Chapter 46: The Incredible Bulk

Rhos took a good look at the figure that almost crushed his skull.

Standing before him was a giant of a man concealed beneath a brown cloak, but it couldn’t properly hide the sheer size of his frame, especially his thick shoulders and arms. A mask covered his face completely.

He stood motionless after his missed attack, then lowered his massive fist from the damaged wall before turning his gaze onto the red haired young man.

Rhos stared at him and the stranger stared back. For a good minute, they sized each other up in silence.

Looking at the man, the sheer amount of spiritual energy radiating out of his body was enough to make his instincts scream that this was not an opponent he wanted to fight.

He had been deliberately avoiding fighting anyone unless it was absolutely necessary or when he had confirmed the location of the little girl. But it seems like circumstances had decided otherwise.

Now that he had already been discovered and there was nowhere in the narrow corridor for Rhos to simply disappear, there was no choice but to fight.

Rhos sighed and lowered himself into a fighting stance. The giant responded the same as he stepped forward, cracking the stone beneath his foot.

In the blink of an eye, he was already upon the young man with his enormous fist crashing toward him.

The giant was fast, far faster than someone of his size was supposed to be. He must have been using spiritual energy to reinforce his physical abilities, most likely pouring it into his legs and muscles to compensate for his size.

It would have been troublesome if it wasn’t so predictable. Rhos avoided the punch by tilting his head to the side, feeling the displaced air against his cheek. Before he could recover, another punch came from the opposite direction, followed by another and another, each strike becoming progressively faster as the giant attempted to overwhelm him through sheer volume.

For a time, this did work in pushing him further back down the corridor, but it was ultimately useless as none of his attacks landed on him. Rhos stepped around the attacks and occasionally ducked beneath as his eyes carefully studied every movement.

The man’s hips turned before his strongest strikes. His feet always planted in the same manner whenever he committed his weight forward, and despite the increasing speed, he never changed the fundamentals of his attacks. The giant’s movements were surprisingly easy to read. It made his fast speed less impressive.

The real problem was the power behind them.

Whenever one of those massive fists completed its arc, the resulting pressure blasted against the walls with enough strength to chip stone.

Those fists were not quite on the level of Keeper Taru’s, but that did not make them harmless. There was still enough spiritual energy behind them to make fighting him recklessly a very stupid decision.

Eventually, an opening had presented itself in this flurry of punches and Rhos made full use of it. He planted one foot against the stone floor and leg swept the other upward in a powerful roundhouse kick.

The man’s height made the angle awkward which forced Rhos to jump slightly to bring his heel high enough to reach the giant’s jaw.

The kick connected and the giant’s head snapped sideways as his enormous body was sent flying backward. His cloak dragged behind him before his body finally came to a stop several meters away.

Rhos landed lightly and stared in confusion.

"Huh?"

That was not what he expected.

He definitely improved during the months he spent training his body, but that kick didn’t pack enough strength to send someone of his size back so easily. He wondered if he somehow overestimated him, but that didn’t make sense.

The spiritual energy leaking from him was unmistakable. There was enough of it that Rhos would have placed him somewhere around Alpha Class without thinking too much on it. So a weak kick like that shouldn’t have sent him flying.

When the giant pushed himself back onto his feet was when it began to make sense.

"Such a waste"

Rhos’s expression changed as the realization settled in. The man possessed an enormous reservoir of spiritual energy, enough to make his physical abilities frightening, but he had no idea how to properly use it.

He was untrained. His movements were crude, his attacks were predictable and his entire fighting style consisted of throwing his overwhelming physical strength at whatever stood in front of him and hoped for the best.

Rhos almost felt insulted.

It was the kind of fighting style that worked when nobody possessed the strength to punish its weakness.

Against an experienced Ranger who knew a thing or two beyond throwing punches and kicks, it was almost like fighting a child who happened to possess the strength of a monster.

Raw power could only carry someone so far.

Rhos understood that better than the giant here.

He had spent years being weaker than everyone around him, surviving through instinct, observations and his own skill. During his time in the Academy, he had learned very quickly that having more spiritual energy didn’t automatically make someone a better fighter.

Knowing how to control it, how to reinforce the correct parts of the body and how to combine it with actual technique was what separated a warrior from a walking powerhouse.

Unfortunately, this man had not been taught the basics of spiritual energy manipulation.

Well, it didn’t matter. An attempt was made on his life, which meant Rhos couldn’t afford to hold back. He needed to find the girl, and he couldn’t allow some enormous idiot to follow him around while he searched the facility.

In other words, he needed to kill him.

Still, Rhos wasn’t completely unreasonable. He decided to give him one chance to redeem himself.

He straightened his posture and raised his voice so the giant could hear him clearly.

"Listen, I’m going to give you an opportunity here, so don’t waste it. Pretend you never saw me. You’ll get to walk away with your life, and I’ll continue looking for what I came here to find"