Knife Fighting: Rank 1

Suddenly, his vision and senses were overstimulated. Pure blue filled his eyes and he couldn’t tell up from down and the backside of his body was cold and pressed against something hard.

A warm feeling washed over him, especially his head, and then cooled down. Suddenly, foreign knowledge appeared in his long-term memories, as if they had always been there.

He immediately realized that in all of his knife fights he had been posturing wrongly with his knife. In previous fights, he would have his left unarmed side in front of his right holding his knife. And he would threaten with heavy stabs by swinging his entire body from right to left.

He immediately saw how that left him open to attacks on his unarmed side and also left him open to attacks during the heavy movements.

What washed over his mind was the superior way of standing with a knife. The exact opposite way of how he usually did it. You are supposed to stand with your armed side in front of the unarmed side. And try to hide your unarmed side behind you as much as possible without limiting the muscle range of the right side.

And another fundamental mistake he realized was the way he viewed knife fighting. Instinctually, his reaction was to try to do deep stabs into the head or torso of his opponent and hope that his opponent did not knock his knife out of his hands or wrestle him to the ground.

A 2 centimeters cut into the interior of the forearm leads to an adult male bleeding unconscious within 3 minutes.

This new skill taught him to focus on striking at his opponent’s hands, arms and legs. To use his knife and stance as a shield of constant threat to his opponent.

This knowledge did not enter his mind as words. It entered as mental visualization and muscle memory and POV grasp and also bird eyes’ view grasp of how to stand in relation to his knife and his knife in relation to his opponent. It was as if he had thousands of memories of ‘fake’ training ingrained in his mind and body.

What the fuck!!!!!

He jumped up and the blue was replaced by grayness and stone colors.

“Jack! Jack!” he heard a familiar voice yell from far away.

Jack realized he had been laying on the stone floor and staring up at the sky. He now saw Brian and Lucas’ faces and felt better.

“Get up now!” Lucas said. They grabbed his arms and forced him up.

They were standing in a big circular stone plaza. There were hundreds of other people in the plaza as well.

“What took you so fucking long! We have to get out of here now! This place is too crowded. We waited for you for hours. Let’s get the fuck out now!”

The stone plaza was surrounded by big walls and in those big walls there were small tunnels leading out.

“Did you bring your knife?” Brian said.

Jack reached back and felt his kitchen knife on him.

“Yeah I’ve got it,” Jack said.

“Okay so this is what we figured out while waiting for you. If you look at the bottom right of your field of vision, a pop-up will appear. You can press it to leave this place. We have all the things we had on outside of this place inside this place for some reason. And outside that tunnel over there there’s a big forest and you get a quest as soon as you leave the tunnel,” Lucas said.

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Jack looked back and saw that while most of the people stayed inside the plaza and just chatted in big groups, there were a few smaller groups or individuals walking through the tunnels alone.

“Maybe we should just leave now. This place is fucking weird. I thought it would just be some normal VR shit. Not like I would get teleported somewhere else man. This is fucking weird. It feels like everything is real.”

When Jack looked around, the colors were vivid and the sky was beautifully blue. And the temperature was a kind of perfect summer day, way better than the cold winter in Bluetown.

Jack unzipped his winter jacket. He noticed that Lucas and Brian had done the same.

“Fuck no. We’re already here and there’s something you should see,” Brian said.

As soon as they exited the tunnel and arrived at the foot of the forest, Jack got the following notification in his field of vision.

Challenge: Kill 100 Balloon Monsters. Reward: ?

“Okay, I’m in,” Jack said.

Maybe I can get another skill? That Knife Fighting skill is super useful. And I think it’s even gonna apply to me when I leave this game/weird place. I already feel more powerful with just that one skill.

“Okay I’m in. Let’s stay. But let’s leave right after completing this challenge… By the way, I have something to say,” Jack said.

He explained the Murder Challenge and the skill he got and how it felt.

“Fuck, that’s cool!” Lucas said.

It took about five minutes of walking before they spotted the first monster.

“Holy shit, it looks so real! Like I’m in a horror movie or some shit,‘ Lucas said.

“You think it’ll hurt if we get hit by it?” Jack said.

In front of them was a bouncing Balloon monster. Its skin looked leathery and blue and it had a scary face with big fangs in its mouth. It bounced its way slowly towards the group.

They all pulled out their knives.

“You two stay on both sides of me. I’ll take the first one,” Brian said.

He took a pose with his knife and got ready for the monster.

“You’re standing wrong!” Jack said.

“What?” Brian said.

“Imma take the first monster, you two watch how it’s done,” Jack said and got in front of Brian.

“Okay, it’s on you,” Brian said.

Jack postured in the correct stance like the skill taught him how to, and focused on the Balloon Monster while it slowly got closer and closer to him.

I’m not sure how I should stab it or the timing though… The skill doesn’t tell me anything about that. Okay, just focus on its rhythm and hit it with a slash and step away and then slash again.

When the monster was close enough, it changed its rhythm and jumped more horizontally towards Jack’s stomach.

Jack got scared and jumped away while slashing.

Despite getting scared, the artificial muscle memory Knife Fighting: Rank 1 gave him, made him point the knife in front of himself at all times and he managed to slash the Balloon monster while jumping away.

The attack did not feel powerful, but the knife popped the Balloon Monster.

Challenge: Kill 100 Balloon Monsters. Reward: ?

001/100

“You jumped away like scared lil bitch!” Brian said. Lucas and Brian were laughing at him

“Shut the fuck up,” Jack said and sighed.

I can’t wait to find out what this reward is. I’ve never been so excited in my life. God I love this feeling.