Chapter 746: One Last Surprise

Honeybun had spent the whole gold-form stretch of the fight studying the serpent, learning its patterns, memorizing the tells before each strike, and it put that knowledge to use. It anticipated the serpent’s attacks before they came, reading the subtle coil of muscle that preceded a lunge, the shift of weight before a tail sweep, positioning itself to dodge and counter rather than simply reacting.

He dealt heavy damage, each high-velocity ramming strike carried force, and now that he was landing them freely rather than trading blows, the serpent’s wounds mounted fast. Crystal projectiles fired mid-dart punched deep.

The turtle struck the beast from various angles with an aggression that the golden form could not allow.

But the trade-off showed its teeth.

The serpent’s tail caught Honeybun across the shell during one exchange, and this time the jade surface cracked, spreading across the plates, deeper than the hairline from before.

A sharp, pained cry rang out Honeybun’s mouth.

Moon tensed for a moment ready to intervene, but the crack wasn’t life-threatening. Honeybun shook it off, the fracture already beginning to knit, and kept moving. In the jade form, he would take hits, that was the nature of the trade.

As long as they weren’t fatal, the turtle could keep fighting, and its speed meant most strikes missed entirely.

Moon watched the turtle’s fighting style with surprise and growing appreciation, but his sharp eyes caught a few flaws in the instinctive technique he deployed.

"Honeybun, listen!" he called, tracking the blur as best he could. "You’re overcommitting on your approaches, you dive straight in every time, so it’s learning to predict your angle. Vary your entries! Come at it from curves, not straight lines. And when you dodge, you’re drifting too far out before you reset, that’s wasting the opening you’ve already created moments before. Dodge tight, stay close, counter while it’s still recovering from its own missed strike. You’ve got the speed to punish it in that window, use it!"

Honeybun absorbed the corrections instantly, his high intelligence letting him understand and apply them in real time.

His next approach changed. Just like Moon had instructed him, instead of diving in a straight line, he struck from an unpredictable arc, and the serpent’s anticipatory strike cut through empty air where it expected the turtle to be.

Honeybun slipped the dodge tight, staying close instead of drifting wide, and the instant the serpent’s lunge overextended, the jade turtle struck into the recovery window, a devastating crystal-tipped ram to the exposed neck that it would have missed entirely a moment ago.

The serpent reeled, and Honeybun pressed the advantage with the refined technique, changing entry points and forming counters, landing strike after strike it had been missing before, each one guided by Moon’s corrections.

Dark blood sprayed across the dead stone. The serpent’s wounds went from mounting to severe, the obsidian predator heavily injured now, its coils sluggish, its hisses turning ragged and desperate.

Moon grinned, watching his turtle tear through the ancient beast with a technique sharpening by the second.

"That’s it! See the difference? You’re a natural, Honeybun. Now finish what you started."

The fight continued, and victory drew closer with every exchange.

Honeybun’s refined technique dismantled the serpent piece by piece, the serpent bleeding from dozens of wounds, its movements growing slower and more desperate. It was losing, and it knew it. An ancient creature that had ruled this basin for decades or longer, swallowing everything that wandered in, was about to fall to a turtle that was barely two days old.

So it made one final gamble.

Knowing it couldn’t win, the serpent chose to take Honeybun with it.

It deliberately dropped its guard, exposing itself to a massive attack, and Honeybun, pressing its advantage, took the bait. The turtle committed to a devastating high-speed ram, crystal-tipped and carrying its full velocity, and the strike tore deep into the serpent’s body, injuring it even more severely than before, very nearly a killing blow.

But at that exact moment, with Honeybun committed and close, the serpent struck.

Its coils whipped around the turtle in a flash, wrapping tight, and this time it had chosen its moment perfectly. Honeybun was in his jade form. His shell was no longer the impenetrable gold fortress, and his defense was traded away for the speed that had let him land the blow.

The serpent constricted with everything it had left, intending to crush the turtle while its defenses were at their weakest, a mutual death, both of them falling together.

Moon’s heart skipped a beat.

It’s going for a suicide kill. It knows it’s dead, so it wants to take Honeybun down with it. And in jade form, with his defense dropped, that pressure might actually do it.

He didn’t hesitate.

Lightning crackled to life in his hands, and the Lightning Raiju formed, the purple wolf coalescing with hungry white eyes. He let it free instantly, and it streaked across the basin in a flash of violet, moving at insane speed, slamming into the serpent’s coiled body right as the constriction tightened around Honeybun.

The wolf struck true.

The serpent released a massive, shuddering hiss of pain and shock. It was already on the verge of death, heavily injured, and now it had been struck from where it least expected, from outside the fight entirely. For the whole battle, only Honeybun had engaged it. The serpent had calibrated everything around a single opponent. And now, at the critical moment, a second attacker had intervened.

Its coils spasmed and it began to slowly loosen as the lightning began to take control over its wounded body.

Its deadly tight grip on the little turtle began to slack as the light faded from its eyes ever so slowly.

Then the ancient beast slowly began to collapse, its massive length going limp, the last of its strength and life fading.

[You have killed the level 65 Obsidian Hollow Serpent]

[You have gained 30,125 Lives]

"Are you okay?" Moon called immediately, rushing toward the turtle.

Then his eyes widened as he stared at him. His heart skipping a beat.