When Arthur realized that he couldn't keep running away, he rose high up into the sky, turned back for a brief moment, and then threw his hammer at Green Viper.
The black hammer flared suddenly with a violet brilliance of lightning and streaked through the air towards Green Viper like a bolt of lightning.
Green Viper was already furious by the turn of events. He couldn't believe that he had to succumb to chasing Arthur, not to beat him up but in order to avoid a nasty defeat.
So when the hammer flew towards him, he didn't hesitate at all to strike it down. He let all of his pent-up anger find an outlet through his fist. Even the pressure compressing him from his armor finally got somewhere to be released.
His hand was protected by a gauntlet, so he wasn't afraid of smashing it into the hammer. But when the hammer got close to him, a force emanated from it that pushed his hand away.
Green Viper's eyes widened in shock. He watched wide-eyed as his hand stayed where it was while the hammer approached his face.
He pushed his hand forward with all of his might, but this only prevented his hand from being pushed back. He couldn't stop the hammer from enlarging in his vision.
Fortunately, he was quick to react. He moved his head aside, which caused the hammer to sail past his head.
Even that wasn't enough to keep him unscathed from the hammer. The violet lightning energy from the hammer has singed his poison armor because of the proximity and caused him to lose some energy keeping the armor intact.
But with the hammer gone, Green Viper didn't care about the amount of energy that he spent on keeping his armor intact.
He sneered at Arthur and asked, "What kind of fool throws a hammer? Don't you know that a hammer is not a throwing weapon?"
He doesn't know what Arthur had done to make his hand unable to touch the hammer. But now that the hammer was gone and Arthur was nearby, he became sure that the rest of the fight would be easy.
Unfortunately for him, he was very wrong about this estimation. He realized this when he saw the hammer stop flying forward and turn around to strike him again.
If not for his divine sense, which grants him a 360 vision, he wouldn't have noticed this and would have been caught off guard. But he wasn't happy that he saw this scene at all because it meant that the fight had only gotten more difficult.
As the hammer made a U-turn and streaked towards him with the same ominous violet glow, his eyes budged in frustration, and he roared in anger, "Why!!!!!!!!!"
After confirming that the poison from Green Viper wasn't corrosive or at least couldn't corrode his weapon if it was protected with a layer of lightning energy, Arthur decided to release the Storm of Blades.
With a thought, the Storm of Blades was roused into action. It buzzed like a nest of bees. Then a pack of blades left the core and swarmed towards Green Viper.
Green Viper dodged the hammer, but his troubles were far from over. The Storm of Blades struck him and began chipping away at him.
He was protected by his armor, but the Storm of Blades struck him with both physical power and energetic lightning. So he had to spend twice as much energy to resist them.
The energy consumption would have been inconsequential if there was only one. knife-like blade harassing him. He could even avoid the knife.
Unfortunately for him, there were 99 of them. He couldn't dodge them. He could only allow them to strike him and deplete his energy.
But Arthur didn't stop there. He finally approached Green Viper. But he was swinging the large war hammer at Green Viper's face.
Green Viper had to ignore the storm of blades and focus on Arthur and the hammer. But his hands refused to help him attack Arthur or defend against the hammer. He could only watch helplessly as the hammer smashed into him again and again.
He was completely focused on Arthur, but this only made sure that he was very aware of every strike. Because the hammer was writhed in lightning, every hit was impactful and caused a loud explosion as the violet lightning tried to break through his defense and rip him apart.
Arthur used the sharp axe face of his hammer to strike, as that was the best way to break the defenses of the armor. This face also caused a lot of pain to Green Vine even though the attack couldn't completely cut through the armor.
Green Viper's poison armor was very strong and could resist the attacks because his power output was higher than Arthur's. But he knew that once the hammer broke the defense of his armor and made contact with his body, he would lose.
He also knew that was going to happen soon and his armor would break soon because he was running out of energy needed to maintain it.
The consumption of energy spent on keeping his current state, resisting the 99 blades striking his body, and withstanding the heavy blows from the body. This made him desperate.
He had to do something to turn the tides of battle. Unfortunately, he was out of viable options. He was a body cultivator, not an energy cultivator, so he didn't have special spells to use to turn the tide.
At the end of the day, what he decided to do was to cause his armor to explode. His decision caused all of the poison energy that had been compressed onto his body to erupt and expand outwards.
Arthur was smashed in the face by the explosion. He was fine, but he had to consume a lot of energy in order to resist the power of the attack.
Green Viper saw this outcome, but he only grinned. Then he said, "Finally."