The moment the two fists collided, a terrifying shock wave rippled through the dense vegetation of the forest, killing any early-stage entity-level being who was in a 50 km radius from the eye of the event, and most mid-stage entities were injured. The wise and experienced beasts and entities always knew that they had to stay 50 km away from the territory of the king ape. The collision made Solanky take a dozen steps back, while the king ape took only one of those steps back. The moment the king ape stabilized its body, it roared in excitement and started beating its chest loudly. With every beat, one could see sparks of flames emitted the moment its hand landed on its chest, which was ten million times harder than diamonds from earth.
Solanky looked at the ape in confusion, but he still maintained caution because from the clash before, he realized that the king ape didn't give it his all and seemed to hold back. The king ape then walked forward and said, "This is the first time someone has actually matched me in terms of strength when I burned the first layer of my three layers of body amplification, and you seemed to even hold back against me. That's really nice. Thank the transcendents for giving me this opportunity to test my full strength and test my limits. What do you say? If I win, you will refine a thousand of the candies for me?" Solanky, interested, looked at the king ape and said, "If you lose to me, you will guard these travelers till they get out of the forest. Is it a deal?" The king ape laughed heartily and said you have a big humor for a being of your size, and it agreed to the conditions. The king ape roared in excitement and activated the second layer of his body amplification technique.
The moment it did so, the orange flame burning on the horns seemed to shift downwards to the second section of its horn, which had three sections in total. Based on Solanky's observation, he realized that the ape's amplification was connected to the sections of horns it had grown in its entire lifetime. The orange flames kept burning, and it finally descended to the third section of the horn; at that moment, a terrifying aura spread out from the king ape, suppressing every being except Solanky in the forest. The body of the king ape began shrinking from its giant towering form to just eight feet, its fiery horns seemed to burn eternally, and its back straightened, and it stood perfectly on its two legs like a human.
The king ape before Solanky now looked nothing like the giant ape from before with a hideous appearance, but the transformed ape before him now carried an aura of majesty around him. It now looked like a furry human with shiny, glassy orange fur around every inch of its body with the exception of its face, which was smooth as jade, and above its head were now burning horns. On its chest was a breastplate formed from strange precious metals with two elongated arms with four sharp claws on each finger of each arm, and behind it was a long metallic tail, which segregated into twelve sections with sparks of flames inside them.
The aura of the king ape soared again to 600,000 times the power of an I.S.G. before coming to a halt. The king ape instantly dashed towards Solanky at incredible speed. Solanky, knowing that his forsaken body isn't strong enough for a head-on collision with the much more powerful king ape this time round, activated the body armor Commander Hanks gave him earlier, but it could only amplify his disguised forsaken body to 450,000 times, which was very lucky compared to the king ape before him. Before Solanky could think of how he should handle the situation without exposing his true identity and aura to the transcendent beings watching from afar, a palm strike landed on his chest, and he was sent flying several kilometers back, crashing into a mountain in the distance.
Solanky felt that without the protection of the armor, his forsaken disguise would be instantly killed and he would be exposed. He looked at his chest region and saw a palm print dented on his armor with several tiny nets of cracks spreading from the impacted region. The king ape said, "You forsaken have really good defensive treasures and artifacts, but I think I would have to spend very little energy in destroying this armor of yours. Don't worry, I am not going to kill you because I need you to refine some special pills and treasures for me."
After hearing this, Solanky came up with an idea, which was to lose this battle but refine a pill that would help him control the king ape, but he scrapped that because he knew that those old transcendent beings in hiding watching from afar would instantly notice his refinement skills, which were comparable to some of the powerful transcendent alchemists and craftsmanship. He then started to go through the skills and techniques left behind by his predecessors while evading the attacks of the king ape.
With the brutal fighting skills of the king ape, the techniques Solanky combed through were far inferior in terms of movement techniques, making the king ape a difficult opponent to deal with. Without him exposing himself by using his own self-created techniques to fight the ape.