MIGHT AS WELL BE OP-Chapter 963: Awkward Position
But Anthony didn’t just dodge, his toes screamed downward toward Kingsley’s head with ruthless precision, the motion so abrupt it seemed to tear the air apart. Kingsley felt and heard the violent displacement of wind as it slammed into his ears like a bursting shockwave, the pressure alone enough to rupture lesser eardrums.
His reaction was immediate, his reflexes and instincts snapping together as though they were one seamless mechanism, moving before conscious thought could even form, and he instantly dodged to the side as Anthony’s foot met the asphalt the moment he landed, the ground cracking and caving beneath the impact like brittle glass.
Kingsley’s foot left the earth, Anthony had landed in an awkward position, and he immediately capitalized on it without hesitation, his knee singing toward Anthony’s jaw as though he intended to dislocate it from his face entirely. As usual, Anthony simply smiled as his centre of gravity shifted with uncanny fluidity, as though adjusting naturally to Kingsley’s own movement, rhythm, and timing.
His hand blurred upward as he caught Kingsley’s knee dead in its tracks, stopping the violent momentum as though he had merely intercepted a falling leaf rather than a strike capable of crushing and falling a planet.
Using it as a handhold, he pushed himself upward from his awkward position with effortless strength, his foot tearing toward Kingsley’s head once again with even greater force. Kingsley was stunned at the sudden turn of events, the reversal so smooth it almost felt unreal, but what he didn’t know was that at the pinnacle of martial arts or any battle, there was no such thing as an awkward position, because each position, no matter how unbalanced it appeared, was inherently an attack position waiting to be exploited.
Kingsley immediately blurred as he dodged, putting some distance between himself and Anthony as his instincts saved him yet again, cold sweat trailing down his back as the realization settled deeper into his mind that a single clean hit to the head might mean death. He didn’t dare receive any attack aimed at his skull, not even by accident.
Anthony’s attack missed again, but he didn’t care in the slightest, his expression unchanged, calm and almost amused. He simply completed his rotating motion with mechanical precision, but he didn’t delay or retreat; instead, he pressed his attack, his fingers digging into the asphalt like claws, then he yanked it upward with raw strength, tearing apart the road as though it were nothing more than loose fabric.
Kingsley immediately staggered as he hadn’t expected Anthony to destroy the asphalt road itself and weaponize the terrain, but in that brief and fleeting moment of surprise, Anthony had already closed the distance between them. He arrived face to face before his supposed student, so close Kingsley could feel the faint warmth of his breath.
Kingsley’s golden eyes tore downward, and all he saw was Anthony’s fist screaming from below toward his chin, the air splitting around it, but he couldn’t move, dodging or escaping was useless, because Anthony neither gave him the time nor the space to react.
As Anthony’s fist met his chin, his lower jaw tore into his upper jaw, bones snapping apart from the sheer force of their collision, his entire jaw ripping open violently. The impact tore through his tongue, then his lips, then his nose, then it slammed into his brain before bursting upward from his cranium in a grotesque spray. The next moment, his feet left the earth yet again as his body screamed toward the heavens like a projectile launched from a cannon.
Kingsley felt as though he was on the very edge of death, because if his entire brain had truly been destroyed he would have died instantly. He knew he was alive only because of his absurd vitality and monstrous physique. But as he tore upward through the sky, he seemed to be in a daze, as though his brain were overloading from the overwhelming pain and force, reality itself becoming hazy and distorted. 𝘧𝓇𝑒𝑒𝑤ℯ𝑏𝓃𝘰𝑣ℯ𝘭.𝘤ℴ𝘮
’Is it a bird? Is it a plane?’ he thought to himself as he stared blankly at the clouds drifting around him, his thoughts strangely detached and sluggish. But the next moment, his dazed state vanished as his brain regenerated, his jaw and entire head returning to their perfect state with sickening, rapid regeneration.
His golden eyes tore downward, and there he saw Anthony, who simply stood millions of meters below, staring at him with that same faint, infuriating smile. The next moment, he reached the peak of his ascent, and then gravity reclaimed him mercilessly, his body plummeting back down. Kingsley’s form readjusted midair as he tore downward, his eyes locked onto Anthony like a homing missile fixed on its target.
Momentum increased the farther he descended, the air howling past his ears like a storm. As he approached, his hand stretched backward like a bowstring being drawn tight, his fingers curling into a fist as every ounce of gathered momentum concentrated into that single point. Then he punched downward toward Anthony’s head with everything he had.
Anthony’s smile turned into a grin, sharp and confident, and he immediately retaliated, his fist rocketing upward like a sniper bullet to meet the incoming strike. And with a catastrophic, titanic impact, the two fists met. At their collision, the air burst apart, the wind screamed in agony, reality itself seemed to fracture, and then continuous successive impacts and shockwave blasts erupted outward in concussive detonations, millions of kilometers wiped off the map with a single collision as though existence had simply been erased.
Ravines tore open across the land, dust and smoke churned and swirled into the sky, covering everything in a suffocating haze. Tremors capable of reducing planets to nothingness tore through the separate plane they occupied, yet it held firm as though it didn’t even register the attack at all, unmoved and indifferent.
The entire cityscape battlefield seemed to be erased as buildings vanished, cars torn into metallic shreds of themselves, pavements crumbling into powder. All that remained was ruin, madness, apocalypse, and destruction, a silent testament to the magnitude of their clash.
Kingsley’s entire arm exploded off his shoulder like an overfilled balloon bursting apart. Blood tore toward Anthony’s face, but Infinity was ever so loyal to allow the blood of a lesser being to touch its master, and so, it parried the blood with ease, repelling it as though reality itself rejected the attempt. Anthony didn’t pause for even a fraction of a second; he moved again, his knee collapsing into Kingsley’s side with merciless force.
Kingsley felt his ribs break, shatter, then crumble entirely, the bones tearing and piercing deep into his organs. He groaned as pain exploded in his mind yet again, raw and unrelenting. But Kingsley didn’t resist, instead allowing the momentum of the attack to tear him sideways. Midmotion, every one of his injuries healed, his body twisting as he landed on his feet, his boots carving deep trenches into the earth as he came to a halt.
His head snapped forward toward Anthony’s location, but all he saw was a palm that grew bigger and bigger with each passing nanosecond as it filled his entire vision. With the force of a dying sun, Anthony’s palm tore into Kingsley’s chest with a power that felt utterly reckoning, as though judgment itself had taken physical form.
Kingsley felt his heart jolt like never before, it felt like something had slammed directly into it, then burst through his entire body. He didn’t know what it was, he didn’t know if it was pain, or force, or momentum, but he didn’t care, because it was all the same to him, an overwhelming and ridiculous amount of suffering regardless.
He vomited another mouthful of blood, but Anthony seemed to be enjoying his suffering and didn’t plan to stop anytime soon unless Kingsley awakened the Martial Rhythm.
