Before I'd even completely finished powering up, Slug had already made his move. A fist smashed through the air at lightning speed, heading straight for my chest with deadly accuracy, so quick that, by the time I'd caught a glimpse of the movement, the fist was almost upon me.
But I'd fully acclimated to the primal variant of the Super Saiyan form. Heightened reflexes were a natural bonus from my long work. I dodged the fist with a minimalistic left motion and, without hesitation, reached out and cut the arm off with a ki blade extending from my palm as it passed me by.
The hand that'd already circled around from behind and was millimeters away from grabbing me by the shoulder from my blind spot fell to the ground.
A moment later, my form blurred.
Slug wasn't kidding around this time, like he had been when Zeck originally showed up. In this battle, neither of us was holding back a bit. As such, neither of us cared if the initial attack hadn't worked, because we were already looking beyond it.
My knee slammed into Slug's outstretched leg with enough force to shake the air around us. He'd already been moving when he'd thrown the fist. The kick he'd smashed into me had the full force of half a football field's flight worth of kinetic energy behind it in addition to his actual power.
I'd canceled it out with a picture perfect knee strike, already dropping my shoulder to unleash my next blow, a clean jab to the collar, which the Namekian smoothly ducked past, simultaneously countering with an uppercut. I danced around it without hesitation, my leg already halfway up for a windmill kick to the side of Slug's chest, using the momentum from pulling back my jab to help me put more power into it. Slug had already clocked it, though, and leaned into his duck from my jab, whipping his fist around from below, attempting to hammer it into my chest.
In response, I leaned into the force from my kick, smoothly shifting places with the Namekian in the midst of the exchange, whipping my fist out without hesitation toward where he'd be when he recovered from the duck.
Sure enough, our knuckles smashed against each other, generating a massive shockwave and an accompanying sonic boom that both of us ignored, due to the fact that we'd already braced our ears for it.
Slug's eyes widened almost imperceptively in shock as his brain processed the fact that I'd perfectly predicted his hook strike, but the surprise passed in a flash, his body already on the move, no hesitation in his motions at all.
There weren't any in mine, either, though.
Our bodies turned into an explosion of motion. One would think that two hundred million-class fighters battling it out with everything that they had would move faster than Slug and Zeck had when they were battling at a level below it, but that actually wasn't the case.
To any onlooker (that would, honestly, already be dead by now if they were close enough to watch), our battle would only seem 'just' fast. Even normal humans could follow, if not our individual motions, our bodies, at least, as we flashed through the sky.
That was because all of the power we were using went directly into our attacks. Each exchange was accompanied by shockwaves, not of ki, like from Zeck's battle that'd flattened the landscape, but of pure air pressure, as the energy from our attacks, by itself, consistently shattered the sound barrier, over and over again, our ki perfectly tuned to the task at hand.
Finally, when Slug blocked an aerial punch-turned inward crescent kick and countered with a haymaker, I found my opening.
Reversing the direction of my heel, I grabbed Slug's wrist and flipped him over my shoulder with every muscle I had, half-flipping my body over in midair along with the motion.
The Namekian hadn't expected it. His body was launched straight through the air, carving a trench through the ground.
"Regalia!" For the sake of follow-through, I shot two simultaneous Regalia Blasts after the Namekian. They exploded deep at the end of the trench, creating a fiery mushroom cloud where they slammed into the demon-clan king's body.
I didn't expect them to actually do much decisive damage, but they weren't something that he could simply ignore, either.
Our battle had altered the feeling of the air. Not the actual atmosphere itself, but the surrounding area's ki saturation. Whatever remained of Zeck's aura that'd been lingering was gone, the feeling of my own energy colliding with Slug's stiflingly negative aura was so dense at this point that it was difficult to feel the world beyond a couple kilometers in any direction through my ki sense.
That was fine. Slug's evil energy was like a lighthouse to me. He was good at using the volatility of it to hide his exact intentions, but his general location was as clear as glass.
By the time Slug came out of the trench, whatever injuries that he'd sustained as a result of my blasts had already regenerated.
He snarled at me, brushing the dust off of his shirtless form. Under the surface, though, my aura was broiling with far more rage than that empty bastard could possibly hope to feel.
My eyes narrowed coldly as I analyzed the figure of the Namekian who had killed my friend.
I could already tell what his next move was going to be.
He moved anyway.
I could feel the cold smirk take over my expression as my figure blurred once more.