His lightning angel armor would protect him if he decided to venture into the body of the giant snake made of poison. But he didn't want to risk that kind of danger and was content with slowly melting the giant snake.
The lightning domain was also consuming a lot of his energy, just as the lightning domain was causing Green Viper to consume a lot of energy to keep the giant snake intact. So it is the one with the most energy that will win the fight.
Arthur did some calculations to determine who would lose if the fight continued like this. After his calculations, he concluded confidently that he would win.
His confidence came from the fact that he had a perfect golden core, which is bigger than Green Viper's core. So he has a larger energy capacity and a higher energy regeneration than Green Viper.
There was also the fact that his lightning net was consuming more poison with a lesser amount of lightning energy from him. This made him also have an advantage in the efficiency of energy utilization.
Another advantage he had was the effect of the Mountain Karma divine ability that enhanced his energy regeneration by 5 times. This will ensure that even if he had a small golden core and was wasting energy in the exchange, he would still come out on top at the end of the day.
Lastly, there is a major difference in their cultivation path in which Arthur can regenerate his energy from the world around him while Green Viper can't because he didn't cultivate the path of energy refining.
So even if he had inferior golden core and didn't have the Mountain Karma divine ability to enhance his energy regeneration speed, he would still be able to replenish his energy faster than Green Viper.
All of these advantages were why he decided not to risk danger by plunging into the body of something created by the energy of his enemy. He would rather destroy the poisonous giant snake from safety.
Green Viper also came to a similar conclusion after making a mental calculation. But his conclusion wasn't good news for him. So he had to take a risk to change the unfavorable situation he was in.
He decided to make the giant green snake lurch towards Arthur to grab him. This was because he couldn't be content with sitting still and waiting for his defeat. He decided to bring the poison to Arthur if Arthur wouldn't come to him.
Arthur had the advantage of speed, so he was able to step back to avoid the giant snake. But then the giant snake began throwing the poison jets around to delay him.
The poison jets forced Arthur to dodge, which prevented him from running in a straight line away from the giant snake and wasted his time on evasion. However, this still wasn't enough to make the giant snake catch up to Arthur.
Green Viper needed a lot of time to compress his poison energy in order to give it a speed boost, but Arthur's lightning energy was always in a high energy state, ready to be discharged at a moment's notice.
The lightning armor was actually bad for physical defense. It was best at energy defense and enhancing his speed.
With the lightning angel spell, it was as if he had put on a jet pack that could let him fly in any direction. He was very small compared to the giant green snake, but he was faster and far nimbler too.
When Green Viper saw this, he gritted his teeth and activated the second phase of his battle art.
As he did so, he said to Arthur, "You're good for forcing me to this stage."
Arthur grinned and said, "You haven't seen anything yet."
Green Viper caused the large body of the giant snake to collapse onto his body. This caused the poison energy to be compressed to a state that its color changed from green to something bordering on black.
The compression of Green Viper poison energy also enhanced his physical state. His speed, strength, and defense increased rapidly.
The best part of this transformation is that the poison energy had turned into a scaled armor around Green Viper's body. This granted him the speed and flexibility of his body, the powerful defense of the giant snake, and a smaller surface area for the lightning net to attack.
The smaller surface area reduced the energy consumption caused by the lightning energy, but this superstate wasn't cheap at all. It cost a lot of energy for Green Viper to use this transformation, which was why he didn't use it at the start of the fight.
But once he began to lose, he had to use this transformation. It was a good idea to do so because the energy consumption has remained about the same. However, Green Viper is now in a better state to take on Arthur.
Arthur sensed that the energy consumption of this transformation was very high, so he was still content with dragging the fight out. He withdrew his lightning net as it was consuming too much energy and producing too little result.
Then he chose to keep his distance from Grene Viper. But Green Viper was hell-bent on forcing him to fight head-on and was also fast enough to achieve his wish.
Green Viper pushed himself to his fastest speed possible. Even at the risk of crushing his body by compressing his energy too much, he dashed towards Arthur with everything he had.
His power output peaked. And since his power output was higher than Arthur's, he was able to close the distance between them even though Arthur wanted to avoid him.
He shouted at Arthur, saying, "Stand and fight if you're man enough. Running is for cowards."
Arthur called back, "You're just saying that because you don't want to lose."
Green Viper chased Arthur across the sky goading him to stand and fight. But no matter how Green Viper cursed at him and goaded him to fight, he didn't stop running.