Chapter 454: Combat Method, Analysis Completed

The tearing of space produces no sound beyond the subtle ripple of the void. When the blade struck Wang Yu’s neck, his head was instantly severed from his torso; the cervical vertebrae snapped, and the internal structures caught in the spatial fissure were likewise cleaved in two. Though his head had not yet tumbled from his shoulders, the two parts were already irrevocably divided.

"Clang!"

Yet, the decapitated Wang Yu did not cease his assault. Even as Ethan’s blade descended, a fist wreathed in lightning smashed directly toward his opponent.

Ethan’s brow furrowed slightly. He discarded the curled and shattered longsword in his hand, gathering his battle aura until it solidified into a second blade. He parried upward, meeting Wang Yu’s fist with a concentrated force that his "Inner Potential" subdivided into thousands of precise points, perfectly dissipating the momentum.

Though the fist was deflected, the seventh-tier lightning spell coiled around it remained unaffected by mere physical force, piercing the air to strike at Ethan Harris, who stood mere inches away.

With a flick of his fingers, Ethan’s blade shivered. The powerful lightning, drawn by an unseen force, spiraled back to wrap around his own sword, which he then swung in a counter-strike against the exposed Wang Yu.

The blade flashed. The lightning-laced air-blade was released at point-blank range against Wang Yu, who had yet to retract his punch. In terms of sheer speed, Ethan remained superior.

"Boom!"

Before his right fist could return, Wang Yu’s left smashed downward to meet the thunderous strike. As the two collided and flesh was shredded, the high-energy blood within his body detonated. It was a clash between raw kinetic force and Ethan’s strike—a blow not of full power, but of calculated guidance and speed.

The shockwave rippled outward, forcing both men to retreat. The slash was neutralized by the explosion of high-energy blood, while the lightning coiling around it was torn to shreds by the power of Wang Yu’s "Chariot."

"Interesting. You are a worthy opponent."

Ethan gripped his longsword with both hands, shifting his stance. He raised his arms, knees slightly bent, the tip of his blade leveled at Wang Yu. It was a thrusting posture. His eyes fixed on Wang Yu’s neck as he spoke in a calm, detached tone.

At that moment, no wound remained on Wang Yu’s neck; it was as if he had never been struck at all. Had Ethan not been absolutely certain he had severed the man's head, he might have dismissed the event as a hallucination.

"..."

Wang Yu remained silent, his expression unreadable. It was impossible to discern what he was thinking.

In truth, one had to admit that this creature’s anatomy was bizarre. To put it simply, he merely looked like a man; in reality, he was a "thing" shaped like one. After all, a being that could shrug off decapitation, bisection, and the rupture of its internal organs could no longer be called human.

The reason his body structure remained largely consistent was that Wang Yu was familiar with this form; through directed reinforcement, he could quickly adapt and convert his physical mass into combat power. In reality, however, performing grotesque modifications was not beyond his capabilities. Thus, standard combat techniques designed for humans were largely ineffective against him.

"Come!"

Perhaps piqued by a sudden interest, Ethan actually gave a warning before launching his next attack. The blade trembled, and his figure vanished in the same instant. With his sword tip aimed at Wang Yu, he lunged.

The power of the Chariot tracked his every movement. Wang Yu raised his hands and threw a punch—a full-burst, short-range strike. With the ability to predict the outcome, Wang Yu possessed the speed to keep pace.

However, the effect of the trembling blade manifested. Just before reaching the point of impact, layers of dense spatial fissures overlapped. Ethan’s figure flickered, changing direction without losing momentum, side-stepping the fist, and accelerating into a straight-line assault.

"Zing!"

The aura-infused blade possessed unimaginable destructive power. Wang Yu had no way to dodge the extreme-speed thrust after its sudden turn. The blade pierced his right chest, shattering ribs and reaching his organs. In the next moment, the power condensed upon the edge bloomed, and a multitude of multidirectional slashes erupted instantly within Wang Yu’s body.

"Squelch!"

Flesh and viscera were shredded to pulp by the internal assault. Yet, faced with an attack that had nearly obliterated half his body, Wang Yu did not stop.

A torrent of blood surged, filling the gaps in his torso, supported by the "Material Molding" technique and the secret arts of the Bloody Gale Knight, rapidly repairing the damage.

Wang Yu then forcibly gripped the aura-blade with his left hand as it slowed within his chest. He countered with his own aura, detonating the weapon inside him, while the infusion of blood neutralized the secondary shockwaves, preventing further harm.

"It seems none of these are your weaknesses."

Ethan’s tone was slightly excited. The aura-blade he had been holding was destroyed, and he immediately began to condense another. This brief expenditure of time, however, gave Wang Yu the opening he needed.

"Splash!"

In an instant, half the blood in his pool vanished. Across a vast area surrounding Wang Yu, blood materialized out of thin air, manipulated into a cube that engulfed them both, drowning them in a sea of crimson.

The battlefield had shifted, turning the environment in Wang Yu’s favor. Being submerged in blood—which was effectively an extension of Wang Yu himself—was no laughing matter. It meant that Wang Yu, like Ethan, could launch attacks from any angle, and Ethan no longer possessed the Chariot’s ability to perceive attacks from all directions.

A hint of seriousness entered Ethan’s eyes. As the battle progressed, his fighting spirit was fully ignited. Having not fought in a long time, even if his skills had continued to refine, his raw combat capacity had atrophied. Now, that power was returning as the intensity of the battle climbed.

He swung his sword rapidly, but the environment submerged in Wang Yu’s blood failed to slow his movements. The tip of his blade tapped repeatedly at various points behind and beside him, the sound of tearing fluid constant.

Countless shards of blood, their properties altered, attacked Ethan from every angle. His lightning-fast strikes shredded each one, even those hidden within the fluid. No matter the direction of the attack, Ethan predicted it perfectly and extinguished it.

A phantom eyeball, a special structure formed of condensed battle aura, sat within the aura vortex in Ethan’s chest. The Knight’s Secret Art: "Mind’s Eye." Like Wang Yu, Ethan had mastered this power, known as "Pseudo-Inner Potential." Because he had practiced it for hundreds of times longer than Wang Yu, his mastery was vastly superior.

The Mind’s Eye scanned the surroundings, feeding information to Ethan. Though it could not see everything like the Chariot, when combined with his five senses and instincts, it allowed him to calculate the state of his surroundings with every movement.

Holding his breath, he tensed his muscles. In the next moment, he unleashed a slash. A massive wave of force swept across the entire area, meeting Wang Yu, who was rushing toward him at high speed through the blood.

The blood in front of the slash hardened instantly, forming a thick wall to block the air-blade. Yet, Ethan’s destructive power was truly terrifying. Setting aside the gods, this "Legendary Warrior" possessed the greatest destructive force Wang Yu had ever encountered. The hardened blood could not stop the strike at all.

The wall shattered. The slash roared outward, its massive range nearly cleaving the blood-cube in two. But it wasn't over. The moment the giant air-blade was about to fly out of the blood sea, Ethan’s "Inner Potential" decomposed it into countless smaller slashes. These were released at point-blank range as "Inner Potential: Rain of Blades," falling upon the charging Wang Yu.

The number of smaller slashes was staggering, leaving Wang Yu no room to dodge. Layer upon layer of cuts fell, stripping away his flesh until his pale bones were visible everywhere—even his face, eyes, and ears were not spared. He was a mangled, horrific sight.

"Powerful self-healing, but compared to pure destruction, the latter is much simpler. Hmm?"

Ethan watched Wang Yu, whose flesh was being shredded and ground away by the violent slashes, and murmured softly. He raised his blade, and space began to tear once more. But suddenly, he felt a faint, sharp pain within his body. For a legendary knight, it was not fatal, but the momentary numbness that followed caused him to falter for a split second. The next moment...

"Boom!"

All the blood detonated at once. A terrifying shockwave engulfed them both. This massive quantity of high-energy blood, ignited simultaneously, caused the explosions to overlap and collide, their power climbing exponentially.

The earth collapsed. A massive crater expanded hundreds of meters in an instant. The shockwaves surged toward the heavens, piercing the clouds above; even the Spellbinder Wizard Tower, kilometers away, began to tremble.

Poison. Wang Yu had always held another identity: Alchemist. As his strength grew, the precision and control of the Chariot evolved, allowing him to alter material structures to hand-craft terrifyingly effective toxins.

The sea of blood had been laced with a poison Wang Yu called "Blight." It was colorless and odorless; once it entered an organism, it destroyed cellular structures in a way even Wang Yu did not fully understand.

The most valuable aspect of this substance was that, while it did not distinguish between friend and foe, it was effective against legendary knights who were immune to most toxins. The principle was likely that the body’s instincts identified the substance as something akin to oxygen before it caused damage, preventing the body from purging it.

The "indiscriminate" flaw was perfectly solved by Wang Yu’s Chariot. From the moment the blood sea descended, the "Blight" had been mixed into every drop. When the blood was sliced open, the substance was absorbed by Ethan through the air. At a certain moment, it caused damage, creating the tiniest of openings. This was why Wang Yu had not detonated the blood sea immediately; now was the perfect time.

"Snap..."

Wang Yu’s figure flew backward from the explosion. His feet skidded half a step on the ground before he steadied himself. The gruesome lacerations covering his body were already mostly healed; submerged in the blood sea, his self-healing speed was several times faster, and the damage from the slashes could not keep pace with his recovery.

He was not dead. The earth-shaking explosion had failed to kill Ethan Harris. In that split second, Ethan had used his free hand to form a sword-finger, unleashing a strike that his Inner Potential transformed into a storm of blades around him, acting as a shield against the blast.

Then, his sword-hand, recovered from the lethargy of the poison, slashed out, tearing space to drag himself out of the explosion’s radius. Faced with such a staggering blast, he was nearly unscathed; the greatest damage had likely come from the "Blight" toxin that had invaded his body.

"An exquisite way to fight. However, it is time to end this."

Ethan spat out a mouthful of boiling, crimson blood, purging the Blight toxin and the damage it had caused. He looked at the wary Wang Yu with a faint smile, his left hand forming a sword-finger and his right gripping his blade. Both were raised.

The battle with Wang Yu had provided a long-lost sense of amusement. Though not entirely satisfying, the man’s unique style was fascinating. If Ethan was one who had pushed his skills to the limit, moving with grace and ease at all times, Wang Yu’s style was that of a "street thug"—lacking structure, using whatever was at hand. It appeared quite wretched, yet it remained effective.

But that was as far as it would go. The rekindled interest and passion for battle allowed Ethan to begin exerting his greatest, perhaps even greater, power. It was time to finish this.

The Rain of Blades, born of his Inner Potential and Knight’s Secret Art, locked onto Wang Yu’s position. He had to admit that Wang Yu’s recovery was truly astonishing, so he would make it impossible for him to recover. He would completely sever the location of the soul that controlled the body.

Power accumulated on the aura-blade in his right hand, while his left hand slashed down. Space tore, and his figure vanished into the fractured, misaligned void, appearing briefly, then flickering again as his left hand slashed.

The trajectory was completely unpredictable. Before the spatial ripples could even spread, the next landing point was already cleaved open. After only a few flickers, he was right in front of Wang Yu. The blade in his right hand had finished accumulating power, shining with a brilliance that tore the firmament.

Wang Yu’s crossed arms were severed by the strike, which had been pushed to its limit, the blade cutting through bone and flesh alike. The slash, angled upward, tore through his torso from his left hip to his right shoulder. With a destructive force that surpassed all previous attacks, it completely shattered Wang Yu’s defenses.

In the next heartbeat, before Wang Yu could force his body to react, Ethan’s left hand, fingers poised like a blade, swept across his head; a spatial rift tore through the air, piercing the skull—fortified by shards of shattered meteoric iron—to carve directly into the brain where his soul resided.

"Clang!"

A sound that should not have existed rang out as the process of spatial severance was abruptly halted. Upon Wang Yu’s cranium, a golden mark appeared, perfectly mirroring the shape of Ethan Harris’s strike. The moment they touched, every effect was rendered null—the power Wang Yu had held in reserve, his "Golden Body."

"Analysis complete."

Avia’s voice, laced with a hint of a smile, echoed within Wang Yu’s mind.

"Understood."

With a slight nod, flames erupted across his entire frame. The cursed fire ignited, unleashing the power he had reclaimed since regaining his influence over the void. Blood-burning drive, activated.

From this moment on, defense was a luxury he could afford to discard entirely.