Chapter 501: Figuring Things Out

Bang! Bang!

Two sounds of collision rang out as Gustav managed to land a hit on the strange force a moment after he got hit. 

Fwwihhh!

He slid back by a few feet and stabilized himself with a look of surprise on his face.

Asides from the stabbing earlier, all hits barely had an effect on his body. Now that he managed to hit the force responsible for these sneak attacks, Gustav sensed something.

'It feels... Like a person,' Gustav said internally as he once again prepared himself for the next hit.

Gustav had been studying the pattern of this strange invisible force, so he stood in place while waiting.

[Combination Has Been Activated]

[Sprint + Dash]

He suddenly activated this and combined dash and sprint, increasing his speed level multiple times.

The strange force was felt again at this moment, headed for his spine area.

In that split moment, Gustav turned around with immense speed and reached out.

Bam!

He grabbed hold of what felt like a fist and held it in place.

'Got you,' Gustav said internally as he reached out with his left palm.

[Palm Strike Has Been Activated]

His palm travelled forward with speed causing ripples of breeze to scatter across the place as it slammed heavily into what seemed like a chest to Gustav, tearing through it.

Gustav still kept God Eyes activated. For a few moments, he noticed a bleeping body outline twitching in and out of existence.

Within its chest was Gustav's left arm.

Fwwweee~

In the next second, it disappeared along with all the small blue dots in the vicinity.

Gustav had deactivated Combination at this point. He didn't combine Sprint and Dash initially because of the high amount of energy it consumes.s This was why he needed to use it at the precise moment when he was sure the attack of the unknown force was going to appear.

'So, it was like an invisible clone? How is the kid able to do that?' Gustav was so surprised as this didn't make sense to him.

However, there was no time to think about this at the moment because Gustav suddenly felt an immense amount of heatwave from above.

He turned around and looked up, only to see the massive bowl of liquid flames hovering above the platform.

The time he had spent dealing with the invisible clone allowed Endric the chance to pull this stunt.

Endric smiled from his current position thousands of feet away as if he was saying, I win.

Pah! 

Snapping his finger, the massive bowl of liquid flames began to fall towards the platform once again.

Fwwhiiii!

It carried so many heatwaves more intense than before and cast a blazing red light upon Gustav and the platform amidst its descent.

Gustav once again had to turn around with speed, charging in the other direction to leave its range.

Even though he currently had Heat Resistance Activated, which currently consumed a lot of energy, he could still feel the searing hotness of the descending mountain-sized liquid flames.

Burn marks had already appeared on his skin as the hot liquid flames got closer.

Boom! 

Gustav felt the blast of heat behind him as parts of the liquid slammed into the platform behind him, and some were close to dropping on him.

Swwoooooosshh~

Luckily Gustav managed to dash past the range of collision just in time. However, the shockwaves mixed with immense heat still slammed into him from behind, catapulting him forward.

Gustav somersaulted across the air repeatedly as his uniform caught fire from behind.

Krrryyhhh! Krrryhhh! Krrryyhhh!

More cracks appeared all over the floating platform at this point in time.

The spectators all had widened eyes as they stared at the splits on the platform increase more and more.

All of a sudden...

Grrrhhyyyhhh~ Bam!

A loud crumbling sound was heard as the platform split into three parts from the middle.

Gasp~

More rocks from the battle platform continue to crumble into the river of fiery hot liquid.

Krrryyhhh!

It didn't look like it was over yet, as the parts that got split broke into several smaller parts as well, and some even sunk into the river of flames.

The crowd was stunned as they noticed that Gustav happened to be standing on the side of the platform that only covered around a radius of two hundred feet.

Some of them tensed up after noticing the large cracks on the platform that seemed to be increasing even more.

Gustav, at this point, already tore the upper part of his uniform once again. His entire upper body was in full display, and everyone could see the scorch marks on his back and shoulder, which indicated just how hot the liquid flames were.

Gustav's back that was stabbed initially had stopped bleeding, and everyone could hardly see any signs of injury.

-"Did he already take a healing pill?" 

This was everyone's thoughts because they had expected this injury to incapacitate Gustav a lot, especially since it was a sneak attack. Still, here he was standing like he had received no damage whatsoever.

During the battle, it was nearly impossible to take a healing pill because your opponent wouldn't even give you the chance to heal yourself. The spectators also didn't see Gustav bringing out a healing pill, so they were confused.

Gustav, on the other hand, stood on his broken part of the platform with a look of intrigue.

The part of the battle platform he was currently standing on was drifting further away while the other parts in the vicinity kept crumbling into the river.

Endric was up to six thousand feet away from Gustav's current position, still standing on his telekinetic board while staring at his small outline with a gloating look.

Krryyhh! Bam! Krrryyhhh! Bam!

The space on the platform Gustav found himself broke apart even more, and there were only about fifty feet more room left on it.

From the looks of things, it was only a matter of time before this one sunk into the river.