What ozpin wasn't aware of despite being aware of leon's treatment of grim was that the essence of grim didn't get diluted just because it had birthed a grim. over the years hunters showed more violent tendencies but not even ozpin who was aware of how salem had been corrupted realized the source. everyone simply thought that it was a natural result of being a hunter for so long when in fact it was because of the minute amounts of essence of grim that they got exposed to. leon thanks to his habits was being exposed to far more than almost any other hunter.
Leon himself wasn't realizing the problem thanks to his semblance healing the damaged parts of him and the stabilizing ability of the falna. much like salem leon's body was becoming attuned to the destructive tendencies of the essence of grim. thanks to the divine origin of the essence however the falna was sucking it up before it became noticeable making the corrupting process far slower than it would have been otherwise. add in the addition of the sharingan and leons almost entirely unaffected personality wise despite how much of the essence he was in contact with regularly.
"The next match up is between li ren and blake belladonna." leon said snapping the students out of their shock. this matchup was a little special since honestly neither of the two had any huge flaws in their combat style. the problem both had instead was that they were both capable of long range combat as well as close range but weren't set on either. this led to them being ok at both styles but not nearly as good as someone who focused on only one. if they were over the top genius's like ruby or leon they could use talent to fix this but neither of them were that talented.
The match took far longer than any of the other matches thanks to how evenly matched in every regard the two of them were. in the end blake just barely won after the two of them decided to just devolve the fight into a slug fest. ren had martial arts training but lacked experience using it against people but blake was the exact opposite thanks to her time in the white fang where she mainly fought other people. in this instance of skill versus experience , experience won out narrowly.
The only matches after that worth mentioning was yang and nora's in which both of them were pit against ranged fighters. both of them had the same difficulty dealing with pure ranged opponents while their opponents couldn't survive close combat and needed to work on that. it showed too since after yang was irritated enough by the potshots she burst out with her rage fueled semblance that boosted all of her stats enough to close the distance and lay down the hurt. that semblance made yang the perfect example of the type of person you don't want to piss off.
Theoretically speak yang's semblance worked similar to the hulks power in that the angrier she was the more of a boost her semblance gave her. nora's semblance however was much more similar to leons own semblance in that she absorbed an energy type to strengthen herself. the biggest difference was that leons semblance made him pretty much immortal while hers only gave her a base improvement as well as an extra temporary one if she was exposed to electricity. if they were put on a ladder to determine which was superior leons would be easily five or six rungs higher up than hers and towards the top of the ladder.
It wasn't the most powerful version of that type of semblance however as the semblances that gave the ability to actually transform oneself into their element along with the other benefits won that category easily. in leons case he would not only be nigh immortal but also untouchable since attacks would just pass through him harmlessly. if for whatever reason he was blown apart elementization would let him reassemble without any trouble at all.
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