Ramos glances at the woman. He tries to glean her weaknesses.

  ‘She appears to focus on agility and elemental manipulation and maneuvering.’ He assesses.

  ‘Probably means that she would be weaker to fighters that rely on brute strength that could overwhelm her.’

  ‘Unfortunately, I am a finesse fighter, not a brute.’ He says, realizing that she was chosen to hunt him precisely because she might have a chance of countering him and his style of fighting.

  On the other hand the woman sizes up him too. Despite being chosen for her ability to counter his style, she looked more uncomfortable than him.

  The woman activates her martial soul skill. Branches of tree emerge out of her outstretched hand, twisting as they rushed towards Ramos.

  Ramos dodges, but the branches continue to follow him, forcing him to maneuver constantly around them.

  Ramos weaves together a bunch of runes, and unleashes a torrent of fire. The fire appeared as if a giant flower of fire bloomed on the mountain, scorching the trees in its wake.

  The branches caught fire and started crumbling away. Ramos retreated, uncertainty clouded his mind as he looked at the scene of the crumbling.

  He then smirks and launches himself at the woman. Weaving another bunch of runes to create lightning in between his palms.

  He suddenly finds himself impaled by a saber. He glances at the woman he was about to engage. She fades as if she were but a mirage.

  He turns behind him, where she stands clutching the saber that impaled him.

  He expected to see her smug, but she looks at him doubtful, her brows furrowed.

  He suddenly launches the lightning he was gathering in his palms at her.

  But, even before he launched it, she had started to move away.

  She flew to the sky, away from the blast of lightning that would have temporarily paralyzed her.

  She then inspected her saber, and as she expected, instead of crimson blood, what she found was red gelatinous slime.

  Ramos stood uninjured by the stab to his torso.

  ‘Tch, he/she figured it out,’ they both thought at the same time.

  The woman had used one of her martial soul skills to create an illusory clone of herself, while she turned invisible using a combination of the another martial soul skill and sorcery.

  This was in an attempt to try and lure Ramos into attacking the clone, while she would assassinate him from behind.

  However, Ramos had figured it out when he saw that his spell had damaged the branches more than he anticipated, and then used one of his own martial skills to turn his body into slime.

  He had planned to ambush her the moment he was struck, but similar to him, she figured it out and retreated.

  The woman once again started deploying her branches, but unlike last time, this time the wood was blackened and inside it flowed magma.

  Ramos once again dodged it within a hair’s breadth, but magma burst out of the branch and drenched a part of his shoulder in it.

  Ramos groaned before discarding the part of his slime body that melted due to the magma.

  He then retaliated by forming a thin whip of slime and whipping it at the woman who dodges with ease.

  He however continues to form multiple such whips and strike at her, she dodges all, but one of them grazes past her.

  The minute touch was enough for the slime to cling to her body. Ramos activates a bloodline skills and she then finds her vitality being sapped out of her through that bit of slime.

  The molten, ruined shoulder of Ramos started to recover as he sucked the vitality out of her.

  The woman uses the phoenix fire to burn the slime attached to her body.

  The woman rushes at Ramos and using a combination of her magma branches and saber. She mixes in some feints and illusions to disorient Ramos, and it appeared to be working.

  She slowly whittled him down, cutting away major chunks of his slime body.

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  Ramos weaves a spell and blinks her away from him.

  “Whelp, its time to get serious.” He says and uses his bloodline and martial soul skills together.

  The chunks of slime that fell out during his melee with the woman started to morph and turn into clones of him.

  Unlike the illusory clones the woman made, these were real, physical clones and could interact with the physical world.

  The woman emerges out from the lake, pissed off and drenched in water.

  She beats her wings and takes to the skies. She then heats up her body to dry the water, causing stem to surround her and blur her form.

  Ramos and his clones start to attack her, launching whips of slime.

  She moves through the steam, easily dodging all the attacks.

  One of the clones weave a spell and blink above her, morphing its hand into a hammer and slamming it on her.

  She starts falling like a broken kite after that unexpected attack, before righting herself.

  The rest of the clones start blinking around her whenever she was distracted from the attacks from the whips, slowly whittling her down.

  Finally, two clones appear and morph their arms into blood slime swords, cutting a wing and an arm respectively.

  She shrieks in pain and falls to the ground, her blood flooding the ground.

  She then stands up shakily, phoenix fire blazes and the stump on her arm and wing start bubbling before they are restored.

  But the effort, combined with the blood loss appears to take a lot out of her.

  Ramos starts to heave as well, using such high intensity skills and spells caused his mana to nearly tank out.

  The woman heaves out, before activating her martial soul skill and weaving a spell along with it.

  Dozens of illusory clones flood the surroundings, enclosing Ramos from all sides.

  Ramos ignores the illusory clones and weaves a spell.

  Golden runes appear in his eyes. They glow for a moment and turn golden.

  The dozens of the clones start their assault, charging at Ramos with incredible speed. However, Ramos observes that despite the speed she was much slower than before, allowing him to weave through the attacks.

  Using the spell, Ramos starts searching for the real person amidst the clones all the while dodging the attacks just to be sure on of them wasn’t real.

  He spots the woman to his right, and so charges towards her ignoring the attacks of the illusory clones, only to be struck on the side by one of the clones.

  Ramos is hit on the liver and blasts away, bouncing a few times before skidding to a stop.

  He lies there groaning, before stumbling up.

  He looks at the clone that hit him, and observes that it was actually a magma clone coated in illusion and hidden among the many illusory clones, hiding its nature.

  He observes that his slime clones have been overwhelmed by these magma clones and have already been destroyed.

  ‘Smart.’ He thinks before chuckling.

  A sharp pain arcs through him at that, causing him to glance at his stomach, only to discover a small branch filled with magma impaling into his liver.

  He weaves a spell.

  The large fish that he gathered hovered for a moment, before they were shredded apart, their blood and flesh mixing together to form a giant claw of blood. The bloody claw radiated a primordial aura.

  “Oh right, I forgot to tell you that the carp I fished happen to have a draconic bloodline. Sacrificing them would let me summon a hint of a dragon’s power.” Ramos says pointing at the claw and smiling all the while coughing blood.

  He suddenly lowered his hand that was pointing at the claw, causing it to descend on the woman and her clones.

  The claw slams into the ground, crushing everything beneath it, leaving a mushroom cloud of dust several feet into the air and cracking the mountain.

  The woman stumbles out of the wreckage, gravely injured. She crawls away from the enormous crater that was created by the hand. The most grievous of her injuries have already started to heal from the wisps of phoenix fire that were lit from the last of her mana.

  Ramos wobbles toward her.

  “You shouldn’t have come alone.” Ramos says finally relaxing.

  “I didn’t.” The woman says spitefully.

  Before Ramos could register what she said, multiple harpoon-like pieces of metal slam into him on the shoulders and knees, piercing through him and making him fall to his knees, pinned down and screaming in pain.

  “Ah, that scream was so satisfying.” A man who shimmered into existence behind behind him.

  He was a young man wearing black Dachang style Hanfu, laced with golden dragons. His hair tied back into a pony tail.

  “Master!” The woman calls out reverentially.

  The man ignores the woman and concentrates on Ramos.

  “Ramos the Mad, the Scourge of the West, the Sorcerer King…. brought low by a girl younger than you.” The man mocks.

  “Yeah right. I could have killed either of you alone. I should have expected that you being the hypocrite you are would have ambushed me.” Ramos retorts, coughing out blood.

  “However the world will only know that you were killed by her alone. It will pave the way for her fame and the revival of our sect after you have humiliated us last time.” The man says.

  “I guess the rest of the Righteous Alliance have signed off on it as well? Damn hypocrites.” Ramos says.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. You should have surrendered when you had the chance.” The man says.

  Ramos looks at the ring drenched in his blood and hanging from the threat around his neck.

  “You may kill me, but I won’t let you mooch of my wealth as well.” Ramos says and snaps the thread, before attaching a thread of slime to the ring and rotating it like a sling.

  He then throws the ring , the force propelling it far away.

  “I don’t care about your fucking riches.” The man says, punching Ramos.

  “Sure you don’t.” Ramos says, wiping the blood off his lips.

  “Oh, by the way, I did know that you would ambush me.” Ramos says cackling.

  Enormous runes light up around the entire mountain, the spell/trap Ramos had set up long ago finally sprung.

  The man’s eyes widened, and he tried to apparate away, but the spell was faster.

  The mountain shook as magma shot up into the sky, turning into a volcano that erupted.

  The force disintegrated everyone on the mountain including Ramos who only cackled in sick irony.

  After the spell was done through, all that was left was smoldering ruin where the mountain existed.