. Blood leaked from my mouth.

And even then, I didn’t get a moment of peace. Amidst all that misery, I could feel that Jambavan was already coming for my life, like the bull of Lord Yama.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep