Vibranium

"You know where your biggest weakness lies now, right?"

James spoke to his adopted son, who was grimacing in pain beside him, without much seriousness.

Azazel's ability was strange and unusual, but his raw physical strength and destructive power only barely surpassed the limits of a human. Against certain tough opponents, it was of limited use.

Azazel looked rather unhappy. It was the first time he had ever been bested by someone other than his old man.

There was no point in fighting James. It was as if he could predict every place Azazel would teleport to in advance. His old man was like a dark, unfathomable ocean, leaving Azazel with no desire to compare himself to him. But he didn't want to let this Black Panther off so easily.

"Enough. You can't handle his strength or that armor yet. Don't take any risks." James shook his head and stopped Azazel, who was still itching to try again.

He took off his jungle jacket and tossed it to the indignant Azazel, as if he didn't want to ruin his clothes. Then he stepped forward, bare-chested, to face Azzuri.

Watching the white man with his deep, unusual presence approach, Black Panther couldn't help feeling puzzled. Since the devil couldn't do anything to him and had even been injured in the process, was he planning to call a truce?

Just then, he watched with a dry mouth as the skin on the man's casually lowered arms began to ripple.

His bones were extremely thick, and his wrists and hands were especially large. Three bone claws, gleaming with the lustrous sheen of jade, slowly emerged from the backs of his hands, but not a drop of blood appeared. The flesh on either side of his forearms also split open, revealing broad plates of bone with the same texture as the claws. They formed arm shields, each adorned with three clusters of short, hooked blades.

James didn't extend the bone spikes at his elbows. This was enough for now. He glanced at both hands. After entering a new level of cultivation and stimulating his body to replace its bones through Bao Dan, he no longer had to suppress his physique. His tall, well-proportioned form was now completely stable.

His newly formed exoskeletal weapons had also become exceptionally "refined," as if they had been cast and polished using modern technology.

The bone claws were over half a meter long, with three-sided, conical tips and thick, razor-sharp edges. Each one was like a dagger. The bone shields were smooth and polished, about two fingers thick, narrow at the front and broad at the back like diamonds. They covered just the right area, from his knuckles to his elbows, and looked both fearsome and elegant.

Clang! Clang!

James crossed his hands and clashed the bone claws together, producing a piercing sound like metal striking metal. He looked at Black Panther and smiled.

Boom!

Azzuri's vision blurred in an instant. The white man surged forward with a burst of thunderous noise. Before Azzuri's eyes could even register what was happening, the blade-like bone claws struck upward and sent him flying. The tremendous impact slammed him into a massive boulder more than ten meters behind him. His Vibranium armor sank deep into it like tempered steel driven into brick, and the boulder trembled on the verge of collapse.

Black Panther vigorously shook his dazed head, then shuddered and shattered the boulder behind him.

"Long live Wakanda!"

He crossed his clenched fists in front of his chest and roared, charging forward.

The Dora Milaje nearby and the tribal warriors watching from afar in formation saw their king driven back with a single blow. They, too, shouted angry cries in Wakandan and charged at James.

Seeing the women of the Dora Milaje, who were difficult to deal with, abandon their defensive formation, Azazel teleported into their midst. His tail coiled around one woman's neck as he grabbed another with both hands, then teleported hundreds of meters into the air before disappearing again.

Piercing screams rang out through the sky as Wakandan soldiers plunged to their deaths, one after another. It was like a living hell, and Azazel was the devil toying with their lives.

The battle between Black Panther Azzuri and James was one no one else could join. They moved at incredible speed, colliding across the open ground with tremendous force. Azzuri had become a target that simply couldn't be broken, getting sent flying by James's claws again and again like a marble, leaving destruction everywhere he crashed.

The more James fought, the more interested he became in Vibranium. His bone blades struck it with the force of dozens of tons of kinetic energy, yet they didn't damage it at all. And the armor made from this metal had an ability to disperse force that defied reason.

It was not only incredibly tough, protecting its wearer from cuts and stabs; it could also spread out and absorb the impact of tremendous kinetic energy to an extraordinary degree.

He had more or less finished testing the strength of the Vibranium armor, so he slowed the pace and rhythm of his attacks, allowing Black Panther to keep up and giving him a chance to counterattack.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Azzuri finally seemed to see a glimmer of hope. He must have been giving it everything for a long time without making any headway. His stamina must be failing; his speed and rate of attack have both dropped noticeably.

With the miraculous power of the sacred armor, I can't lose!

Black Panther Azzuri counterattacked even more fiercely. His attacks had a unique style and rhythm, brimming with the primal aura of a wild beast. James couldn't help thinking of a few things from his past.

James only defended, letting Black Panther's Vibranium claws rake viciously across the bone shields on his arms again and again. He began carefully studying the strength of his bone shields.

After three rounds of bone replacement, his exoskeletal claws and arm shields had, as James's tests confirmed, surpassed the strongest alloys humans of this era could smelt and synthesize. His bones had tremendous resilience, ensuring they wouldn't break even if he used more force to strike Vibranium. But their sharpness was far inferior to Vibranium.

Black Panther's claws, meanwhile, could easily carve deep gashes into the bone shields. Before long, bone fragments were flying from James's arms.

He fended off Azzuri's attacks casually, lost in thought.

Shhk!

Black Panther's claws raked deep across James's chest, leaving a wound two or three centimeters deep.

James was taken aback as well. This leopard really was strong—and seemed to be getting faster as the fight went on.

Based on what he'd observed during this stage of the fight, Black Panther's overall combat power was comparable to his own when he had first entered Huajin, except he lacked James's unique vital energy.

He lowered his head and looked at the wound on his chest, which hadn't bled, and at the scarred exoskeleton where the leopard's claws had raked him. Neither had healed.

Black Panther and Azazel also stopped. The entire battlefield fell into an eerie silence.

Azzuri stared at the wound, which was torn open but not bleeding, and wondered to himself. The feeling of that claw tearing through him had been like pulling apart rubber with incredible elasticity. Without the Vibranium claws and his own extraordinary strength and speed, ordinary attacks might not even have broken the man's skin.

Azazel, however, was startled. Could this strange metal suppress Dad's terrifying healing ability?

James smiled. In an instant, the four wounds on his chest healed, and his battle-damaged bone shields and claws were restored as good as new.

He now had enough control over his body to regulate the healing of his injuries and how quickly they healed. If he wanted, he could even pretend he had no healing ability and leave his wounds as they were—or make them bleed.

Red Devil relaxed. He couldn't help laughing at himself. His old man was an immortal monster; there was no need to worry about him.

"Your Majesty, King of Wakanda, do you have any other tricks?" James suddenly retracted his exposed bone weapons and continued, perfectly straight-faced, "No? Hmm. Super technology?"

He asked another question, puzzled. Black Panther's reaction confirmed the information Daniel had brought back all those years ago, as well as James's earlier suspicions.

King Azzuri didn't know what the man meant by that last phrase, but his heart sank. An unbelievable thought surfaced in his mind: Could it be that Bast, the Panther Goddess, no longer watched over Wakanda?