While lying on the ground, Jason couldn't help but smile lightly.

He realized that he had lost miserably.

In fact, the Spiral path puppet hadn't even moved to defeat him!

This caused Jason to feel embarrassed because he had been confident in defeating the puppet, but instead had to taste failure.

Sighing deeply, he lifted his upper body, while remaining seated on the ground.

Staring at the Spiral path puppet that walked away from him effortlessly, he scratched the back of his head. Jason was unsure of what he should do right now.

Petri's fusion was already terminated, and he began to estimate how much of his combat prowess he had been able to display.

In order to achieve the best results, he had to show how strong he was in his best condition.

As such, the last fight was not exactly something he was supposed to choose in order to demonstrate how strong he was.

With that in mind, he sighed deeply before trying to think of a solution on how he could show his combat prowess.

Defeating a total of 12 duplicates was not feasible while simultaneously paying constant attention to the main body.

Thus, Jason began to think that it may be better to change his target.

'Even if I were to be defeated, showing my combat prowess will be enough to allow me to get the highest possible ranking.

Because this was more important than before owing to the fifth trial's remark, Jason had to be careful. Otherwise, his efforts of the last three years would be quickly destroyed.

With that in mind, he thought of something before choosing his next opponent to fight.

By deciding to fight the puppet that had defeated him with the use of the true dragon roar, Jason was confident that he had found a way to counter this attack.

Afterward, he should be able to at least reach the puppet. Trying to defeat the puppet might be unreasonable, but that didn't mean he shouldn't attempt to reach and clash with it!

Taking this into consideration, Jason was confident of fighting.

Thus, once his short break was over, and his mana core refilled, he challenged the mysterious puppet to a spar.

Standing opposite each other at a distance of more than one hundred meters, both parties were ready to fight. Hence, the moment the artificial intelligence counted down from three, initiating the start of the battle, they began to move.

While Jason grew a little nervous, the mysterious puppet moved slowly and appeared to be unbothered at the prospect of facing Jason.

It circulated the mysterious energy through its body, while Jason's entire appearance changed once again, as soon as he fused with Petri.

By activating the stigmas, the wild and ferocious aura was fully unleashed, as Jason circulated the moonlight transmuted mana through his body.

It took only a moment for Byakur to manifest in his hand, and at the same time, Petri's scale grew out of Jason's body, while his pupils were turned into reptilian slits.

Without wasting a fraction of a second to hesitate, Jason immediately initiated the race specific weakening curse.

It was followed by the petrification curse that were both strengthened by the fusion, the ferocious aura, and the stigmas.

This forced the mysterious puppet to slow down its circulation tremendously.

On the other hand, Jason used his Emperor Eyes' abyssal effect in order to further decrease his opponent's speed.

He left no stone unturned to prevent the mysterious puppet from summoning the soul of the true dragon, but Jason realized only a second later that this was simply not possible.

Even without the use of the mysterious puppet's energy, the soul of the true dragon was able to emerge from its body.

A mighty roar escaped its mouth that shook the entire arena once again, almost throwing Jason off his balance.

Yet, just at this moment, Jason couldn't help but smile because he realized two things that were closely tied to each other.

First- without the unique energy the true dragon's roar was much weaker than before, and it wouldn't have affected him as much as it had in their first battle.

Nevertheless, using the ferocious aura to tightly envelop his body followed by a thick layer of Solaris' flames was enough to block the attack initiated by the dragon roar.

Jason hoped to burn the mysterious energy using Solaris' flames.

It was still strong enough to blast Jason a meter away owing to the shockwave the roar created, but that didn't deter Jason.

He used his entire strength to appear right in front of the mysterious puppet. Byakur had already appeared in his hand and Jason looked at his opponent with a bright smile on his face.

He felt exhilarated that everything had worked according to his plan.

Now wasn't the time to back off, and Jason knew that he just had this last chance to make his efforts count. His entire body was already screaming, begging him to leave his current position as quickly as possible.

This was caused by the fact that the true dragon had simply dispersed, returning to the mysterious puppet in a completely different way than it had done in the fights before.

Following that the puppet had already gathered some of its mysterious energy within its body, and was ready to release it.

Noticing this, Jason sensed that something was off.

This caused his mana veins to make faint cracking sounds as they were being strained.

Unbearable pain coursed through every single cell of his body that rnd under the pressure it felt as the pure divine energy circulated through them.

In the end, the divine energy in its purest form was not something Jason could simply circulate through his body.

He had ordinary mana veins, and even if the Celestia race should be able to use divine energy, he was severely restricted in this aspect.

As such, while enduring the pain caused by the purest divine energy that was not even intertwined with mana to make circulating it easier, Jason's entire being seemed to enlarge.

His aura became several times denser all of a sudden, followed by his glowing stigmas.

A golden light surrounded his entire head like a halo making him look like an otherworldly being.

Following that, his strength and speed increased too. Yet, instead of allowing the mysterious puppet to retaliate, Jason used the seven-meter-long tail that had grown out of his coccyx in order to pull the puppet's leg away.

Through this sudden attack, the puppet was pulled to the ground, and Jason was just about to cut it in half, by swinging Byakur as something unimaginable happened.

"Fuck!" Jason suddenly cursed out, dragging himself backward.

He was forced to change his direction midway which caused the bones in his ankles to crack faintly.

This caused Jason to frown, but he couldn't pay any attention to this.

His eyes were trained on the mysterious puppet that was lying on the ground.

With wide eyes he saw its appearance drastically change.

Yet, instead of moving, it simply remained on the ground, brly lifting its hand in the air where a small dot manifested.

Increasing in size, the black dot turned into a ginormous black mass.

It resembled a black hole but had a completely different task at hand.

Instead of pulling everything into it, an enormous black tortoise manifested from within, that had a lengthy tail with a snakehead at its tip.

Roaring out, both the tortoise head and that of the snake manifested pitch-black balls of energy which they threw towards Jason showing no signs of hesitation.

While he was distracted in evading the attacks, the mysterious puppet that had been lying on the ground just a moment ago, appeared right next to him, as if it had materialized out of thin air.

This caused Jason's eyes to widen, only for a high-velocity punch to hit him at the exact same spot as it was the case two months ago.

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