{Chapter: 165: Tasting The Depths With Jarlot}
It didn't matter to him what his opponent was thinking.
Lowering his gaze, Dex examined the blood streaks trickling down his torso.
With an exasperated sigh, Dex shook his head in mild disbelief.
It wasn't that he had taken any real damage—far from it. The truth was more absurd: his opponent had hit him so hard and with such reckless force that the blow ended up wounding the attacker instead. The backlash from striking his body caused the enemy to injure himself and spill blood on Dex's exoskeleton.
"It seems my defense has improved far more than I anticipated," Dex muttered thoughtfully, brushing away some of the blood. "Even with magical protection, it shouldn't have been this impervious. Either my physique is evolving... or this guy hits like a fool."
To him, the attack felt like nothing more than a light vibration, like a passing breeze brushing against his chest. It wasn't even worth reacting to. So he didn't.
Noticing the defiance still burning in his opponent's eyes, Dex gave a smile—one that was both kind and utterly mocking.
"Would you like another chance to strike me?" he offered, his tone courteous but laced with venomous sarcasm.
To Jarlot, those words landed like a slap to the face. His pride, already bruised by the earlier exchange, now boiled with rage. His muscles tensed, his eyes widened, and he let out a furious roar as if Dex's offer had ignited something deep and primal within him.
"Really?!"
Without waiting for a response, he lunged forward again with reckless abandon, throwing his entire body into the assault. This time, he wasn't holding back at all—he was using every ounce of strength, speed, and hatred he could muster. He moved with the fury of a man possessed, aiming to crush his opponent with pure ferocity.
Dex, however, remained as calm as ever.
Suspended effortlessly in mid-air, he barely moved. There was no flinch, no hesitation—only quiet calculation. And just as the furious blow was about to land, his right leg blurred into motion, a whip-fast strike that came from nowhere.
With the speed and precision of a striking serpent, his foot collided squarely with Jarlot's face.
The impact was catastrophic.
Jarlot's head snapped back as his body was launched through the air like a ragdoll. He tumbled across the sky before crashing down into the earth like a blazing meteor, carving a smoking trench in the ground as he landed.
Dex withdrew his leg with grace, watching with amusement as the shattered fragments of Jarlot's broken teeth still lingered mid-air.
He smirked coldly and murmured, "We're all demons pretending to be polite, but don't take my kindness for charity. You really thought I'd let you try again? Be serious."
In the blink of an eye, his body vanished and reappeared above the newly formed crater. With a casual gesture, he conjured a searing orb of blood flame that pulsed with destructive intent.
"Boom!"
The fireball dropped like a divine punishment, exploding with force and fury. A towering column of flame erupted from the pit, engulfing everything inside in searing heat and crimson light.
But instead of silence, a shape emerged from the inferno.
Jarlot—charred but still conscious—flew out of the flames, no longer pretending to play dead. Though clearly scorched and bruised, his vitality remained unsurprisingly stable. His body was healing rapidly, his broken teeth already regrowing with unnatural speed.
Dex wasn't surprised in the least.
Despite his arrogance, he could recognize that Jarlot was no weakling. In fact, he was a formidable opponent—one of the stronger upper demons Dex had encountered in recent times.
If this had happened before his transformation, Dex might have struggled to defeat him one-on-one. And when compared to the demigod dark elf he'd fought not long ago, Jarlot was undoubtedly on another level.
The difference was rooted in their origins.
Jarlot hailed from a brutal and savage abyss—a place where peace was a foreign concept and daily survival meant stepping over the corpses of one's kin.
Compared to the natives of this world, who lived under structured societies and stable civilizations, the demons of Dex's homeland were forged in unending bloodshed.
In the Abyss, meteor storms could fall from the sky without warning, obliterating entire armies. Carnage, slaughter, betrayal, and chaos were everyday occurrences. Killing wasn't a crime there—it was the norm.
A demon who survived in such an environment did so by climbing over tens of millions of corpses. Even the weakest among them had seen more battles than most love lived mortals ever would. Add to that their inherited memory and you had warriors with experience far beyond what their age would suggest.
That's why, even at the same power level, demons from the Abyss were often vastly superior to creatures from more peaceful planes.
The only reason these so-called "natives" could hold their ground against the abyssal forces at all was because of the rules of this worlds—their natural laws suppressed foreign power, dampening the strength of creatures from other negative invader realms especially Abyss and Devil's don't get the same treatment on the same level. Add to that the alliances formed by various races and the defensive structures erected over time, and they managed to resist.
Barely.
But take away that suppression—just once—and the tables would turn in an instant. The abyss would spill over like a flood, and no resistance would stand for long.
That's why monsters worked so relentlessly to expand the corrupted zones. The more land they polluted, the weaker the suppression grew—and the closer they came to unleashing their true strength.
To the demons of the Abyss, the creatures of other worlds were nothing more than walking nutrients—prey to be harvested. They didn't envy them; they didn't respect them. They simply saw them as food.
Now, standing before him with eyes filled with venom and hatred, Jarlot said nothing more. His fury had become a silent inferno, his pride still stinging from Dex's taunts and overpowering strength.
He no longer sought to talk. He just wanted blood.
The muscles across Jarlot's body suddenly convulsed, swelling with unnatural force as if a beast were clawing its way out from beneath his skin. His body grew larger with every heartbeat, veins bulging like twisted black cords beneath his flesh. The roar of rushing blood echoed in his ears—his pulse accelerating beyond mortal limits. This was no mere flex of strength. This was his birthright—an innate demonic ability that rapidly amplified every facet of his physical form.
It was a transformation bred for slaughter.
Dex, however, remained perfectly still, standing mid-air with his arms loosely folded across his chest, as if watching a street performer prepare for an act. He didn't attempt to interfere. Instead, a faint, amused smile curled his lips.
Let him power up. Let him reach his peak.
It would make crushing him all the more satisfying—and informative.
The next moment, both figures vanished from sight, replaced by a burst of wind and heat.
"BOOM!"
A deafening explosion cracked the skies like a thunderclap. The air itself trembled violently. They reappeared at the epicenter of the shockwave—fists colliding in mid-air with such ferocity that even the clouds above scattered.
"Crack..."
Jarlot heard it—the unmistakable sound of his own knuckles fracturing. But he didn't flinch. His blood boiled with rage and power. With a beastly roar, he swung his left fist at Dex, aiming to cave in his skull.
Dex didn't back down. His own left hand surged forward in reply.
Flesh met flesh.
Bone met bone.
The duel erupted into a savage ballet of fists. They were no longer fighters—they were storms given form.
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
In the span of a breath, hundreds of blows were exchanged. Their arms moved so fast they became blurs, like a swarm of phantoms striking from every angle. The sheer velocity of their blows carved shockwaves through the air, warping the atmosphere and pushing back the ground below as if a god were breathing fury upon the land.
The impact zone became a furnace. Each collision unleashed bursts of heat. Fists became anvils of flame, and every punch sent out concentric waves of force that liquefied the air around them. Sparks erupted with every strike, lighting up the sky with arcs of red and gold.
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