Just like his primitive leather hunter's outfit suggested, the Muscular Swordsman possessed no grace in his nonexistent bones.
His maneuvering was straightforward. He only ever moved forward and backwards. Most
of the time, he pressed forward as if he was constantly stuck in attack mode.
"Has he lost his mind?!"
There was a method to his madness. His unrelenting aggression combined with his awful
tendency to doggedly stick to his target at all times stifled the First Sword's ability to
counterattack.
If he ever took a step back, I was because he needed moment to recover or because. he was preparing for an even more devastating strike.
Otherwise, he remained committed to offense no matter how much he put his large and
muscular body at risk!
What Venerable Dise found even crazier was that the Muscular Swordsman rarely
bothered to evade attacks!
He instead preferred to let the First Sword's strike go through in favor of chopping the
Heavensword with great force!
"This madman!"
This exchange always made the First Sword worse off! Every weapon swing from the Muscular Swordsman struck with great force and inflicted more than simple cutting
damage.
The Muscular Swordsman may look and act like a brute with no subtlety in his body, but
that did not mean he was an imbecile.
"This is a master of the earth!"
The man possessed a surprisingly effective grasp on the earth element.
One of the ways he applied this advantage was to surround the Heavensword with a thicker and substantially longer application of heavenly energy that was strongly biased towards his favored E energy attribute!
The Heavensword effectively transformed into a substantially different sword as a result. The Muscular Swordsman comfortably held the enlarged hilt with both of his thick arms and was able to hack down the blade as if he was swinging down a heavy club! Since the earth-aspected Heavensword crushed down with much greater force than usual, the First Sword acquired a growing collection of cuts as well as shattered pieces of
armor plating.
The internal components of the expert swordsman mech incurred damage as well as the powerful kinetic blows badly rattled the closest sections of the mech frame.
In contrast to the Muscular Swordsman's undeniably effective power attacks, the exquisite and well-executed offensive sword attacks failed to inflict any immediate wounds onto the energy projection!
In multiple cases, just before the Decapitator managed to strike the 'body' of the
Muscular Swordsman, encountered a hindrance in the form of a rocky layer of armor!
No matter what angle the First Sword managed to strike the Muscular Swordsman, the latter always found a way to conjure up a layer of metal and position it over the right limb or body part to block any attack!
Although Venerable Dise understood that her attacks were not completely useless and that every blocking attempt drained the Muscular Swordsman's energy a bit further, the latter appeared to possess an abundance of energy!
Not only were his defenses tough, his endurance was probably good as well! The Muscular Swordsman's reckless and linear fighting style made complete sense after taking this crucial factor into account.
The man fought like a berserker, knowing that most of his adversaries were unable to
outlast him after getting locked in a mutual exchange of blows.
With superior defenses along with an earth-empowered Heavensword that struck like a gigantic club that just happened to have a sharp edge, few combatants of the same level would dare to stand in front of such a beast!
"If that is not enough, my First Sword can't even take advantage of her superior mobility." Venerable Dise discovered.
For all of the strengths of the Muscular Swordsman, his mobility was much worse in comparison. He simply could not keep up with the First Sword in terms of speed and
maneuverability.
This gave Venerable Dise a chance to outfight the Muscular Swordsman by relying on
her expert mech's superior mobility.
Yet when she actually tried to change her strategy, the Muscular Swordsman refused to
let the First Sword fly away with impunity!
The energy manifestation raised his energy-covered Heavensword with both of his hands and began to leverage another aspect of the earth element!
A thick and heavy energy field came to life that was saturated with the earth element!
Amplified by high-grad heavenly energy, the earth field produced a myriad amount of effects that hindered the First Sword from distancing itself from the source!
The pulling gravity field, the circular vortex distortion and other effects slowed down the First Sword's attempt to disengage from the Muscular Swordsman!
The living mech slowed down to such an extent that the somewhat decent forward acceleration rate of the Muscular Swordsman could easily catch up to his chosen prey. The First Sword hastily put up a defense, but the much better prepared Muscular Swordsman was able to convert his charge into a chopping attack that was unblockable with the First Sword's current strength!
The Larkinson expert mech suffered another nasty cut to one of its shoulder plates.
Precious Unending alloy got cut or fractured with many pieces spreading across space.
If the Muscular Swordsman kept bashing its copy of the Heavensword like this onto the
First Sword, then almost all of her Unending alloy may end up getting lost by the end of this bout!
"This swordsman... is overpowering all of my tactics and basic sword moves!"