Chapter 122 - Disapproval

After a few close exchanges without each combatant landing significant damage on one another, one of Xoz'gekal's vulture flame boosted punch finally lands squarely on Fumios torso.

*Fwahh*

Fumio's body is immediately wrapped in flames. Through his crossed arms, he tries to look through the flames to give Xoz'gekal a look of defiance.

Xoz'gekal takes Fumio's momentarily limited field of vision, and rains more flame boosted strikes on the cultivator.

Fumio tries to retreat, but blindly dodging attacks from a fighter much more experienced than he is, is useless. After a few more consecutive hits from Xoz'gekal, the flames accumulate until he is encased inside a huge ball of very condensed fire, even hotter than the ones he endured from the demon during his training.

Xoz'gekal meanwhile, clicks his tongue. Even though he can see that Fumio is struggling and is in pain, he knows of Fumio's physique. He knows that Fumio cannot be taken down yet.

Soon, *whoosh* Fumio breaks out of the ball of flames, and charges at Xoz'gekal in great speed. Xoz'gekal notices something odd with Fumio's glare and it tingles his instincts.

He then boosts his legs with flame vultures and retreats immediately at a much faster speed that Fumio is charging.

He does not know what Fumio is planning, and decides to be careful for now.

While Fumio was forbidden by Red to use spiritual energy in this spar, he still boosts his speed momentarily by 30% by executing Hasegawa Footwork 3 and he closes his distance with Xoz'gekal immediately.

Xoz'gekal gets confused because while he is in Fumio's range, he is not seeing any signs of attacking from Fumio.

The next moment, however, he finds out why.

Fumio dives towards his abdomen and, *thud* he is lifted to the air.

Fumio is pleased at this. But as he is about to continue to take Xoz'gekal down, the feeling of resistance from Xoz'gekal disappears suddenly and he loses his balance.

He has no time to wonder what type of maneuver Xoz'gekal did as he is suddenly hugged by the demon in a way that wraps his neck.

Xoz'gekal then squeezes hard but as soon as he does, he immediately feels immense power coming from the contraction of Fumio's neck muscles.

He already had an idea of how strong Fumio's physique is because he is a first-hand witness of how Fumio was able to withstand an hour and a half of his second level flame which can melt copper, but hugging Fumio's body for the first time, he realizes that he severely underestimated it.

Fumio, while being choked, panics and he lifts Xoz'gekal off the ground once again while trying to remove the demon's hold on him.

After a few shakes, he feels does not feel Xoz'gekal's hold loosen, so he jumps meters high in the air bringing Xoz'gekal with him.

Xoz'gekal knows what Fumio is thinking of doing so he immediately summons a flame vulture under him to stop himself and Fumio from falling, to persist his choke hold. He then expands the flame vulture to cover the two of them, hoping that the pain the fire inflicts on Fumio will make the young man's resistance weaker.

Fumio meanwhile, is not distracted by the flame. Instead, he realizes that Xoz'gekal is not physically as strong as he thought and that he still has a bit of time before he gets choked out, so he calms down.

He then stomps hard on the flame vulture, making it explode.

As soon as him and Xoz'gekal start falling back down, he forces Xoz'gekal under him.

Xoz'gekal realizes that he does not have much time to summon another vulture and detaches himself. Even though he is much more experienced than Fumio, and can possibly turn around Fumio's move, Fumio's crazed recklessness made him nervous.

He is also not willing to risk being smashed to the ground by Fumio given the disparity between their physical strengths.

"Damn… So, grappling doesn't work either." Fumio says in frustration as him and Xoz'gekal lands back on the ground.

"Don't even try. I've taken part in hundreds of wresting and grappling tournaments in Hell." Xoz'gekal smirks.

"Wrestling? I use jiu-jitsu though." Fumio grumbles.

"So? In over fifteen thousand years of wrestling and grappling history, I've seen many jiu-jitsu practitioners among demons. They just don't have a name for it." Xoz'gekal scoffs.

"…Right…" Fumio gets it.

"Tezguniuth-san's fighting style that looks so close to the Russian Systema's slap techniques, but he never knew until I told him." He compares.

Xoz'gekal shrugs, not really interested at the comparison. He then summons tens of chicken-sized flame vultures and throws them to Fumio.

Fumio's eyes widen in shock. Unlike the yellow flame that Xoz'gekal has been using before, the small flame vultures are made of blue flames. As he dodges, he feels the heat coming from the flame vulture that passes by him. He figures that they must be two times hotter than the flames Xoz'gekal uses on the oven on him.

Even though the flame vultures travel much slower than Yoshiko's spiritual energy blades, he still cannot dodge all of them, so he can only block and pop the ones he cannot block.

Xoz'gekal's flames however are unusual. His limbs that blocked the flame vultures immediately feel hot. His socks and the bottom of his kimono even caught on fire which fortunately put out immediately.

Seeing Xoz'gekal elevate things, he takes out his practice katana from his storage ring. He then looks at Red as if asking permission to use a weapon. To his relief, Red nods in response. As soon as he takes his attention back on Xoz'gekal, more flame vultures come his way.

Unlike the first time, the flame vultures are now much smaller but they are now numbering more than a hundred. Fumio then continues to dodge and the vultures he cannot dodge, he blocks with his sword.

Unlike the first time, he fails to protect himself totally from the flame vultures and he gets hit in various parts of his body.

The hotness of Xoz'gekal's flames display their danger as even his clothes that were special due to them being Red's handicraft, immediately starts being consumed by the leftover blue flames.

Instead of putting the flames out, he rips his clothes off of his body, finding clothes inconvenient at this situation. He does not care about the presence of a lady as he is still wearing boxers, covering his lower parts well. He can only hope that Xoz'gekal is honorable enough to spare his underwear.

Yoshiko meanwhile, cannot help but blush at Fumio's daring action, but her interest in the spar overwhelms her shyness.

Before Xoz'gekal can summon any more flame vultures, Fumio charges forward in a zigzagging manner.

Xoz'gekal nods in approval as he boosts his legs once again with flame vultures and starts retreating. While doing so, he summons double the amount of flame vultures he summoned last time and conservatively throws them to Fumio while reading Fumio's pattern.

Soon enough, just as Fumio is starting to close the distance, he gets hit by two flame vultures in the chest. This stops him for a moment, and his momentary vulnerability is immediately exploited by Xoz'gekal as Xoz'gekal throws a hundred flame vultures towards him all at once.

He also realizes that the flame vultures are flying at him at a formation that blocks any path forward.

He can only retreat while dodging or swatting off the flame vultures with his katana.

After retreating a certain distance, he sees Xoz'gekal charge forward, matching his retreating speed. Fumio immediately figures that Xoz'gekal's powers has range limits. With this in mind, he estimates the current distance between himself and the demon which is at around fifteen meters.

A plan also brews in his mind, and it being the only plan he has for now, decides to act on it.

As soon as he sees Xoz'gekal run out of flame vultures, he immediately charges forward.

Xoz'gekal who still has not stabilized himself from his forward momentum, cannot retreat as fast as he wants. Seeing that Fumio will easily close the distance, he can only quickly summon flame vultures and keep sending them to Fumio.

Fumio however, as if not feeling any pain, and has learned his lesson earlier, continues to charge, not caring about the flame vultures that are assaulting his body.

Soon enough, he is already in front of Xoz'gekal at a sword swinging motion.

Xoz'gekal meanwhile, is not fast enough to retreat or defend any further. As soon as he feels the warm blade on his neck, he stops on his steps.

"I guess it's my loss." He can only admit.

"I got lucky. And you were holding back." Fumio retreats his katana.

He heard from Tezguniuth that Xoz'gekal recently got stronger and is now a mid to high tier A-class level, and from what Xoz'gekal displayed during the spar, he feels that Xoz'gekal did not go all out.

"Lucky? Maybe. As for holding back, I'm not the only one. Kichirou-sama stopped you from doing something earlier, didn't he? I wonder how our spar would have gone if we both went all out." Xoz'gekal shrugs.

He is not stupid. He has seen how Fumio, Kotone, and Yoshiko train. He has also seen Fumio and Kotone spar with each other in the treasure fragment dimension. The Fumio who sparred with him today, moved much, much slower than the fastest he has seen the young man move while sparring with Kotone.

He has always been confident that he can defeat Fumio and Kotone in nine out of ten fights even though the two are physically stronger than him, by resorting to his superior aerial mobility and the longer range of his attacks. But now that he lost a spar, albeit due to his own carelessness, from the obviously powered down Fumio, he is not so sure if he can even win against Fumio in three out of ten fights.

"If boss didn't stop me? ..." Fumio smiles.

He just realizes that he was able to beat Xoz'gekal just with his physical body.

"It probably would have ended the same?" Fumio smirks.

Xoz'gekal smirks back.

'As expected from master's disciple…'  He realizes that Fumio already blew past him.

"Now put on some clothes like a self-respecting human." He scoffs at Fumio.

Fumio realizes that he is still half-naked so he immediately pulls out a bathrobe from his storage ring. He chose the outfit as he will go for a medicinal bath to treat his burns anyway.

He then looks at Red but instead of receiving at least a look of approval from the man which he was expecting, Red is busy chatting with Yoshiko instead.

"B-boss…" He calls out, in case there are anymore orders from Red.

"Oh. Well done." Red nods. His tone is a bit dismissive however, which hurts Fumio a bit.

"If you want to spar with someone, choose someone who you'll learn something from." He continues.

"Yes, boss." Fumio can only accept, reminded of what he did to Yoshiko earlier.

"Good. Now go treat your burns and after that, let's talk about your progress." Red nods and dismisses Fumio.

"That was a bit mean, sensei." Yoshiko, seeing Fumio's retreating back, feels bad.

"Think of it as a medicine he needs." Red shrugs.

He has treated Fumio very well and has always expressed his approval towards the young man. But with how Fumio is now, he wants to remind the man that getting his approval will also become harder the more powerful Fumio becomes.

He hopes that Fumio seeking his approval will help with the motivation that Fumio so desires.