"So, are you ready to pay with your life for the shenanigans your sect attempted to implement?"

As the two of us awaited the signal from the ancestor that would officially open the duel, I couldn't help but look at my new opponent. Just a quick scan with energy vision revealed that although his jump was impressive, that was basically all there was to him.

The level of strength coursing through his body barely amounted to a half of what I could produce with my limits on and just a small fraction of the power that was currently reinforcing every last bit of my being.

Yet that didn't mean I was free to simply smack him away like the last guy!

History proved again and again, that just like I had my own techniques and ways to use my energy to reach for things far greater than would otherwise be possible, I could only expect someone who managed to enter the highest level of a disciple in the entire sect to be more than just knowledgable and experienced at using his techniques!

"Fight!"

With the command of the ancestor, the two of us jumped forward at the same time, proving that at least my opponent's reaction time was up to the standard I set for myself for the early fights of the challenge.

But rather than exchanging energy-infused hits that either of us could produce thanks to our techniques, we simply engaged in the simplest of the brawls, with our fists speaking for themselves!

Yet as manly as it sounded, I had to severely limit the output of my strength in an attempt to gauge what was the level of the light blue robes without killing my enemy on the spot!

With the first bout of our simple hits now over, we both jumped to the back, gaining the distance between each other. As we continued to gaze into the eyes of the other in hopes of gaining some intel about coming attack, I realised that for a pale blue robe, or even for the amount of energy I found in him when he first entered the stage, this exchange was simply too weak!

SWOOSH!

Bending my body to the side in the last second, I barely avoided a hit that would otherwise land squarely in my back, right at the height of my heart. But before I could even regain my stability, another attack came my way, this time properly executed by my opponent's right arm!

Catching the glint of steel around his fist, I realised that he was carrying some kind of weapon, showing how little did he care about honour or respect of going armed against the unarmed enemy when it came to saving the face of the entire sect and taking revenge for his fallen juniors!

But just when his strange, circular weapon was about to hit me in my exposed side, I decided that I had enough.

Rather than scrambling to both dodge the attack and put myself in the position of recovering from my unstable position, I simply pushed my feet forward, depriving my body of the last bit of support that it had.

Instantly falling to the ground, I unlocked all my potential to its current limit, banking on the notion that I realised back when I first upgraded my strength.

Crack.

CRASH!

Just like expected, the improvements to my statistics lead to the great increase of my body weight, allowing me to simply crack the barrier of the stones open and let myself fall down through the hole that appeared.

With my opponent's movement too fast and advanced to be stopped midway, I caught his extended arm in between my legs, ignoring the fact that he was still holding his weapon in his arm, and using the simple force of gravity that was pulling me down to the ground, I forced him to follow in my steps!

But as soon as all the potential support was gone from the two of us, I forcefully turned my body around, making my enemy appear below me.

As the barrier started to get dangerously close, I spread my legs wide enough for this poor disciple to lose all connection with me, before using my shockwaves both to propel myself back into the area, while pushing this daring enemy even faster towards the barrier.

"Intruder have won!"

While the light-blue robbed disciple of the gorilla sect was capable of launching himself into the air from the ground, maybe even climbing the non-existent rope back to the area, he was either unable to do so while falling at a huge speed downwards to the ground, or he simply realised that after this show of my strength and with my height advantage on the stable ground, all his chances at winning the duel were now gone!

This time, the fight was long enough for the spectators to grow some expectations out of it, even to the point where we entered our clutch that some of them started cheering for either side, yet the sudden conclusion had to surprise most of them, not to speak about the elders of the gorilla sect!

For them, this entire day had to be the nightmare coming into reality. After all the efforts they wasted to get me out of the picture, and possibly many more to clean the way for challenging the Pengu sect out of all their possible allies, rather than receiving the earned reward for all their hard work, their sect was about to crumble under the foot of someone called an intruder by the ancestor himself!

Yet rather than putting off their greatest powerhouse right away, I could see that there was some commotion going on as soon as the last opponent of mine returned, albeit wobbly, to the ranks of his friends.

Even though I wanted to deal with this entire matter as quickly as possible, seeing that what started as a small discussion between the elders was slowly turning into a proper conflict, I couldn't help but get interested curious about what the fuck was going on down there!