On the other side, the battle was unfolding far differently than expected.
Dartnerly did not display overwhelming, one-sided power.
On the contrary, looking at the situation, Purr was the one holding the upper hand.
Rocks floated in the surrounding air, making the entire area resemble a zero-gravity environnt in outer space.
Purr currently stood atop one of these floating rocks.
Standing over ten feet tall, he appeared entirely weightless. The bone fin on his back faintly emitted a unique field.
He gripped a stone in his hand. With a forceful squeeze, the rock crumbled, and a barrage of jagged fragnts shot outward like shrapnel.
"Whale-ification... Is this the hidden trump card Nels was concealing?" Dartnerly swung his sword continuously, his imnse strength slicing apart and deflecting the thumb-sized stones.
Though these pebbles appeared small, their speed and weight were staggeringly high.
This was the power obtained after Whale-ification reached an extrely high level and its traits were further developed.
In the early stages of Whale-ification, after Purr manifested his bone fin, he could only adjust his own body weight by about ten percent. While useful, it rely made him slightly more agile and allowed him to occasionally throw heavier punches.
However, in the later stages, his bone fin gradually evolved. Especially after Nemus acquired a massive amount of whale products, the whale-blood diamonds drastically elevated Purr's Whale-ification stage.
His weight adjustnt capacity leaped from ten percent to a full one hundred percent.
In other words, as long as Purr wished it, he could render himself completely weightless.
Subsequently, Purr naturally advanced to the Iron Rank. His bone fin ability evolved further, transforming from self-weight manipulation into a specialized field. Within a certain radius around him, the weight of any matter—provided it lacked sufficient vitality or spiritual mass—fell entirely under his control.
In addition, after Purr advanced to the Iron Rank, another trait underwent a transformation.
Colossus morphed into Giant Lifeform!
Purr's original number had only been twenty-seven or twenty-eight. Yet, bolstered by the Giant Lifeform trait, the practical effect of that number approached a power value of sixty. Simultaneously, his defensive capabilities, vitality, and physical resilience far surpassed those of a normal human.
A power value of sixty applied to a small, weightless stone was enough to launch it at a speed beyond the limit of human perception. In the split second before impact, the stone's weight would suddenly multiply.
A stone the size of a finger could deliver a colossal, crushing impact akin to a boulder hurled from a catapult.
Because this massive weight was concentrated into such a tiny object, it translated into terrifying penetrating power.
Even a high-value Iron Rank combatant like Dartnerly found it difficult to track the trajectory of the incoming projectiles. He could only rely on a vague premonition of danger to mount a hasty defense.
If he was even slightly careless and let a single stone slip past, the divine protection granted by his Holy Path Sword would be shattered.
It could be said that while the opponent's number was not exceptionally high, the synergy of several traits multiplied his combat effectiveness several tis over.
This was exactly like the whale-ified demon Nemus had encountered in The Abyss years ago.
An Iron Rank peak entity with a number in the nineties had managed to make Nemus—a heterogeneous demon with a number reaching three hundred—find the battle incredibly thorny.
This was the power of top-tier traits.
A superior trait could amplify the effectiveness of a base number by multiple folds.
It was just that acquiring a top-tier trait in the early stages of cultivation was exceedingly difficult.
And this was precisely why the Whale-ification ability was so formidable once developed; it yielded two top-tier traits.
But Dartnerly was cut from a different cloth.
The bones throughout his body emitted a faint glow, and the trait stemming from the Dartnerly family's holy blood activated.
Path of the Saint.
With his high number, this trait no longer required external catalysts to trigger. It had beco a permanent state, able to be activated with a single thought.
However, the Path of the Saint ca with a flaw: the imnse physical burden. In a previous battle between Nemus and Dartnerly, Nemus had exploited this by using the Secret Sword: Hummingbird Descent to shatter this very trait.
That had been a case of pushing combat skill to its absolute limits.
Purr, however, was not Nemus. His combat skills were not nearly as refined.
And as long as the user could withstand the strain, the intensity of the Path of the Saint made it an absolutely top-tier trait!
With the trait unleashed, the battle finally reached a true boiling point.
Dartnerly completely abandoned all defensive asures, pointed his sword at Purr, and launched an all-out assault.
Purr casually flicked his wrist, sending the remaining stone fragnts flying. Yet, the mont they neared Dartnerly, they were violently deflected away.
'As expected, he activated his trait,' Purr thought, recalling Nemus's evaluation of the Path of the Saint trait.
The Path of the Saint guaranteed that its user would always be able to advance and deliver a strike.
During this process, absolutely no external force could impede their forward montum.
If utilized properly, this absolute property could render the vast majority of attacks completely useless.
The only vulnerabilities lay in the exact mont of striking, the aftermath of the attack, and the physical backlash caused by the clashing of forces.
While these were indeed openings, very few fighters actually possessed the capability to exploit them.
It was like an eye that boasted three hundred and fifty-nine degrees of vision, only to have that single missing degree deed a fatal blind spot.
Yet a normal human eye only possessed a field of view of a little over one hundred degrees. Wouldn't the blind spots of a normal human missing over a hundred degrees of vision be infinitely larger?
Despite this, so people illogically believed that the single missing degree was far more fatal.
This was clearly a cognitive fallacy where having more was sohow perceived as having less.
The sa logic applied to the Path of the Saint. Because it provided guaranteed protection during the advance, it covered the vast majority of combat ti. The user was only unprotected during the split-second clash of strikes and the imdiate aftermath.
Ordinary people, on the other hand, lacked such absolute protection at all tis.
'Therefore, if your sense of timing isn't sharp enough, the best way to fight Dartnerly is to drag the battle out!' Nemus's advice ford the core of Purr's current combat strategy.
His body rapidly blurred into a dark shadow, swiftly vanishing from Dartnerly's line of sight.
Being utterly weightless, he was already capable of flight.
However, flight rely relied on the anti-gravity generated by manipulating his weight.
On the ground, he could use his entire physical strength to maximize his speed.
In a re fraction of a second, Dartnerly lost his target.
Although the Path of the Saint was incredibly powerful, it was not so omnipotent that it could treat vast physical distance as a re obstacle to be automatically bypassed.
At the very least, the current Dartnerly could not achieve such a feat.
Consequently, Dartnerly shifted his gaze, locking his eyes on Cici Marie, who was lying inside the magic array nearby.
Since Nemus had cultivated her to this stage, he naturally had a use for her.
In that case...
Dartnerly raised his sword. Moving at breakneck speed, he charged straight toward Cici Marie.
"Grandpa Patriarch!" Cici Marie mumbled. Whether caught in a dream or driven by so other instinct, she continued to mutter those words despite being unconscious within the magic array.
Hearing this caused a subtle shift in Dartnerly's expression, but neither his charging footsteps nor the sword in his hand faltered for a second.
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