His initial strikes worked amazingly well, so of course Alexander wasn’t surprised when his opponent adapted. The Metal Slime Prince seemed smart enough for it, but he silently cursed the creature anyways. It felt like a spar against Matsuha all over again, where the smaller statured man would roll, twist, and turn with each of his strikes and bleed away some of the momentum and force or even turn the blow completely aside. Still, his attacks had only been lessened in effectiveness rather than outright nullified, so he pushed onward as Zhan’s form wavered and shifted. The fact that he had not yet received a single counter attack from his opponent only encouraged Alexander to press on; Zhan probably couldn’t risk the loss of whatever material it devoted to an attack.

As he was forced to fling handful after handful of the metallic fluid, Alexander disengaged with a huff of frustration. The fight had already dragged out longer than any of their other encounters and at his current rate, he would need quite a bit of time to rip Zhan down to size. Apparently his decision to disengage proved to be correct, even if he didn’t particularly like it, as Ares voice echoed in his mind. Without a word he retreated to the stairs and up them towards the handy statue Senna had discovered earlier, intending to use it before the medallion’s effects wore off.