Chapter 102 - Blood and Bone
Alex charged at the creature with his dark sword held low and his world quickly became submerged in red blood and bone-white strikes. Blade-like appendages shot forth from the creature's rippling body, each sharper than the last. The creature's attacks were everywhere, coming from all angles, every single one of its blows carrying the full force of a cultivator just slightly beyond the Qi gathering stage.
Any normal disciple at Alex’s level or stage of cultivation would have died on the spot, finding themselves turned into a bloody pincushion, their nervous system unable to respond to its numerous and powerfully unpredictable attacks.
But with his latest skill, Sword Sense, Alex no longer had a nervous system. His sensory receptors to detect internal and external changes in the environment— such as light, sound, touch, temperature, energy, and chemical signals had been completely replaced by a construct of the system. His brain and spinal cord processes to interpret sensory information had similarly been replaced by the system, along with all the functions that entailed. A baseline human’s nerve impulses travelling from the brain to muscles could take around 20-50 milliseconds, and the average human eye could capture 60 to 90 frames per second, maybe 120 for the truly exceptional.
The system had taken Alex far beyond that.
When Sword Sense coupled with Monarch’s Temporal Drift, he experienced far more than just ‘slightly’ slower than his surroundings, as the skill's initial description had suggested. Using just Sword Sense alone, Alex supposed he could probably completely see a hail of bullets moving with some effort, and that would require his eyes capturing the equivalent of somewhere between 40,000 to 200,000 frames per second, although he wouldn’t be surprised if there were experts out there that could witness reality at far greater speeds beyond him.
That is, if it weren’t for his Dao.
With his Dao's prodigious influence on his experience of the flow of time, Alex had transcended each of his skill’s initial functions. Both Inner Focus and Sword Sense enhanced his ability to utilize Monarch’s Temporal Drift, Outer Focus enhanced his ability to use True Sight, and Bestial Senses empowered each one of his skills, and even his Dao. His combination of unique abilities, all stemming from his glitched arrival, had granted powers of perception only reserved for the highest levelled system users and experts of cultivation.
Though his body was still limited to system users and first-stage cultivators at and below the 10,000 threshold, his perception had far exceeded those limits.
Boundless Dodge. Boundless Dodge. Boundless Dod—
Constant applications of the skill became something close to his battle mantra, and it didn’t stop there. With each time the skill was triggered, he rallied Inner Focus to guide each Boundless Dodge, seizing his entire body with the skill’s mana and moving faster than he ever could with his own strength. He had gained near-instantaneous processing of visual and auditory information, reflexive, high-speed reactions to environmental changes, and a continuous preternatural readiness to dodge. With each limb infused and commandeered by Boundless Dodge, he manipulated his movements perfectly as a puppet master would manipulate a marionette.
[Boundless Dodge: Mastery 5 > 26 %]
Attacks far stronger than his Mana Burn and Allocation-boosted body could handle shot at him from every conceivable angle. He was an embodiment of chaos—his sword dance becoming a manic blend of the entirety of his expertise, flowing through the katas of kendo, instantly shifting to foundational kenjutsu, performing advanced sword techniques with his left hand and unarmed Koryu with his right. Off balance and blade extended, his knee rose to deflect a spike with the finesse of a seasoned pugilist.
The chaos of his blade dance encompassed all.
[Eternal Disorder - Blade Dance: Mastery 0 > 14%]
An impact. Broke his momentum. A deadly strike from the creature landed, then another, causing his knees to buckle under the force as his soul defence depleted, the damage transferring to the undead two souls stored in Thanatos’s Sovereign. He had seen the attacks coming and yet his body had been too slow to respond.
More. I need to be better, he thought.
He slowed his perception of time as endless spikes, bones, and weapons of blood rocketed toward him, each capable of devastating his form. Calming his mind, Alex sought the Mushin no Shin, Kendo’s Mind of no Mind.
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The ‘mind of no mind’ was a fundamental aspect of Kendo and Kenjutsu, focused on the idea of having a mind free of thoughts, emotions, and distractions. In this state, the mind would be clear, free from any interference, allowing for pure, instinctive action.
It was a concept he had easily mastered back on Earth, but in the many worlds he had found himself in since his reincarnation, the madness of his second life combined with his empathetic nature had only caused him to seek it in the Dao and nowhere else. Now, with no one to protect and no objective to seek aside from winning the battle, he found himself returning to the fundamental concept without the need to channel his Dao offensively.
Alex willed Inner Focus to channel mana to his eyes, and his pupils shone bright with energy as he rallied his focus to zero in on only himself and the creature, ignoring all else.
Nothing else existed. Only the creature, his arm, and his blade.
His Dao slowed his flow of time in bursts while merging with Monarch's Temporal Drift, causing his control over his perception of time to grow steadily with each blow deflected, his mind settling with each step of ground gained. Through Sword Sense, his soul bypassed his brain's connections and reaction time, moving beyond the bounds of his physical body. He processed and responded to all sensory cues almost instantaneously. Bestial Senses entwined with the use of the skill and took it further, his body becoming in tune with every sound wave, airwave, vibration, and chemical reaction flowing within the creature of blood.
[System Message: Skill consolidation detected—]
Without distraction, Alex felt a shift within him, as if he was an ungraspable breeze the creature sought to capture. He felt as though he no longer existed within his body but that instead his consciousness was infused outside of it—his mind extended to his immediate range encompassing only the space between himself and the creature—ignoring all else. As his sensory skills merged, bleeding into each other to work as one, the world around him ceased to exist. Within just under three arm’s paces—the length of his extended arm and blade—Alex achieved the beginnings of something close to omniscience.
He hacked off the creature's spike.
He sliced through a claw.
He bisected a bone spear, targeting a section where the sinew was thinnest and only blood connected its appendage, and with an empty mind and a perfect execution of the sweeping technique, he sliced off many more.
The creature fled.
The creature paused, then turned, shooting across the clearing in a blur of sinew and flesh, away from Alex. Its massive limbs sent an explosion of blood-soaked earth as it moved with incredible speed.
[2-hour mana cooldown in effect. Skill unavailable]
Alex could hear the crunch of sinew and bone of the creature's movements as he slowed to a stumble and crouched low. With his mana depleted, his mind devoid of thoughts, and his consciousness expanded beyond the range of his physical body through his skills, Alex’s Qi swirled and flowed in the void left by his mana’s departure. He breathed and moved, blurring past the bloody destruction of the clearing in the Qi-filled movements of the Charging technique as he chased the creature down.
Impermanence circled his blade's edge as his downward swing— angled to utilise the fleeing monstrosity’s momentum— sliced through the its neck, then hardened blood, then bone, and then finally its core.
[You have defeated…]
The creature collapsed in a heap as his dark blade, Eclipse’s surface rippled, absorbing its blood like a hungry fiend. And a slew of notifications Alex had previously considered mere distractions finally caught his attention.
[System Message: Skill consolidation detected]
[Initiating Skill consolidation protocol…]
[Skill: Bestial Senses removed!]
[Skill: Monarch's Temporal Drift removed!]
[Skill: Inner Focus removed!]
[Skill: Outer Focus removed!]
[System Alert: Skill consolidation has been influenced by your class]
[Consolidating Skill Masteries…]
[Completed]
[A ranked Skill - SwordSaint’s Domain (Passive) gained!]
Alex sat down in a heap as his blade continued to absorb the creature's blood. A sigh escaped his lips as he closed the notifications. I’m far enough from the clearing. It’s probably the perfect time to try to cultivate the ‘Divine Bovine Vessel’ and regain some strength before any more of those things arrive. The technique required the user to be near death in order to bolster their life. It should work, Alex thought. If that wasn’t a near-death experience then I’ll eat my sword. He eyed his dark demonic blade, its surface rippling as it became covered in blood and Qi. Well, maybe not Eclipse, but a different, less demonic sword.
He closed his eyes to cultivate, before they immediately shot open in alarm. He felt someone enter within his range of detection, a person heading to his position at the edge of the clearing from the direction of the portal. There was a good chance whoever it had been had witnessed a portion of his fight, if not the entirety.
Alex’s head turned sharply, snapping his face to see… Jin.
The star disciple stood there, slack-jawed, his eyes drifting from the beast's corpse, to the rippling sword absorbing its blood, then to Alex’s seated and unharmed form, then back to the clearing filled with dead beasts and would-be disciples. Jin stood there for a moment, speechless, eyeing Alex with intense curiosity— as though he had just seen the impossible.
Or as though he had just witnessed a demon in human form.