Not all the cries were happy. For the most part, the audience sounded excited at the spectacle they had witnessed, but the battle cages had more than fights to them. Actually, the latter were its lowest business.

Complaints about losing bets reached Liam’s ears. Others instead cursed the intricate patterns Grace had painted on his body, believing they were some sort of unfair art at the foundation of his physical superiority.

As for Liam, he barely paid attention to the audience. It wasn’t even that he didn’t care for them. The fight simply wasn’t over.

There was another opponent left. The young man curled on the floor was still there but had stopped crying. The audience might have forgotten about him, but Liam hadn’t. He couldn’t.

Conflicting sensations rang in Liam’s brain as he walked toward the curled expert. Part of him inevitably disregarded that opponent. He was already on the floor, too, and his instincts didn’t really react, either.

However, Liam’s instincts also gave opposite evaluations. He felt the danger, but not always. It spiked every few seconds, as if unsure whether to exist or not.

Still, there was one thing Liam could be certain of. When the debris had hit that curled man, they had bounced off his skin, leaving no mark at all, achieving more than Liam’s own body could.

Whatever the deal with that rooting expert was, it wasn’t simple.

In a real life and death situation, Liam would have gone for the kill without much of a thought, even keeping his distance in the meantime. Unclarity was incredibly dangerous, especially with magic involved. Rather than facing a strange phenomenon, Liam could eradicate it before it came to be.

But that was training, and Liam had basically spent his entire life getting the jump on prey. It literally was his default strategy, the closest to his being, and he was there to learn something new.

Instead of accelerating, Liam found himself slowing down his steps. The audience seemed to remember about that remaining opponent at that point, but he only had eyes for him, growing warier by the second.

Liam didn’t know why, but the intervals between the spikes in the dangerous sensations shortened the closer he got to the curled expert, as if reacting to his arrival. He didn’t stop, but he took his time to absorb the event, especially once physical repercussions unfolded.

The curled expert was wearing a simple robe and shoes that left only hands and head exposed. Even with that little, the quivering of his skin was impossible to miss, triggering painful cries.

The rooting expert stiffened and stretched, lying on his back, opening his robe to reveal the dark spots expanding on his chest. His pale skin turned black, with some patches rotting and falling off, the process continuing even after the entirety of his torso fell prey to it.

Once the darkness covered the cultivator’s neck, his painful cries grew hoarse, guttural, becoming inhuman growls. His mouth was wide open, drops of saliva spitting out, mixed with blood once his canines stretched to become fangs.

The cultivator had messy brown hair, but it fell as the dark patch took over his head. Even his eyebrows joined the trend while his nails seemed to fuse with his fingers to transform into pointy claws.

There was also Qi blowing all over. That now-black rooting expert released his energy nonstop, wildly and chaotically, similarly to what happened to Liam during the Primal Urge.

It didn’t take a genius to understand that the transformation was unnatural, and the same went for the following conclusions. The audience had probably already seen similar scenes, and the two swordsmen had warned Liam about that possibility.

The battle cages featured far more than gambling and prostitution. If it were just about that, their criminal activities would be tame, unworthy of any warning.

However, there were even unsanctioned cultivation methods involved, like human experiments with a whole battle performance on top of them. Whatever had been done to that growling rooting expert, the culprits also wanted to see how it did in a fight.

The answer to that arrived in no time, Liam able to witness it first-hand. The black expert stopped growling before Liam heard every warning bell ring in his brain.

For all of Liam’s newfound basic speed, he could only react instinctively, his senses prompting the action his thoughts were too slow to process.

Liam stepped back, and trails of blood filled his view. Four long cuts had opened on his chest, almost going from his left shoulder to his right side. They were deep, his tissues having failed to pose any opposition, and the assault wasn’t over.

The black cultivator was right in front of Liam, bald, his eyes wide and bloodshot. Liam saw the clawed hand below him, having just finished its slash, only for both those dark limbs to grow blurry.

There was no time to think. Liam barely had enough time to react. He ducked, his hair fluttering, the air above him whistling. His opponent had swung his claws again, and he had dodged them at the last moment.

Liam wanted to deliver a counterattack but couldn’t. The demon was already swinging his claws down, moving so quickly it defied the laws of momentum. Liam was in no position to dodge again, so he snapped his arms up.

The impact almost sent Liam to the floor, but he tensed up his core, remaining on his feet. His whole body trembled in struggle, but those deadly claws were in his grasp, held above his head, his fingers squeezing black wrists.

Liam wasn’t trying to use the Metal Hand, but his senses provided answers nonetheless. That black skin was unbelievably tough, similar to the Jade Skin or other defensive techniques.

At the same time, patches of rotten skin were still falling from the demon. Now that Liam had stopped him, he could even see the foam drooling from his fanged mouth.

That was exactly what the Primal Urge caused. Whatever the rooting expert had done or ingested, it was killing him, sacrificing his body and cultivation to achieve explosive power.

But empowerments still relied on a foundation. They multiplied basic features. Liam with the Primal Urge was straight-up monstrous, while his opponent only touched on that realm.

Liam couldn’t win in speed in his normal state, but strength was a different matter. As heavy as the pressure was, his arms held, gaining enough room to try another attack he had seen Robert perform.

There was no way back against a faster opponent, so Liam stepped forward, performing a sharp half-turn, letting go of the black limbs to press his hand on his fist, thrusting his elbow at the demon’s chest.

The shoulder bash had already proven itself powerful, and elbows didn’t disappoint, either. Liam hit the rotting and tough skin, feeling the demon’s sternum crack under his blow.