With the sound of continuous explosions, severed limbs flew everywhere upon the butterfly-filled sky.
Ying continued to stroll forward with her parasol on her shoulder, stepping over the flowing blood as she faced the increasingly many figures approaching her: "Who else… would like to die?"
"Or has the Dragon Warrior who's about to become my pet already ran away?" Ying asked while turning towards a different direction, sending numerous blue flaming butterflies there.
Each of these blue butterflies were an artificial Shikigami created from Ying's spirit energy, they do not have personal will so it's very easy to control them, which Ying employs as her main form of offense.
"Well, well, provocation comes right to my door" a figure parted the crowd as he walked in front of everyone else.
"Adrian, I've heard of you before. Why have you brought this woman here to provoke me?" the Dragon Warrior's physique was towering. His bulging muscles were visible even through his clothes, his golden hair was so long it almost touched the floor, and there was a long scar that ran across his handsome face.
If one could disregard the discomforting bloodthirst that constantly emanated from his body, perhaps he might be the dream lover of many aristocratic ladies.
"I'm just a prisoner" Adrian wryly smiled. After hearing Ying's words earlier, he had understood his position better as nothing more than an unqualified toy.
"What a disgrace to dragonborns" the Dragon Warrior stated.
A domesticated dragon, it's such a big joke that he felt ashamed by proxy, so he turned his gaze towards Ying. The pride of a dragon makes sure that he would not condone this woman who had humiliated the dragonborn.
Without any further talking, the Dragon Warrior's figure flashed forward and charged towards Ying. He could sense that this woman was emanating immense power from her body, the aura of which surpassed even his own. However, this didn't mean anything, even a child can kill an adult under the right circumstances, and a battle had never been determined by pure strength alone.
…
The current power system of Pugilists was divided into a total of three stages. The first is to use [Bone Forge Art] to forge the metal characteristics of one's bones, then change out one's blood to strengthen one's body.
The second stage is to stimulate an individual's own metal characteristic through various means, thus manifesting a Pugilist Heart to obtain Metal Qi.
Metal Qi would then be used by each individual as their own forging material. Each Pugilist [School] would forge the Metal Qi in a different manner, mixing various material components into it.
What comes next would be the Burning Soul Tempering process, through which an individual's mind, body, and skill would be used as fuel to temper their Metal Qi and complete the forging process, turning it into a peerless weapon. When this process was complete, they would then enter the third stage as a Pugilist.
For this reason, even though all first-rate Pugilists were powerful, the actual strength of each individual is determined through how they forged their own Metal Qi.
The main issue for all Pugilists currently lies in how difficult it is to further improve one's Metal Qi after the Burning Soul Tempering process. This was currently the full extent of the Pugilist path, as everyone was still searching for a point of breakthrough.
There were increasingly more first-rate Pugilists by the day, so it was quite predictable how big of a commotion it would be once any of them found the point of breakthrough.
The original reason why the Age of Turbulence came to an end, replaced by the Age of Metal, was the discovery of the Burning Soul Tempering process as the point of breakthrough. As the first first-rate Pugilists came into existence, a large number of smaller forces were kicked off the stage of history through their defeat, allowing the initial forms of the current countries to emerge.
Someone had predicted that once the point of breakthrough to surpass first-rate Pugilists was found, the current equilibrium of the larger countries would be broken, and the 6th Empire would come into existence.
Of course, the people of the New Royas Kingdom also believe that once their Grand Emperor Eldridge awakens from his slumber, the status quo would also be changed.
"Half Dragonoid!" in an instant, the Dragon Warrior's original human appearance began to change. Scales began to grow all over his body, a pair of dragon horns emerged from his forehead, a thick tail sprouted from behind him, and even his back slightly became bulged up like it could grow a pair of wings at any moment.
A large number of blue butterflies rushed towards the Dragon Warrior with reckless abandon, all of which ignited in a resounding explosion on contact with him.
Numerous explosions rang out one after another and kicked up a storm of dust, from which the Dragon Warrior leapt out as he charged towards Ying with intensely surging smoke.
If one took a closer look, one would notice that qi was circulating throughout all of his scales, and that other than his clothes, the explosions from earlier caused no damage to the Dragon Warrior at all.
Seeing this, the dragon beasts erupted into loud cheering, encouraging the master they serve.
The [School of Dragon] was one that fused all of a dragon's characteristics, including their bloodthirst, into one's Metal Qi, resulting in a more powerful defense and evoking many characteristics of the legendary dragons.
Dragons cannot die to mortal weapons, dragons are immune to the majority of physical attacks, a characteristic that even creatures who had bathed in dragon's blood would manifest, which was perfectly displayed in the [School of Dragon].
Before the power of an attack reaches a certain threshold, no attacks would be able to cause any damage to him, and each attack must be able to damage the continuously regenerating scales all over the Dragon Warrior's body in order to defeat him. This means that sheer number alone was useless against the Dragon Warrior.
Carrying immense heat through his body, the Dragon Warrior arrived in front of Ying as a red flash flickered in his pupils, manifesting a terrifying pressure around him that can startle any being.
If Ying hadn't been in constant contact with entities that invoke mental dread like murderous ghosts and grudgeful spirits, thus becoming used to such means of mental attacks, she might have fallen prey to the Dragon Warrior here.
Unfortunately, there was no 'if' in this world, and the Wicked Spirit Terracotta Warrior manifested in front of Ying once again while exuding immense hostility, blocking the Dragon Warrior's attack.
The black armor of the Terracotta Warrior shattered, the Metal Qi was howling as it was expelled through the scale-covered hand, reaching the flesh inside the armor. Black blood spilled through the broken armor, carrying with it a foul stench of corpses.
…
This caused Negary who was observing from the side to feel lament. The Dragon Warrior had managed to use power level at the second stage of release to fight on par with an entity at the third stage of release.
Back in the Disaster world, Negary needed to use both a scheme and the power of Sin that counteracted the dragon race in order to kill a dragon at the third stage of release. After that, he even had to use deception and relied on the world's power in order to skill the God Negary who had begun to sustain a Seed of Truth.
With the metal characteristic as a foundation, all of one's power could be concentrated to create the strongest possible weapon available to oneself, allowing one to explosively exert an extreme level of combat prowess. If he had known about the Pugilist path in the past, he wouldn't have needed to go through so much trouble.
Currently, the Dragon Warrior still hasn't released his [Origin] at all, so if he could fuse his [Origin] ability into it as well, then his combat strength would be greatly boosted once again.
It was for this reason that Negary praised the Pugilist power system for having a lot of potential. Its immense inclusive capabilities can unify the majority of powers into a single one, and if that young girl called Ying only had a single Shikigami, she would fall at the Dragon Warrior's hand 80-90% of the time.
Unfortunately, as the Black Terracotta Warrior mobilized the black aura around its body to coil around the Dragon Warrior's hand like thread, Ying crushed another talisman in her hand to summon a different towering figure over her head.
This was a slender humanoid bird with black wings whose entire body was clad in flames; as soon as he appeared, the temperature of the environment sharply increased.
At the same time, the caw of a crow echoed, followed by the bird's resounding voice: 「 This one is the Sky Crow, governor of life, the great heavenly Sun God, wielder of the Sun, and lord of all crows! 」
For some reason, the Sky Crow suddenly felt a chill down its back right after saying its introduction lines.
