"Fuck!" Alicia yelled as another rock hit her shield. Like the one before, it crushed the wood, her remaining good arm, and threw her on the ground.
| Health points: 37 / 100 | -32
"Ahhhhhh!" she screamed in pain.
She wanted to buy a better shield, but the store only sold G-rank equipment. The worst part was that Shen had forewarned her about it. She should be dodging and deflecting with her sword, but the rocks came fast and casting spells while focusing on hitting projectiles with her weapon was impossible.
Alicia almost ran away to get out of range, but seeing Shen dodging, deflecting, parrying, and killing made her stay. She wanted AP too but now was not the time. Now, she had to do as much as she could—as little as it was—to help the person she wanted to help her.
So she clenched her jaw, stood up, and stopped casting spells.
Instead of helping with fireballs, she focused on dodging the few stones that came her way. Each stone thrown at her was one less thrown at him. It might even work as training of sorts.
And if it looked like she was about to die, she could still run away.
It didn't take her much longer to realize the obvious: she could use magic to defend herself. Shen had talked about magic barriers before, but she always considered attacks better because of the AP and had focused on it. Now was the perfect moment to learn how good mana was to deflect attacks.
So she dodged and did her best to become a more versatile mage.
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The F-ranks once again served as a tool to tire Shen or made him show his abilities to the E-ranks.
Unlike the Defenders, these Rockthrowers—what a pitiful name!—ran away from him when he approached. They did it somewhat orderly, even preemptively, keeping a minimum distance from him. It forced him to showcase how limited the Gale Footwork's Pursuit technique was. He had to actually cease using Pursuit to dodge and restart it after he dodged. Running normally made him too slow to gain any ground when he was under a constant barrage of attacks.
And a constant barrage it was.
The rocks came faster than he thought possible. Each throw started supersonic, as proved by the sonic boom of their release. The stones were heavy and kept their momentum well. Shen had to focus on dodging because using his spear on them would break his weapon.
The situation would be dire if it wasn't for his two advantages. First, the monsters never went closer to the third row than they had started. Pursuing them from the opposite direction was the easiest way to catch them. Second, they couldn't carry more than two rocks while running and had to reload at the piles, somewhat limiting the amount and angle of projectiles. Thanks to those, he eventually caught them.
Eventually.
The first werewolf took him five stamina points, which was a lot, especially since he had to kill ninety-nine more of them and had only one hundred stamina points total.
However, when he killed it—that part was easy because they had shitty fighting skills—it was one less Rockthrower to thwart his advance toward the others. Moreover, he was getting very good at dodging, taking the most out of his recently leveled Gale Footwork.
The most noticeable change was how fast he changed between distinct movements. The learning ability upgrade had assisted him in noticing connections, but when there were none, it only told him to get good at stopping one and starting another. So that's what he did, now taking the most out of his improved stats.
The second werewolf took him four stamina points.
The third took him one.
By the fourth, his movements were so effective that he dodged rocks by a hair's breadth. He swapped between dodging and pursuing so well that he reached the enemy fast and effortlessly, not even wasting a stamina point.
The usual carnage followed then.
After he killed the ninety F-ranks, the ten E-ranks acted.
Their piles of rocks had stayed untouched until now. Well, not rocks; theirs were solid iron balls. The moment Shen killed the last F-rank, the pile in front of each of them started floating to their side. Shen estimated about fifty balls to each one of them.
As usual, they moved to surround him while he rushed at them.
The spear was a fantastic weapon, but like any close-range one, it was limited by its reach. When enemies were far away, he had no choice but to get closer. He would find ways around it as he became a stronger cultivator, but it wouldn't come until the Fate Origin realm, at the very least.
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If it wasn't for his training with the F-ranks, he would've died in the first seconds of the exchange. The iron balls came so fast that he started dodging by fractions of inches not out of effectiveness but necessity. Even with his body filled with qi, that was his best. The Rockthrower he was running after also started running from him as soon as he turned its direction instead of waiting for a threshold like the F-ranks. To make things worse, it was faster than the previous weaklings too.
Shen was pushed to the limit, then surpassed it.
This time, it wasn't a Skill level up that made it, but a realization. The Pursuit move was different from all other moves because it wasn't made to be used to battle. Shen had bowed to the wisdom of his ancestors time and time again, correcting his wrong conclusions and technique usage after each fight. That had started aided him greatly.
Yet, it was also limiting him.
When there was no technique to erroneously blend, nothing to do incorrectly, it wasn't wrong to adapt a technique to his necessity, was it?
Martial arts were born out of necessity and to fulfill a purpose anyway. If Shen needed to achieve a goal not contained in his footwork, he might as well improve the footwork itself.
He would've considered that thought heresy a few days ago.
But now?
Now it became wings that let him soar.
Shen blended different abilities in his Pursuit, testing how well they did. Some of them were dropped even before he put them to the test, his mere expectations and experience letting him know they would suck together. Others performed poorly in the field.
And three of them were terrific.
The All-Encompassing Pursuit was based on the fact that the wind was everywhere and thus could know all there was. It was a predictive-dodging and running technique. Shen rushed ahead while paying attention to the tiniest details around him to predict the trajectory of incoming projectiles and dodge them without losing momentum.
Only nine enemies were attacking him while he ran against another. It wasn't hard to predict the projectiles' path after they were thrown, as fast as they were.
And yet, sometimes, a ball did a strange turn here or there. That's when his second self-created technique came in place.
The Whispering Transformation was based on the whispers of wind that all activity generated, though he used more than his hearing for it. It was actually a derivative technique from a few others in the Gale Footwork. It isolated the characteristics of micro corrections based on unexpected enemy actions.
If an attack became closer to him than expected, he would use his Whispering Transformation to change his movement without affecting whatever he was doing. It was the most adaptable move he had created, and he would need to constantly improve it to be usable with any and all techniques he knew.
So when the balls changed paths slightly, Shen adapted to them, and they missed.
Unfortunately, that still wasn't enough to deal with the last hurdle created by the very enemy he was pursuing. When he got a dozen yards away, the Rockthrower simply stopped running, turned, and started throwing as many rocks as it could, as fast as possible, against him.
Shen's answer to that was the third and boldest move.
The Unrelenting Pursuit was based on his Windstorm Spear Art rather than his Gale Footwork. You couldn't stop a storm by throwing things at it. It was an unstoppable force of nature that would arrive and bring destruction with it. Likewise, this move took advantage of his F+ resistance to simply take a beating and keep going.
The Gale Footwork was based on the Concepts of the Gale. Shen wasn't enlightened to them yet, yet a gale was definitely not unstoppable. It was elusive, focused on dodging. No move in it dealt with taking damage.
Shen had been ignoring that stat completely, but it was time to put it to good use.
He rushed at the enemy in Unrelenting Pursuit while also using the All-Encompassing Pursuit to deal with other projectiles. Iron balls came his way. Shen took the beating as best as he could, using his Whispering Transformation to minimize the damage taken with micro corrections, even dodging a few of them.
| Health points: 98 / 100 | -2
| Health points: 95 / 100 | -3
| Health points: 94 / 100 | -1
| Health points: 92 / 100 | -2
| Health points: 91 / 100 | -1
Eight balls were thrown at him before he reached his enemy. Five of them brushed on his skin or merely bumped, yet they still dealt damage.
And then he was upon the werewolf.
A swing of his spear, a head rolling, a corpse turning into light. The first E-rank was dead, and he had the key to deal with the others. This time, it didn't matter if they had watched his action, for he could deal with them the same way.
Killing ensued.
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Shen thrust his spear, and the last Rockthrower died.
| Enhanced Werewolf Rockthrower (E) | 5,882 → 5,982 AP
E-ranks gave 100 AP, which pleased him. Alicia, however, was having trouble helping or even surviving. On the bright side, her survivability was definitely increasing.
He turned to her. She had two broken arms and was panting but had a satisfied half-smile on her face.
"I did it," she said victoriously. "I can use magic to defend myself! And it's much easier to do than creating fireballs too!"
Shen smiled back. "Good. We'll attack the Techmages when you're healed." That was the name of the people with mystical bracelets. "You might get some ideas from them too if their name is any indication."
She nodded and unceremoniously threw her body on the ground.
"Fuck, it hurts," she said, looking at her arms. "But not as much as I thought it would."
"Either the tutorial or the system numbs pain quickly," Shen pointed out the obvious, then sat himself to think about his fight and how to improve.
Alicia surprised him though. "I believe you. You're really from an ancient Asian-like nation."
"Oh." He noticed she still didn't say she was sorry for doubting him or offending him. That was the cultural difference he was having the most trouble adapting to. "What made you change your mind?"
"The way you fight... Some of it can be explained by stats, but I saw the people around me fighting in the first stage, and I met two others before meeting you in this stage." Her voice strained a little, but she continued, "They were nothing like you. I think even a martial artist nutjob from today can't be as good. Not at our age. Maybe not ever."
Shen nodded. "The cultivators who created the techniques I used tapped in the secrets of the universe itself. I can't comprehend it, but the Concept of Gale and the Concept of Windstorm, both from the Laws of Wind, are in all my moves." That wasn't a secret, so he had no problem telling her that. "Your martial artists are likely still good for their levels though. The biggest difference between us is that there's only so much you can accomplish and so many variations you can apply to a mortal body. I have strength, agility, elasticity, and reaction times that let me do much more than those who could only study up to the mortal limits."
"I see. Makes sense."
Shen smiled slightly, then waited a few moments. Seeing she had nothing else to say, he closed his eyes and reviewed his battle. Once he was done, he stood up to train his corrections.
Alicia was still not fully healed by the end of it, but instead of listening about the mortal world, he prioritized his cultivation this time.
Shen sat down again and focused inwards.