Chapter 749: Honeybun vs Hawk

But Honeybun had an answer.

The golden turtle reacted the instant the hawk revealed itself, its shell flooding with deep jade, the speed form activating.

But this time it didn’t trade away its crystals, the formations erupting across its jade shell all the same, and the moment the hawk wheeled for another dive, Honeybun unleashed them.

A volley of crystal spears launched skyward, streaking toward the circling hawk.

The hawk banked hard, and the clearing lit up as crystals flew towards the sky.

It didn’t take long for the fight to show who was winning. Honeybun found himself on the back foot.

The hawk was unlike anything he had faced. The Shadow Panther had been fast but ground-bound. The serpent had been powerful but confined to its basin.

This predator owned the sky, and the sky was a battlefield Honeybun couldn’t reach.

In his jade form, the turtle moved with blinding speed and hurled crystal spears skyward, but the hawk simply climbed out of range, banking and weaving through the air with an agility that made the projectiles look clumsy.

Most of the crystals missed entirely, the hawk reading their trajectories and sliding aside, and the few that came close it batted away with buffeting wing-beats.

Then it would fold its wings and dive, striking from an angle Honeybun couldn’t fully track, raking its talons across the jade shell before rocketing back up to safety.

And the jade shell cracked under those strikes.

Each dive that connected left a small fracture, the speed form’s reduced defense unable to fully withstand a Surpasser’s talons.

Honeybun was fast enough to dodge most of the dives, but not all, and every hit that landed hurt. It was losing, slowly, bleeding fractures while unable to land anything meaningful in return.

The hawk controlled the fight completely, dictating every exchange.

But Honeybun didn’t panic, he adapted.

Moon watched, resisting the urge to intervene, remembering his promise.

This one’s yours, buddy. You have to figure it out.... You got this.

When the jade shell took one crack too many, Honeybun’s shell began to change, his shell flooded back to gold, and the next time the hawk dove, its talons met the impenetrable fortress instead of fragile jade.

The strike skated off harmlessly, and for the first time the hawk recoiled, surprised, its attack doing nothing.

Honeybun had read the pattern, understood that it couldn’t out-manoeuvre the hawk, and switched to simply weathering the dives, letting its legendary defense turn the hawk’s greatest weapon useless.

But gold form was slow, and the hawk, realizing its dives did nothing, changed tactics, staying high and refusing to engage, circling out of reach while it waited for an opening.

Suddenly, the two had reached an unexpected stalemate. Honeybun couldn’t hit it, but now it couldn’t hit Honeybun either.

So the little turtle adapted again.

It began cycling between forms, learning the rhythm of the fight.

Gold when the hawk dove, tanking the strikes without a scratch. Then, the instant the hawk pulled up to climb away, jade, exploding into speed and launching a crystal volley at the brief window when the hawk was close and committed to its ascent, when it couldn’t dodge as freely.

Slowly but surely, Honeybun learnt to how to switch forma faster ans faster, understanding the timing needed to catch the hawk in vulnerable moments after each dive.

And finally, the first crystal volley in that window clipped the hawk’s wing.

The hawk screeched, faltering, and Honeybun pressed, landing more strikes in the narrow openings between the hawk’s dives and climbs.

Moon’s eyes shone with pride.

Nothing short of amazing... as expected of a supreme rank creature.

The turtle had gone from being thoroughly outmatched to fighting the hawk on even terms, purely through adaptation, reading the hawk’s patterns and building a counter-rhythm in real time.

Gold-jade-gold-jade, defense and offense blended together, each form covering the other’s weakness. The hawk’s wounds began to mount. Its dives grew more cautious as it learned to fear the crystal volleys that greeted every climb.

What had started as a one-sided beating had become a true contest, two Surpasser-tier beasts trading blows, the gap closing exchange by exchange, Honeybun clawing its way from the losing side to an equal footing through nothing but its own escalating mastery of the fight.

Moon folded his arms and watched his turtle fight, saying nothing, letting Honeybun earn this one entirely on its own.

Having learned that both its dives and its evasion were being countered, the hawk tried something new, a feinting dive, pulling up short to bait Honeybun’s gold-form commitment, then twisting into a faster strike meant to catch the turtle mid-transformation, in the vulnerable window between forms.

But Honeybun seemed to predict his plan wouldn’t always work, and changed it entirely.

As if reading the hawk’s intent before it even committed, he changed strategy entirely. When the hawk dove next, angling for its tricky feinting strike, Honeybun didn’t fire a crystal volley into the sky and he didn’t simply tank it. Instead, he formed a crystal formation on the ground where the hawk would arrive, a dense cluster of jagged, sharp points bristling upward like a thicket of spears, placed precisely in the predator’s descent path.

The hawk, already committed to its dive, couldn’t abort in time.

It plunged straight into the trap, and the crystal spikes punched through its body and tore into its wings, impaling and pinning it to the earth.

~Screech!~

A horrible, piercing cry split the sky as the hawk thrashed, caught and skewered among the crystals, its wings shredded, its body pierced in a dozen places. It flailed desperately, trying to tear itself free of the trap, and in that frantic moment, Honeybun struck.

He transformed his shell to jade, the speed form exploding into motion, and rocketed toward the trapped, struggling predator. Before the hawk could wrench itself loose, Honeybun was on it, a blur closing the distance in an instant, and his crystal-tipped claw raked across the hawk’s face.

The strike destroyed one of the hawk’s eyes.