Experience

By the time Isaac was trapped in the black box ability, Messa and his opponent were able to distance themselves an entire block away from their battle.

"So, looks like you're eager to fight your own as well, huh?"

The enemy nods their head.

"Not much of a talker, huh? I can respect that. After all..."

Messa claps his hands together, summoning a hula hoop sized ring blade.

"We've got much more important things to do than just standing around and talking, right?"

Actually, he could be saying something, I just might not be able to hear him with the gas mask he has on. We are about 10 meters apart, after all. Messa thought.

Messa's first strategy was simple. Use his superior range with his weapon in order to chip down the enemy's defences and force him to make a mistake. It was a simple strategy, but Messa firmly believed to only use tactics that required the least brain-power, since mentally tiring yourself out will affect your Psynesis energy output as well.

But he quickly finds out that he will likely need a slightly more complex plan than that when the enemy jumps over his first attack, and Messa punish attack phases through him, resulting in him getting kicked in the face with a mentally charged attack!

He slides backward a few feet, but since he was able to protect his face with the correct form of defense.

So he prefers mental attacks, then? It's likely that his ability is a Spectralist ability that allows him to phase through attacks, but it's also possible that I was just hit with an illusion, since I didn't have my mental defenses up until now. But usually if I was hit with an attack that would make me hallucinate without any way for me to sense it, then there would likely be some sort of downside, like a special condition for it to activate. It could be that me trying to talk to him was the trigger...

Messa stops his thoughts there, and first tries to figure out if he was hit with an illusion attack or not. Since his mental defenses are up across his body, then it's likely that he's no longer being affected by anything like that anymore.

Then, even if not enhancing his body with physical power will weaken the power of his arms, and thus, reduce the power of his ring blade attacks, he still decided to attack with it. The enemy does a little jump, and sure enough, the attack phased right through him!

So either the illusion effects can stick onto me after I put up my mental defenses, or it's the Spectralist ability. Going to just assume it's the other one.

"Hey, why aren't your clothes getting harmed?"

"Because my clothes are part of me."

"No they aren't. Were you born with your clothes?"

"Doesn't matter. I use them to express myself, so they're a part of me."

"What, so you just wear gas masks for fun?"

"Absolutely."

"I respect that."

This guy is simple. I like that. Simple guys are usually easy to befriend... and to defeat. Of course, there are... exceptions.

Messa's thoughts remind him of someone he wanted to not think about. This sudden and random event causes Messa to focus himself on the battle to an intense degree, as an attempt to distract himself. He starts by tossing the huge hula hoop ring aside, with the ring slowly rolling past the enemy...

That little hop proved to me that you have to use it on your entire body at once. You can't use it on the ground since you'll just fall into the ground, after all!

It's only a second later when the ring makes a sound summoning another ring that the enemy realized that the casually rolling ring blade was an attack! The ring summoned from it was used to anchor it to the ground by summoning another ring of the same size partially inside the ring blade, making a ven diagram shape. But, that was just a decoy! While the enemy still had his eyes on Messa as he was getting rushed by him, the unknown sound caused him to jump back, since that's the only time when he's untouchable.

That action was exactly what Messa wanted him to do! Messa feigned his attack on the enemy before he jumped back, and when he did, Messa dived towards the enemy's feet! The moment the enemy lands on the ground, Messa grabs his feet, then creates rings partially embedded in the ground to tightly squeeze around his hands and the enemy's feet to keep them to the ground!

If I prevent you from jumping, then you can't use that powerful ability!

Messa swings his knees into the enemy for a powerful physical attack! The enemy leans backwards in pain, but Messa wasn't done yet! He keeps the momentum from his legs going to deliver a mentally charged kick just under the enemy's chin! The enemy wasn't prepared for Messa to switch to mental attacks so quickly, that they blocked it incorrectly!

A moment passes as the enemy leans farther and farther backwards. It takes longer than Messa to would like to admit for him to figure out that he'd already won the fight.

He undoes his ring summons, and lets the enemy fall to the ground. After using Mind's Body he's able to see that the amount of Psynesis energy that the enemy's showing off has dropped below the average human, indicating that he has been knocked out.

But, I still need to test to see if he's using Body's Mind.

Messa gives the enemy a swift, unpowered punch to the face! They don't even flinch.

Yeah, if he was using Body's Mind, then their instincts would have made them dodge the attack, no matter how much they wanted to fake being knocked out.

Man, I knew I said you'd be easy to defeat, but that was just disappointing.

Messa then heads back to Isaac's position, finding the black box that he was trapped in. After a minute or two of waiting, the black box is shattered into pieces! What Messa saw however, was something quite exciting to him.

Messa planned this fight to awaken Isaac's fighting instincts, but what he got was... a little more extreme. Messa was hoping to see the enemy defeated, but not broken.

He's progressing much faster than I thought. Wonderful.

"Yo! Over here!"

"Ah, Messa! I-"

"No need to excuse yourself! They're our enemies, we don't need to show them any sympathy!"

Isaac doesn't respond.

"Regardless, we need to head inside!"

"...Yeah."

Is all Isaac could get out, as he realizes who he likely has to fight next.