He Roared and Pounced...

His Secret Art was completely different from before.

Gazing at the Nail Sword in Moke's hand, Lude felt he had learned another lesson.

Lude was a man who loved to learn; in the days since his transmigration, he had not even slept.

Asynchronous Hemispheric Modification allowed him to rest his left and right brains alternately, so in the days since his transmigration, he had always used every spare moment to understand this world through various literature, classics, and interactions.

And beyond literature and classics, Lude also loved to acquire knowledge from his enemies.

Aleppo had taught Lude how to formulate targeted plans against all manner of strange Secret Arts.

Bescher had made Lude realize that one must not relax for even a moment until the enemy's death is confirmed.

And Brandon and Polina had taught Lude how multiple casters could coordinate with one another.

Now, Moke had let Lude understand the essence of Secret Arts and the methods to twist them.

Sufficiently intense emotional fluctuations, sufficiently firm resolve, and a sufficiently strong desire for change could allow a Secret Art to achieve unprecedented growth or transformation.

It was just a pity that Lude's own Secret Art was still in gestation; he had no use for this knowledge just yet.

"So, why are you telling me all this?"

Moke's voice interrupted Lude's brief contemplation, his gaze never shifting from his opponent.

Moke was merely a bit slow-witted and timid, but he was no fool. Just now, as his Secret Art was undergoing metamorphosis, his control over his body had actually been quite sluggish; had Lude attacked at that moment, he likely would have been unable to defend himself.

Therefore, he had intentionally spoken to Lude, hoping to use the conversation to stall for time.

He had not expected, however, that Lude would not only refrain from attacking, but actually engage in conversation, even expressing a considerable degree of respect for his teacher, which left him momentarily bewildered.

"Because I respect your teacher very much."

Lude spoke calmly: "Can you accept this answer?"

This was a lie.

Although Lude did indeed respect Matos, the teacher who had paved the way for his student with his own life, he did not respect him enough to sit by and watch an enemy grow stronger for the sake of his dying wish; he was simply waiting for the power of the nail to dissipate.

But that did not stop him from spouting pleasantries; after all, saying nice things to people wouldn't cost him a piece of flesh.

"...Thank you very much."

Moke's voice sounded quite low, and he then raised the Nail Sword in his hand, pointing it at Lude.

"Very well." Lude performed a graceful flourish with his blade, aiming the silver-green edge at Moke: "Come, Mr. Moke, do your utmost to fulfill old Brandon's dying wish."

In the next instant, two single-handed swords, ill-suited for fencing, simultaneously traced an elegant arc and thrust straight toward each other's faces, colliding in mid-air and sending sparks flying instantly.

At the moment of impact, neither man paused in the slightest, flicking their wrists to deflect the other's weapon.

The tips of the two weapons, like two silver snakes, crossed between them at a speed invisible to the naked eye, clashing dozens of times in an instant; the crisp ringing of metal striking metal wove together into a symphony imbued with the aura of war.

As the one with more combat experience between the two, Moke's offensive was clearly more ferocious, forcing Lude to retreat step by step.

However, just as Moke was about to secure his first victory, Lude suddenly stomped his foot with great force, causing the wooden floor to shatter instantly under his immense strength.

Several wood splinters grazed Moke's face, causing him to slow down for a beat, and he was kicked squarely in the chest by Lude, stumbling back several steps.

In this head-on collision of strength and technique, Lude finally made a comprehensive assessment of Moke's capabilities.

Moke's strength was only half of Lude's, and his limb speed was about seventy percent of Lude's.

However, his method of exerting force was far superior to Lude's, effectively compensating for the gap in their physical bodies.

And what further leveled this gap was the role the weapons played in this battle.

In hand-to-hand combat, strength plays a far more decisive role than technique.

An adult can, at most, defeat an enemy twice their weight through technique.

When facing an enemy three times their weight, technique loses its effectiveness.

But if weapons are involved, it is an entirely different matter.

An ordinary adult holding a dagger can pose a serious threat to a professional boxer.

Not to mention a spear; that thing is basically the bane of all cold weapons.

Although Lude had a longer reach, his weapon was a full half-meter shorter than Moke's.

Coupled with the fact that he could not allow his arms to be pierced by Moke, his combat became all the more constrained.

Furthermore, the angles of Moke's strikes were quite devious, consistently catching the blind spots of Lude's leverage.

For a time, Lude found himself in a precarious situation, nearly being pierced in the arm or chest several times.

However, I can win! Lude thought to himself.

Lude was naturally adept at learning, and combined with the photographic memory brought by this body, he was able to rapidly learn Moke's combat techniques during their exchange.

After their blades clashed once more, barely ten rounds later, the two had returned to an even footing.

Although Lude had not yet fully digested Moke's techniques, he had already found a way to counter them.

He no longer sought to attack proactively, but began to advance steadily through defense.

Moke's offensive repertoire consisted essentially of only three moves: thrusting, flicking, and parrying. Because of the Nail Sword's rounded profile, the drag encountered when swinging in any direction was significantly increased, making his attack vectors even more limited than those of a rapier.

This also meant that his attack trajectory could be predicted almost the moment he made his move.

Therefore, Lude only needed to rely on his keen observation and lightning-fast reflexes to strike the midsection of Moke's Nail Sword with his Dragon Tooth Sword the instant Moke attacked, causing his strike to deviate wildly.

After several collisions, Lude noticed that Moke's wrist had begun to tremble.

Moke's wrist was indeed trembling.

While his steel-cable tendons and reinforced muscles could still hold up, his original biological components were starting to fall behind.

Every joint in his body was creaking, and his wrist, in particular, was sending out signals of intense pain due to the high-frequency impacts.

Yet, compared to this physical agony, the Lightning Falcon nerves he had grafted were far more lethal.

Unlike his synthetic parts, this component had been forcibly stripped, bit by bit, from an extraordinary creature known as a Lightning Falcon.

Alchemical prosthetics fell into two categories: those manufactured artificially, such as his reinforced muscles and steel-cable tendons, and those harvested from extraordinary creatures. The advantage of the latter was that they possessed supernatural abilities absent in standard alchemical limbs, but the drawback was that they often contained the lingering, resentful psionic energy of their original host.

This psionic energy could directly influence or even attack the transplant recipient's soul; without constant suppression, the recipient would eventually succumb to madness as their soul became corrupted.

It was for this very reason that Moke had been consistently injecting anti-rejection serum.

However, at this moment, those damned Lightning Falcon nerves seemed to have found an opportunity for revenge, thrashing and tearing away like mad, making Moke feel as though his brain and spine were being seared by fire!

This won't do, Moke thought to himself, I must decide the outcome quickly, or I won't be able to hold on!

With that thought, he let out a roar and lunged at Lude.