From Bullets To Billions

Chapter 727: New Items

There now was only Blark left standing relatively close to those who had been kept captive, leaving the university students to watch the members of the Bloodline group fighting on their behalf once again.

"Why would they risk their lives for us like this?" Eric said, his eyes glued to the battlefield. He watched one person in particular fighting against the man with the daggers. Darno wasn’t even attempting to dodge the knife attacks; instead, he was slapping and hitting the man’s wrists away at the exact right moment. One wrong move, though, and it felt like it would be all over.

"These people, they’re in the same group as Max, right?" Talia said quietly. "We all saw how hard Rick and Aki fought for us back there, even though they hardly knew us at all. It seems like all of these people in these gangs are willing to do whatever it takes for their own group."

"Well, maybe it’s things like this that actually show what loyalty means," Yovan said, looking down at his bound hands. "Think about how far Max is going for us, when he hardly knows us—and even for me, after I used to call him a fake. If he would go this far for people like us, then imagine how far he would go for the people in his own crew."

Hearing those words come from Yovan of all people made it hit home. It certainly did seem to be that way.

All of the individual fights were fully underway, and unlike what the Black Hand members might have originally thought, the matches weren’t going to be nearly as easy as they expected.

In one of the closest duels, Joe was going up against Skull. Having brought out his heavy knuckle dusters, Skull took wide, aggressive swings with his arms, but Joe was able to easily duck and slip out of the way of the metal.

Whenever he saw an opening, Joe snapped out his jab, trying to tag Skull in the face several times in quick succession. But Skull was incredibly quick, easily avoiding the incoming counters as well.

"Freaking hell," Skull muttered, gritting his teeth as he reset his guard. "This isn’t the style of anyone from the Black Hand, and this definitely isn’t how Aaron fights either. How the heck were you able to learn to fight like this?"

Joe didn’t say a single word in response. Instead, he just stayed completely focused. He was relentless as he pushed forward, wanting to stay right on top of Skull and making sure the older fighter didn’t have the space to back away and reset.

He continued to snap his jab non-stop. For Joe, this repetitive pressure was the best chance he had. Although he had learned other moves and vastly increased his arsenal over the months, he knew his limits. When going against someone who was this impressive, and when going against someone who was genuinely skilled, he couldn’t afford to rely on his subpar, newer techniques. Instead, the best thing to do was simply not stop moving.

"This is getting annoying, you little freak!" Skull shouted. Finally losing his patience, he decided to fight the exact way he had been trained.

Using his experience, Skull intentionally created a false opening, forcing Joe’s hand to move exactly where he wanted it to go. When the precise moment arrived, it meant Skull could finally launch his own counter-attack. He threw out a heavy fist, and his knuckle dusters collided dead-on with Joe’s incoming hand. When the two forces clashed, the metal teeth ripped the skin right off Joe’s knuckles, and a sharp pain rang through his entire body.

"Ahhh!" Joe screamed out in pain, forced to take a heavy step back to break the engagement.

"Hahah!" Skull laughed, stepping forward as he shook out his hand. "With that useless lead hand of yours, do you really think you can keep fighting me? It looks like your strongest skill has just resulted in absolutely nothing now."

Now, it was officially Skull’s time to go on the offensive. Joe started to actively move away, trying his best to avoid the incoming hits, but once in a while, he would fall right for a trap and get hit hard in the stomach. Another punch caught him hard on the side of his arm, and his primary fist was still entirely broken from the clash.

Even though I have the healing factor active, I can tell he broke the bones in my fist, Joe thought, his breathing turning shallow. It’s going to take some real time to heal this up. I just need to survive this onslaught until my arm gets better.

To make it through, Joe was intentionally allowing hits to land on the rest of his body from Skull, but he was pulling his frame back or forcing his way forward right when the momentum mattered most to diminish the damage.

Even Skull could tell that Joe was actively diminishing the power of his strikes by rolling with the punches. It wasn’t just a skill someone could casually do; heading straight, face-first into that kind of pain was unnatural and terrifying for any regular person. Joe had to have almost zero fear inside him.

It made Skull honestly wonder how someone so young had no fear, and why that would even be the case.

Suddenly, Joe quickly stepped back, putting a massive amount of distance between them. Blood was now dripping down from his forehead, and several other areas of his body were aching in deep pain.

"Alright, training time is officially over," Joe said.

He calmly rolled up his sleeves and unlatched a heavy restraint band, letting it drop straight off his arm and onto the floor. The band crashed down onto the stone with a incredibly loud thud, violently kicking up a cloud of dust. Joe then reached over and did the exact same thing to his other arm as well.

Skull stared at the cratered dust on the floor, his jaw dropping slightly. "What in the Rock Lee is going on here?"