Chapter 5496 An Unfair Comparison The fight between Ves and the Azure Tornado Dragon turned a lot more physical! After the beast failed to bite Ves with its jaws, the larger creature continually utilized its enormous body to wear down his defenses! Though Ves' Kelsis organ had to work overtime to prevent the dragon from sinking its teeth into his flesh, he did not just float in the water and allow himself to get hit for free. The disruptive body slams and frightening bite attacks prevented him from playing his flute. His song ended and his control over the surrounding water element had been taken away by the furious beast. The Azure Tornado Dragon might not understand the concept of music, but it clearly associated Ves' flute playing with his strong water manipulation abilities. This was why the creature aggressively attacked Ves up close! Ves personally discovered the weakness of relying on music to channel his powers. There was no way he could leverage the power of the Oceancaller when he was being attacked like this! Perhaps a more competent music cultivator could continue to play a song under these difficult circumstances, but Ves did not excel in this aspect! "FINE THEN! I WILL GET PHYSICAL AS WELL IF THAT IS WHAT YOU WANT!" Ves changed the grip of his flute and held it like a baton. He had already tested the durability of the Oceancaller many times and learned that it would take far more power to ever threaten its integrity. When the Azure Tornado Dragon made another pass at Ves, he swung back his arm and slammed his flute against the Azure Tornado Dragon's snout! The surrounding water shook from the painful roar released by the beast! Ves got slammed back from the collision as his ability to move in the water was not good enough to evade the collision in time. His spatial barrier flickered in a worrisome manner, but he knew he had to go on the offensive if he wanted to postpone its collapse. Man and beast began to wrestle and circle around each other underwater! Initially, the beast held the advantage. Its body was larger and its control over water was stronger. As a true darling of water, the Azure Tornado Dragon's abilities did not weaken even when it was fully engaged in launching physical attacks. The powerful beast did not believe that this strange organic humanoid possessed the ability to overpower his body! However, Ves had his own strong points. He was admittedly unskilled in combat and completely made a fool of himself in his attempts to defend against the Azure Tornado Dragon. His true body was smaller. His ability to maneuver underwater was awful. He was not a real qi cultivator, so his ability to control the surrounding water was too poor. Swinging around his flute like a club only bruised the massive beast at most. All of these disadvantages and more caused Ves to lose the initiative. He could only react and launch the occasional counterattack when the dragon swam close enough! Though he occasionally managed to break or dislodge a few scales with the swing of his flute, the Azure Tornado Dragon did not lose any of its powerful momentum. The creature firmly gained the upper hand! This became evident when the Azure Tornado Dragon slammed against Ves like a crashing starship! The collision was so powerful that Ves' Kelsis organ couldn't take it any more. The spatial barrier shattered apart, exposing his suited body to the elements! The Azure Tornado Dragon clearly understood the significance of this change. Its beastly eyes conveyed an intense eagerness to pounce on Ves and tear his limbs to shreds! "YOU THINK YOU CAN TAKE ME?! THEN COME GET IT! I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU, LIZARD!" Though Ves believed he had solved the problem of developing an overinflated sense of confidence, he couldn't help but express his contempt at the powerful beast. He still believed he could defeat the Azure Tornado Dragon! As if the monster understood the message, the dragon furiously charged straight at Ves! It even sped up its approach by forming a water turbine that propelled it even faster! Ves narrowed his eyes through the murky water. When the Azure Tornado Dragon was just about to pounce, Ves commanded his flute to grow in size, making it as long and thick as a spear! He quickly adjusted his grip until he directly pointed the Oceancaller's tip at the rapidly approaching the Azure Tornado Dragon! The Azure Tornado Dragon's momentum was too great. It was impossible for the creature to halt or redirect his body in so little time. The water above the surface splashed as a powerful collision took place underneath! Two different kinds of blood mixed into the river water as both Ves and his beast opponent had managed to strike serious blows against each other! Ves shook his head as he noticed the closing holes of his nanosuit. The beast had not only bit through his suit, but also managed to break his skin! Fortunately, the monster's teeth had been unable to penetrate too deeply, which was exactly what he expected. Ves' body was akin to a hardy biomech. His flesh was not as easy to damage as it looked. The phasewater in his body had already reinforced his physique to a point where even mechs would find it challenging to wear down his defenses. Still, repeated attacks of this nature could most certainly put his life under threat! His ability to regenerate his body was not as good. An important factor that hindered his recovery was that he had lost a bit of blood, which happened to contain a bit of the phasewater that made him strong! Ves focused on his adversary. He had managed to deal a serious blow against the dragon. The mutated beast's maw leaked a copious amount of alien blood as the flute had managed to pierce a hole. Though the wounds were far from fatal, the Azure Tornado Dragon became maddened by pain! The creature quickly directed its growing aggression towards Ves yet again. The beast only needed to move a short distance before it was able to launch another attack! The beast did not make any big moves this time. It simply utilized its long and heavy body to slam and bite against its enemy. Ves struggled to fend off the attacks. Turning his artifact flute into a makeshift spear did not help enough. It did not possess a sharp edge, so he wasn't able to cut or stab into the creature as effectively as he wished. He could only utilize it as a staff and inflict repeated blunt impacts against the Azure Tornado Dragon. These staff swings only hurt the creature, but did not even make it bleed any further. It did not help that Ves not only fought in an unfavorable environment, but also had no systematic combat training in fighting with melee weapons! 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶 Let alone a sword, Ves did not know how to effectively utilize a staff as a weapon! What he was doing was completely ineffective against this kind of beast. Though he attempted to augmented his attacks by leveraging water energy, the Azure Tornado Dragon's control over it was so much better that Ves was like a child trying to show off in front of an adult. "SO THIS IS IT, HUH?" Playtime was over. Ves had tested his ability to utilize his flute in battle. He had also learned several new insights into whirlpools and other aspects of water by observing the Azure Tornado Dragon in action. While he became disappointed that he was no longer able to prolong his studies into leveraging the water element, he needed to beat this overgrown lizard! "COME!" For whatever reason, the Azure Tornado Dragon sensed a much greater threat from its current adversary than before! Even though Ves looked no different, the beast listened to its instincts and began to form a water corkscrew around itself that threatened to tear apart anything nearby! The infusion of air energy caused the whirlpool to become more violent and disorienting, but this did not seem to hinder Ves that much. Just as the furious beast attempted to bite the vulnerable body of its prey, Ves turned around and struck a powerful blow! Surprisingly enough, Ves did not swing around his flute anymore, but simply lashed out with his fist! Though the Azure Tornado Dragon initially thought little of this move, the creature reared back in pain as the large humanoid fist not only managed to penetrate its scales and flesh, but also unleashed a forceful explosion that exacerbated this wound! The large beast had suffered its most serious injury yet as the strange fist had truly damaged a considerable chunk of its flesh! Ves' eyes sharpened as he took advantage of this drastic turn. Instead of clumsily swimming forward, he activated the phasewater in his body yet again, causing his body to disappear from sight only to instantly appear above the creature's body! Ves tried a variation of his earlier attack and reached down with his hands in the form of a claw. The creature thrashed yet again as Ves' fingers tore through its body like it was being raked! Ves continued to pummel and ravage the beast with much greater effectiveness than before. Each time he struck the Azure Tornado Dragon, the powerful Worclaw energy cycle inside his body depleted a little further. Even though Ves felt a bit pained for expending this relatively scarce resource, he felt it was important to actively start making use of it. He had ignored its existence and potential for too long, and while he had good reason to do so in the past, the same circumstances no longer applied anymore! While the Azure Tornado Dragon managed to hit Ves back a few times, he simply took the hits and continued to punch or kick the powerful beast even more! There was a limit to how much the mutated beast could tolerate these blows. The dragon's fury had not abated, but the fear of getting hurt even more caused it to regain enough clarity to utilize its brain. The Azure Tornado Dragon abruptly backed off from the abnormal humanoid and swam straight towards the surface! The mutated beast did not stop its ascend at all. Once its long and scaled body leapt into the air, it continued to rise until it flew well above the river! The wings that previously stuck close to its body had unfolded and began to flap in order to turn it into a master of the skies. Ves dove up to the surface as well, but he did not possess the ability to fly like his opponent. The Azure Tornado Dragon was already beginning to shape its power over the elements to form his characteristic tornado. The blend of so much wind and air energy caused this powerful weather manifestation to gain the power to shred mechs and exobeasts alike! Ves did not know how long he could last against its powerful forces, but he had no intention of subjecting himself to this tornado for long! "IT'S TIME TO FINISH THIS." He declared. Ves began to accumulate several energies at once. A combination of Worclaw energy, E energy and spatial energy swirled around his body before he disappeared once more! Though the dragon had been on guard against Ves' teleportation trick, that did not prevent him from appearing right above its body! An empowered tornado quickly moved towards his location and threatened to toss him into the air, but it strangely weakened as soon as it got close to Ves! "Mrow!" Blinky made an appearance and devoured as many wind and air energies as possible! All of those energies that previously fell under control of the Azure Tornado Dragon fell straight into the companion spirit's imaginary universe! Even though Blinky's devouring rate had its limit, what he had done was already remarkable enough to cripple the Azure Tornado Dragon's signature ability! Taken by surprise, the stupid monster was unable to do more than undulate its body in the air. This was far from enough to prevent Ves from striking its body. Though Ves did not possess any flight abilities, he was still able to maneuver in the air in a limited fashion by bending the fabric of space around his body with the help of his Maracos organ! By forming an invisible slide, Ves managed to control his falling trajectory just enough for him to unleash a powerful punch straight onto the creature's back! BOOM! Ves had pumped more Worclaw energy into this attack than before, causing his fist to explode a significant chunk of the Azure Tornado Dragon's body! The damage was a lot more serious this time as Ves had managed to break some of the creature's bones as its organs! A painful roar spread escaped the injured creature's throat as it started to lose altitude! Though Ves had exerted himself quite a bit, he did not intend to give the dragon a chance to recover and teleported yet again to give the dragon another Worclaw energy-empowered punch! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Though Ves' Worclaw energy reserves dropped at an alarming rate, each attack blew another chunk of flesh and bone from the creature's body! With Blinky continually breaking and absorbing any nearby energies harnessed by the Azure Tornado Dragon, the poor beast could not rely on its superior E energy manipulation abilities to beat Ves back! By the time the creature's massive body crashed on the ground, the entire length of its body had become a broken and beaten mess. Ves felt rather mixed as he teleported on top of the heavily injured monster's head. If he had a choice, he would have preferred to defeat the Azure Tornado Dragon at its own game. Alas, that was not possible this time. Ves ultimately felt that he had cheated by utilizing his vastly superior capabilities. "IT IS NO WONDER THAT PHASE LORDS ARE SO REVERED IN THIS DWARF GALAXY." The fight probably would have been a lot more even if the Azure Tornado Dragon had evolved into a calamity beast, but alas it fell one step short of this goal. Ves had ultimately gained a much better understanding of his direct combat power. While ordinary mechs and mech pilots had good reason to fear mutated beasts, Ves had already grown past the point where he needed to take them seriously. He hadn't even taken advantage of the fact that he could borrow the power of his design spirits! The human phase lord looked down at his enormous body. "HAVE I GROWN THIS STRONG ALREADY?"