Ning looked at Merasi, with her full clad armor and dashed.
His body had no strength aside from the slight physical empowerment that everyone got with their increase in Aether rank.
At best, he was at maybe Level 2 of body cultivation, which would be equal to the 2nd realm of Qi condensation on Kumia.
Still, it helped him enough to enhance his speed to the point where Merasi could barely put up her to protect herself.
BAM
A rather loud sound rang from the staff hitting the side of her right gauntlet. Aether stirred inside Ning, trying to do something, but failed.
In the same way, a world with Qi would allow for intents add to the damage of one's strike, the Aether tried to do the same and failed.
It was understandable. Aether wasn't Qi.
Merasi tried to punch with her left arm, but Ning slipped back. One thing he knew about fighting someone bigger than him was that he couldn't let them get close.
Once he was back, and Merasi was somewhat off-balance, he dashed back in.
He wanted to use the staff like a spear, but without the spearhead, it was a little hard to do.
So, Ning used one technique he knew that used the spear as a staff. The Revolving Spear technique.
He dashed back in to close the gaps and swung to her left side now. Merasi decided to go on the attack, not bothering to block at all.
When Ning slammed her left shoulder, she felt a slight force pass through her armor, but there was no pain at all. She barely even felt the force.
She then swung her right arm at Ning. Ning brought back his staff, while at the same time spinning around the incoming fist, barely dodging it.
At the same time, he brought the staff to hit her right shoulder. Aether stirred within him once more as that was what the technique demanded, a power source.
But Aether couldn't provide it. So, the power compounding effect of the Revolving spear technique was nowhere to be seen.
However, what did remain was its ability to gather momentum.
Ning spun the staff once again and hit Merasi's left shoulder, barely dodging the incoming left arm.
Then, he brought it back around and jumped as a swooping right foot came to attack his leg.
At the same time, Ning accurately turned around, using all of his momentum to swing his staff one last time and hit Merasi in the head.
The hit sounded like a gong in her head. The force of the impact, the sound is produced and the position she was already in, all came together to make her dizzy enough into falling to the ground.
Ning propped the staff on his shoulder and looked at her, struggling to get up. "Did I knock your head around too hard?" he asked.
Waxil and the surrounding crowd looked with shock. They had thought the big woman would win, but somehow, she had been beaten to the ground like she was a punching bag.
Not a single of her hit managed to land on the young man in front of her.
Merasi shook her head. He had knocked her head so hard that her brain had likely dislodged from its place for a moment or two.
Her blurry vision came back to focus and she finally stood up.
"You're not bad," she said. She felt a little disappointed in herself when she said that.
Ning looked like he had half his body weight, but somehow he had hit her hard into dropping to the ground.
"Can you continue?" Ning asked.
"Of course," Merasi said as she stood up once more.
"You can attack this time," Ning said, his staff unmoving from his shoulders.
Merasi felt a little angry, but she didn't contradict him. She was happy to get the chance to attack first.
She dashed forward with incredible speed, despite the amount of metal covering her body.
Ning dodged to the side, his staff moving to hit her stomach area. Then he dodged another attack to dash backward, out of her range.
She followed him, trying to catch him, but she couldn't. Ning weaved in and out of her range, attacking each time he did, like a mouse fighting an Aether beast.
Merasi felt like she was significantly slowed down by her armor, but that was the only thing keeping her from taking a lot of damage.
Now that she was backing out of the fights when Ning was gaining momentum as well, she didn't take the same damage as she had earlier with the first bout.
Ning frowned. With Merasi realizing what not to do, his chances of winning had significantly lowered.
'Well, time to win by another method,' he thought and propped up his staff again.
He pointed it directly forward and charged at her. Merasi put her left arm in guard while punching with her right arm.
However, unexpectedly, Ning didn't attack her. Instead, he threw his spear at her visor.
'Does he want to block my vision? Why get rid of his weapon?' Merasi wondered, but not for long.
Her left arm mored slightly and grabbed the staff. Then… she felt her arm go numb.
Her left arm had grabbed the staff, but she couldn't feel her right arm. It was like a shock went through her entire right arm, and now she didn't even know if it was attached to her.
She put down her left arm and looked at her right arm in front of her only to find it dangling beside her without any control
She wanted to move it, but all she felt were pinpricks suddenly appearing all over her right arm.
"Don't worry," Ning said with a friendly smile from a bit far back. He had moved back there at some point. "The nerve will heal itself in about 5 minutes."
"What did you do to my arm?" Merasi demanded.
Ning's smile widened. "The same thing I'm going to do to the rest of your body."
