One man and one women could be seen walking along the stone street confidently only the man had a slightly noticeable lag in his movements, Riley wanted Brian to rest to allow his injuries to heal. However, Brian insisted on continuing even with his injured arms. So the two kept walking after the first battle and they encountered another battle similar to the first one, the fight had the same amount of stone hands at 4. The fight went differently from the previous one, as Brian told Riley not to interfere with the 2 he was fighting as he wanted to get better.
This left Riley as a bystander after she quickly finished the two with her skill, she turned herself into a cheerleader instead saying words like.
“Fighting! You can do this Brian! Come on Brian left hook, uppercut, right jab and elbow strike! Keep it up Brian! Remember to use your essence!” Detracting Brian constantly during his fight and with his already slightly flagging arms, he had not even finished one stone hand after the fight went on for 5 minutes. The good news for Brian was the first stone hand was already looking much worse for wear and a few more well placed punch would break it and his fight would get easier.
However at the end of the five minutes where the last words from Riley as he punched on violently shocked Brian and reminded him of Jacobs’ many advice, since there were so many quite a few slipped from his mind. Jacob said that even with enhanced stats fighting would be hard as monsters naturally knew how to use the essence within them, however humans had never used something similar to essence at all so he would have to get used to using it. He could not believe it slipped his mind, Riley even had a greenish aura covering her right fist when she used her skill. He had been fighting too much like an ordinary kickboxer, he was now an empowered kickboxer with vastly superior physical fitness and an all empowering energy.
He began mentally drawing essence from the core located in his middle dantian, he directed the essence to both his hands in an attempt to strengthen them. To his dismay, the essence faltered midway it seems he was missing something that came naturally to Jacob and Riley. However, he did not have the time to figure out what was exactly wrong. So he could only fumble blindly with the essence and drew out more instead, another punch came from the second stone hand as he was lost within the actions of channeling his essence through his limbs.
Brian quickly brought his right arm back to absorb the impact with both his arms, he pushed himself back as he did so gaining some distance for him to experiment with the essence. This time he drew out even more essence from his pea sized core and attempted to force it through the location where the essence cut off.
He felt a clog in both areas, as if two walls stood between his essence and its destination. The walls already looking in disrepair due to Brian first effort to channel essence, with the second push of larger essence the walls started breaking apart in various places. The walls started collapsing and reminiscent to how a dam breaks causing a flood, the essence ran through the walls in Brians’ arms.
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Brians’ arms feeling rejuvenated having caught a second wind, Brian pushed forward to test out his essence infused arms. He closed the distance between the stone hand already breaking apart slowly due to the many punches Brian landed while the second stone hand was pulling back already ready to punch out another time as soon as he got within range.
He punched out with his right arm again towards the almost destroyed stone hand, this time the hand blurred moving at speeds much faster than he was capable of in his first fight. It connected beautifully this time he was able to punch through the stone hand causing it to immediately collapse after the right punch a light blue trail of essence could be seen entering Brian. As he retracted his right arm to bring it back to guard. The second stone hand was already shooting towards him, Brian already prepared for this ducked under the punch and with two essence infused hands punched towards the overextended stone hand. Immediately, the punches carved large chunks off the hand.
The hand tried pulling back to throw another punch at Brian, however the missing chunks caused it to slow not by much but it was enough for Brian to draw back both his arms and throw another simultaneous double punch. This time the punches broke cleanly through the stone hand depriving it of any proper support and it promptly collapsed, another light blue trail of essence entered Brian.
Although his arms ached he clearly felt the improvement of being able to channel essence into his arms, if he could do the same for his legs he would be able to deal with the stone hands with negligible damage and not sore and bruised arms. He turned towards his now cheerleader who once again had another victory pose, this time it was a crossed arm, chin tilted upwards and arrogant looking pose. Its as if she learned all the poses she could from fighting games and was slowly bringing them out.
“Thank you Riley, without you I might still be punching through the first stone hand.” Brian said gratefully while smiling. Riley got out of her victory pose shook her head and replied.
“Awesome! No need for thanks I was just spouting whatever came off my head. Hopefully it was not too distracting” Brian smile faltered a little at Riley's last sentence. This time Brian feeling much better about his own performance and seeing marked improvements wanted to take a break to properly go through the essence channeling process once again and also learn how to fully channel the essence throughout his body. Riley readily agreed as she already wanted Brian to rest and at least let him recover from the dark bruises he still had on his arms. Hence, they both took turns to condense the newly gained essence in addition to the ones gained in the previous fight.
They still had more to explore or at least the two battles did not satisfy Riley at all and she wanted a cool and beautiful weapon like Jacob. After Brian recovered the duo moved out again to hunt more stone hands and explore the ruined city, this time however they turned around and moved deeper in the city. Brian wanted to have harder fights to improve on and Riley figured she would have a higher chance of finding weapons within the more dangerous part of the ruined city.
And so the duo moved through the edge and into the inner area of the ruined city, defeating stone hands and some goblin statues as they did. With Rileys’ green exploding punch and Brians’ renewed confidence the rabbles stood no chance merely offering level ups and essence for the both of them to absorb. However, they did not know that Jacobs’ weapon was a rather special case and without any special occurrences obtaining a weapon would be most difficult especially one that fits both the user and their Job. While they managed to get stronger, Riley was doomed to be unable to find her desired weapon at least while she was in the city where stone beings and giant tigers made their homes.