Ultimate Dragon System: Grinding my way to the Top-Chapter 197: Dragon claw

The arena had gone completely silent.

Jello and Ken stood facing each other, a few meters apart—both still, both focused. No wasted movement. No words.

Just intent.

The crowd had quieted without anyone asking them to. It wasn’t the kind of silence that follows a call to attention. It was the kind that falls naturally, instinctively, when something in the air tells every watching eye that whatever is about to happen deserves to be witnessed without noise. Even the ambient hum of the arena’s overhead lights seemed to dim, as though the space itself was holding its breath.

Jello kept his eyes fixed forward.

Ken hadn’t moved yet—but everything about him suggested he was already in motion. The way his weight had shifted almost imperceptibly onto his back foot. The way his fingers had uncurled, then slowly reclosed. Small things. The kind of things you only noticed if you’d been watching him long enough, and Jello had been watching since the moment they stepped into the ring.

He catalogued what he knew. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Ken’s ability worked through shadow. Not illusion—not trick of light. The shadow obeyed him the way fire obeyed Jello: as an extension of the body, responsive to will, capable of form and force. It could harden. It could move. It had speed that didn’t require Ken’s legs to carry it. And it was reactive—almost preternaturally so—which meant attacking in a straight line against it was the worst possible strategy.

Jello had already decided he wouldn’t do that.

Then—

Ken moved first.

His shadow stretched unnaturally across the ground, spreading like liquid. It didn’t creep—it surged, bleeding outward from his feet in a dark, rippling wave that swallowed the light touching the arena floor beneath him. In an instant, it rose up his body, wrapping around him like armor—dark, shifting, alive.

The transformation was quick, but not seamless. There was a half-second where the shadow wavered at his midsection before locking into place—a seam, almost. Jello filed that away without expression.

Jello didn’t wait.

He stepped forward—

—and vanished.

Wing Burst.

The technique wasn’t flight. It wasn’t teleportation. It was displacement—a concentrated release of compressed energy through the soles of his feet that launched him across short distances faster than the eye could cleanly track. The tradeoff was the sound it made on arrival: a sharp crack of displaced air that announced exactly where he’d reappeared.

He materialized at Ken’s flank, hand already swinging, the motion fluid and committed.

"Dragon Claw."

A glowing, claw-shaped projection tore through the air, slicing toward Ken’s side—the energy shaped by the angle of his fingers and the focused intent behind it, leaving a faint trailing afterimage that cut through the dim arena light like something alive.

But Ken reacted instantly.

His shadow surged outward—

Clang!

The claw struck a hardened wall of darkness, sending sparks of energy scattering across the arena floor in brief, dying flickers. The sound was wrong for what it looked like—too metallic, too solid for something made of shadow. Whatever Ken was doing with it, it wasn’t just darkness. There was structural density to it, a resistance that Jello felt travel back up his arm from the point of contact.

The impact pushed Ken back slightly—but it didn’t break through.

Jello’s eyes narrowed.

So it can block that too...

He landed a step back, resetting his footing. A full-strength Dragon Claw deflected like that meant either Ken’s defense was extraordinarily robust, or he’d had a split second to reinforce it at exactly the right angle. Jello suspected the latter. Which meant there was a ceiling—exceed the speed of Ken’s anticipation, and the defense would be imperfect.

He needed to find that ceiling.

Ken didn’t give him time to think.

The shadow around him split into tendrils, lashing out like whips from multiple directions—three of them, then four, erupting from the darkness pooled at Ken’s feet and cutting through the air with a sharp, hissing velocity. They didn’t all come from the same angle. They fanned out, deliberately staggered, designed to cover overlapping zones.

Jello twisted—

dodged the first—a clean sidestep, the tendril grazing the air an inch from his ribs—

ducked the second—it passed over his head close enough that he felt the displacement—

—but the third wrapped around his leg.

It was faster than the others. Not a mistake—a deliberate sequence. The first two were meant to position him, not hit him. Ken had been watching where his evasions went.

Ken clenched his fist.

The shadow tightened—

There was no gradual warning. The pressure went from restraint to crushing in less than a second, the tendril compressing around his ankle and lower calf with a force that ground against bone.

—and slammed Jello into the ground.

BOOM.

The impact sent a shockwave through the arena floor. Dust erupted in a wide circle, billowing upward in a pale cloud that briefly obscured the ring’s center.

In the stands, Atlas leaned forward sharply, hands braced on the railing. "That got him—"

"No," Tongen muttered. He hadn’t moved. His arms were still crossed, his expression unreadable—but his eyes hadn’t left the dust cloud.

From within it—

Jello’s arm shot out.

His skin had darkened slightly, hardened—a visible shift in texture, the surface taking on a density that wasn’t there before. Not stone. Not metal. Something between—like the body deciding, at a cellular level, that it refused to yield.

Skilled Guard.

It wasn’t perfect. It had limits, and maintaining it while being physically thrown cost something. But it had bought him the fraction of a second he needed to absorb the worst of the slam rather than be broken by it.

The shadow constricting him cracked under the pressure as he forced himself free—not by pulling against it, but by expanding, by pressing outward with the Guard active along his leg until the tendril fractured at its weakest point—then sliding back along the ground and immediately launching forward again.

This time, faster.

More aggressive.

The shift was noticeable to anyone paying close attention. The first exchange had been probing. This was different—there was less caution in the angle of his approach, less hesitation in the way his weight committed forward. He’d seen enough. Now he was testing the ceiling.

He thrust his hand forward—

"Dragon Claw!"