There was no holding back anymore. My movements became more disciplined. My plan, completely focusing on the peripherals. My eyes, resting where his chest would be. Refusing to miss a motion, choosing to ignore the notification I got after my Lightning Strike killed his imaginary twin, I dug deep. I sought to make one thing clear; this guy was not going to beat me.
He simply shouldn’t, by his stance and clear exasperation after a minute of combat, he doesn’t do this very often. I do, and I aimed to make that apparent. Hiding my steps forward with my blade by lunging from a downward angle closer to hip-height lunging upwards to his face, I aimed to draw his focus. With his eyes locked on my Wakizashi long before it could ever make purchase with his body, I lifted my lead leg stepping forward, replacing it with my rear while my body remained bladed. Dead-set on connecting to ribs, I fired out heel first, twisting from my hips to my ankle on my pivoting planted foot, putting full force into this strike.
His body flew about 2 feet in the air before crashing and rolling along the arena flooring, spitting blood on the beautiful oceanic artwork we battled on. With that formal sign of disrespect to my favorite place thus far, I removed any ounce of remorse for this asshole I had left.
“You’re over-committing, even if you don’t bite on every attack. You’re relying far too heavily on your reach, on many levels.” He didn’t seem fond of my backhanded advice based on his dismissive ‘pshh’, but frankly, he ought to take it. We once shared this issue not long ago, but I learned what royally fucked that up; lying.
Was it ratty? Sure. But so is teleporting at level one, who the fuck does that? If there’s more of these pricks around here, I have got to step it up in meditation. I need more leverage.
Bursting to his feet, the halberd wielding wizard began inching closer, indicating he was fully down to run this some more, but didn’t initiate. Not immediately at least, until I took a cheeky stab at his knee with my lead blade, changing positioning around him diagonally, putting his newly exposed side in range as I transitioned across his body.
Mistake number two, as I took the bladed spear-tipped pommel of his halberd to the stomach. A grazing blow, but it still hurt, and I too began defacing the beautiful sanctuary’s artful flooring. Now, I was pissed.
If Korbin saw this, I wouldn’t hear the fucking end of it for the rest of my life.
This was enough for me to remember a technique I learned, a type of water step that always kept you off center from your opponent by constantly stepping diagonally. It held dynamically powerful options to choose from at most any position during the steps, and defense was as simple as doing more of what you’re already doing; move. I focused, and began trying to use this unarmed footwork with my weapons in hand, and I was pleasantly surprised to say the least.
After another quick stab stepping away, he began putting a high value on blocking the less powerful attacks I was constantly poking him with, being leg slashes and arm or shoulder stabs. The more he moved, the more he bled, and he was finally getting frantic.
Setting up my trap, I jabbed at his hand once more, only to be upset for a moment seeing it appear just an inch over where I had stabbed into, indicating to me he just used whatever he does to avoid an attack. This also meant he was about to counter attack, which was exactly my intention.
He leaned hard into his patented diagonal strike. Anticipating this, I opened my hips and pushed my body diagonally in junction to his swing, leaving me on the right side of his now exposed body with his hands firmly on his downward-facing halberd. Not willing to miss this opportunity, I thrusted with my lead hand Wakizashi into his ribs about 2 inches deep, twisting as I pulled out.
The kill shot would have followed barring his revealing another surprise; a second attack. It came within a second of the first, and swung from the opposite direction. This, too, was exactly what I had hoped. Repeating this diagonal stepping, this time opening the opposite way with my other leg, a mirror image of the last defensive gap appeared. This time, it was on my left side, my strong side.
Immediately I went for his neck this time, not willing to dance long enough for him to catch on. The sensation of the blade touching soft skin indicated I was able to hit, but suddenly he was just a little to the right, bleeding a bit from his neck.
An internalized prejudice towards mages began bubbling deep within me, but I decided it’d be unfair to pass judgement on them all from this…rat. I’ve killed him twice now, but apparently no one told him. This next time however, I will be certain he’s aware.
Before my next cycle of stepping away and punishing, I noticed something new about him. It was like he had a pull, as in a literal gravitational pull. Not strong like a planet, maybe a meteor or something, but it was definitely there, because my sleeve visibly wavered towards him as I lunged. He swung his halberd again, this time it also felt like it was trying to pull me into its path. My step had plenty of force to beat this out, but the implications of this ability worried me.
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These people don’t die here. I’ll either be fighting with or against everyone in this room, outside of Korbin being a certain ally. This meant I’m going to see this asshole again, so I took the opportunity to rub in his inferiority more while gathering information.
“Hey, slow poke?” I said, stepping with an especially quick strike.
“You got some nice tricks, what’s your name?” I asked him, but was too preoccupied inspecting his blade for a second. Whether it was a shock of happy amazement at the newfound speed or defeating disbelief was irrelevant to me, wasn’t my problem.
He staggered for a few moments to reframe into his stance properly, his leg clearly ate up from eating leg kicks between my stabs trying to get a pin on him. “Really? You want to know my name? Heh, alright, Derrick. My name’s Derrick. And you?” He seemed to relax a moment, indicating a response wouldn’t be interrupted with violence.
“Tom, and yeah, cause I’ll be seeing you a bit later after this. Better train up. son.” Derrick was clearly older than me, which was all the more reason to refer to him as my child here. He talked shit, when I was trying to conserve myself, like an asshole. In hindsight, I should’ve taken the third fight more seriously, especially having seen thousands of people teleported in from afar between matches. They’d later wander to their respective dooms, but there were bound to be outliers. Now, I’d need to meditate on keeping my moves fresh so nobody can have my number at the start like this guy.
Derrick was livid after this comment, and began actually charging at me.
Got ‘em.
Now he was all offense, and the ocean of opportunities for me to strike opened like a Christmas present in greedy, spoiled hands. Initially I was apprehensive, but when I felt the pull again, only more amplified, I knew he was fully focused on this attack and not teleporting or whatever defensively.
Dipping back my hip, my Flow building in my left side again, only quicker this time to avoid missing this opportunity while everything slowed slightly due to my stance. A whipping sound erupted as I exploded out again, this time further off his chests center angle, making my entrance a bit different than the prior ones. He clearly expected it to go to his head again, and it did, but it came from under his chin.
The problem with being tall is, down is a longer way for you than your opponent. Meaning, they could get under your vision way faster than you could them, at least without compromising too much defensive integrity. I never got to use this advantage, just saw it as Korbin’s fist would appear at my chin from under my guard, but now it was my turn. Boy, did I make it count.
He had the blade wedged into his skull, but I stuck it from under his jaw. He had just lifted his halberd for another attack, and before the motion of it going upward could end, I struck. My Wakizashi was hot white from the beginning this time, yet the heat didn’t bother me. It exploded into his jaw on impact, dispersing all at once and exploding bone shrapnel everywhere, including a bit that nicked my arm and gave me a little bleed.
Oh god, I have got to wash that.
After some difficulty yanking my blade from his brain from the bottom, I finally heaved it out of his skull. After a big spray of blood and other gelatinous fluids sprayed on my feet, he disappeared, and I was teleported right outside of the arena, attire clean and pristine.
Looking around, I saw a few faces looking at me in horror. It would bother me, being judged so openly and audaciously, but they couldn’t bother me if they tried right now. A massive warmth had filled my chest, as finally, fucking finally, I got to let loose.
Quickly, I went to the corner closest to the waterfall flowing off the rock formation that hung around the arena, where I left my gloves the system offered I took because, well, they were free.
My hands are calloused already, so I had no intention of pampering them now. Though, after that drawn out fight, I did begin to regret my decision a little bit, but the soreness I felt inside was but a phantom of one.
As I checked my hands, they were just as they had been when I entered.
Hell yeah, auto-healing is way overpowered.
I nestled nicely into my meditation spot, crossed my legs, closed my eyes, and replayed the fight I had just walked away from covered in the gore of my enemy not 40 seconds ago.
I simply didn’t want to forget a thing, I felt there were a few great lessons from this fight hinting at areas where I saw potential to grow. These moments have always been essential, long before the stakes were this high, and my value on them was above that of riches and comfort. How else could you even get there? Other than being lucky, but that’s nothing to be proud of. Only thankful over.
The first being the lighting strike. Which reminded me, I had gotten a notification after I threw it the first time, but I ignored it to stay focused. Opening the tab in my head, I was elated to find one of the moments had already translated into some actual returns.
Skill Acquired-> Lightning Strike (common) - Wielder is able to add Lightning mana into an attack, amplifying its speed depending on the total mana spent while using it. User gets a +4 agility when using this strike.
Now THAT is what the fuck I’m talking about.
My body and mind felt supercharged, more inclined than ever to focus on picking apart my fights, as clearly, it yielded valuable lessons I’d be beside myself to let fall to the wayside. The first step was to settle down, so I refrained from checking my status just yet. If I were able to get a few more skills, or, something more to show for this before then, it would make the review all the sweeter.
Once I settled my blood, I focused on channeling my Flow to my mind. Well, okay, don’t laugh but, my third-eye. It’s a belief I had developed this year, and it truly felt like something in the literal center of my forehead opened when I got ‘good’ at it. Often what followed was a cacophony of concepts and ideas flowed through my thoughts, compared to what I’d normally have I mean.
Sometimes even placing my mind in the most serene locations, my favorite being an empty beach in the summer. Smooth sand under my toes, the cool breeze keeping the sun’s beautiful rays at bay. Waves crashing around me as I’d ponder things as trivial as budgeting at times, but it helped all the same.
Putting myself back into the fight, I did my best to ignore the other guy’s abilities. It felt fruitless once I figured it was something stupidly good that made no sense to me now, and that I’d learn more soon enough about it I’m sure. After playing back the sequences a few times in my mind, I made note of my water stepping. I wondered if it played into my Water Stance skill based on how effective it had been, so I decided to test some things out.
With my eyes shut, I got up, and began water stepping about my immediate area. Focusing intently on if and when my speed changed, figuring agility was boosted from this skill. The skill hadn’t mentioned it explicitly but, Flow was Flow. There’s big and small Flow. Small keeps you alive and fast, and big kills, normally. It’s fuckery, and it felt more so now than ever, so why shouldn’t they overlap?
As I stepped, I played around with the idea of seeing a bunch of skills with high rarities, accidentally pulling it up.
Wait…I’m not actually getting boosted.
That couldn’t be right, I was clearly faster, like, much faster doing the steps in form than just walking, or even messing up the steps themselves. Yet, when I did it with my status open, no boosts triggered. When doing my normal fighter bounce, low and behold; +3 agility, +3% endurance. Turns out, flow is indeed that much more bullshit now. This at first puzzled me deeply, but I was washed with a sense of excitement for the opportunity.
I need to make this a skill.
Sadly, before I had the chance to start his estimated form of training for it, I was blipped once again into the arena.