The Human Giant



The instant the black spike appeared so close to his spine, a wave of danger crawled up Yoze's spine, almost making Mindless Legs activate. Even though he knew that activating Mindless Legs would allow him to escape without harm, Yoze chose to suppress it and continued to follow through on his Martial Wheel Spin.

With his spinning speed accelerating rapidly, Yoze turned his body around just before Geo's knee spike pierced through his Blood Armor. At the same time, Geo's eyes flashed with a hint of surprise as he didn't expect Yoze wouldn't use his instinctive martial art technique to avoid his attack. 

This small surprise created a delay in his response which Yoze was going to capitalize on heavily and use to counterattack. Just before the black spike pierced through his Blood Armor, Yoze lifted and bent his body backward and slammed one of his knees against Geo's attacking knee.

The amount of strength Yoze was able to use to push Geo's knee wasn't much and couldn't damage Geo at all, it was enough to avoid the situation of his entire stomach being pierced through, but when he saw the black spike extend a few inches to slice through his Blood Armor like a hot knife through butter, Yoze couldn't help but breathe a small sigh of relief.

Not letting this opportunity go, Yoze continued to increase his spinning speed and grabbed hold of Geo's leg. The moment he got a firm grasp, he crushed it with all his strength while using his momentum to send Geo flying.

"Click!"

Seeing the situation changing in Yoze's favor, Geo clicked his tongue again to cause his spiked arm guards to explode again. Using the thousands of shadow armor shards as a cover to prevent himself from getting trapped in one of Yoze's combo attacks.

After covering his tracks and forcefully stopping Yoze, Geo quickly stomped the air to regain his footing and used his incredible speed to disappear. Only to reappear alongside his Shadow Clone, who also recovered from Yoze's punch, for both of them simultaneously attacking Yoze's weak points. 

With his Shadow Clone targeting the black spikes on its elbows straight for Yoze's head, himself aiming for Yoze's heart, and the thousands of shadow armor shards completely blocking any other path, Geo smiled as he knew that this match was about to be over. 

"Not too bad. Unfortunately, Yoze had chosen to join the Immortal Palace Sect, or I would have taken him as a student once I had become an immortal." As the thought of taking Yoze as his student passed through Geo's mind, he noticed a small but sinister grin on Yoze's face.

Aided by his momentum, Yoze twisted and flipped his body upside-down before launching a full-powered Wind Kick directly at the Shadow Clone's jaw while he punched Geo's skull. Even though his attack plan had been interrupted, Geo didn't panic as he had planned for this and quickly shifted to his backup plan, to stall until the thousand shadow shards ate Yoze alive.

Unfortunately, before Geo could alter his plan of attack, he suddenly felt his body become slightly heavier. It was only in the tens of pounds, so it was minuscule for someone of his caliber, but it still led to his body responding slower than normal.

However, what made Geo truly shocked was that all the thousands of shadow armor fragments that he controlled plunged to the floor. With each shadow armor shard weighing less than a few grams, they rapidly descended and lost a large amount of their speed, causing the gaps between each shard to grow massively. 

Even though each gap was not even remotely large enough for any adult human to pass through, no matter how flexible they were, especially for someone as large as Yoze, after everything he had seen through their fight, Geo did not doubt that Yoze could crush himself enough to fit between those small gaps.

Not letting Geo's high expectations of him go to waste, Yoze used a combination of his flexibility and high control over his body to shrink and thin his body just enough for the shards approaching him to narrowly move to miss him. While at the same time, he activated and moved all his heavy inner vigor into his fist and leg, slamming into Geo and his Shadow Clone. 

"Boom!" 

With the weight of several thousand pounds slamming into him, Geo could sense that even his Shadow Armor began to crack. At the same time, the remaining force sent his entire body straight into the obsidian platform.

"Bang!" 

Even then, it wasn't until Geo felt the pain of crashing into the hard obsidian platform that he realized how Yoze could manipulate his shadow armor shards. Hearing the howling wind that each shard created in their descent, Geo couldn't help but compliment Yoze in his mind.

"I can't believe it. He made the air itself extremely heavy and thus indirectly forcing his shadow armor shards to quickly lose their momentum."

"Even if I injected more crystal energy into each of the shadow armor shards, they would still struggle to stay afloat under the crushing weight of an additional 50 pounds. Yoze must have decent control of his inner vigor to ensure that not a single strand went near the shards, or they would have been absorbed." 

"Very clever; I didn't realize he could partially manipulate his inner vigor outside his body. But then again, the clues were all there, but the excitement of the battle made me ignore them." Geo's eyes shined with excitement as he realized that Yoze was even more of a battle freak than he was.

In their short time fighting, he had already found one of the few weaknesses of shadow armor shards. If he wasn't in the middle of the battle and didn't sense the powerful killing intent radiating from Yoze, Geo might have decided to examine every second of their fight from the beginning to see all the tricks that Yoze might be hiding.

"Bang!" 

Seeing that Yoze was about to crush his skull and had sent his Shadow Clone flying, Geo immediately tried to twist his body out of the way, but he realized that Yoze had planned for it and sent a finger straight for his chest. Even though he knew that it was mostly a trap that Yoze had placed for him, Geo gritted his teeth and continued to roll as his instincts screamed at him to avoid his head getting crushed.

"Cling!" 

"Boom!"

The soft sound of metal tapping against metal was instantly overwhelmed by the sound of Yoze's stomp. Even the gust of wind generated from the attack could have killed a person.

If it wasn't for his quick action, there was a chance that his Shadow Armor would have shattered and given Yoze a valuable opportunity to crush his head. At that time, he wouldn't even be able to challenge the ten Shadow Lords, much less achieve his dream, so Geo wasn't regretful of his choice.

But when he felt the danger coming from his heart instantly triple the moment Yoze's finger poked the back of his Shadow Armor, Geo's face turned grim as he sensed a powerful force enter his body. Even the protection that Shadow Armor strengthened skin, muscles, bones, and organs could stop it. 

All he could do was reduce half the amount of power from the force, but even still, the amount remaining was enough to do a large amount of damage. So Geo immediately took action and mobilized his crystal energy to form a sphere of protection against the Death Finger's target, his heart.