Nic stabbed out, aiming for the breach in the beast’s armor. It struck his blow away, parrying easily with his spear, and stole enough force from the exchange to surge up from the mud. Its knee swept towards his head, and Nic was forced to lurch back.
The spear struck out once, twice-
It had clearly been feigning weakness before, but now it showed its own strength, its own skill-
And yet, Nic still sensed nothing behind its blows. There was no killing intent, no billowing aura that spoke of the combatant’s fury, nothing but cold, restrained strikes that hissed through the air, the spear bending like an adder.
Nic used his Hand of Ash to strike the blow aside, and stabbed Peacemaker into the earth. Without hesitation he summoned the flame deva from within the greatsaber, a wisp of fire erupting skywards and taking on a four-armed, flame-headed shape as Peacemaker’s spirit came out to play.
“Bind him.” Nic commanded.
With a nod, the flame spirit shot forward, darting around the praetorian to try and pincer it between them. Nic lifted his arms, slipping into a new martial stance- more aggressive, more pressuring. With a shrug of his shoulders he expanded into his Warform.
Towering, corded muscle erupted into being. Two arms became six, his legs fusing into a massive scaly tail. The ancient naga opened its mouth and hissed, Nic’s newly empowered strength surging up through every one of its six heavy limbs.
Ten arms against two.
With a joined roar Nic and Peacemaker crashed down on the enemy. The mud surged upwards, binding its feet. Peacemaker’s arms wrapped around the armored figure’s stomach, her other set grasping it from beneath the shoulders to immobilize its spear. Nic’s ashen palm strikes slammed down on the defenseless praetorian like a meteor shower, testing that armor to its limit, the metal slowly bending, deforming, being hammered out of shape…
Suddenly the praetorian’s head snapped back, ramming into Peacemaker’s vague, blurred face. The deva was sent stumbling, her arms briefly releasing the praetor’s limbs. In another moment she was gone, her three breaths of time expiring.
It was a momentary weakness, but it was enough for the beast to free his spear-arm and strike out three times in quick succession. So much power had built in its body that the spear was like a comet, a shooting star of blurred steel.
It struck across three of Nic’s arms in quick succession, spilling blood and rupturing tendons from each.
Nic had seen that his enemy relied on stealing force, and was giving him all he needed.
It wasn’t a misstep, but a purposeful choice to meet the enemy head-to-head. That was his best chance of coming to understand the Technique that was the real goal of this Trial…
And in the worst case, Nic was confident he could burrow through the earth to escape.
But it hadn’t come to that yet.
As the spear surged towards Nic’s throat, he activated one of the twin runes of his new armor, which was flexible enough to transform with his body. Instantly his speed surged to a new height, the world seeming to slow as the spear solidified from a blur into a solid object.
His hand slashed upwards and caught the weapon underneath its glinting point.
Two blows slammed into the praetor’s knees, breaking its flowing, circular movements, breaking the cycle that allowed it to hold on to its stolen strength.
Nic’s tail whipped around and struck it from the side, knocking it clear into the pagoda. One of the glinting, steely thorns scratched against its shoulder, tearing clean through the armor and stealing blood from below.
Nic grinned. So that’s how it was…
The weapon that could pierce his enemy’s armor, built into the trial. The System really could be ruthless, hiding the thing you needed most in plain sight.
He drew out a talisman of healing and slapped it against his chest. Flowing light spread through his body and repaired his injured arms.
The praetorian stood back up, gasping, struggling to breath under its battered armor. The dents were so deep they would barely give its chest room to expand, trapping it in a prison of broken metal.
Nic was surprised, honestly, how well he was dominating this D-Class opponent…
It seemed to have no Shards of its own. Instead, it relied solely on one supreme technique, and Nic had already found the weaknesses, the ways to pull apart that unassailable strength.
And Nic was used to fighting, not just E-Class enemies, but the peak of that rank. A ‘normal’ opponent who had made it to D-Class might have access to greater brute force, but at this point, Nic’s strength was D-Class in its own right, and nearly peak D-Class at that.
It was his techniques, his killing voice, and his other advantages that made him deadly.
He was finding this fight faintly refreshing, after living on the edge so long.
But as the knight advanced, Nic opened his crystalline eyes. Golden informational runes flooded across the world, and he wiped away the irrelevant details to focus solely on one thing…
How power moved within the praetorian’s body.
How it was stealing, cycling, returning each of his blows.
The praetorian lunged at him, and Nic knocked the blow aside, already knowing the force of his hand clashing against the spear would build the enemy’s strength. That was what he wanted. As they fought, Nic focused on defense, parrying each strike and letting the next one come faster, faster, faster…
The Mistwater Step’s illusionary fog built up around him as Nic continued to dance, seeing how long he could hold out against the flurry of blows. His arms were blurs of blue-orange scale, meeting the silver comet of the spear in endless, ringing exchanges. Wounds began to claw across his flesh, thin traces of blood flying into the air-
But Nic was learning. With every movement, he was watching how the praetorian moved his aura with precision and grace, keeping it flowing unendingly from the points of contact where his feet touched the earth up into his arm and back down, creating a river of power. That was the most basic level…
A single river. Every cultivator practiced this kind of movement, trying to flood aura to the muscles that were in use and cycle it away from elsewhere, ensuring nothing was wasted.
What made the praetorian unique was that it had split its single cultivation into distinct flows, into ‘waves’ that accumulated and moved within its body. When those waves collided it could utterly explode with strength. When they separated, that strength vanished. The result was a fast, rhythmic style, predictable but completely deadly to anyone who lacked the raw ability to keep up and read the rhythm…
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Each blow Nic delivered simply split the waves apart, dividing its strength further, giving it more points of collision….
And as those waves returned, its strength became eight-fold, ten-fold…
Its spear punctured through an illusion’s throat, and in that moment, Nic unleashed the Ghost-Mirror Waterveil.
In that moment, he used what he had learned. The Ghost-Mirror was also a reflecting technique, one that stole power from a mistaken attack aimed at an illusion. It could benefit from this strange folding and shaping of waves, this rhythmic dance…
Instead of releasing the force of the attack directly back at its source, Nic absorbed that strength, folded it into the Mistwater Step’s flowing rhythm. More and more illusions fell to the praetorian’s spear, and each time the waves grew higher, until Nic was straining to hold on to such an unsteady and unruly torrent of power.
And so he released it.
One by one, the illusions summoned by the Mistwater Step exploded into sprays of water droplets, each flicking out with the force of a giant’s fist, heavy pearls of black water and shining white water. There were countless such droplets in the air, each exploding as it touched the earth, the spear, the hand that wielded it.
The praetorian was knocked away and sent flying.
In the moment of disoriented, confused stumbling, Nic saw his opportunity and spoke aloud.
DIE.
His tail whipped around and seized the praetorian by the waist, throwing it against the thorned pillars of the pagoda. The whole structure shook as the armor failed, the praetor letting out a final shriek as it was impaled on the thorns…
Nic’s palm slammed down, hammering its head into a long, curved spike. The end of the thorn pierced out through the slit of its visor and through the back of his hand.
The trial ended with the chime of a bell.
Congratulations
A Trial defeated, a step taken towards the stars.
Your performance can be considered “Excellent”
Your reward is 30,000 Essence
In addition
Your progress on the new technique will be codified
Nic felt energy surge into him as the crystals shattered, dissolving into motes of Essence that rushed into his flesh. It was too much. His limit was only around 27,000 - the excess burned away from him in pale streams of rainbow-colored fire, leaving him gasping, his cultivation surging in his chest. His entire body shimmered with afterglow as he flicked open his cultivation map.
Essence 27,653 / 27,653
+ 25.696 per Minute
(3.212 Base)
300% Local Modifier
+ 100% Dominion
+ Devoured an E-Class enemy (200%)
+ Consumed a F-Class treasure (100%)
+ Rested in toxic environment (300%)
Demonic Essence &%##!~
Titles -
Witness of the New Dao
---
Bloodline Progenitor
(You are the first of your kind. All costs related to innate abilities are halved. Title is lost if you lose your current form without furthering the bloodline.)
Ferocious Beast
(Rewards 18,500 First Wave Credits to your killer. Increase bounty by 500 with each Native you kill. Each dawn, gain credits equal to one tenth of your bounty.)
Sage-Artisan
(The Hand of Ash and Mistwater Veil techniques are recognized as your creation, and all costs related to them are halved.)
The Mistwater Veil technique…
He grinned. Euphoria was flooding through his veins, but this made it feel all the sweeter. He had made the technique his own…
Slipping into the lotus position, he looked across his options for the haul of Essence.
Cultivation Base (Unranked)
XIV Physical Strength (Completed)
III Mental Acuity (854/8,000)*
IV Spiritual Clarity (11,283/16,000)*
IV Gift of Life (904/15,000)
IV Mistwater Step (742/15,000)
The Old Speech (0/50,000)
Enhancing his Mistwater Step by another boundary was tempting, especially considering how his new technique augmented it…
Mire-Caller (F)
Calls to and creates binding masses of mud, sludge, or tar. A powerful Shard for binding and controlling that requires work and imagination to master.
II Base Enhancement (614/2,000)
Add Aura Efficiency (0/1,000)
I Secondary Slot (0/50,000)
Mire-Drowned Remnants (0/50,000)
Futile Struggle (10,53/50,000)
Mire-Dweller (Complete)
Clay Idols (0/50,000)
His original plan, a while ago now, had been to unlock Futile Struggle for Mire-Caller and progress its Base Enhancement to the next large stage, receiving a vision to help him find the Shard’s focus.
And definitely, if he didn’t invest eventually, the Shard would begin to lag behind…
Techniques (30% Capacity)
Eight-Eyed Mantle (2,144/13,000)
Inner Sacrifice Cauldron Technique (1,514/6,500)
III Hand of Ash (318/3,250)
Mistwater Veil (0/6,500)
But the Mistwater Veil was beyond tempting. In the end, Nic could only sigh and promise to himself he’d split the difference evenly. This first batch was spent on raising the Mistwater Step by one last grade, which left him just short of being able to raise the Veil twice…
Grimacing he dumped the 12,500 points into Futile Struggle instead. His next Trial would let him break through and unlock that ability…
His next Trial…
Nic grinned to himself.
Today was going to be a busy day.