Fwoosh
The Statue rushed in Nio's direction, killing intent blazing behind the red glow that originated from where its eyes should be. In a wide motion, it pulled the greatsword back before swinging it with great force downwards.
Nio stepped away pretty easily, but he was still pretty shaken. The strike had been slow and had several openings, however, the power behind it was no joke.
If he had to guess, the statue was probably more defense and offense focused than mobility and skill, otherwise, anyone with a little bit of power would be able to destroy it. How was this a construct of the strongest mage of the time?
As Nio collected himself and drew his sword from his sheath, he waited for the statue to make a move.
And that it did.
In a rush of mad violence and bloodlust, it rushed forward, momentarily losing part of what made it corporeal, of what made it physical.
When Nio finally noticed, it was already upon him. Activating the Sharingan fast enough, he was able to barely dodge the attack.
'I must attack now!!!'
Not thinking much, Nio concentrated his breathing and swung his sword at the statue, hoping to cleave its head off. Only for the blade to keep going as if nothing was there.
As the blade was about to come out of the other side of its neck, Nio felt the statue's knee striking him from below into his side, hurling him away.
'He is completely intangible? No, just now, my blade was still inside his neck, and yet his knee still made contact with me. He can be partially intangible, that's why it was so fast. He made certain parts intangible, effectively ignoring air resistance.'
So how was he supposed to counter that? It was actually simple, in theory, at least.
He needed to predict which parts were tangible and which parts weren't. And attack both.
He breathed in deeply and concentrated. Chakra, cursed energy, and Qi swirled inside his body and into his blade as he rushed forward, the statue rushed back.
Suddenly, Nio jumped, gaining some altitude. He then straightened his legs and delivered a kick to its chest. Believing it to be less dangerous than the sword, the statue took the kick to the chest and made his neck intangible.
Water Breathing - 1st Form - Water Surface Slash
The sword traveled without any resistance, as if there was no neck, but Nio grinned.
From his feet, a surge of wind chakra, which the statue could not sense, burst into its chest, sending pieces flying and forcing it to stagger back.
'Success!!!'
The first strategy worked, and that made Nio more bold.
But the statue seemed to figure out what had happened and turned to flee in the direction of the grave site exit.
'You are not getting away, my friend.'
Water Breathing - 3rd Form - Flowing Dance.
Nio surged forth and clashed with the statue that was running in the direction of the exit. Sensing Nio approaching, it blocked the various strikes from him that came from every angle with its greatsword.
'The sword, it can't be turned intangible, can it?'
But there was an even more serious question.
'Why are you blocking?'
Nio thought for a moment and arrived at an answer. The statue recognized that Nio had figured out its intangibility and turned to flee, when it failed to do so, it switched to a more defensive stance, preventing Nio from once again creating an opening.
'Meaning that I have to surpass this statue in pure swordsmanship before I can actually deal damage.'
Nio grinned.
'Fine by me.'
Channeling some wind chakra, he rushed forward trying to catch the statue off guard, however, its reaction speed was fast enough to react to it, effectively blocking his strike.
Nio and the statue exchanged blows several times. The statue's sword was wide and heavy, different from Nio's longsword, and while that would give a great advantage to Nio, as no matter how big a sword is, if you have a good structure, you can block almost anything, the way the statue wielded the blade was not meant for offensive purposes, but crowd management, meaning that unless Nio was willing to lose an arm in the process, he couldn't get close.
And so he gave up on trying to overwhelm the statue with swordsmanship alone. He decided to rely on traps.
By dropping clusters of wind chakra strings on the ground from time to time, Nio was setting up his own version of a landmine.
And now, the trap was ready.
After forcibly disengaging the enemy, forcing the statue to make distance, Nio exploded all the wind chakra and saw the chaos with a wide smile.
BOOOOOM
The Stone Knight was not dumb, however, and quickly activated its intangibility in most of its body, disregarding some parts. However, it had lost its sight as the debris and dust rose into the air.
Naturally, being a creation of the late alleged strongest mage, it had ways to track its opponent.
Nio was expecting that, and so he did his best to mask his qi signature with his chakra and cursed energy, which he was certain the statue could not sense.
And it was a success, or a partial one at least. The statue did, in fact, become unable to sense Nio's current position due to its unfamiliarity with cursed energy and chakra, however, it began to adapt. It had learned that these unknown energies were linked to its opponent, and so it had immediately started trying to locate the position of Nio's chakra signature.
Thankfully, it lost too much time getting used to tracking chakra, and although it was only for a couple of seconds, Nio was able to close in and make use of this opening.
"Rasengan!"
Hitting a Rasengan in the hand holding the sword, he made it fly into the air a few meters.
Losing the sensation of holding its sword, the statue roared in fury and jumped in a frenzy trying to catch it.
Nio reacted fast enough and followed.
Water Breathing - 2nd Form - Water Wheel
As the statue was about to once again hold its sword, Nio's sword flashed in a circular motion and cut off its hand at the wrist.
'Got you!'
Twisting himself in the air and with a few bursts of wind chakra, Nio caught the Statue's sword, reinforced it with chakra, qi, cursed energy, and everything nice, before slamming it into the statue, sending it to the ground.
After that, Nio let himself fall to the ground with a superhero landing.
'Damn, my knees hurt.'
ROAAAR
Nio looked at the statue that roared in outrage. Soon, a black mist surged from behind the stone armor and rushed in various directions.
'This sensation, is it mana?'
Soon the mist wrapped around Nio as if it was solid and tried to crush him into blood mist.
'Shit! So fast!'
As Nio felt that he was about to die, he was suddenly let go as the statue was once again holding the sword, but the mist had not disappeared, lurking around waiting to once again crush Nio.
'This is bad. I need to end this.'
Dashing at great speed, Nio relied on his Sharingan and bloodline abilities to make sure that the mist did not react once again. In his right hand was his sword, and in his left a swirling rasengan.
Around him, the dark mist moved and solidified into various black blades, shooting at him at incredible speeds.
But Nio picked up their positions and trajectories pretty easily and successfully dodged.
He was now once again in close quarters with the knight. It raised its sword and prepared to strike with ferocious bloodlust, but Nio reacted faster and attacked with his rasengan.
Instead of using its intangibility, the statue blocked it with his sword by swinging it down to meet Nio's attack.
Booom
The clash was intense, but Nio persevered, and the sword was once again launched away from the black statue's hands.
But, before it could rage once again, Nio was already attacking.
Water Breathing - 4th Form - Striking Tide
Nio started delivering various slashes, each connected smoothly by the clean movements of the Water Breathing Style. Every time the statue turned intangible, the slash went through and immediately changed direction into slashing another part of the statue's body.
Crack Crack
Soon its armor started cracking and falling apart, revealing seven small carvings that seemed to serve as slots for cores. There was only one core intact, the others either weren't present or were destroyed.
Seeing this, Nio decided on what to do and stabbed in the direction of the gem, breaking it apart.
Rooooaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh
What seemed to be an attempt to roar turned into an awful scream as the statue finally stopped fighting and "died", as the black mist disappeared.
Nio took a deep breath.
"I won."