Aaron used a skill on his most vulnerable lethal spots: heart, spine, neck, and head.

Qi Defensive Arts: Protective Shell!

Almost half his total Qi went into changing the very structure of his skin on those locations, making it harder and extra resistant. It turned into a kind of dark turtle shell, leaving only two small slits — also protected — for him to breathe from in his nose area. The same happened around to the flesh heart. The defense the skill provided was great, but it came with a price.

The affected skin lost all flexibility. He couldn't turn his head anymore, nor open his eyes. He had effectively blinded himself until he cut the shell off and regrew a new skin.

To counter that, he focused some Qi into his ears, nose, and his healthy skin, improving his senses. Together with his energy sense and active perception, that should be as effective as if he weren't blind.

Aaron's sacrifice paid out when the Mouth-Man changed the trajectory of his axes from Aaron's belly to his eyes and neck. The attack was fast, and the blades were sharp, but they bounced harmlessly from the shell.

The Mouth-Man let out a furious shrill and followed with an attack to Aaron's belly for real this time. At first, the axes cut easily through Aaron's clothes, skin, and flesh. However, Aaron used the Qi in his body to fight back against the invading metal. Three inches in, the axes were stopped, and his Qi and Vital Energy took care of healing the injuries after the weapon was removed.

Next, the Mouth-Man attacked Aaron's chest, going for the heart. Things were even worse for him there, as Aaron's Qi-infused ribcage required a lot of power to break. They almost completely stopped the axe's momentum before it even touched the shell around Aaron's heart.

It became obvious that the Mouth-Man couldn't kill Aaron like that, so he changed his tactic.

He swung one of his axes at Aaron's neck, but when the blade was almost reaching Aaron, he changed his time freezing skill. Time went from being frozen to being extremely fast. That way, the axe became even faster and capable of dealing a lot more damage.

Aaron considered that a dumb move. Just as time had sped up for the Mouth-Man, it also had for Aaron himself. Other people might have trouble adapting to the sudden change of time flow, but he could easily dodge the incoming attack.

He didn't though, for it wasn't life-threatening yet, and dodging would make the Mouth-Man try something else while Aaron was still under the effect of the time skill. Instead, he focused even harder on analyzing said skill, making full use of the accelerated time. It even helped that the new way the skill had been used gave him a better idea of its capabilities and where he might find its weaknesses.

The Mouth-Man's axe dug deeply into Aaron's neck shell but didn't kill him. The beast didn't want Aaron healing that injury, so he didn't take the weapon out. Instead, he changed the skill to stop time again, left that axe there, and pulled the other back to use it to hammer the first one like a nail.

The first hit had been enough to take the blade all the way to Aaron's spine. The metal grazed on his bone and stopped there.

A second strike would kill Aaron.

The Mouth-Man would have succeeded if he was going against anyone else. Unfortunately for him, the former immortal had finished analyzing the time skill.

Large area skills made them harder to counter. Their weak spots could be too spaced between each other and within the influence of the skill itself. However, he had the perfect counter for it, the same one he had used to try to decapitate the second Mouth-Man: his active perception.

When he found the weaknesses, he already had energy perfectly positioned to exploit them.

"Die!" the Mouth-Man yelled and hammered the first axe down.

Aaron waited for the beast to change time again, right as the axes were about to meet, and then acted.

When time sped up, the Arcane Energy of his active perception also unfroze. He immediately used it to destroy the area skill.

Arcane Offensive Arts: Particle Explosion!

Particles of Arcane Energy in key spots exploded, and the Time skill shattered. Aaron was free to move again. And, even better, he finally found himself close enough to the Mouth-Man to force him into a proper fight.

Qi Martial Arts: Absolute Limit!

As Aaron's speed, strength, and resistance reached their absolute limits, he moved his body enough to the side that the Mouth-Man missed his attack. At the same time, he took the first axe from his neck and swing both it and his sword on the leader.

The Mouth-Man, surprised at the sudden destruction of his skill and his missed attack, found himself out of position. He barely managed to step back and dodge the axe, but not the sword.

Aaron's blade cut through the enemy's white robe. Unfortunately, the robe was made of highly resistant fabric. Even though Aaron had focused on its weaknesses, just like he had done against the tiger back in the forest, the material still greatly lowered his damage output. When the blade reached the Mouth-Man's skin, it barely penetrated.

Aaron, seeing that the Mouth-Man was trying to flee, let go of the axe, took a javelin from his spatial ring, twisted his body, and threw the weapon at the enemy.

The Mouth-Man jumped back but was still hit. The javelin throw was so powerful and fast that it created a sonic boom. It went into the Mouth-Man's hood, penetrated his head all the way through, and even pierced the back of his hood. It stopped midway through, stuck in the beast's head.

Yet that hadn't been lethal. The Mouth-Man didn't even do anything about the javelin, he just kept running away from Aaron. The former immortal immediately moved to press the attack, taking a spear from his spatial ring next — it's long reach was better for chasing an enemy. However, the Mouth-Man reacted by shooting tens of time blades at Aaron.

And those things were dangerous.

Aaron didn't think twice before disengaging and doing all he could to dodge.

Unlike spatial blades, time blades weren't sharp things that could cut through anything. Instead, they gave the illusion of cutting because they messed with the past of the material particles they touched, thus changing where they existed in the present.

At the Champion level, the blades weren't powerful enough to create a true time paradox; they couldn't actually erase the target from existence altogether. What they did was rewrite the past of those particles as if they had been frozen in time for a couple of seconds instead of continuing to keep moving. That was enough for them to not be in the same place as the rest of whatever was being cut.

Those particles suddenly found themselves in empty outer space. Time blades were the first of time skills to affect time relative to the universe, not the world. Both world and galaxy were moving at a high speed through space, and few seconds of difference might very well put those particles inside a moon.

The blades themselves were also ridiculously fast. Aaron couldn't fully dodge them even using his absolute limit technique.

The first blade cut through his sword that was still on the way. It faced no resistance at all and kept going toward Aaron's skull. All could do was move his head a bit out of the way, so instead of cutting through his brain, it went for his mouth. It easily cut through his protective shell too, and only stopped not because it met resistance, but because it had limited potency on how many particles it could affect.

That was a skill that Aaron couldn't stop, no matter how much Five Star Qi he poured at it.

He couldn't even instantly heal it. It wasn't an actual attack, but a time rewrite. His body needed a few moments to even understand it had been injured. Blood poured from Aaron's head and he focused his Qi and Vital Energy into slowing the flow instead of healing.

That was just the first blade. Tens of others were coming his way.

Fortunately, he had the perfect counter for it.

Arcane Elemental Arts: Condensed Air!

He calculated how much matter the first had affected before fading away. The conclusion was that simply condensing a lot of air in a nine-feet radius around him would make him virtually immune to the blades. The blades could circumvent that by traversing the same path as each other, one after the other, but they weren't doing that right now.

So his Arcane Energy gathered and condensed the air surrounding him. The time blades cut through it unhindered until they ceased existing about a foot away from Aaron.

"What are you?!" the Mouth-Man bellowed in fear for the first time.

Aaron's reply was to keep running at him.

The Mouth-Man froze time in the region again. However, the right particles of his active perception flared and destroyed the skill before it could set, just like he did for time locks with his Arcane Energy cocoon.

Surprised again, the Mouth-Man just kept running away and throwing more time blades at Aaron. The first blade he had used had widened the distance between Aaron and him, and he hoped to do the same with the next ones. However, Aaron just ignored them, using the condensed air around him to counter the skill.

"I hate you!" the Mouth-Man yelled, and Aaron laughed. To have a time-bending skill be denied by thin air could certainly be infuriating.

Seeing that the time blades were useless, the beast resorted to hindering Aaron's approach with barriers again. However, he was close enough that Aaron could hinder his path too.

Arcane Tactical Arts: Arcane Minefield!

The path around the Mouth-Man became covered with energy mines. Cutting them only made them explode, while freezing them in time would only turn them into obstacles he couldn't go through. He was forced to shoot time blades at them before getting to them, but Aaron kept creating more mines and moving them at the Mouth-Man, which made him almost stop.

Meanwhile, Aaron himself was destroying the barriers and approaching faster than the beast could run.

It was only a matter of time for the beast to die.

The Mouth-Man realized death was approaching and did the only thing he could. He went back in time. Or rather, he changed his position to one he had been in the past, effectively teleporting away.

Unfortunately, Time Energy didn't specialize in moving matter through time. While a Champion Shaper could teleport to other nations altogether, a Champion Entropomancer's range was much more limited.

So, one moment, the Mouth-Man was a few seconds away from death, the other, he was merely a third of a mile away from Aaron. Safe, yet not really. It was certainly better than being killed, but it was still too close for comfort.

Worse still, it took almost all the Time Energy left in his dantian to accomplish even only that much.

Aaron couldn't see the Mouth-Man, who had teleported to a place behind three buildings, but he could feel him. He immediately turned the beast's direction and used his go-to movement skill.

Qi Martial Arts: Elusive Steps!

A Five Star absolute limit together with a Five Star elusive steps made Aaron almost teleport. The synergy was so good and his speed so absurd that he also broke the sound barrier. The sonic boom echoed all over the city.

Meanwhile, the Mouth-Man had used all his remaining energy to create seven time domes around himself. Then, he took a new item from his spatial artifact, a black crystal brimming with Space Energy, and crushed it.

Aaron had seen Tia do something similar before and recognized the teleporting crystal. He was surprised the Mouth-Man chose to retreat rather than use a Time Crystal to recover his spent energy and keep fighting instead. He wasn't completely stupid, after all.

Unfortunately, the teleportation crystal took three seconds to teleport him away, just like the Champion Shaper hadn't immediately disappeared. It couldn't be fast-forwarded either, as it was creating a spatial tunnel. Messing with the spacetime continuum then would throw the whole thing sideways.

Those three seconds were enough for Aaron.

When the timer started, he was already midway through to the domes. The Mouth-Man probably expected Aaron to waste time going around the buildings, but that wasn't an issue. Instead, Aaron erected an Arcane shield in front of him and went through the stone buildings, crushing the walls with ease.

He reached the domes. The Mouth-Man started turning his head.

One second had passed.

Aaron dropped his spear and took two swords from his spatial ring, which were better suited to deal with the domes. He easily crushed the domes when he reached them. Soon, nothing stood between him and the Mouth-Man.

The beast opened his mouth to swear at Aaron and put his arms protectively in front of his hood's opening, the only weak spot of his protect clothes.

Two seconds had passed.

Aaron dropped the swords and took other weapons from his spatial ring. The Mouth-Man's robe could protect it somewhat against cutting and piercing, but it wasn't a hard shell.

Aaron's two new maces made the robe effectively useless.

He swung them at the beast's head, sandwiching it between the maces. The head burst like a melon, letting out a wet sound. Some blood and brain matter went through the opening in between his arms and dirtied Aaron's hardened face.

Three seconds had passed, and the corpse was teleported away, together with half the maces Aaron had used.

Aaron had won.

He deactivated his absolute limit and physical weakness hit him hard, even though he had only used it for fifteen seconds. He took a few moments to recover, then ran at the tower.

That Mouth-Man had been more resourceful than he had expected.

Maybe his people weren't so safe after all.