Bro, I'm not an Undead!

Fulgardt was amused by the appearance of the Treasure. His eyes narrowed but his smile remained. In response to Skullius' lock around his neck, he pushed his elbow backwards into Skullius' chest and casually obliterated half of it. As soon as Skullius' hold over him loosened, he made a quick pivot to the side with his torso, and smashed his elbow into Skullius' face, pushing him back. He immediately followed up with an exaggerated front leg axe kick to stomp down on Skullius' head, but the Hybrid Warmoth countered by striking it back with an uppercut.

"Hoo…" Fulgardt backed away as Skullius recovered. "You're learning."

Skullius didn't retort. Instead, he flexed the fingers on his golden gauntlet, which looked as though it was made of thousands of golden shards. He lunged at Fulgardt, and made to deliver a skipping cut kick that had too much distance to be effective. Fulgardt raised a brow at it.

It was a feint – half-hearted.

Skullius seamlessly transitioned from the kick to a super quick lunge that landed him into a position where he had his right leg behind Fulgardt and his upper right arm clashing with the Immoral's chest. A shuttle of Amras flew out of him and bashed into Fulgardt. The Immoral staggered off Skullius' leg behind him, spun and flew hundreds of meters away.

"Interesting," he said mid-flight, but he was aware. Skullius was coming. As soon as he steadied himself, he saw the Warmoth sending an overhand punch with his gauntlet using all his might. Fulgardt crossed his arms to guard.

The impact was terrible.

If Edagon hadn't been reinforced, that would have been the end for it. But regardless, the ocean around it seemed to boil as it attempted to absorb the force of the blow. Even the barrier in the distance shuddered.

Fulgardt streaked down like a lightning bolt from the momentum, but he warped into the sky, carrying the same berserk speed to storm down on Skullius from above!

'Dammit!' The Hybrid Warmoth failed to turn around in time. The best he could manage was to prop up the Malefic Gold Hand to guard.

To his surprise, however, Fulgardt didn't dish out some lethal blow. Instead, he placed his hand on the gauntlet and hissed:

"The darkness destroys."

The golden gauntlet turned pitch black and crumbled into useless scrap.

Skullius scowled.

'That was a Realm Rank Treasure.'

And indeed it was. Treasures normally held the highest ranking in the Common Reality leagues; they were usually effective against Physiques and Exotic Parlous Natures of the same rank.

Yet Fulgardt had just…

"You didn't think that that was going to help you a whole lot, did you?" said the Immoral. "Come on. Use that freakish power of yours. I'm starting to get bored. It won't be long before I stop leaving myself open for you get a hit in."

"Who's stopping you from going all out?" said Skullius as they both landed on the ground.

Fulgardt's smile disappeared.

"I see."

He raised his hands to temple level again, and closed the distance. When he threw a meaningful jab, Skullius made to defend only to realise…

It was a feint.

Just as the jab was pulled back sharply before it reached him, Skullius got hit with a calf kick so powerful that his feet left the ground, his head and legs trading positions. A heavy front kick bashed his chest in next, and sent him ploughing against the ground for several hundred meters.

…That was until Fulgardt clinched him, smashed his face with a knee repeatedly, flattened his head against the ground and hammered him with a mighty jab to the side of the head.

Skullius managed to avoid the full brunt of the last blow by summoning his nimbus and allowing all its defensive properties to attack Fulgardt. The coat of darkness around the Immoral suddenly flared. The Maximum Frost and Melding Stitches which attempted to restrain him simply burned like common ice and strings when they tried to make contact with the enemy.

It was bizarre and frightening. How could Fulgardt simply shirk off attacks like that?

The man advanced unhindered. Skullius had managed to buy himself a second to straighten his posture. His arms were saturated with Maximum Catalyst again. He had it course through every bit of his limbs before lunging to close distance between himself and Fulgardt… again.

The Immoral changed his stance. He lowered his centre of gravity, and the look in his eyes turned colder. Skullius didn't bother trying to deconstruct what manner of evil that look translated to. It was bad news all the same.

His feet bonded together and he unleashed a flurry of rapid, cycling punches that moved at a hundred times the speed of light!

In contrast, Fulgardt spread his legs… and proceeded to receive all these attacks with grace.

His torso would swoosh to the left and then to the right and back again while his hands guided Skullius' punches away and immediately dealt vicious strikes to his underarm, his ribs, his neck and his face. Each blow blasted in or blasted off a chunk of Skullius' body, leaving a searing, haunting wound that healed just a second later.

The Hybrid Warmoth still incurred damage though. It was piling.

Even with four arms and four hands, he was tragically outclassed.

Nothing demonstrated this fact better than what Fulgardt casually did next. Somehow, he got past all of Skullius' blows, crushed all four of his arms in less a breath and dealt him a palm strike to the abdomen.

"The light propels."

A jarring golden flash erupted on Skullius' body upon contact and an instant later… he was gone. Or was he?

He had been propelled backwards so fast that he turned into an illusory figure… and then became solid again. It was hard to tell if he had moved at all. If this were an ordinary world, it would have imploded immediately upon tasting such a dreadful, contradictory phenomenon, but Aigas only rumbled furiously as though an earthquake too great to quantity on any recognisable scale had ensued.

Skullius was shaken.

He had started healing right when the attack hit him and thus, the only damage he suffered was being paralysed for a few seconds. His Physiques were potent enough to allow that at the very least.

'That would have killed me,' he thought, frowning and looked at Fulgardt, who didn't follow up with any more attacks. 'He left me just enough room to not die. Haha. How kind.'

"Well?" said Fulgardt. "Are you still feeling stubborn?"

"Yup," said Skullius and he conjured two scimitars made purely from [Evil Darkness]. "Let's keep going."

Would a battle in Arma Using yield better results?

---

[Author's Note]

Next Chapter title, 'How About Armed Combat?'