I retracted my claws and embraced a different form of combat. Clapping my hands, I smacked the floor and grasped the dirt. Converting minerals and elements into iron and hardening whatever carbon I could grasp into a diamond point, I channeled the power of the Rider through my transmuted wave of spears. Black matter trailed after them as they swung; a trail of dark and burning death.

Zhao leapt higher than I’d ever seen him jump before. The grin on his face stretched from ear to ear as he reveled in his newfound strength and abilities. He didn’t know what I could do, not really, not if he was drawing on the experience of my own blades like I thought he was. Dodging was his only recourse.

Considering he was now in the air and couldn’t fly, I had a chance to take advantage of that. Soaring up to meet him, I clapped my hands and threw out a fist just as I was on the same level as him. Black matter emerged just as the transmutation completed, turning the result into a fluid substance.

When Zhao launched fire at the potential mass, it super-converged and congealed in his direction – this gelatinous blackness exploded as frozen fire, the dry ice equivalent to black matter that turned to a toxic fog in contact with his bending… and it stuck to whatever skin was available.