CHAPTER 35 - Turf war
I start my training with some basic exercises to warm up before starting with the adjustments of my martial arts.
I try to experiment with a few things I have in mind. Moves that include high jumps over more than 2 meters high or even running in vertical walls for a few seconds.
I don’t come up with anything crazy, but with a lot of moves that may prove useful in some situations. However, I can’t wait and try to get better with qi.
I focus on moving it in different ways, yet only the one I have been using works. I experiment to try and recreate a slingshot for example with the materialization of qi to try and use it to throw big rocks at my enemies.
At first, it seems like it could work, it is a similar notion as adding an additional layer of it to my hand resembling a blade.
Far from the truth though, the blade I came up with, is a one or two-time thing I can only keep up for a split second at a great cost of qi. Whenever I try to do the same over a larger space like with the slingshot and for a larger amount of time it just doesn’t work.
It’s not like I lack enough qi, which I do too, but the main problem is my concentration not being good enough to maintain the tangible form of it. It is already hard for me to do it when manifesting the blade for more than a couple of seconds, so it's even harder to expand it and move it around as intended as with the slingshot.
I try a few more times with changes to the way I make it tangible and even with my approach to make it maintain its form. However, the moment I change my focus from maintaining it in the physical world to expanding it, it starts to crumble, losing all energy and shape in a go.
I go at it for a long while, but in the end, I run out of qi to continue practicing and I eat as it recharges before leaving base camp to look around the place.
I expand my range around the camp a bit to try and look for some animals, and I end up finding a rabbit to hunt after hours of aimlessly walking.
Not giving up on the food in front of me, I grab a small rock from the ground. It is around one-third of my fist, and with an unmatched aim, I hit it on the back of its head, showing just how much my practice lessons with throwing all kinds of things paid off.
I am best with a knife, but now I can throw a little bit of everything just fine. I am sure that if I were to throw the spear that I first shot and badly missed, I would nine out of ten times hit the head or heart of that rat.
I shake my thoughts about useless stuff and fetch the rabbit, going back to base to prepare it and store it in some way so that it won't attract any predators. Not before a quick check though, I want to know if it has mutated or changed his internal structure in some way.
While it is a good idea to look for clues inside monsters and beast bodies coming from the other sides, I am not going to pass any chance to look for changes in our native species.
Who are we to tell if we are going to be the first living beings to adapt to any change in the environment? Every new native animal I meet from now on is a new source of intel I need to gather just to assess how the situation develops.
I go back to my little hideout and call it a day after practicing some more after dinner.
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Days go by just like that and I find myself exploring the forest again.
‘Today something is different, I am exploring farther from base than normal, and it is already late in the afternoon yet there are no sounds at all in the forest.’
The forest, which every other day at this hour would be filled with sounds of small animals like birds, frogs, insects, and a lot more wildlife. Is now deadly silent.
I look around and try to watch out for a possible ambush, thinking that I may have been the target of a threat I have not seen untill now in the area.
Minutes pass, and there are no signs of anything stalking me. I make sure to enhance my senses to the maximum and look for clues, yet I can’t spot anything weird apart from the lack of sounds.
Seconds tick by and all of a sudden a roar like no other shocks the place.
I look in the direction of where it came from and can’t hold out as my curiosity gets the best out of me and I start running to the sound. Not long after, I am hiding while crunching in a bush near a small clearing where two beasts confront each other.
On one side, a giant bear of at least 3 meters stands his ground. The fur on its chest area is covered by a layer of what seems to be compressed rocks.
The layer works as both a chest plate and shield against a torrent of lighting that is raining upon it at the moment. I feel amazed at the armored bear, but even more at the beast it is fighting right now.
On the other side of the clearing, a small white fox with a black tail stays proud while barking at the bear. The small animal seems cute at first sight, but after a closer look, I can feel the dread as more lighting gathers behind it, preparing for another barrage.
The bear roars again into the air, it does something around him that makes the stones in the ground around it start to orbit around him and create another coating layer of stone and dirt around it. Definitely trying to prepare to block the next barrage of miniature thunder.
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Soon enough, the fox commands the thunderbolts to shoot at the bear, which stays unfazed against the barrage, negating most of the electricity with the dirt accumulated in its chest.
The fight goes on for a while and I can’t help but feel in awe, ensnared by the beauty and the sheer amount of power in the attacks of both beasts.
Each time the fox creates a new bunch of thunderbolts, it tries to hit the weak points of the bear, only for it to move just in time to either dodge it or tank it with its chest. All the while, the fox circles the clearing trying to get a good angle while dodging the rock spikes that ever so often appear from below it trying to pierce the fox's stomach.
Apart from being amazed, I try to figure out how they are doing it. I know that their powers do not come from qi as there are no leftovers of it in the clearing.
I enhance as much as I can my senses and try to imbue my qi with my will to expand it and reach closer to the fight to see what they are using to power up their attacks, but it's hard.
Not only is the qi in the area all in chaos, but the energy they are using is not easy to catch and most of my focus needs to be used just to maintain my short-reaching qi thread.
I can only make out the shapes that their energy is taking. I try to look inside the shapes and try to decipher the flow of the energy to know where it comes from, which “track” it follows, and where it goes in the end, but with no results.
I can’t even reach most of their attacks before they throw them at each other, and by the time I get closer enough to reach one of the shaped energy of the next barrage, their next attacks destroy my thread of qi, and whatever progress I may have accomplished.
However, I do not despair. A few days ago, I wouldn’t even be able to use my will in tandem with my qi to take the form I wanted, making me mad at the impossibility to even try and get close.
Accepting I can’t discover anything by sensing it for now, I keep watching over the fight.
I wait for the conclusion of the fight while I analyze all the possibilities of this new power I discover and start to develop future counters to it. I find it weird, the power that they are displaying is by no means weak, yet I feel like it is not as strong as the one the orcs wielded, at least the stronger ones.
It’s hard to describe the power output of it. It definitely is deadly if hit unprepared, but as I watch the fight unfold, I feel like there are a lot of ways to avoid the hits just with some training and figuring out the patterns they are using.
Both beasts are giving their all in the fight, but with every round of attacks their stamina decreases, and at some point they are both exhausted.
The bear still wears the chest plate, but there are a lot of cracks on it and a few patches of his uncovered hide are charred, displaying black marks all over its body.
The fox, in turn, is spotless, not even one attack has landed on it. Its complexion though, is far worse than the bear.
One has tanked barrage after barrage of attacks while dispelling a big part of them with his own, while the other is running out of steam due to overusing its own power.
I don’t know how the power works, but if it needs to enter their bodies at some point for the attacks to come into place, their bodies will probably need to fend off the strain on their own, and I am damn sure the bear’s body is a lot more resilient.
What happens next, just proves my point as the bear starts charging up another attack while the fox goes into the defensive, trying to dodge the attacks by merely jumping in between the onslaught of flying boulders.
The fight goes on, both fighters displaying everything but intentions to surrender. Rocks fly by, and at some points even I have to move a bit to dodge a few rocks that unintentionally came my way.
I look closely at everything that goes on, still alert for any other threats that may arrive in the midst of the battle with opportunist intentions.
The fox displays an amazing level of nimbleness that helps it avoid most of the attacks thrown at it by the bear, but not all of them are straightforward like the flying boulders.
Some of the other attacks come at random intervals and are hard to predict and escape, making the fox sustain some damage over time. A rock spike piercing one of its shins or part of the ground deforming and trapping one of its paws, forcing it to use too much power at once are just some of them.
It doesn’t help that the bear, even while tiring itself, still stands strong and keeps up with the non-stop attacks without leaving the fox any breathing room, tiring the exhausted creature even more.
The fox, seeing that at this rate the bear will come on top, stops dashing in between the attacks and chooses a more straightforward approach.
Charging up a new attack behind, the little animal uses a huge amount of energy to create the biggest thunderbolt up to now.
The bear, feeling the dread of the attack, starts charging up something else too, clearly intending to counter whatever the fox throws its way.
As the thunderbolt comes into existence, the loud sound of thunder follows. It is not quite as strong or loud as a natural one, that’s for sure, but the mere fact that such a monstrosity is capable of being created but such a small animal is worrying, to say the least.
The spear-like attack is thrown at the bear at a rapid pace, yet not fast enough to skip the defense of the bear, whose defense comes into place as a dense wall of gravel and rocks packed together.
The fox does something to its attack, speeding it even more and bypassing the wall of earth that the bear desperately fought to create in time.
The bear panics and strengthens the rocky chest plate, which is now in shambles, as fast as it can before the attack lands.
A huge explosion reverberates after the collision and I can see anything due to all the dust blown away working as a smokescreen.
After the dust goes away, the bear appears into view again. Its whole chest is nearly pitch black. There are no other damaged areas apart from a couple of patches of burnt hair, probably due to the explosion.
The beast, however, is death. The high voltage of the attack must have dealt an outstanding amount of damage to its insides and charred some of its vital organs.
The thing is that the bear is now dead, and the fox is tumbling around, trying to leave the area, and that’s when I spot it. A monster, resembling a cat, approached the fox from behind.
The monster is similar to a domestic cat, but has a tail that divides halfway into two parts with a curved blade.
I ponder on how to act from now on. I could try to wait for them to fight and then kill the last one standing that will probably be weak enough for me to take down. I could go and stealthily steal the body of the bear and maybe of the next beast that ends up dead too before running.
Both will reward me handsomely, and even if the second one is harder due to the weight that the bear's corpse has to weigh, I can take it with me if I boost my strength just a little.
I look one last time at the tumbling fox and can’t help but consider another option.