The rhythmic pulse of the tower grew louder.
The floor throbbed under Shojiro's bare feet — in tune with the monster's breathing.
Artaxion stood motionless now, its towering frame glistening like a sculpture of muscle and sinew. But its ligaments were alive, rippling beneath translucent flesh — constantly shifting in strange, symmetrical patterns.
Shojiro cracked his neck, blood running down his jaw.
"Alright… I get it now."
He raised both fists. "You're not strength. You're structure."
He exhaled — slow and deliberate — and the Vythra in his veins began to hum.
Instead of flooding his body with raw power, he focused.
Every micro-movement, every muscle twitch — he analyzed them all.
For once, Shojiro wasn't charging in head-first.
He was listening to the rhythm of the fight.
Artaxion's torso bent backward unnaturally — a counter ready to punish any predictable strike.
Shojiro didn't attack. He shifted.
His ligaments loosened — the fibers of his body began to slide around his skeleton, mimicking Artaxion's impossible flexibility.
The creature struck — its arm shot forward like a whip, bending mid-flight to curve toward Shojiro's side.
Shojiro's shoulder drifted — ligaments detaching just enough to let his upper body twist without moving his feet.
The claw skimmed past his ribs, slicing only air.
He pivoted instantly — all momentum stored in his tendons, released in a single uppercut.
The punch connected — directly under Artaxion's chin.
The impact cracked like thunder — but again, no result. The Titan's neck compressed, absorbed, then snapped back into shape like elastic rubber.
Shojiro grunted. "...Still nothing."
Artaxion retaliated — its leg bent sideways, rotating 180 degrees mid-kick. Shojiro's instincts screamed — but this time, his body reacted without thought.
Ligaments slid.
Muscles reconfigured.
He moved like liquid steel.
The kick missed, and Shojiro counter-spun, delivering a knee strike to Artaxion's abdomen.
Again — the sound, the quake — but not a scratch.
He landed, exhaling steam through clenched teeth.
"Okay… I can dodge. I can move. But I still can't hurt you."
He backed away, watching closely. Each time Artaxion flexed, its ligaments shimmered with faint red light. The vibrations weren't random — they were rhythmic, like a tuned system.
> "So that's it…"
"You're not just absorbing my power — you're redirecting it through those ligaments."
The creature lunged again — both arms extending like serpents. Shojiro slid under one, tilted his spine in an inhuman arc, then twisted mid-fall to grab its arm.
He tried to use the creature's own momentum — and something clicked.
For a fraction of a second, he felt the same ligament elasticity flow through his body — like copying its internal pattern.
The two of them moved in sync — predator and reflection.
When he released the hold, both staggered backward.
Shojiro's pupils flared.
He could feel it — that elastic current running along his limbs. The body of a human mimicking the architecture of a monster.
Shojiro inhaled, and this time his ligaments shimmered faint crimson — the same glow as Artaxion's.
He flexed experimentally, and his forearm bent outward just enough to create a new striking angle.
His punch carved a clean arc through the air — smoother, faster, sharper.
Artaxion blocked.
But for the first time — the impact made it step back.
Just one step.
Shojiro's grin widened.
"Now we're talkin'…"
The two clashed again — a dance of anatomy gone mad.
Shojiro's limbs blurred, twisting and snapping with bone-defying precision.
Every motion was perfect — no more dislocations, no more backlash. The "Never Misjudge" rule no longer punished him, because he'd learned the tower's rhythm.
But still — every hit, every kick, every grab — the Titan's body refused to break.
Shojiro landed, chest heaving, fists trembling.
He'd finally reached equality in motion — but not in power.
"...Then what the hell can hurt you?" he growled under his breath.
Artaxion straightened, ligaments tightening like cables, as if mocking his progress.
Then it began to walk toward him again — each step echoing like a heartbeat.
Shojiro tightened his fists. "Fine… I'll figure it out the hard way."
The ground shuddered.
A sound like bones grinding underwater filled the tower.
Artaxion's torso began to split. The flesh along its ribcage peeled open — not in pain, but with surgical precision — and two new arms grew from within.
Each one was thick as Shojiro's torso, ligaments coiling around bone like cables, flexing in rhythmic pulses.
The transformation wasn't grotesque — it was mechanical.
Every new joint, every tendril of muscle aligned perfectly with the rest of its body, as though calculated by divine geometry.
Shojiro's eyes widened. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me…"
Artaxion didn't answer. It roared — a low, grinding bellow that shook the marrow in Shojiro's bones — and then moved.
WHAM!
The first punch came faster than the others — Shojiro barely blocked with crossed forearms, but the impact cratered the flesh floor, sending shockwaves up his arms.
Then the second arm hit.
Then the third.
Then the fourth.
All four swung in an alternating rhythm — two striking, two recoiling — a living machinegun of cannon-fire fists.
Each hit had the weight of a falling boulder and the precision of a piston.
Shojiro was thrown back again and again — slammed through fleshy walls, bones cracking from the cumulative force. He rolled to a stop, coughing blood.
"Dammit… every one of those hits feels like a freight train…"
Artaxion didn't let up.
The arms blurred — a hurricane of strikes from all angles. The sheer volume of attacks made blocking useless.
Shojiro ducked, parried, rolled — but the force alone was enough to break the ground each time. Flesh and bone splattered across the walls, vibrating from impact.
A right hook grazed his temple — his vision went white.
Another caught his ribs — something snapped.
A third slammed into his chest — his back hit the ground hard enough to leave a crater.
Shojiro coughed, blood spraying.
His left shoulder had been torn half out of its socket.
"Shit… this thing's speed… it's like fighting a damn bulletstorm."
Artaxion stepped forward, its four arms spiraling in asynchronous rotation — the air bent around them from sheer velocity.
It was no longer humanoid; it was a biological turbine.
Shojiro slammed his fist into the ground, forcing himself upright.
His breathing steadied — he let the pain fade into background noise.
"Alright… I see what you're doing, you bastard."
He began watching — not reacting, but measuring.
The rhythm.
The timing.
Each punch wasn't random — they flowed in a repeating 4-beat pattern. Left-upper, right-lower, mid-cross, back-recoil.
A mechanical loop.
Artaxion's strikes came again — Shojiro barely slipped past one, then the second.
He started feeling the delay between arm sets, the ligament extension time, the moment of drift before each recoil.
One wrong move would break his bones.
One perfect read would open a window.
"Alright… let's dance, four-hands."
The next flurry came in.
Shojiro ducked under a left cross, pivoted, and countered into the blind gap — his fist slammed into the creature's abdomen. The impact made a ripple — but again, no damage.
Artaxion's torso absorbed it and returned the force back through recoil.
Shojiro was blown backward by his own punch, spine cracking against a rib wall.
He gasped, blood leaking from his mouth.
"...You're really just not gonna let me hurt you, huh?"
Artaxion marched forward, arms spinning faster now — faster than before, pressure in the room building with each synchronized swing.
Shojiro stood, barely keeping balance, his body screaming.
He flexed his arm, watching it twitch, skin splitting slightly from overuse.
"Alright…" he muttered, voice low, dangerous. "If I can't stop the rhythm…"
He lowered his stance.
Veins lit up crimson.
"Then I'll break the tempo."
He waited until the very moment the next set of punches aligned — the peak of synchronization — and lunged forward into the hurricane of strikes.
CRACK—BOOM—BANG!
Every blow clipped him — ribs snapping, jaw dislocating, blood spraying across the arena — but in that chaos, he slipped through, sliding under Artaxion's left arm and slamming his knee into the creature's side.
He felt something shift. Not break — but shift. A ligament tightening, redirecting internal energy.
Shojiro smirked through bloodied teeth. "...There you are."