Ivor was flabbergasted at this bullcrap. It was ridiculous. That’s not being a Qi Gatherer, it’s just plain luck… god, why didn’t I realize that this guy cultivates the Dao of Luck? It was like… the most obvious thing ever. Am I just a moron? Yeah, it’s probably that.

Worst grabbed the knife and casually flung it at Ivor, confident he wouldn’t die. Ivor raised his arm and casually caught the knife in the palm of his hand. A trickle of blood dripped down his palm as he stared at the knife blade protruding through his palm. Any normal man, woman, or folk of unusual gender would have screamed, maybe letting loose a yelp even with the Hobo’s blessing. Ivor, though, handled negative emotions and pain differently from others. If it hasn’t been noticed yet, he swore. “FUCK THAT HURTS!”

Ivor pulled on the handle of the knife and the blade came out, and the life force flowing from his bladder ran up his spine and into his lungs, only losing a little efficacy from traveling outside of his meridians due to the short distance. It entered his lung meridian and went through that to his arm, flowing into his wounded right hand. The wound was sealed by suddenly appearing Ye before starting to heal as Ivor’s head swiveled, looking for Worst. He was rewarded with instant success, but Worst was quite far from Ivor, and even though he still looked like he was on a light jog, he was nearly as fast as Ivor’s enhanced sprint. His cultivation totally overpowered Ivor. Ivor had no way to chase Worst if he got serious… thankfully for Ivor, there was an option: mental warfare. “Yo mama is so fat she can’t cultivate - wouldn’t be able to expel all the impurities!”

A sigh loud enough to give Ivor a migraine burst from Elder Worst’s mouth. “My mother is dead. Yo mama jokes are a sore spot for me, and they were bad in the first place. Like… I guess that was kind of creative, but not really.”

That made Ivor feel like a piece of shit, but only a tad. He was resolved to continue his mental warfare… and he had an idea. “I enjoyed Sword Art On- WHAT THE FUCK DUDE?! You just cut off my fucking arm! This is EXTREMELY PAINFUL YOU TERRIBLE, EVIL… respected elder! Thank you for the pointers! Please don’t cut off my other arm.”

Elder Worst had twisted around and thrown out his flying sword, manipulating it to cut off Ivor’s arm. His eyes were filled with cold fury as he snorted. “Each time you mention that… thing. Each time you mention it, I will cut off one of your limbs. Getting limbs reattached can be expensive, you know. I wouldn’t do it again if I were you.”

Ivor stayed calm throughout all of this before bending down, picking his arm up off the ground and placing it to his stub, a layer of Ye forming in between and starting to connect them. Then Ivor sprinted. Elder Worst had stopped to attack, so Ivor managed to nearly catch up, but Worst just jumped away… but he wasn’t expecting Ivor’s concealed knife throw with a knife shrouded in perception diversion gas; he didn’t notice until the last second. Sadly for Ivor, even though the knife sliced a gash in Worst’s shirt, it bounced off of a metal plate residing under their garment. “Hey, I’m kind of wondering, this was the trial of combat, right? So how about we just fight with my goal being to touch you and your goal being not to get touched? I feel like this might get somewhat boring if I have to chase someone faster than me for hours, and I already got in close range.”

Elder Worst brought his hand to his chin pondering Ivor’s question, and soon came to his response. “Yes, that would be more interesting for me as well, I suppose. But I’m lowering the time if there’s no chase. You have… precisely 99,280,423,116,000 cesium cycles then, because that last number was a bit irregular. You start… now.”

Ivor began blasting out his green-tinged red poison gas right on the “now” and kicked off the ground toward Worst, but he was easily dodged. But Ivor wasn’t going for Worst. Ivor snatched his knife up before it hit the ground before slamming his right foot into the ground, twirling around to face Worst before coming to a halt. He realized that Worst was covered in a thin layer of qi that was blocking out the poison, casually tapping his foot on the floor while waiting for Ivor to attack. “Oh god… I shouldn’t have asked for a fight. I have no way of winning. Well, thanks for going easy on me. I’m fairly sure that you could kill me in less than a second with your flying sword, even without any techniques, and you’re definitely suppressing most of your physical strength. Otherwise there’s no chance I could have outsped you, even if you were only jogging and I barely managed to go faster.”

Elder Worst smirked wordlessly at this accusation and pulled his sword off of his belt before kicking off the ground at Ivor at three times the speed he had been jogging at before. His jump didn’t just leave furrows in the pale dirt road, it caused dust and grains of sand to fly off the ground in clouds bigger than him… and Ivor had no clue what to do about it.

Thoughts raced through Ivor’s head about how to escape, a sudden adrenaline rush originating from the revealing of the opponent’s strength accelerating his thoughts. He’s going too quickly for me to dodge, and I have my doubts about blocking him after what happened to my arm. I need to end this quick, or I’ll run out of my bladder qi, and then it’ll really be over. I only have one application of my focus diversion thingy - I’ll call it Focus Diversion until further notice - left. Demonic Legend Green Stone Doom Qi Toxin Breath won’t work; he’s covering all of his orifices with qi. I don’t have a way to penetrate his qi guard! Unless… yeah, Body Temperers might not have qi shrouds or qi manipulation outside of their bodies, but they can manipulate the qi in their bodies, just not on the skin level, so I can’t penetrate the guard like that, and I doubt my punch would have enough force. But what if I brought the inside of my body to the outside and shot it as a high speed projectile? Wait, that would be a terrible idea. No way I’m doing that. I need another way… I’d break my leg if I tried kicking, the energy coursing through my legs might heal me but I doubt it’ll mend bone, and I won’t make progress anyway. I can’t really spontaneously make a legendary technique on demand. No, there has to be an alternative to using my innards as a projectile. Wait… I have an idea that might work… and it wouldn’t be as disgusting as intestine ammunition. It’s even kind of funny! Although I still hate the idea. Dammit reality, why can’t I fight someone a full realm above me?

Ivor grabbed his right forearm while drawing qi out of his elbow region before dislocating his radius and ulna, the components of his forearm. He grabbed his right forearm and maneuvered it with his upper arm into the path of Worst’s diagonal sword swing. Worst would have retreated out of suspicion, but he had too much momentum to stop, so he carried on with his attack and sliced Ivor’s forearm right off. Ivor quickly adjusted his grip on his forearm before spinning his forearms so their palms were facing upward. He moved his left arm forward and pulled up, grabbing Worst’s wrist with his detached hand and, unable to stop the swing, pushed it to the right to allow Ivor to sidestep the attack. “You didn’t want to hurt me, right? But it looked like you weren’t going to be able to stop, so I gave you a hand. But to make up for it, my attack will definitely work. My idea was-”

Worst was confident that Ivor shouldn’t be able to break his barrier, but he was worried. Why had Ivor cut his hand off? How could Ivor attack him by doing that? In his mind, it was totally illogical. Then Ivor pointed the stump of his arm of Elder Worst. The elder could see qi building up in Ivor’s forearm, but didn’t have time to ponder what it was. He only found out when it was too late to avoid the attack. Ivor finished his sentence, sending surprise and a little joy at Ivor’s ingenuity through him, although it was overshadowed by his desire to cringe away from the attack. “-rather humerus.”

Elder Worst’s instinctive reaction to the pun wasn’t enough though, and Ivor’s utterly hilarious bone shot out of his upper arm, propelled to high speeds by a blast of qi while pumped full of Ivor’s qi in an attempt to get it to make a small shroud when the qi begins to diffuse a little after it leaves his body. (disclaimer: the funny bone is actually nerves near the elbow and not actually a bone. The absolutely wonderful amazingly hilarious bone that is being shot out is the humerus, which is what influenced the name of the so-called “funny bone.” Also, just in case it isn’t obvious, DO NOT try this at home, kids. We here at Oven Inc. are not responsible for any injuries incurred during an attempt to use your own bone as a projectile weapon.)

The bone slams into Elder Worst’s qi guard, which he condensed in front of his forehead to block, as he wouldn’t be able to block Ivor’s with his normal qi guard, not with the limits he was placing on himself. The bone slams into the barrier and sends ripples throughout it, causing it to rupture and disperse… but doing so ate up almost all the momentum and extra qi in it. It was still going, but Elder Worst tripped and fell backwards managing to keep in position while doing the limbo. Ivor’s last-ditch effort didn’t work - he had used up all the qi in his bladder meridian, but it wasn’t good for attacking. He was all out of gas, except for his lungs, but those weren’t usable at the moment. But even though Elder Worst evaded his bone, Ivor still had one last trick up his sleeve. Ivor dropped his severed forearm onto Elder Worst’s face palm-first. Ivor uttered a few words. “I win. God, that was risky. Can I get some… medical attention? I know the sect has healers that can mend bone. Oh, and I won within less than a third of the time. I want my stuff. Also, that’s a mean offer. There was barely a chance for me to beat… you…”

Ivor’s jubilance was overcome by the darkness encroaching on the edge of his vision. He dropped unconscious, his body falling flat to the floor, joining his right forearm and humerus. Elder Worst picked him up along with his severed parts and began carrying him to the infirmary.