Chapter 77: Floor-200 Debut: Yusuke vs. Gido
Gido had no lower legs. In their place was a goblet-shaped prosthetic, the base removed so only the stem column remained. Combined with his naturally short build, he looked like a little person who had been stuffed into a wine glass.
"Hmph! Kid! You're lucky to be fighting me!"
The moment the referee called start, Gido deployed his signature weapons: ten spinning tops lined up and spinning at high speed along his crutch.
"Take this! Battle Waltz!"
The crutch shook and all ten tops surged toward Yusuke at once.
For Ross, it was like watching a live-action Beyblade tournament.
The tops were not all spinning in the same direction. Half ran clockwise, half counterclockwise. Each top's rotation generated small air vortices around itself, giving all ten completely different movement trajectories.
Unstoppable.
The current Yusuke clearly had no reliable answer for targets this small and this numerous. But his brain was working.
Faced with a wave of small units swarming from all directions, Yusuke arrived at his conclusion almost immediately.
These little things are a pain to deal with. Go straight for the main body.
Without another thought, Yusuke charged directly at Gido.
In fairness, this was genuinely the best solution available at the moment. Unfortunately, a fighter who had won four matches at the two-hundredth floor had obviously considered exactly this situation already.
"Not a bad choice, but... it won't work."
The moment those words were out, Gido channeled his Nen instantly into his lower prosthetic, and his entire body began spinning clockwise at high speed.
"Tornado Tops!"
This was Gido's signature killing technique, developed specifically for ring combat: simultaneously offensive and defensive.
Yusuke's Nen-charged fist connected with Gido solidly. But it barely produced a pause before the powerful spinning force, also loaded with Nen, deflected it sideways with almost no resistance. The arm was thrown off-angle hard enough that Yusuke's whole shoulder followed through and slammed in.
Unsurprisingly, Yusuke went flying.
"Knockdown! Two points!"
The ringside referee called it the instant Yusuke hit the floor on his back.
"Damn it!"
More offended than hurt, Yusuke scrambled upright immediately. The points were still gone.
The moment he was back on his feet, two of the small tops collided with each other, and one of them launched like a guided shot directly at Yusuke.
Yusuke, with excellent dynamic vision and reaction speed, punched it out of the air.
"Heh heh heh heh. Nice block. Doesn't matter though."
Gido was quite pleased with himself. When someone is pleased with themselves, their mouth tends to keep going. He had the particular air of someone who wanted his opponent to understand exactly why they were losing.
"The first time I rose to the two-hundredth floor, I was baptized. I came away with this unbeatable body at the cost of my two legs!"
"I become the top for defense. The Battle Tops handle offense. Simple as it looks, in this ring I am invincible!"
Gido's Nen and his body rotated smoothly together, his voice barely affected by the high-speed spinning, coming through clearly.
At that point, a shout from the spectator seats cut through the noise.
"Yusuke! Don't fight him head-on! Stall for time! He'll collapse on his own!"
Kuwabara's voice had easily cleared everything else in the arena. Ross and Kurama both involuntarily covered their right ears.
"Kuwabara. Calm down."
Kurama spoke first.
"Even ordinary people can train to handle the dizziness from the semicircular canals. A professional fighter at this level can probably keep going indefinitely."
"So he can just keep spinning forever?"
Kuwabara asked with genuine disbelief.
"Yes. As long as his Nen holds, he can keep spinning. It's an application of Hatsu, one of the four foundational Nen techniques. In essence it's the same principle as your Spirit Sword, just a different usage pattern."
Seeing that Kuwabara genuinely didn't follow Gido's combat logic, Ross started explaining.
"Gido is almost certainly Manipulation type. Unlike you, who projects the Spirit Sword directly from your Nen, he channels Nen into his prosthetic and those tops to amplify their inherent kinetic energy.
"Think of it this way: Gido's Nen is the fuel, the prosthetic and tops are the engine. As long as the fuel keeps flowing, the tops keep spinning.
"Generally, manipulating an object costs Nen in proportion to its mass and size. Smaller and lighter objects cost less. Gido's prosthetic and tops are both small and light. At his level of Nen, keeping them running for several hours shouldn't be a problem."
While thinking through Gido's ability, Ross found himself comparing it to the Little Tyrant, and the comparison did not favor the Little Tyrant at all when it came to power consumption.
"So this human top has no weaknesses?"
Kuwabara, having mentally put himself in Yusuke's position and immediately concluded he would have no idea what to do either, asked with visible frustration.
"It's clearly a ring-combat scoring specialist build, but observe carefully and there are plenty of gaps."
Kurama took over the evaluation.
"Nen in theory only enhances an object's inherent kinetic form. Tops are not intelligent objects. Even at low individual cost, maintaining multi-line control over ten simultaneously must produce additional strain. For them to consistently track and attack Yusuke, Gido must have embedded a specific Nen trigger inside them.
"A trigger like that only has so many possible forms. Either they react to Yusuke's Nen, or they're responding to body heat, magnetic field, or electromagnetic signals."
"Oh! Like Ross's Tracking Shurikens!"
Kuwabara, who had already seen the Tracking Shuriken Type I in action, put it together immediately.
"But the core issue is still Gido himself. As long as he doesn't go down, even if Yusuke forces the tops to stop, all Gido needs is a moment to reinject Nen and they'll spin up again. And it barely costs him anything..."
While the three of them worked through the match, Yusuke had already taken three more hits from the tops striking blind-spot positions through their irregular collisions, losing another three points. The tip of his right index finger was glowing. He leapt into the air, took aim at the still-spinning Gido below, and fired.
"SPIRIT GUN!"
A massive blue-white energy blast surged out.