Over the next couple of seconds, the peacock continued running while launching pathetic attacks.
It was still faster and more powerful than Shang.
Yet, it had severe problems with its focus.
Sometimes, it even forgot what it had just wanted to do.
Naturally, this was the effect of Shang's Needle.
One had to remember that Shang had constantly remained in a heavily injured state throughout the fight.
When he healed his old injuries, they were quickly replaced by new ones.
Shang had been in such an injured state on purpose to refill his Death Mana.
Additionally, whenever the peacock injured Shang, he received more Death Mana.
After eliminating the space between him and the peacock, Shang had filled the Needle with Death Mana with the Concept of Purgatory again.
When Shang had used Radiation earlier, the effects of Purgatory had been spread across the opponent's body.
Weaker muscles.
Less focus.
Slower.
Not as resilient.
However, Shang's Needle was a precision attack, and it focused all the effects of Purgatory on the spot it touched, which had been the peacock's forehead.
This meant that all the effects had been focused on the peacock's mind.
This put the peacock's mind into an early stage of dementia.
It was a weak and old mind in the body of a young and powerful beast.
The peacock wasted a lot of its Mana in weak attacks, and Shang could even focus on actually slowly inspecting his surroundings.
Instead of rapidly absorbing all the surrounding Mana with Void Break, Shang was using Void Break very slowly to look at all the Mana he was absorbing.
Naturally, this meant that Shang couldn't absorb as much Mana as usual and that it took several times longer.
However, the end result was that Shang could tell where all the foreign and hidden Blaze was located.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Across a vast space, individual pockets of Blaze were exploding while Shang was nowhere near them.
The peacock had just retreated again, and its last attack had already passed.
WHOOOOOM!
This meant that Shang could use Void Break again!
As Shang chased the peacock, he used Void Break two more times to refill the Mana of his swords.
Even more, Shang even summoned Entropy Ore to allow his Addum to return to its peak.
The fight was essentially already over.
The peacock was only launching pitiful attacks, and it was using far more Mana than it was regenerating.
It would run out of Mana soon.
After a while, Shang saw the peacock's eyes lose focus, meaning it forgot what it had just been doing again.
Shang saw his chance and readied his Addum.
Shang's Addum warped the surroundings with its incredible heat as it swung forward.
SHING!
A thin streak of warped space shot at the distant peacock.
The peacock's eyes regained focus, but it was already too late.
BANG!
The front of the peacock's head exploded, a burned black hole now visible on it.
The burned hole reached the peacock's brain, but it didn't destroy a lot.
The peacock was still alive, but the powerful attack on its head destroyed all of the peacock's focus.
This was another one of Shang's new attacks.
This was a long-range precision attack, but compared to Needle, this one had far more destructive power.
Shang launched this attack by creating a small ball of heat and then infusing it with more mass.
This essentially made a non-explosive and heavy bullet made of extremely hot fire.
The small bullet would burn through an opponent's defenses and spread its heat deep into the target.
Shang called this new attack Missile.
After the peacock was hit by Missile, Shang used Void Break again to refill his Addum with Fire Mana.
Then, he lifted his Addum high.
The peacock was completely absentminded, and it couldn't take note of its surroundings.
The space above the peacock warped.
Shang swung down.
Meteor!
BOOOOOOOM!
The peacock's head exploded into pieces!
Meteor was one of Shang's slower attacks, but its destructive power was extremely great.
Luckily, the peacock's natural defenses weren't very impressive.
The peacock's headless body fell to the ground, and Shang took a deep breath.
The applause returned, and the body slowly vanished.
'Finally,' Shang thought with a sigh. 'Fortunately, I can use Entropy in my inner world without fear of being found out. Without it, I probably wouldn't have won.'
"Level 17: Average Initial Beast Lord," the voice spoke.
At that moment, Shang remembered what he had just fought.
'Right! That was a weak Initial Beast Lord!'
'That was a far below-average Beast Lord!'
The peacock definitely hadn't been a pushover.
It had seen through one of Shang's weaknesses in an instant and had used it against Shang by letting him freeze himself.
After that, it had even placed traps while retreating.
Sure enough, this was almost like fighting an intelligent human, and a quite experienced one at that.
It was shocking to think that this was one of the weakest Beast Lords.
"What's even the point of keeping score anymore?"
Shang didn't show any reaction to the jester's words.
"You actually jumped a full Realm against a beast," the God said. "And it was even against a Beast Lord."
"I wonder how far you can go," the jester said.
Shang didn't say anything.
The jester looked at Shang for a while, and a small smirk appeared on its face.
"Interesting," it said. "That's not too dumb. You know that?"
Shang didn't react.
"Alright, go ahead," the jester said with a chuckle as the Affinity Wheel slowed down.
"Have fun," it said.
Shang was readying his Addum and Subsis again.
He knew that he couldn't possibly win his next fight.
However, that wasn't his intention.
Shang wanted to experience something.
Death.
The higher level a Concept of Death was, the closer it came to death.
The level three Concept of Death, Purgatory, was already as close to death as it got without outright dying.
So, the next one was probably just straight-up dying.
Something like this could probably only be comprehended in a Pit of Death, but Shang didn't have access to that.
But he had access to something else.
Actual death.
He could comprehend death by dying in his trial.
