Martial Arts Worlds-Chapter 853: Begging For Mercy

"YOU!!"

Mercedes screamed with her beautiful face ruined.

She became aggressive. Lunged forward like a mad witch. And she only touched Kiernan's shoulder.

Pop!

With a loud pop, his shoulder dislocated, and pain shot throughout his body like a spreading fire.

'What an insane strength for her to be able to do something like that so effortlessly!'

Kiernan thought with a surprised look.

But in that moment.

He swung his right arm, and he reset his dislocated shoulder using centrifugal force—an impossible technique, which he did with ease.

"Argh!"

Mercedes punched forward.

With his elbow, Kiernan parried her fist, but he greatly underestimated her strength, and his elbow cracked like glass.

"?!?!"

Kiernan's eyes shook and cold sweat ran down his face.

"Haaaaaah!"

Mercedes screamed and kept punching, and Kiernan kept slapping her punches away, but his hands were starting to go numb from the impact.

They became red and swollen.

In that moment, Kiernan lagged slightly behind because of the pain, and Mercedes used that as her advantage.

She punched under his guard, and sank her fist deep into his gut—the organs squelching under the force of her blow.

"Argh!"

Kiernan's eyes shook, and he was sent flying through the air—he coughed blood—it felt like his insides were being shredded.

This was easily the hardest punch that he had ever come across.

With this punch, if she wanted to, she could destroy the moon in the sky in just a couple of punches.

Thus.

Kiernan felt like he was being punched by 30 trillion megatons of TNT!

"Whoo…"

Kiernan landed back on the ground, and touched his stomach with his fingers—he stabbed his skin—a small opened up.

"Darkness…"

With a whisper, he made a little bit of his dark smoke enter the wound, and it headed straight for his organs.

He wrapped his organs with the black smoke, keeping them in place, and slowly fixed them so they could return to their normal function.

The punch caused his organs to almost shut down completely, so this was a quick fix to make sure that wouldn't happen.

'You alright?'

Bael asked.

"Just fine… She is trying to counter my martial arts with her strength, which is vastly superior than mine, and I can't defend her attacks at all.

"I'd need to switch to hit-and-run tactics, which I don't really excel at, but it doesn't seem like I have another option here."

Kiernan said.

Swoosh~

In that moment, Mercedes vanished from the stadium.

She appeared elsewhere—hovering in the sky—looking down at the running civilians with her disfigured face.

"She is…"

Kiernan's expression turned ugly.

'She is going to use those civilians as bait. You will not beat her if you try to save them. You need to ignore them and focus just on her.'

Bael said.

"I will not save them—they will."

Kiernan said, and with a smile on his face, he started cloning himself—clones resembling him appeared all around him.

"Army of Hunters…"

They launched forward, headed straight for the civilians, and then Kiernan went straight for Mercedes.

Meanwhile.

Mercedes turned into a massive rain cloud and started dropping rain upon the city below—it was the most dangerous kind of rain in all of existence.

"Ahhhh!"

"That rain is coming again!"

"Run inside!"

The people of the Irio tried rushing inside, but they didn't know that it would be futile, as that rain was as sharp as a bullet.

It would just shred through the buildings as if they were cheese.

At that moment.

"Iron Smash!"

The clones suddenly appeared, and punched, and kicked the raindrops till they dissipated into nothingness.

However.

There were close to a million raindrops—and more coming from the cloud—raining down furiously without any signs of stopping.

"Crash Impact!"

In that moment.

Kiernan reached the rain cloud, and with his fist, he punched through the cloud to try and stop the endless onslaught of rain.

The cloud exploded in a burst of water droplets and lightning.

Swoosh~

"Argh…"

Bleeding from mouth, Mercedes returned back to her human self, and looked with hate towards Kiernan.

The rest of the falling rain was swiftly stopped by the clones.

Below in the ground.

"Ah…"

A beautiful woman peeked out from inside a store—looking out of the window—and saw one of Kiernan's clones standing guard on top of a rooftop.

"Kiernan…?"

Julia whispered.

"Julia, go away from the windows. There is a basement down here, so let's go there to hide!"

Azer pulled her daughter away from the window and led her towards the basement.

She kept looking out of the window while being dragged away.

'It feels like only yesterday when we were studying in same class… Training in the same gym… Sleeping in the same dormitory…'

Julia trailed off, her voice inside her mind full of nostalgia and longing.

'Now he has become god… I am just a Martial Master… It feels like we are in entirely different realms of existence now… I wonder if he even remembers me anymore…'

…

'You need to hurt her more… I can't take control of her like this… Go on the offensive; stop defending. Defending doesn't work against her!'

Bael shouted.

"Fine!"

Kiernan rushed forward, and his power flowed into his fist like a raging tide—his next punch was going to be mighty.

"Abandoned Arts, Magnetar Smash!"

The punch shattered the speed barrier, but Mercedes just vanished into mist, and his punch went straight through.

The mist enveloped Kiernan. It then turned back to Mercedes. And she had her hand wrapped around his throat.

"To kill Primordial… you need to be fast."

Mercedes whispered.

In that moment, her face started smoking, and the wounds that she had suffered during the fight started to heal themselves.

Primordial's healing factor started to kick in!

Her disfigured face—with the five finger wounds—was gone, and she was back to being her beautiful self.

She was at the exact same state as during the start of the fight—as if they hadn't fought at all—this was the danger of Primordials.

If the fights lasted too long, Primordial's healing factor would just heal them back full, and Mercedes was already hard to kill.

She will never die.

'You need to be faster to injure her. We're back at square one. Gather your breath, and start going on full offensive!'

Bael shouted.

'This is bad… Since I have to go full-on offensive, I need to abandon my defense in favor of offense. It is risky. I can't afford to let Mercedes get a single hit on me.

'But I have no other choice.

'I won't have a way to regain my energy and heal my wounds with just a snap of my fingers like she can.'

Kiernan thought with a serious expression.

There was no other choice.

In that moment, he spread his arms wide, and he started transforming—smoke started billowing out of his body.

He turned tall and skinny with the neck of a giraffe, and his fingers turned extremely long as if they were being stretched.

"High Speedster!"

A quarter of a second passed.

In that short time span, Kiernan attacked Mercedes ten thousand times before the citizens down in the ground had time to even conjure a thought.

Mercedes—while not being as fast as him—was still able to react to all of his moves, and kept up with his relentless attacks.

None of Kiernan's attacks got through her defense, and Mercedes was even smiling and laughing as if she were having fun.

'She is just playing around… The weakness that she showed during the early fight… It was just a joke on her part… She wanted to make us think that we have a chance at victory.

'Then she will just pull the rug beneath our feet…'

Kiernan gritted his teeth.

He realized that just using overwhelming speed wouldn't work either, and he had to go straight to the basics.

Which might not even work.

'I am not really using martial arts right now… I am just trying to overwhelm her with speed… That'll never work.'

Kiernan stopped attacking, returned back to his former self, and landed down at the ground—it happened to be at familiar place as well.

He turned around and saw Karuza High's school building right here—it had changed slightly, but it was definitely the same building—where he spent most of his high school years.

"When I was young, just a foolish Martial Grandmaster, I fought a martial artist who was far more skilled and experienced than me.

"It was a deathmatch. He was really trying to kill me. In the end, I prevailed, but how did I do that? I mean, he was stronger… faster… more durable… and easily more skilled."

Mercedes talked while slowly coming down from the sky.

"With tricks."

Kiernan guessed.

"Correct~ I started begging for my life… Crying… Screaming for mercy… I made myself look as pathetic as possible.

"It worked as the martial artist started to take pity on me… I was a cute girl begging for mercy… and it made him hesitate for a moment.

"I took that one moment of weakness, and stabbed my hidden dagger into his side… and I killed him.

"I think about that day every now and then… What if I had actually died… It made me very urgent to get stronger quickly, so I'll never experience that again."

Mercedes said coldly.