Young Master's PoV: Woke Up As A Villain In A Game One Day - Chapter 342: Talent And Defiance [II]

Chapter 342: Talent And Defiance [II]

Ray overextended.

He was itching for this fight. For any fight, actually.

Ever since he had watched Alexia take that brutal hit meant for him against Vaeghar… he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t even breathe in peace.

That scene kept replaying in front of his eyes over and over and over again, driving him to lose his mind.

He was frustrated.

No, frustration couldn’t even begin to cover the volatile cocktail of guilt and rage simmering in his gut.

So, he decided to vent it all out right now.

He detonated one explosion after another, using the concussive force to either propel his fists forward or snap his body out of the way, both at breakneck speeds.

Moving in that blur of combustive motion, his punches were less like punches and more like guided missiles.

Each blow that connected to Michael’s matte-black armor rang out with the percussive, bone-shaking force of a cannon blast.

…Yet, it wasn’t enough.

None of it was enough.

Ray was a human dynamo — a whirlwind of fire and ash and unbridled force.

But Michael tanked those hits without so much as a grunt of discomfort. His dark armor didn’t show even a hairline crack under the assault. He wasn’t budging an inch, standing like a monolith against the storm.

So Ray decided to amp it up. He deployed a set of Enhancement and movement Buff Cards before diving back in with a heavy straight.

Michael was ready this time, though. He cemented his footing then raised a free hand.

Ray’s missile-like punch connected with Michael’s vambrace.

But instead of absorbing its full force, Michael slightly opened the face of his forearm and deflected the incoming strike away from him, letting Ray’s forward momentum just slide off.

It was a masterclass in redirection. By sloping his arm only a few degrees to the side, Michael turned Ray’s explosive force into a liability before completely stepping out of the way.

The guided missile didn’t hit its mark this time. It grazed the target and kept going.

Ray, unable to kill his own velocity in time, shot past Michael like a runaway train that had lost its rails, his balance momentarily lost.

Michael didn’t let him recover.

With the efficiency of a slaughterhouse machine, he brought his shadowy longsword up high and then whipped it down toward the back of Ray’s neck, intending to decapitate the boy in one clean stroke.

…Unfortunately for him, Lily had already alerted Ray of this exact scenario.

So even though it looked like he was stumbling forward uncontrollably, it had actually been a high-stakes bait.

Ray skewed his other arm and threw it back at an awkward angle without fully turning himself. Then, before the blade could fall on his nape like a guillotine, he blasted another fiery explosion.

It worked as a kinetic shield and a counter-attack all at once. The blast of superheated air and raw concussive energy slammed into the leading edge of Michael’s shadow-wrapped longsword.

CRACK-THWOOM—!!

The sound was a distorted thunderclap that vibrated in their marrow. The force of the explosion was enough to disrupt the trajectory of Michael’s blade, flicking it upward and away.

The unnatural bend of Ray’s arm when the explosion went off put a massive strain on his shoulder, so much so that it felt like the joint would dislocate under the pressure.

Thankfully, it didn’t.

It still hurt like hell, but it was worth it.

Because now there was a clear opening in Michael’s stance.

Ray didn’t waste the heartbeat of hesitation he’d earned. Ignoring the white-hot agony in his shoulder, he used the recoil of the explosion to snap his body around like a high-tension torsion spring.

As Michael’s blade was thrown skyward by the blast, his midsection was left completely exposed. It was a rare lapse in his masterful fighting style.

Ray drove his lead foot into the rocky floor and channeled a huge portion of his Essence into his arm, reaching for Michael’s solar plexus.

But of course, Michael wasn’t out of options yet. He couldn’t bring his sword back down in time, so what? He could still use his legs.

And that’s exactly what he began to do. He started lifting his right foot, either to kick aside Ray’s incoming hand or to plant a heavy boot squarely in the boy’s chest to push him away.

…Either way, it was the wrong choice. Because this was exactly what they had been waiting for.

Yes, they.

Swooo—!!

Vince came barreling in from the periphery and wrapped himself around Michael’s other, still-planted leg, using his entire deadweight to throw the armored powerhouse off balance.

Michael’s eyes widened behind his visor. This was a problem. He couldn’t afford to fall now, because the moment he hit the dirt, they would be all over him like wolves.

As such, dealing with Vince became the immediate priority.

Michael instinctively decided to brace for Ray’s incoming attack, endure the pain, and use this moment to eliminate the blue-haired boy at his feet instead.

…But again, this was exactly what they’d been counting on.

As Michael twirled the sword to point it downward and started thrusting it toward Vince… Ray’s reaching hand changed direction and instead went to clasp Michael’s wrist.

By snatching the sword-arm mid-thrust, Ray stalled the black blade mere inches from Vince’s head.

It took a lot of effort to hold back a juggernaut like Michael, but Ray had to struggle for only a moment.

Because in the next one, he ignited another blazing explosion… right around Michael’s seized arm.

KABOOOM—!!

The point-blank blast was blinding, scorching, and deafening all at once.

Vince’s ears were ringing with a high-pitched whine that made him feel like he’d never hear anything ever again.

But the one in absolute agony was Michael.

His vambrace shattered, crushed into metallic, razor-sharp fragments that either flew off or bit deep into his own flesh under the full force of that superheated detonation.

Michael threw his head back. The sound that escaped his helm was a mix of a roar and a desperate gasp — the first true sound of pain he had cried out in this fight.

It broke Ray’s heart to do that to the boy he had come to consider his friend.

But it was a binary choice: either subdue him, or get killed by him.

A broken arm could be fixed later. If they died in this canyon, though, there was no fixing that.

So Ray gritted his teeth and pulled away his own bloody hand, scorched and raw, littered with dark metallic shrapnel piercing his palm.

Michael’s grip of his sword arm went slack. The weapon should’ve slipped from his grasp. But somehow, it didn’t.

Somehow, his fist still stayed closed around that shadowy longsword. He still refused to let go of the blade.

…So that’s when Lily decided to jump in herself.

Michael didn’t even register her until she was right beside him, throwing one of her arms over his elbow and using the other to interlock it.

Then she hopped, wrapping both her legs around his waist, essentially executing a standing variation of a Kimura lock.

The submission hold was putting extreme, bone-creaking tension on his rotator cuff and elbow joint.

With that, Michael was now truly compromised. One leg was anchored by Vince’s deadweight, and his primary arm was being torn off by Lily.

But still! He still wasn’t yielding! He still wasn’t falling!

Some-fucking-how, Michael Godswill refused to go down.

His back was arched, his muscles screaming under the combined strain of two people trying to break his frame, yet he stood like a rooted oak in a hurricane.

He was an embodiment of sheer, stubborn willpower.

…But even he had to follow the laws of physics when Ray Warner’s palm suddenly clamped down on his visor, and yet another devastating explosion was discharged right at his face.

KRA-BOOOOM—!!

The sound of ceramic and metal cracking resounding across the canyon was drowned out by a raw, visceral scream ripping out of Michael’s throat.

His helmet came undone in fractured pieces, revealing the ashen eyes hiding behind. The left side of his face was burned and bleeding in spots, though the damage didn’t look permanent.

His resilience was terrifying. Even with his visor shattered and his face a map of fresh trauma, Michael’s ghostly eyes didn’t roll back into unconsciousness.

But physics finally won the day.

With his center of gravity shredded by Vince, his sword arm pinned by Lily’s lock, and the concussive force of Ray’s blast rattling his brain, Michael’s knees finally buckled.

He crashed back onto the ground, the heavy weight of his black armor creating a dull thud.

He grunted out loud, and when he finally looked up… he once again saw Ray high in the air before the boy propelled himself down like a kinetic projectile.

Michael couldn’t even close his eyes before a brutal punch landed squarely on his nose.

Thwack—!

…Although it was a good hit, Ray didn’t celebrate since he had already heard Lily’s frantic warning when he was coming down.

Unluckily, he was beelining so fast that he didn’t have the chance to stop the descent. It was something he was going to regret very soon.

Why? Because Michael, up until that point, hadn’t once deployed his Origin Card.

He did then.

Using his innate power to copy Ray’s, Michael created a condensed lance of explosive firepower in his good hand… and lashed it toward the side of Ray’s ribs.

Ray’s body was still vertical like an arrow, his fist still connected to Michael’s face… when the fiery lance exploded.

KABOOOM—!!!

The shockwave was a mirror image of Ray’s own brutality, and it sent him spiraling through the air. He slammed into the rocky floor, skidding for meters before crashing into the canyon wall.

And just like that, the tide of the battle shifted.

Michael stood up, effortlessly lifting the complete weight of Lily up high, before snapping the leg around which Vince was wrapped like a whip.

Vince didn’t even realize he had let Michael’s leg go until he was spinning end over end in the air, until his body plowed through the ledge and trees above and tumbled into the forest above the cliff walls.

Lily, reading the situation, immediately tried to disengage, but Michael didn’t give her the luxury.

He swished down and body-slammed the slender girl into the ground with enough force to send cracks spiderwebbing through the earth.

Her breath was knocked out of her lungs as she saw stars. She was in no condition to move if Michael were to try to end her right here.

Thankfully, before he could chain his attacks, a condensed light of explosive energy shot forward, forcing Michael to lean away to dodge as the projectile slammed into a ridge behind him, erupting in a shower of stone and fire.

It had come from Ray, who was trembling as he tried to push himself up against the rock. The left side of his torso was charred, his clothes reduced to smoldering rags.

He was coughing blood, but he had still bought Lily a second of life.

Michael could’ve retaliated, but he didn’t.

He had a bad feeling about staying in the open here.

Juliana was somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t see her.

If she pitched in now, she could buy time for Ray to recover.

So instead of targeting them, he pivoted and sprinted toward the near-vertical cliff face, scaling it in two monstrous jumps that defied gravity.

His armored fingers gouged deep into the stone as he crested the ledge and entered the forest.

He was going to isolate Vince. He was going to take them out one by one.