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Dark smiled faintly, slightly amused by the groan of his opponent. The style before him was familar, but he couldn't place a name to it. It seemed as if this place was robbing him of his memories, and that of his past life. Perhaps it wasn't, but Dark welcomed it all the same.

He did not enter a stance, but started to walk towards his opponent. Every step was sure and balanced, assuming nothing. On an outlook, it appeared secure.

Appearances are deceiving.

The man did not take the bait that Dark had placed before him, and for that reason alone, he silently acknowledged him, a respectful salute that only Dark would know.

Dark continued walking, yet his steady eyes picked up the little details of his opponent that would serve as a potential spot to exploit once the fight had begun.

Just before he came within kicking distance of his opponent, Dark stopped suddenly almost haltingly, then stepped once toward, his fight foot leading as his hands lifted up smoothly, on level with his hip, shoulders turned slightly to left.

( I am gonna assume the kick is from the right leg, as you didn't state )

Dark responded immedately, stepping towards once more with swiftness, as his right arm slid upwards, the palm turned inwards, in an attempt to grasp the shin of the striking leg.

Should that happen, along with his movement towards, Dark would, without pausing, bring up his left knee at the man's crotch, his left hand to the front of Dark's chest in a simple body defense.

The hell? Ryugi stopped his fire breathing and stayed still for just a moment before grasping his scarf and jumping up onto one of the skinnier rock pillars, his boots ballancing him on top of it. He'd seen his opponent sink underground, and knew that something was up, or down as the case might be. With the time he had left looking for his opponent, he evaluated his options and his situation.

Clearly his opponent was usuing some sort of magical elemental technique to shift himself into the ground. Yet when he'd sunk down into the rock below him, he still appeared solid. Past experience told him that Shouyin was an earth elemental and that he was difficult to get any real damage on because of his ability to cover his body in rock. How even an inch worth of rock could have protected him from at least getting a bit hurt from that toss and faceplant was beyond Ryugi, but he'd seen stranger things.

While it was true that Shouyin could "rock up" at any point in time to decrease, or elimitate, any damage given to him by an outside force, he still had weak points like joints, eyes, his nose, and the like just like any other fighter. Thusfar, exploiting these weaknesses had been very difficult. Ryugi's human fists weren't strong enough to deal decent damage to an opponent who was made of rock, or could use rock to defend himself from most attacks. It just wasn't really possible, at least without significant training. Ryugi made a mental note to start training his arms and fists to be a little more effective, but he had other things to deal with.

Now he had to think. If his fists alone weren't strong enough to deal decent damage to the rock, and getting good hits on Shouyin's joints hadn't proved to be an easy task, he needed to find some way to effectively raise his striking power to at least be enough to knock the rock around. A weapon of some sort would be a great way to do this, but Ryugi had no real weapons that would effect the rock happy elemental. He had no sword, no axe, nothing with significant force to pierce or crack rock. Hell, he'd even take a mace if he could get it...

It was then that Ryugi noticed a chunk of granite sitting in a small outcropping of his perch. Now, one might not think much of this mineral, except that it looks grey with smatterings of black shiny bits embedded in it. However, when Ryugi was a Mercenary back in the day, he traveled all over the place. In fact, one of his battles was against a giant rock golem. For this battle, he had emersed himself in books about geology and rocks. Not alot of this information remained, but some still hung on. For example, he knew that granite was among one of the hardest rocks with a hardness of approximately 7 out of 10. Ten being a diamond, the hardest mineral known to man.

Another thing that was quite nice about this mineral, was that it was relatively common in rocky areas across the globe. And it was just his luck that he'd found this chunk of granite. Now, Ryugi had been searching to find some way to boost his overall attacking power, and suddenly an idea came to him. He took the softball sized chunk of granite and wrapped it in his scarf, then tied it in a tight knot on one end. Ryugi's scarf, when fully unfurled to its full length, was approximately eight feet long. Now that it was tied up with the rock inside of it, it was about six and a half feet long at full length.

The whole process of thinking took place as Ryugi was jumping and landing on the small pillar of rock, and the process of rock wraping took about two seconds. These two timeframes made the entire process take about three seconds. And with Ryugi in his defensive position, an attack from Shouyin would be relatively easy to avoid. Ryugi just hoped that his plans would work as intended.

There was one thing wrong with Shouyin's little plan. Although very well executed, he failed to realize that the thickness of the pillar Ryugi was standing on was less wide than the width of his body, meaning that if Shouyin tried to swim up through it, Ryugi would be well aware of him, possibly seeing a little bit of his body or clothing moving up the pillar. In this case, it happened to be an elbow that caught Ryugi's attention, however Ryugi was caught before he could act fully with Shouyin grasping his boots.

Now, there were a couple of things that would happen in this situation due to bits of information about Ryugi that Shouyin couldn't possibly know. The first thing was the two inch thick field of magic null that surrounded Ryugi's body. If any magical or elemental energy were to come in contact with this field, then it would be completely nullified. Pulled apart. Cease to function. This meant that if Shouyin's hands or any other part of him was within this two inch thick field, then any and all magical or elemental energies within those parts would be dispelled. Hopefully, Shouyin's rock arm didn't require any magic to exist or maintain its state, because otherwise, poof. No magical or elemental abilities could be used within this field, meaning that if Shouyin used some form of elemental ability or magic to create his little spikes, they'd simply go poof and cease to even be formed in the first place.

Secondly, even if Shouyin's spikes weren't created by any elemental energies or magic, then his attack would still be thwarted by yet another quality. However this quality was not of Ryugi himself, but of his equipment. Ryugi's boots had thick dragonsteel shin and knee guards built right into the front to protect against most types of attacks to the shins and knees. In addition to this protection in the front, the sides and backs of Ryugi's boots were covered in metalic plates as well to protect from damage to his calves as well. The rocky spikes would hit metal and fail to pierce the tough material.

Now, neither of these was an attack on Ryugi's part since they were just parts of his person and no different from hair or a shirt. This meant that Ryugi would be able to attack, and attack he did. Being aware that Shouyin was below him, He already had his scarf in hand, complete with the chunk of granite. He might have been caught off guard by the initial bursting through the ground, but the grabbing was a bit of a different story. As Shouyin tightened his grip on Ryugi's legs, Ryugi was moving into action. The scarf was swinging with the full force of Ryugi's torso and arms behind it, Ryugi's right arm still sore from the hit he took earlier. With as much force as possible, he aimed the rock to slam into Shouyin's left arm.

By now the force in the rock would be enough to crush muscles and bruise bone. Ryugi was sure he couldn't crack the rock arm with this hit, but the fleshy left arm of Shouyin might get hurt. With any luck the hit would break Shouyin's left arm with a powerful hit.

Once more Shouyin's plans would be thwarted by Ryugi's field of magic null. Manipulating the rock around Ryugi's body would be pretty much impossible since it was an elemental manipulation, and that fell under the category of nulling by his field. What Shouyin would end up doing is simply turning the rock two inches and below into his watery slush, while the rock two inches up would remain solid.

Now this provided a little bit of a problem for Ryugi, but it was solved with relative ease, however, not a deliberate action by Ryugi. As he went to jump, the rock he was standing on sunk into the rock below, causing Ryugi to slip and fall off the pillar. Not a problem though, for as Ryugi slipped and touched the watery rock, it solidified again thanks to his null field, causing him to fall down to the ground in a semi diving position. The scarf with the rock on it was tied around his waist and could be let go of by his hands, leaving them free to catch his falling diving body, move into a summersault, and land with his feet on the ground. He then moved up and stood, looking around for Shoyuin.

He was pretty sure this rock diving technique would take alot out of Shouyin, meaning he'd have to come up to catch his breath or recouperate. This meant that he'd either try to hurt Ryugi on his way out, or come up away from Ryugi so he'd have some time to rest before enguaging him again. At least standing in the open area gave him room to move about etc. He then cracked his knuckles and rubbed his sore right shoulder. Hopefully he'd done some damage to Shouyin's arms in his last little confrontation.

The realm was blank until Anu arrived while waiting for his opponent he start making some change in the natural landscape of the realm and started eveloping the realm in his own "body" and where the he originally stood was now a small dark tower that looked very strange like it was made out of some kind of jet black cable.