At Shalnark's urging, Uvogin finally agreed to fight Su Wu.
"Fight in the open space. Don't damage the church in District 12 or the nearby houses," Sid called to them, arms folded.
The two of them made their way to an open space.
Sid and Shalnark stood nearby, watching.
"Don't worry, Uvogin knows his limits," Shalnark said with a smile, waving a hand reassuringly.
As soon as he finished speaking, Uvogin raised his hand and punched at the white-haired boy. Red light appeared around his fist.
The man stood two and a half meters tall, with a huge, beastlike body. His bulging muscles were as hard and solid as a wall, and his fist was like a small missile.
Just as the punch was about to hit the boy, the other's figure vanished. The heavy punch slammed into the ground with a boom, sending countless fragments of stone flying.
Sid glanced at Shalnark.
That was it? This was what you called knowing his limits? You told me Enhancement-types knew their limits?
Enhancement-types were single-minded idiots. When they fought, all they cared about was winning or losing!
"Ahahaha, Uvogin takes fighting pretty seriously. Relax, he won't actually kill him. After all, you're here," Shalnark explained with an easygoing smile.
Beneath that smile, however, he was perfectly rational. He kept his eyes fixed on the two fighters, trying to work out Hill's ability type.
And yet... he couldn't see anything.
The aura around this kid was perfectly ordinary—so ordinary that he seemed like an average person who couldn't use Nen.
His attacking stance, his posture... everything was riddled with openings.
He didn't look like someone who knew how to fight at all. Even some random kid from Meteor City wouldn't leave himself open like that.
So far, it seemed he could only use some kind of flash step to dodge Uvogin's attacks.
Every so often, he would pop up and punch Uvogin, but he did no damage. Instead, he only made Uvogin more and more irritated.
And the longer the fight went on, the more injuries the white-haired boy accumulated.
Uvogin hadn't even hit him, had he?
Then why was that kid bleeding more and more, looking worse by the minute?
"Hey, you're not telling me the Church plans to make him fake an injury and extort us, are you?" Shalnark's smile had stiffened. It almost seemed as if silent beads of sweat were sliding down his forehead.
Did they think the Phantom Troupe's annual donations weren't generous enough, so they planned to extort them this way?
Sid flushed, apparently with anger. "The Church would never do something like that!" he retorted irritably.
The two fighters paid no attention to Shalnark and Sid's reactions. Uvogin was fed up with this guy he couldn't get a grip on, who kept popping up to punch him.
With each punch, he hit harder than before, kicking up heaps of rubble and dust and making the ground tremble like a small earthquake.
When Su Wu used Cang to flash around, fragments of stone sometimes struck him. Nearly all his injuries came from the flying rocks. After all, when he used Cang, he couldn't dodge them within such a limited area; instead, he would slam right into them.
Dodging meant giving up on attacking. But his reason for fighting Uvogin was to practice his close-combat reflexes and fine control of Cursed Energy, as well as... the legendary Black Flash.
The principle behind Black Flash could roughly be described as a spatial distortion caused when a physical attack and a burst of Cursed Energy struck within 0.00001 seconds of each other, resulting in a critical hit.
A critical hit, huh? Usually, one happened once in hundreds or even thousands of basic attacks.
But by controlling Cursed Energy to reduce the delay, one could increase the chances of triggering Black Flash.
For Gojo Satoru, with his Six Eyes, it was probably easy. But supposedly, no Curse User or Cursed Spirit had ever taken one of his Black Flashes head-on without being completely overwhelmed.
At the moment, Su Wu was still nowhere near Gojo Satoru's level in any area. Even with the Six Eyes to help, his fine control of Cursed Energy was still rather clumsy.
So he gave up on his other attacks and used only Cang to dodge Uvogin's blows. He kept trying again and again, clenching his fist each time, gambling on whether Black Flash would appear.
If he managed to trigger it even once, he would be able to grasp the feeling.
Eventually, even Uvogin gave up attacking and focused entirely on using his footwork to catch Su Wu.
Seeing that the fight was about to turn into a game of Ghost Catching Game, Shalnark clapped his hands and called a halt to the impending farce.
"All right, all right. We only asked you to play with Hill for a while, and you've gone on long enough. We should head back," said the blond, blue-eyed young man with a sunny smile.
Uvogin stopped fighting. With the scars on his face, his expression looked downright menacing.
"Kid, that's not how you fight," he said, then walked over to Shalnark.
The white-haired boy stopped using Cang, too. He stood amid a pile of rubble, head lowered as he looked at his fist.
Blood seeped from the wounds on his forehead, cheeks, and limbs. His nose was bleeding constantly, too. He looked utterly miserable, but all he did was clench his fist and say regretfully, "I failed. I can't believe I didn't manage to trigger it..."
Black Flash really wasn't easy to pull off.
Even professional Curse Users had to rely on luck to trigger it. How could someone like him, who had only had Cursed Energy for two days, manage to use it so quickly?
Using the Six Eyes to fine-tune his Cursed Energy during the fight had given him good results.
Before, using a few skills would drain his Mana Bar completely. After trying to finely control his Cursed Energy, he could use his skills with relatively little Cursed Energy, which conserved quite a bit of mana and let him use his skills more often in one go.
Overall, he had gained something from fighting Uvogin. It had been a free fight, so he hadn't lost anything—in fact, he'd come out ahead.
After all, it wasn't easy to find a sparring partner as powerful as a Phantom Troupe member.
Besides, now Uvogin and Shalnark would both think he was weak and that his ability wasn't anything special. He wouldn't have to worry about the Phantom Troupe targeting him.
He'd gotten several benefits at once.
Thinking this, Su Wu looked up and called to the figures who had already walked nearly a hundred meters away, "Come back and play next time, Uvogin!"
The two figures didn't even pause. They kept walking without a hint of hesitation, as if they hadn't heard him. If anything, they seemed to speed up.
Sid, however, stood where he was with his arms folded and an expressionless face. He looked at the bloodied kid, who seemed not to feel a thing, then finally said, "Come with me," before turning to leave.
"Hm?" Su Wu was a little confused, but followed him into the church anyway.
Then he was made to sit down while Sid treated his injuries.
"You..." Sid tied a bandage around the boy's head, looking at him as if he had something to say but didn't know how.
"What?" Su Wu had two wads of paper stuffed up his nose and a bandage wrapped around his head, but he was already munching on an apple.
"How did you even get into the Church with skills like that?" Sid asked, sounding as if he couldn't make sense of it no matter how hard he tried.
There was no shortage of things to criticize about the way he'd just fought Uvogin.
Especially since Uvogin hadn't even touched him, and yet the rocks sent flying by Uvogin's punches had left him in such a sorry state.
Sure, he'd landed a punch on Uvogin every time he attacked, but... he hadn't done the man any damage at all.
With skills like that, he shouldn't have been in the Church, should he? And supposedly, Pampas himself had invited him...
"Is Pampas your dad or something? If he had a kid, you'd be about the right age... Though you've got white hair and Pampas is blond. Maybe you take after your mom?" Sid started imagining all kinds of scandalous stories about his superior, Pampas.
It was mainly because of how the boy had performed just now. If someone said Pampas hadn't pulled strings to get him in, Sid wouldn't believe it.
"So you really are an Enhancement-type," Su Wu concluded.
Everyone knew Enhancement-types weren't much good at thinking.
In other words, he was finding a roundabout way to call Sid stupid.
"You're the Enhancement-type!" Sid shouted back.
Oh, so he wasn't an Enhancement-type. He didn't look like a Manipulation-type or a Transmutation-type, either. Was he a Specialization-type, a Release-type, or a Conjuration-type?
He seemed more like a Release-type, since Release-types and Enhancement-types were practically best buddies.
Su Wu kept munching on his apple, thinking it over without letting anything show.
Shalnark/Uvogin: He's so weak.
Su Wu: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. (Nods wildly with his eyes closed.jpg)
If I were writing an invincible-from-the-start power fantasy, the story would go: Shalnark and Uvogin are utterly shocked—this kid is terrifyingly powerful (?)
But I like a gradual-growth story, hahaha.
Before you continue