Cleaver Of Sin

Chapter 1105: Hand-to-hand

Asher exhaled ever so slowly, then he started walking forward, a smile appearing on his face as he walked. The puppet, seeing this, simply walked forward, holding its spiked club just as Asher held his rapier. Neither suddenly dashed forward; they simply walked until they came face to face with one another.

As they came to a stop, they stared into each other’s eyes for a moment before they both started moving the next instant, their hands blurring as rapier met spiked club with staggering force. Neither of them took a step back nor shifted their posture, they stood like mountains that refused to crumble.

Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!

Their hands blurred endlessly as they exchanged high-speed attacks one after the other, their hands seemed to turn into whips as they lashed out, their weapons turning into silver flashes as they met endlessly. They sought holes in each other’s attacks, they sought gaps in their defense, they sought any advantage, they sought anything at all.

A minute, then ten minutes, then thirty minutes, but their speed didn’t slow, instead it seemed to spike instead as the power of collision hit its peak. The first to break rhythm would lose, the first to gain an advantage would win.

Asher’s talent came alive as his eyes danced within their sockets as he read through the puppet’s attacks, his eyes endlessly searching and reading. As they reached the forty-minute mark, Asher parried the spiked club to the side, but before the puppet could recalibrate like it had done countless times for the past forty minutes, Virelass sang with a silver swishing sound as the blade met the puppet’s shoulder.

With a clean cut, Asher’s rapier severed the entire arm from the shoulder, the cut clean and precise, the arm soaring into the air and clattering to the ground with the spiked club.

Asher didn’t delay, he swung Virelass from the shoulder to the neck with one linking motion, but as he was about to sever the head, he instantly paused as he saw the puppet didn’t react at all.

He and the puppet seemed to stare at each other for a few seconds as his blade remained at the puppet’s neck. The puppet turned around without a word as it didn’t possess any mouth or facial features to say anything. It walked towards its severed hand, picked it up, then walked to the weapon rack and put back the spiked club. After that, it went back to where it originally was and sat against the wall while holding its severed hand.

A smile couldn’t help but appear on Asher’s face, the Combat Refinement and Attunement room seemed to have adjusted the battle to match the progress he made in the Swordsmanship Training room and the Physical Conditioning room.

Through the forty minutes of endless exchange, throughout the time, his Battle Intuition linked to the Absolute Physique wanted to activate many times, but he suppressed it as he wanted to make progress and end the stalemate through his own natural talent, not through the Absolute Physique, as that would defeat the entire purpose of training. If he used the Battle Intuition ability, he might as well not train at all and just rely on Battle Intuition at all times.

As the puppet returned to its inanimate state, another puppet twitched as though consciousness from the first puppet had been transferred or something of that nature.

Asher’s purple eyes snapped towards the new puppet, not daring to take his eyes off it. The puppet rose to its feet, its head still lowered, the next moment it raised its head and gazed at Asher. It had the same features and exactly the same measurements, height, and everything as the first puppet.

But, although they looked the same and it seemed as though a transfer of consciousness had happened, Asher felt like this second puppet was different from the first. The way it carried itself was different as it swaggered forward without even gazing at the weapon rack the first puppet had gone to the moment it rose to its feet.

Coming to a stop before Asher, the puppet settled into a combat stance as this puppet seemed to be a hand-to-hand combat specialist.

’Am I going to fight all ten puppets?’ Asher thought to himself as he stared at the puppet before him.

But he didn’t think for long nor keep his new opponent waiting. Virelass vanished from his hand as he settled into a hand-to-hand combat stance. Since his opponent was using hand-to-hand combat, there was no need for anything else.

Asher and the puppet inched closer to each other even as they remained in their combat stance, the moment their wrists met, their figures instantly blurred into pure motion. Sounds of limbs meeting echoed endlessly through the room, tens, hundreds, thousands, they didn’t slow their speed, they didn’t reduce their strength, the moment they hit their peak state across all physical prowess, they kept it constant.

Both Asher and the puppet appeared on the roof, their bodies appearing upside down as their heads were pointing towards the ground, but even as they defied gravity, gravity didn’t act on them for a moment due to their speed of movement and attack.

Asher unleashed a fist attack to the puppet’s side, but the puppet simply blocked with its right hand as it sent out an elbow attack towards Asher’s chest. Asher instantly reacted as he motioned to lean backwards, but the puppet instantly cancelled that motion as it caught Asher’s fist that targeted its side and pulled him forward instead.

Seeing this, Asher’s left hand blurred upwards as he caught the wrist in his palm, the moment he did, their time limit hit as gravity acted on both of them, but they didn’t stop, even as they fell upside down, attacks continued to streak forward.

Asher’s knuckles tore towards the puppet’s chest, but the puppet sent out its own defense, meeting an attack with an attack. Knuckles met knuckles with a burst of force. The moment both of them reached the ground, they rotated and landed on their legs as they couldn’t land on their heads.

The moment they landed, they vanished and appeared again. The moment they appeared, Asher’s fist thundered against the wall as the puppet’s head snapped to the side as it dodged at the last possible second. They blurred again, reappearing at a different corner of the room, as they appeared, Asher took a step back as he leaned backwards, dodging a snake kick that aimed for his head.

As he dodged, he lowered himself as he dropped to his knees and unleashed a sweeping attack, but the puppet took a step back as it repositioned from its earlier missed kick attack, then raised one leg up, the moment it raised one leg up, Asher’s right leg tore through empty space.

But Asher didn’t stop, the moment he missed, his hands, which were on the floor, moved as his waist and entire body twisted, with his hands still on the ground, his left leg shot upward as he unleashed an upward kick with the heel of his left foot to the puppet’s jaw.