After receiving the permission to begin the fight, Nilo and the female humanoid beast stood still, and observed one another.
"So, whose chosen one are you a follower of?" she asked with curiosity. Just like the students, Nilo's group, and the others, she had felt that her opponent was different by the common participants. He was being affected by a familiar, and yet different power than the one that was affecting her.
Nilo did not know much about Daniel's circumstances. What he knew, however, was that the increase in his powers came from him, so it did not take long for him to understand to whom this humanoid beast was referring to. "How about we get this over with? It won't be too late for me to answer that.. If you win." he said, choosing to ignore the question.
The God of Lion race was a matriarchal one, lead by the females of the species, whose sizes matched that of their male counterparts. In order to maintain their standing at the top of their specie's hierarchy, the females had to physically dominate the pretenders, who would otherwise kill her, and put another female in their stead as the head of their prides.
Due to this, the females of this particular kind of beasts were excessively competitive, so when Nilo challenged her, her face contorted into a snarl, revealing a set of four sharp fangs. Her pointy fingernails appeared to be growing as well, but for those who knew something about her kind, it was clear that they were originally retracted underneath her skin, and she was now exposing them on her own accord.
"If there is something left of you." She responded before bending her knees, and allowing for her muscles to bulge. The joints of her legs seemed to change as well, as her knees suddenly bent backwards.
As he went through this transformation, her power started to increase to an absurd level. In her humanoid state, she was already as powerful as a cultivator at the peak of the immortal stage, but the more she turned into a beast, the closer her power would get to that of the half-immortal puppet, which Nilo was sure she had defeated on her own during her tests.
This changes only took a few seconds, which Nilo did not waste, and spent by wrapping his knuckles into a thin white band in order to protect his bones. He then put on a set of gloves, on which he created steel reinforcements around his knuckles.
"Come on." He said before taking his leather armor, and shoulderguards off. He knew that either of these objects would not be able to stop any of the attacks of such a powerful individual, so he preferred to have mobility.
The lioness did not let him ask twice, and disappeared from where she was standing. When she reappeared, only a fraction of an instant later, she was swiping down with her massive hand at lightning speed.
The attack happened so quickly, that Nilo's afterimage was cut apart before it could even disappear.
The lioness was extremely surprised by the fact that Nilo could keep up with her speed, but her surprise did not last long, as she remembered who she was fighting against. If the Tamer's gift was able to give her a boost in battle prowess, nothing stopped that of the others to do the same.
As her massive hand swiped past the ground, the solid rock in front of her was disintegrated, not even leaving dust or pebbles behind.
Unaware of Nilo's position, the lioness allowed for her boosted instincts to chime in, and caused her to jerk her upper body and head backwards. As she did, two feet grazed past her chin.
Without even looking down, she decided to swipe blindly in front of her, where she was sure Nilo was standing on a headstand, but before she could, she felt a powerful tap strike her nose. This heel hit was not enough to do any damage, with exception made for a minor blood loss, but was enough to allow her to stumble backwards, and let her second swipe miss her opponent's body.
The lioness growled in anger, and while lowering her sight, she tried to grab Nilo's body, but once again, she missed. When her eyes finally landed on Nilo's body, she noticed that he was balancing on his right hand, as that his lower body parts were sweeping at the side of her legs.
Once again, the power of the impact was not damaging, but powerful enough to counteract the gravity that kept her large body steadily on the ground.
As she fell on her side, Nilo placed his right arm on the ground, and with the power of both arms, he lifted his lower body as high as it could go, and sent a powerful kick right where her head was.
The lioness was barely able to move her head away, before Nilo's foot crashed onto the ground, and instead of creating a massive spider web crack, pierced cleanly into the solid surface of the stage.
The observers were shocked. Just from looking at Nilo, the student, and the lioness, each of them were reminded that none of their students, disciples, or children, were at the same level of a children of Iewah, or their followers. Their belonging to these groups put them into a different category, in which each person possessed a quality that would put them above all of the others.
Throughout history, this advantage had been enough for the many factions to wage war at one member of Iewah's faction or another, but after a massive loss of people, these pointless wars had stopped. What stopped these "witch hunts", however, was not the number of casualties, but the fact that most of Iewah's children would not care particularly about their followers, which turned them into slightly stronger but disorganized warriors, with an unreliable leader.
Unfortunately, there were exceptions to this. Specifically, the Teacher, and from what transpired from the recent events, Daniel.
The one that was the most surprised about Nilo's ability, was the lioness, who immediately jumped back in order to avoid any possible follow-up attack.
She now knew that she had to take this fight seriously, or she would lose.
The power granted by the Tamer was, similarly to Daniel's group effect, a boost in battle prowess. However, instead of being effective whenever the leader was present, in the group base, or like it was now, permanently, it only worked when a beast would turn into their original beastly state. That was the reason why the four beasts summoned by the Tamer during her encounter with the Swordsman, were all in their most natural beast forms.
For the lioness, it was not different. So instead of keeping on pushing in in her half humanoid and half beastly form, she dropped on her four, and started to change once again.
Her body grew to three times the size, a tail as wide as an adult's male leg sprouted from her lower back, and her skin and fur became white gold, making her look just like the name implied, as a deity for all lions.
Once on her final form, she disappeared from the point where she was standing, and before Nilo could say, 'Damn it!' he felt a wall strike against his body, and send him crashing against the stage's barrier.
Nilo sputed a mouthful of blood before he could even fall on the ground. However, instead of taking a breath on the hard and cold surface of the stage, as soon as his feet touched it, he bent forward, barely avoiding the second powerful swipe of the lioness, which hit the barrier with enough power to make it tremble.
The only thing that worked to Nilo's advantage, was the fact that the massive body of the lioness was impractical in such a relatively small area, making it a slower process for her to turn towards the smaller Nilo to attack again.
For the next minute or two, Nilo healed at a visible rate while making rounds around his opponent's body, which was only able to attack him from the front. At the same time, he tried all he could to avoid any of her attack, which came at such speed, that required him the use of massive bursts of immortal essence to avoid.
Due to these dodging maneuvers, it was impossible for him to find his footing to create a chance for an attack powerful enough to injure the muscular body of this intelligent beast.
—–
After fifteen full minutes of this stalemate, the observers finally noticed a change. The beast was clearly stronger and quicker, but her production of beast essence did not appear to be as quick as that of her more agile opponent.
At the same time, the wounds had accumulated on Nilo's body, as he had been unable to successfully avoid each and every attack that was sent his way.
A white glow was present in his wounds, which showed to her opponent that he was slowly healing.
The lioness was perfectly aware that this fight could not go on any longer, otherwise, she would eventually find herself on the losing end. So she stopped moving, and backed away from Nilo. In a nature setting, the first thing she had ever learned, was how to hunt. Hunting required patience, and made use of the full extent of a lion's power for a short burst towards their prey, so she backed away to the other side of the fighting ground, and started to observe her opponent's movements.
Nilo, on the other hand, had never had anything to do with this type of beast. Each beast has its particular way of hunting, while all he had seen, were the occasional bandit attacks which he had had to deal with on his way between one city to another, when he was only the son of a rich family of martial artists.
What he could see, was that in front of the lioness, was a cone shaped range in which she could easily predict his movements and adjust her own accordingly, and he was right in the middle of it.
Unable to find a way to escape this position, Nilo noticed the lioness pounce at a hardly noticeable speed, so instead of trying to dodge, he dashed forward to meet her directly.
The lioness accepted this challenge, and sent an extremely powerful paw strike against him, which Nilo met with his knee. The impact was powerful enough to strip the space that surrounded them from any sort of essence.
Upon impact, the lioness's paw was sent back a few meters, while the downward motion of the paw strike forced Nilo's suspended body, to spin in place multiple times.
After only moments, however, from the spinning mass that was Nilo's body, a protuberance that was nothing but Nilo's leg extended outwards, and met with the top of the lioness's head, sending her crashing against the ground. Unfortunately, the power of the kick was not enough to make the lioness lose consciousness, sending her on a rampage instead.
As soon as Nilo's legs touched the ground, she pounced once again, and bit on his body, caging his entire left leg in between her sharp set of teeth. The power of her immensely strong jaw was her strongest asset, so it only took a portion of her power to crash the femur, tibia, and fibula of his leg.
Inside his booth, Daniel was now standing, and nervously playing with a small ball of collapsed space which, while much weaker than the constructed solid space of which his booth was made of, could have easily shattered it upon contact.
However, before he could act, he saw Nilo grab onto the mane of the lioness's head with his left hand, and send in only a few seconds, more than a hundred devastating punches against the softest part of her head, which was her eye.
The lioness instinctively closed her eyelids and tightened her hold of Nilo's body, now sinking her teeth into his flesh, but that did not work. From the fissure of her eyelid, blood started to come out, and her eye was pushed back into the socket enough for the impact to reverberate through her skull, and reach her brain.
Nilo kept punching, and punching, and punching, until finally, more than a minute, the lioness finally fell on the ground. Her form was slowly turning back into that of a humanoid beast, whose only movement was that of a feeble breath, which showed that she was not dead yet.
Nilo immediately dropped on her body, and while squeezing her throat with his left hand, sent a powerful slap across her face with his now mangled right hand. This slap was enough to shake the lioness awake, who unable to summon any strength, or even talk, did nothing but look up at Nilo's face with fear.
"Surrender, or I will kill you right now." He said in between deep breaths, and sharp waves of pain.
Luckily, his tone was serious enough for the lioness to not want to test it, so with the last bit of power she could muster, she slowly raised her right hand in surrender.
The old explorer quietly appeared on stage and noticed how, as the cloud of dust settled, the lower part of Nilo's body was uncovered, showing that his left leg had, at some point during his flurry of attacks, been ripped right off, and he was now standing over a pool of blood.
Seeing that both of them were unable to move, he lifted the two of them up with his control over the wind essence, and sent Nilo out of the stage, while the lioness was teleported back into one of the observing booths, where an oddly tall man with skin covered in scales, and long horns was watching with disappointment.
It did not take long for Daniel to recognize this man as a member of the draconic race, and a royal one at that.
Meanwhile, Nilo was sent directly towards Finn, who immediately began to heal him with his comprehension of healing essence and a few healing pills.
"Number one hundred and seven, and number two hundred and ninety-four. Come on stage." He then said while instantly repairing the devastated stage.
