The Martial Techniques that have been discovered in the ancient ruins seem to mostly be the most basic versions of the techniques. Even the most powerful ones that have been discovered are limited in the scope of what they are capable of, this may be to force cultivators to develop their own techniques that suit them or because the ancients understanding of cultivation and Martial Techniques was limited. However due to the advanced relics discovered alongside these techniques the second option is unlikely. The fact remains however that someone who has developed Martial Techniques of their own whether they be modified versions of ones that they had been taught or ones that they created themselves will be more powerful than someone who has not.

Excerpt from Telram’s notes on Martial Techniques.

Telram rocketed forwards slamming his fist into Connor’s stomach with more force than he had used on the weaker cultivators that the young man had surrounded himself with. He was still holding back a little and immediately regretted his decision when he received a return blow across his face that made his vision spin before a wave of fire covered him.

“Don’t get cocky!” Connor screamed. He was already surprised by Telram’s ability to defend himself against his Exploding Sun Technique, but he was even more surprised at how hard Telram had hit him. Connor didn’t know much about body strengthening techniques, so he was at a loss as to how someone who was still in the Human Realm could hit as hard as Telram could.

Little did Connor know that while Telram hadn’t been holding back as much against him as he had against his hangers on, he had still hadn’t been using his full strength.

When the flames that had covered his torso cleared Telram patted the burning edges of his robes with an irritated expression on his face. The crowd gasped in unison as they saw that despite having been covered in flames Telram looked unharmed other than some slight reddening to his skin and then fell silent as they noticed how muscular he was under the loose-fitting robes that he had been wearing and the scars that covered his body that proved he had real combat experience unlike most of the spoilt brats in the arena.

“Now that was more like it,” Telram said, the irritated expression fading from his face and causing Connor to gape at him in confusion.

“That first attack that you used takes too long to prepare for it to be useful in a one on one battle like this unless you use something else to prevent them from attacking you or activating some form of powerful defence like I did,” Telram explained in much the same manner that Gerry had used when teaching him about different types of techniques and fighting tactics. “But while that was weaker it was more effective because it was so sudden, if you had followed up with another attack immediately after then it would’ve been even more effective.”

Telram himself didn’t really understand why he was telling Connor this, it was foolish and disrespectful to the young man who had reached a higher cultivation level than he had, though it was quickly becoming obvious that Connor had rushed through the Human Realm instead of making sure that his body was ready for the amount of Mana that it contained and his knowledge of Martial Techniques was limited. Honestly Telram felt sorry for the other boy who had probably been told all his life how talented he was and this was true, he was talented, The problem was that the people who had taught him had focussed on improving his cultivation as fast as possible which left the young man with both a very limited selection of Martial Techniques and a massive superiority complex.

“I said, don’t get cocky!” Connor screamed in rage taking a wild swing at Telram who ducked easily under the clumsy attack and delivered a powerful uppercut to Connor’s jaw that lifted the young man off his feet and sent him flying several feet backwards onto the ground with a loud thud.

“Fine, I’ll take you seriously,” Telram told the gasping boy whose nose was now bleeding copiously. “But don’t blame me for what happens.”

Blinking tears from his eyes Connor staggered to his feet before wiping the blood from his face and glared at Telram who had taken up a rather unusual stance while he had been waiting.

This stance was similar to the main stance for Solid Fist but somehow seemed looser and Telram was also bouncing up and down on the balls of his feet which was definitely different from the Solid Fist Style.

This was of course a new version of the Solid Fist Style that Telram had created for the purpose of fighting enemies that he wasn’t certain he could simply overpower with his strengthened body, unlike the Solid Fist Style which was closer to an in fighter’s boxing style that specialised in powerful blows to defeat an opponent quickly this was closer to an out fighters boxing style even though with his strengthened body he was willing to bet that even his jabs were about as powerful as a heavy-weight boxers full strength punch.

Without waiting for Connor to surprise Telram darted in jabbing several times at the young man’s face before ducking under another wild swing and circling behind him before slamming an open palm into his back while he was stunned driving a spike of Mana into the other boys body that sent his own Mana into disarray causing the flames that he had been conjuring to hit Telram with to explode in his hands.

“Ahhh!” Connor screamed as his hands were scorched by his own flames causing Telram to swear loudly in surprise. Biting back tears, he spun around lashing out at Telram with a vicious kick that sent Telram flying backwards with a pained grunt despite putting his arms up at the last second to block the sudden attack.

Telram lowered his arms slowly as he watched Connor bring his Mana under control almost as fast as Gerry had been able to when he had tested it on him. Even though they were currently fighting or possibly because of this Telram was becoming more and more impressed with Connor despite his obvious personality flaws.

He had already noticed that along with having one of the highest cultivations bases his Soul was the most powerful of all the cultivators currently fighting other than Telram himself who was a bit of a special case.

Fire wrapped around the hand that had escaped being burned as an enraged Connor charged at Telram who seemed to disappear as he used the footwork from his father’s Graceful Mist Step to flow around Connor’s wild swings occasionally striking back with a few quick jabs of his own that soon turned Connor’s face into a bloody mess.

Connor fell to one knee in a daze as he stared up at his opponent. Telram was supposed to be weaker than him but somehow, he had so far come away from the fight largely unharmed whereas Connor was covered in bruises from Telram’s quick but powerful blows and burns from when he had lost control of his Mana.

Pretty much all the other fights had been finished or had simply stopped so that the fighters could watch Connor and Telram’s fight and now many of them watched in confusion as Connor was the first one to fall to his knees. This was especially true of the competitors from noble families who had been certain that Connor was the competitor with the highest destructive capabilities among them and yet Telram was the one who remained standing and largely unharmed at that.

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“Why?” Connor gasped as blood trickled down his face from a broken nose. “Why can’t I beat you?”

“I have advantages you don’t,” Telram told him consolingly. “I couldn’t have asked for better teachers and I had a few lucky things happen to me that made me a lot stronger than normal.”

The onlookers who all heard this nodded at his words, naturally they were jealous of Telram’s situation but they couldn’t deny that even if he had some lucky occurrences he would’ve still had to work hard to get to the point where they would make enough of a difference that he could defeat someone in the Ascendant Realm while still being in the Human Realm himself. These efforts were made obvious by his powerful physique and the scars that covered it.

“So, don’t worry about it too much and pick up some different techniques to round out your arsenal,” Telram advised him calmly. He didn’t care about the confused expressions the onlookers were giving him, he knew what he was doing was uncalled for and likely unwanted he just hated to see someone as talented as Connor get stuck in working towards something that limited him.

“I don’t have to listen to someone who just got lucky!” Connor snarled arrogantly.

“Is that so?” sighed Telram as he slowly made his way closer to Connor who looked more and more uncomfortable as Telram approached him, the effects of Dissonance having finally taken effect. It seemed that people at the Ascendant Realm were considerably less affected by the technique which was something that Telram hadn’t had time to check having only recently completed the technique.

In many ways the Dissonance technique was his greatest creation, it was just a cloud of vibrating Mana that was kept under control by the power of his Soul Energy but that was, in fact one of its strengths; because he wasn’t actually releasing it in the form of a technique like with his Resonance Palm technique it was still able to be reabsorbed and used for other things. When Gerry had discovered this, he had been gobsmacked at first as this was unheard of, that was until he attempted it himself and discovered how difficult it was to keep that Mana under control with his Soul Energy. Telram’s incredibly powerful Soul and his way of thinking allowed him to control the chaotically moving Mana far easier than either Gerry or Aran could though they were still both interested in learning the technique. The Dissonance technique was a very versatile technique that could be used both as a distraction and area denial technique as well as a technique that can block Mana based attacks, so their interest wasn’t surprising to Telram. What had surprised him was that they were far less interested in Resonance Palm which was one of the first techniques that he had completed but apparently its limited use against Mana Beasts meant that it wasn’t as useful as other techniques.

At this point most cultivators would’ve finished Connor off violently if he acted this arrogantly to them after they defeated him, but Telram just picked him up and carried the weakly struggling young man to the edge of the arena and dropped him off before dodging an attack by a particularly foolish cultivator who thought that Telram had let his guard down but to no-one else’s surprise he just ended getting knocked out of bounds by an irritated Telram.

Glaring at the twitching body of the foolish cultivator he shook his head remembering that he had been one of the people who had been giving him an odd look when he had been trying to give Connor advice earlier. If people were going to look down on him for trying to give his opponent advice that was one thing, but attacking him when he was removing Connor from the arena without harming him too badly was something that he wasn’t willing to forgive and he turned towards the others glaring at those who had crept closer who paled as he opened his mouth sending blasts of Soul Energy infused sound screaming across the arena towards them driving them to their knees with blood running from their ears.

These cultivators quickly admitted their defeat in loud groans as the other cultivators glared at them angrily. Theirs was supposed to be an honourable group and these people had tried to attack Telram while he was doing the honourable thing, so they were understandably angry.

Meanwhile in the crowd the scholars were arguing among themselves, the reason for this was of course Telram who had been using techniques that they had never seen before left and right. This was of course of great interest to them but their leader, the rat-faced man known as Pavel was opposed to the idea of even attempting to bring him into their ranks.

“There’s no way that kid created those techniques!” he snapped angrily. “He’s being taught by Gerry! It’s obvious that that old man hid a bunch of techniques from us when he worked here.”

The other scholars glanced at each other, naturally they knew the story behind the relationship between Gerry and Pavel but disagreeing with the surprisingly ruthless man would just end with them losing their jobs. Besides the chance of them being able to get Telram to come and work with them was unlikely, the most powerful cultivators always ended up becoming Irian’s personal guards so the best that they could hope for was that he gave them the information on how the techniques worked. Nonetheless the techniques that Telram had been using would be a big haul for them, they had had a few hard years where their library of techniques was barely added to recently and Irian had offered a massive reward to the scholars if they managed to add a significant number of new and updated techniques to their library.

“But we still have to get his techniques somehow,” one of the scholars said and Pavel showed him a surprisingly terrifying smile as he replied.

“And we will, just not the way that you’re thinking.”

The other scholars’ faces paled at hearing this, they knew that Pavel cultivated a particularly dangerous technique that usually specialised in healing but could also be used to inflict incredible pain on people by manipulating their blood flow or various other means which was something that Pavel was known for. He wasn’t particularly dangerous in a straight up fight, but then with his position and resources he didn’t need to be.

“Are you sure that it’s a good idea to do anything to annoy Gerald sir?” one of the younger scholars asked earning angry looks from his colleagues, he had only heard the stories about what Gerald was capable of and in all honesty he feared someone who could create a small army in a matter of days than he did Pavel despite the rumours that along with being Irian’s Head Scholar he also held a much less wholesome position.

“What was that!?” Pavel screeched drawing looks not only from the scholars that surrounded him who all flinched in unison but from other members of the audience who were wondering what was going on.

“Don’t mind him sir,” the first scholar replied quickly glaring at his younger colleague angrily. “He doesn’t know what he’s saying.”

Pavel glared at the cowering scholars with bloodshot eyes, most of them were in fact more powerful than he was but that meant nothing next to someone who was as closer to Lord Irian as Pavel was.

“Alright then,” Pavel growled before making his way out of the group of scholars and towards the box that Lord Irian was sitting in.

“You idiot!” the older scholar hissed once Pavel was out of earshot. “Don’t you know how dangerous that was?!”

“Yeah,” the younger man admitted. “But think about it, Gerald still supplies all of the training puppets that we use. What’s to stop him using those to stage a coup or something?”

“I know that!” the older scholar sighed. “We all do but getting that crazy bastard angry will just end with you being an unwilling participant in one of his ‘experiments.’”

The other scholars all nodded their agreement, there was no denying that while Pavel was a talented enough scholar he was mostly there because Irian didn’t trust the other scholars after what happened with Gerry. This was mostly because most of them had disagreed with Irian when he had accused Gerry of wasting resources; it wasn’t unusual for talented cultivators to injure themselves like Lily had and being able to cure these people was something that would have a long term benefit but Irian wasn’t interested in healing people who in his eyes had already failed and had placed his cousin Pavel in charge to make sure that the scholars toed the line.

“I suppose,” the younger scholar grumbled.

“Don’t worry about it lad,” one of the other scholars sighed tiredly. “We understand why you said that.”

The other scholars all quickly agreed patting the young man on the back to console him as Pavel entered the box to find Irian watching the arena with much more interest than he usually did.

“Pavel is that young man the one that Gerald started training?” the massive bald man asked.

“Yes, my lord that’s correct,” Pavel replied quickly. “And as you can see, we were right, that old man had been keeping techniques from us.”

“So, it would seem,” Irian growled. “Well let’s see how the kid decides to play this, if he’s smart, he’ll give up on the old man the minute we give him a better offer and if not, well you know what to do.”

“Yes sir,” Pavel smirked. This time he would have his revenge, one way or another.