Chapter 745: Honeybun Vs Obsidian Hollow Serpent

Realizing that its attacks were doing little to no damage to the current turtle, the Obsidian Hollow Serpent changed tactics.

Instead of striking with head and tail, it used its own considerable speed to close and coil, its massive serpentine body wrapping around Honeybun in a crushing embrace, loop after loop of obsidian-scaled muscle tightening around the golden shell. It had felt its strikes fail to penetrate, and now it tried a different approach, raw constricting pressure, the force a serpent this size could generate enough to crush massive boulders weighing in the tens of tonnes, applied all at once across every surface of the turtle’s shell.

For a few seconds, Honeybun did nothing.

It simply sat within the crushing coils, motionless, letting the serpent squeeze with everything it had. The serpent constricted harder, its obsidian scales grinding against the golden crystal, convinced that the pressure would succeed where single blows had failed, that it could find the breaking point of a shell that shrugged off its previous strikes.

Moon watched calmly, unworried, a faint smile on his face.

Go ahead and squeeze. You’re not going to like what happens next...

Then Honeybun answered.

Sharp crystals erupted from every surface of its shell at once, bursting outward in a bristling explosion of jagged points, and they stabbed into the serpent’s coils all across its wrapped body. The beast’s entire length was suddenly impaled on tens of crystal spikes, the pressure it was applying driving the points deeper into its own flesh.

The serpent hissed in agonizing pain, and recoiled violently, unwinding from the turtle and retreating across the basin, dark blood dripping from countless puncture wounds all along its body. Its attempt to crush Honeybun had only skewered itself on the turtle’s defenses.

Moon’s smile widened.

That’s the thing about a shell like yours. The harder they press, the more it costs them.

Moon watched the fight unfold, learning about his turtle’s capabilities against those of similar rank.

Honeybun’s defense at the same tier was no joke. The serpent, a Surpasser-tier predator, simply could not find a way through. Its strikes were shrugged off, and Its obsidian spikes couldn’t crack the crystal-reinforced shell. Everything the beast threw at the turtle failed against its near-impenetrable defense.

The serpent was trying to bring down a wall with pebbles.

But the fight didn’t end quickly either.

Because Honeybun’s offense, while real, sat only a fraction above the serpent’s durability. Its crystal projectiles wounded the beast, bled it, but each one wasn’t enough to land a decisive blow through the serpent’s own considerable toughness. The turtle could out-defend the serpent all day, but finishing it was another matter.

Moon could see it clearly, Honeybun would need to tip the scales, either dropping into its jade speed form to land faster, harder strikes, or committing to the full crystal armor skill it had drawn from the River, to end the fight in any reasonable time. In its standard gold form, it would grind the serpent down eventually, but eventually was the key word.

And through it all, Honeybun showed its intelligence.

It didn’t simply stand and tank everything anymore. The hairline crack from earlier had taught it something, and now it adapted, choosing its moments. Against strikes it knew its shell would shrug off, it held firm and let them land, conserving its energy. But against the serpent’s heaviest blows, the full-force head lunges and tail spikes, it began to dodge, sidestepping refusing to take unnecessary attacks even when it could.

Its crystal element usage use grew creative, too. It fired projectile volleys to keep the serpent at bay. It erupted close-range spike bursts when the beast came near. At one point, it planted a crystal trap in the serpent’s path and lured the beast into charging straight into it, the obsidian predator impaling itself on the trap. It grew a crystal shield to deflect a tail strike, then used the same crystal as a launching platform to ram the serpent from an unexpected angle.

Moon watched his turtle fight, and pride swelled in his chest.

He shook his head in wonder. _This little one is learning from my own fights.... it’s using techniques I used before to initiate attacks, defend against, or retreat from.

What most impressed Moon was its incentive to finding new ways to fight rather than sticking to one battle style. The little turtle was one of the smartest, tactically

The serpent coiled back, bleeding from dozens of wounds, its ancient eyeless head weaving as it searched for any weakness in the golden fortress that had turned every one of its attacks against it.

It found none.

Across the dead basin, Honeybun gathered itself, crystal bristling, ready to launch its next attack.

"That’s enough defense, Honeybun," Moon called out. "Your shell’s proven itself. Now it’s time to work on your offense. Switch to your Jade Shell. Fight it on speed this time, and train with it while you’re at it. You need the practice controlling that form anyway, we don’t find many of these beasts around anyway."

Honeybun responded at once, the gold slowly fading out of its shell as the deep jade green flooded back in, and its presence changed.

Gone was the immovable fortress. In its place, a blur of motion, the turtle rocketing across the basin the instant the transformation completed.

With the new transformation, the fight took a completely different approach.

Now Honeybun didn’t tank anything. It couldn’t, not in this form, with its defense traded away for raw agility. Instead it relied entirely on its speed, weaving around the serpent’s strikes, slipping past lunges and tail sweeps with a hair’s breadth to spare, never staying in one place long enough to be caught. It darted in, struck, and vanished before the serpent could retaliate, a jade bullet ricocheting around the serpent

And the improvement from its first clumsy use of the form was striking.

The first time Honeybun had entered the jade state, it had crashed into a wall, barely in control of its own momentum.

This time around... he was something else.