'Fighting for a long period of time is harder than I thought,' Kyle thought as he focused on healing from another injury he had received.
He had been fighting the Metal Elementals for several minutes already, and his focus had slipped.
While he was stronger than them, he was still human.
Meanwhile, the Metal Elementals were more like machines.
They were precise, methodical, and procedural.
Their programming wasn't perfect, but they never made mistakes with their imperfect programming.
Additionally, they constantly refined their programming.
When they realized that an attack didn't work, they changed their approach, and if that worked better, they would use that for a while.
Kyle's Ether was recovering faster than he was using it, but that was not true for his focus.
He hadn't been in such a long battle in his entire life, which was why he wasn't used to it.
Naturally, if he wanted to, he could kill the two Metal Elementals within two seconds, max.
He just needed to actually launch attacks.
But he didn't want to kill them.
Luckily, he had his armor made of Rank S Materials, which the Metal Elementals couldn't control or manipulate.
Rank S Materials were on the level of Transcendents, and these Metal Elementals couldn't control something of that level.
Kyle was pushed back more and more, but he refused to retreat.
He got injured here and there, but he always managed to recover.
He had expected that he would mainly learn more about their respective properties, but he was surprised to find out that he was also learning more about himself.
More precisely, about how his own mind worked during a long battle.
30 minutes after the start of the battle was the most dangerous period for Kyle.
Almost every attack injured him just a bit.
This bad period continued for another ten minutes.
And then, things became easier.
While the Metal Elementals learned and grew very quickly, the same thing was true for Kyle.
Regular humans needed to sleep before they could truly internalize something since their neurons realigned and created new pathways during sleep.
But that was no longer true for people of Kyle's level.
Starting in the Second Realm, people didn't need sleep anymore.
The realignment of their neurons happened constantly.
40 minutes of fighting for someone of Kyle's level was akin to fighting for weeks for a normal person. A person who fought against the same opponent for hundreds of hours was bound to get good at fighting that opponent.
Two hours after the start of the battle, Kyle had completely gotten used to everything.
His mind had created new instinctual movements that dealt with his opponents' attacks.
Since his subconsciousness was now dealing with the majority of the battle, Kyle's consciousness finally had some time to actually focus on the things he wanted to learn.
The things that made these Metal Elementals so powerful.
After battling for a couple of hours, Kyle had already learned quite a bit, and he made some interesting observations.
'I've used the Fragment of Metal Density to improve the power of my armor, which is already made of Rank S Materials. Technically, it should be able to withstand their attacks. I mean, just on a base level, it's already a level higher, and it has another Fragment that improves it.'
CRK!
Kyle blocked a sword strike with his hammer, and his hammer chipped a bit, while the Sword Metal Elemental was fine.
'Yet, my equipment gets damaged, while they don't receive any damage.'
'This means they have to know Fragments that improve their power far more than my Fragment of Density improves my power.'
'But isn't density the primary thing that makes stuff hard? Sure, flexibility is also a thing, but my armor is already made with flexibility in mind.'
'I need to test something.'
The next moment, Kyle expanded to a size of 50 meters, dwarfing the ten-meter-tall Metal Elementals.
The Sword Metal Elemental attacked again, and Kyle let it hit the armor on his legs.
The sword cut just as deeply as before.
However, it was important to note that it cut just as deeply when speaking in absolute units.
Not relatively.
Since Kyle grew so much, his armor was several times thicker.
This meant that the sword couldn't break through Kyle's armor anymore.
When Kyle saw that, he became surprised.
'Eh, what?' he thought. 'Logically, the same amount of mass is now distributed over a greater volume for my armor. This means it should be easier for the Metal Elemental to break through it.'
'Why is the opposite happening?'
After battling for a bit longer, the Metal Elementals also decided to expand their bodies to the same size.
They attacked again.
CRK!
This time, something broke, but it wasn't Kyle's armor.
It was their weapons!
'Wait, so, my armor didn't get weaker, but their weapons became weaker? '
At that point, Kyle remembered a conversation he had had with Sebastian.
Obviously, Sebastian and Kyle hadn't been working together on Sebastian's machines without saying anything.
They had been talking about random stuff all the time.
One of the topics they had talked about was their Fragments.
According to Sebastian, there were four Fragments for Lightning.
He had looked at all possible aspects of lightning, and he found out that these four Fragments covered all of lightning's aspects.
These four were:
Composition, which was what lightning was made of, and how to produce it.
Focus, which was how tightly one could shove lightning into any given point in space.
Expansion, which was the ability to retain lightning's power while spreading it over a greater area.
Energy, which was just about how much energy lightning could produce.
Composition made it easier and cheaper to create lightning.
Focus could focus a bigger lightning bolt into a smaller one without losing energy.
Expansion was keeping the density of energy while covering a greater area, which technically added more energy. Expansion just made it far more cost-efficient.
Energy was just increasing the energy overall without needing to invest more of it.
To Kyle, the last three things sounded like they were basically the same thing, but apparently, they were different.
As Kyle saw the differences in how growth affected their bodies and equipment, he realized one thing.
'I comprehended the Fragment of Metal's Density. It increases the density of my metals, but if I'm honest, it's a bit weak for a Fragment. It could definitely be stronger.'
'I thought the Fragment of Metal's Density was equivalent to the Fragment of Lightning's Focus.'
'But it's actually not.'
'It seems like it fits more to the Fragment of Lightning's Expansion. I have the same density of metal over a wider area and only need to use a bit more Ether.'
While Kyle was thinking, the Metal Elementals tried the opposite.
Instead of getting even bigger, they became smaller.
Then, the Sword Metal Elemental launched an attack.
CRACK!
And Kyle's right leg, including the surrounding armor, was cut cleanly in two.
'Oh shit!'
Kyle quickly shrank down again.
'Metal's Composition is equivalent to Lightning's Composition.'
'Metal's Density is equivalent to Lightning's Expansion.'
'Then, the reason why they are so much stronger than my equipment is because they understand the equivalent of Lightning's Focus, and maybe also the equivalent of Lightning's Energy.'
The Metal Elementals noticed that growing smaller seemed to work.
So, they became as small as possible.
In the end, they reached a size of ten centimeters, which was as small as they could get.
When Kyle saw them, he gulped.
His instincts were warning him.
They were telling him that these things were dangerous now.
If he went all out, they would still die relatively quickly, which was why this still wouldn't count as a True Battle.
However, his instincts were telling him that he actually had to be serious now.
If he got careless, this would become really dangerous.
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