The Lupine System-Chapter 132: Mike vs The Panther II
Mike vs The Panther II
The next thing Mike knew, he found himself high in the sky above the trees, his body weightless for a moment.
But that’s not what set off his instincts.
No, instead, what did was the massive rift in space that was drawing him into itself.
It looked like reality itself had been fractured, and what lay beyond was an endless black void that gave Mike an uncontrollable sense of vertigo and dread as he stared into it.
He instantly knew that this attack was more dangerous than the punch the chieftain had used to nearly blow his head off, and the moment he entered this rift, his entire body would be shredded into minced meat. Probably less.
The issue was that he couldn’t move away.
Whatever the panther had done, it had made it so that the surrounding space wouldn’t let Mike move anyway except in the direction of this rift, and Mike didn’t have time to properly enforce his will with his domain to undo the bindings.
He grew closer to the rift, and he felt the turbulent... whatever it was that lay beyond, start to shred his skin. His armor was useless here, and his durability was outpaced entirely.
And yet, faced with the threat of death, Mike didn’t panic. Instead, a sense of cold calm washed over him, and his thoughts suddenly became incredibly clear at that moment.
In an instant, his perception spread over everything, the fractured space, the void beyond, the force holding him down, and his own energy.
He sensed the difference between the stable space that propelled him forward and the fractured space he was heading towards. He sensed between those fractures and how the space worked, the way distance shrunk and expanded in fragments.
Keep in mind, none of this was happening with his conscious thought. As he was placed in a dire situation, his instincts had taken over, and in an instant, they had analyzed and cataloged everything to come up with a way to survive.
The time between him falling into the rift and all of this barely took half a second, and right as Mike was about to be completely consumed and annihilated, he moved.
His aura shifted in a way it never had before, and against all odds, Mike actually shot into the rift faster, and in an instant, he was consumed by the darkness beyond.
Seeing this, the panther panted heavily. In its current state, using such a move was extremely taxing on its body and energy reserves, but it was also an incredibly difficult skill to avoid, let alone resist directly.
And yet, despite seeing Mike get consumed, it had a bad feeling.
CRACK
Suddenly, space fractured again, and the panther’s eyes widened. That wasn’t it.
Suddenly, a blue light streaked down from the crack straight at the panther, and it hastily teleported away as the light smashed into the ground, causing it to shatter.
The panther kept itself low to the ground and watched the dust settle, and slowly, Mike’s figure was revealed.
He looked horrible.
He slowly straightened but wobbled slightly. His body was covered in horrific lacerations, the right side of his face was flayed to the point of bone being seen, and that eye had also been reduced to mush, and his left leg was just gone.
He was covered in his own blood and looked seconds away from death, and yet...
He seemed satisfied.
"I see..." He muttered, the action causing more blood to spill. But a moment later, steam exploded from his body as his body started to heal rapidly.
The removed skin and muscles regrew at a visible speed, and his leg also regenerated, starting from the bones, then nerves, then muscles, tendons, and finally skin.
In just a few seconds, he was healed to his peak state, which was a bit terrifying to imagine.
The panther stared at this scene with wide eyes, and, despite its hostility, a look of genuine respect couldn’t help but appear in its eyes.
While it couldn’t speak, it was still intelligent enough to know that Mike had pulled off something absurd, and even it had to concede that fact.
On the opposite side, Mike was feeling something similar.
That attack just now was simply absurd, and he couldn’t think of any of his classmates who could survive such a thing unless they had special abilities that could counter space in such a way. They sure as hell weren’t tanking it with their bare bodies.
Mike guessed... if not for the injury, this thing was probably stronger than the chieftain, and not by a little bit, either.
Both of them stared at each other for a few seconds, both sides acknowledging each other. Then, they stopped holding back completely.
Mike activated overclocking, and for the first time, he used it in conjunction with his Partial Transformation and his aura, which he also quickly increased to maximum output. Putting him in the absolute strongest state he’d been in thus far.
At the same time, the panther ther also changed slightly. Its already ink black fur turned even darker, and the shadows around it seemed to come alive as pitch black tentacles emerged from them. Moreover, space began to distort and tear in several places.
They stared at each other for a second more, then they moved.
Both of them zipped through the forest, and a moment later, the places they passed were utterly shredded by their attacks.
Mike let out Primal Rends, Haven Rings, and aura-infused punches while the panther unleashed shadow constructs while constantly ripping apart space, both sides aiming to damage their opponent in any way possible.
One thing was made clear quickly, though. The panther had far more attack methods. It could strike from way more angles, and it made a point not to get too close to Mike due to his domain.
However, the advantage wasn’t that massive, as Mike seemed to have entered a state of total concentration, almost similar to how he had been when he fought the six-armed creature. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺
Primal Awareness and Predator’s Foresight merged to turn Mike into an absolute nightmare to attack. It was like he was aware of everything going on around him regardless of the angle and whether or not his eyes could track it.
And that’s not all, either.
Mike’s survival of the panther’s devastating attack hadn’t been a mere fluke. No, he survived because using what he saw in that instant, he managed to achieve something he’d been working towards for a while now.
The panther raised its claws and sliced down. A claw-shaped rip in space appeared where Mike had been, but he had already evaded it. Not by simply dodging. No, it was because of his new movement skill.
[Aura Step (Level 1)]
By instinctively anchoring his aura to stable reality, the Host forcefully rejects positions of lethal damage and collapses the distance between two valid points. This movement ignores conventional momentum and occurs before physical motion can complete.
Effectiveness depends entirely on environmental stability. Attempting to use Aura Step near fractured space, spatial anomalies, or non-space results in severe bodily damage and extreme energy loss. Improper use may lead to partial erasure or failed displacement.
At a glance, the skill looks insane. One could summarize it as Mike automatically shifting to a point where lethal attacks aren’t approaching to avoid taking damage. That’s textbook broken right there. However, as the creator of the skill, Mike almost instantly knew that the skill wasn’t as foolproof as one might think, especially since he already suffered the consequences of the skill not working at 100%
Mike had figured it out in that split second of clarity when death seemed unavoidable.
He did not move through space.
He hadn’t bent it, folded it, stretched it or truly affected it in any long term capacity.
What he did was simpler, and magnitudes more dangerous.
In that instant, his instincts had rejected where he was.
The rift wasn’t simply an attack, it was a transition. Stable space was dragged into fractured space, and fractured space was pulled into something that wasn’t space at all. The instant he crossed that last boundary, he’d have been removed entirely.
So his instincts did what instincts do. They chose the best path to survival.
And that was but latching onto the last place considered ’real’ and forcing his existence there instead.
Not by traveling, but simply refusing to remain in a position that would have killed him.
That’s why it worked... and almost killed him.
There was no space in the void to anchor to. Nothing to push, nothing to shrink, stretch, or collapse. His instincts had forced the shift to happen before he crossed that boundary and got shredded entirely. Entirely because he still got shredded, as seen in the damage he sustained.
That alone made something very clear.
The skill wasn’t perfect, nor was it invincible.
It only worked as long as there was stable space to reject space toward. If the environment were too unstable, fractured, or simply devoid of space, the skill wouldn’t work. It’d either fail or get him killed faster.
In other words, that entire sequence from start to finish was a glorified gamble that his absurd instincts were right on.
Now, one might ask, if that’s the case, wouldn’t using the skill around the panther that’s quite good at destabilizing space be a horrible idea?
And the answer to that was absolutely...
If you weren’t Mike.
Because, most people didn’t possess a domain-type skill that allowed them to stabilize the space around them.
