Chapter 53: Techniques
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<...90%>

<System update complete>

After a five minute wait, the update finished.

Honestly, I wouldn’t have the slightest clue as to what caused a system update. 

During the wait, I discussed the changes with Rin.

The two major improvements of the update the improved translation function (meaning the system’s written translator function now works properly) and the addition of a map.

The map provides an impressively efficient method searching for monsters and temples.

Granted, Rin and I already collected a map of this zone so it isn’t as useful to us as it could be. 

Using the map we previously collected, I managed to confirm that the translation function was working properly. The map had ‘Easy Difficulty, Second Zone’ in plain English written atop it. 

The map showed the vast forest area, red dots littered everywhere. There were mountains to the north and various temples could be seen on the map. They weren't exactly hidden before, but now they stood out plainly for anyone to notice.

Looking at the system map, I’m not sure whether to laugh or cry. I can easily tell where Bai Xiaobao is on it.

Although I couldn't see his exact position, as the map didn't show people's positions. Since Bai Xiaobao had the halo that attracted monsters, I could easily infer where he is on the map by looking at the monster's positions.

There were a large cluster of monsters moved in an abnormal fashion. They were moving way too slow for some kind of beast tide. Yet, at the same time, too fast to be hoarding around some stationary treasure or undergoing some kind of migration. 

Considering the circumstances, it’s almost certain that Bai Xiaobao is being chased by this cluster of monsters. 

That isn’t something that I need to worry about, though.

As I already told Bai Xiaobao, he will deal with the trouble he creates on his own... or at the very least, I won’t be helping him.

Rin seemed busy combining different herbs from the area and Sidney is still knocked out.

Not much point in recreating the mana barrier surrounding her. Rin should be able to protect her if something happens. 

“Alright, I’m going to check out the writing in the room I found the wristband.” I stated awaiting a response from Rin which never came.

Okay... I guess she’s too busy to respond or is lost in her thoughts and didn’t hear me. 

I’ll try and make the journey quick.

When I reach the cave, I realize why Rin didn’t want to bother coming here. The information was shockingly sparse. 

The majority of information written down discussed the initial hypnotic state Sidney was in when I saw her reaching for the wristband.

Apparently, when this wristband has excess mana, it searches the area and utilized illusions to trick someone into putting it on. 

Once equipped, it attaches itself to the person’s soul and only on the occasion of death will the wristband eventually utilize its remaining mana or accumulate enough mana to teleport back into the cave.

The information on the Dream Realm itself was sparse, only stating that the wristband ‘leads to a new universe of opportunities.’

Nothing about nightmares or explorations. 

I should’ve known there would be nothing useful here. 

Looking around the sparse room, I gave up on finding any more potential information. 

When I arrived back at the camp, I discovered Rin practicing archery on a small wooden target around 300-400 meters away from her. Sidney meanwhile had awakened and currently sat near the fire cooking food. 

I’m somewhat surprised, I wasn’t expecting Sidney to wake up so soon. Earlier, Sidney seemed to be passed out cold.

Moving to sit beside her, I began questioning her to see how much she remembered.  

Disregarding the insults, to summarize, she didn’t remember much about the topic. 

Of course, because she is intelligent, Sidney quickly pieced together what happened from my questions.

That set off a whole new wave of insults for stealing an item she should have received. 

Still, relatively speaking, I think the conversation went well. Sidney didn’t ignore me and answered all my questions despite her obvious dislike of me.

Waling over toward Rin who was practicing archery, I asked Rin, “What should we plan on doing next?”

However, Rin was concentrated on the target in the distance and didn’t respond to my question. 

Finally, she released the arrow in the bow, an arrow flew straight toward target. 

Suddenly gust of wind, began blowing. Wind rustled the leaves and blew Rin’s red hair into my face. Stepping back and clear of Rin’s hair, I realized the arrow was now off target.

The wind had destabilized the arrow and it traveled several meters before stabilizing. However, the arrow would now fly directly into the tree beside the target, not the target itself.

I was about to ask Rin another question when I noticed the arrow began curving back on course. 

Without wind or any other outside influences, the arrow adjusted itself and it landed directly in the center of the small target.

What the hell? 

Isn’t that cheating?

What did she do?

How did the arrow curve? 

Rin picked up another arrow and finally responded to my earlier question. “You should do whatever you want.”

That isn’t helpful, Rin, and you know it.

I was looking for specifics. You know, like ‘Hey, there’s this super awesome item over here. We should go collect it.’

Hang on, what’s with that phrasing? She said, ‘You should do whatever you want.’

Implying that she wouldn’t be doing it with me.

Waiting for Rin to finish firing her arrow, I probed, “What do you plan on doing?”

Watching the shot as I awaited her response, I noticed it landed directly to the right of the other arrow. Whatever she's planning on doing, if that was on purpose, she has created an extremely impressive archery technique or ability.

Rin briefly responded to my inquiry, “Practicing.” 

As Rin practiced the space on the entire target became cluttered with arrows. Yet a careful observation revealed that the arrows were nearly all at an equal distance away from one another.

I slowly questioned Rin. Although it was only slow because she refused to answer my questions outside of the brief period after the previous arrow had landed and before the next arrow had been shot.

Anyway… apparently, Rin wasn’t using magic to curve the arrow.

Some technique along the line of willpower directly pushed into the arrow allowed her to control it midair to a limited extent. 

Of course, that’s an educated guess. She refused to provide a complete and proper explanation, thus I was left to piece together the bits she was willing to tell me. 

Actually, I don’t particularly dislike her not providing a proper explanation.  

Part of the culture of her homeworld is to let people learn things on their own... or as the saying goes, ‘experience makes the best teacher’.

It’s actually considered an insult to attempt to teach someone beyond very general information. That’s because teaching them means you don’t trust that can learn it on their own. 

It’s considered harmful to their future growth to teach people too much there. This is because after the person grows to the limit of what you can teach them, the progress of the person taught stagnates.

They are unable to progress further due to having no experience with solving the earlier, easier steps.

As with any culture, this sort of extreme self-learning culture has its advantages and disadvantages.

To be precise, this sort of culture strengthens the power and prospects of the world’s geniuses. While simultaneously reduces the overall power of ordinary people.

This is why I don’t particular dislike Rin not providing a proper explanation. If she did, it would only mean she didn’t trust that I would be able to do it myself.

Unfortunately, in this case, while I’m a genius, I’m don’t even have the knowledge of an ‘ordinary person’ in Rin’s world. 

I don’t have basic fighting knowledge. 

Sure, a high school education is useful for creating a unique viewpoint to understand the world.

Sadly, though, basic fighting knowledge wasn’t a core part of the curriculum. School probably would’ve been far more interesting if it was.

Sword fighting stances? Bow usage, maintenance, and creation? Footwork and positioning?

What’s that can you eat it?

Fine, maybe that’s an exaggeration. That information exists on earth... but who, in their right mind, would take the time to go out and learn it?

Unless you have an unusually hobby, there was never a chance of that information being used.

I learned some information about guns… but even then I didn’t know how to build one until I obtained a book here that taught me.

For most stuff, I wouldn’t even know how to begin. Even if Rin is willing to teach me more of the basics around all that stuff... I don’t have time to properly learn it.

It’s definitely possible to grow powerful without items, artifacts, superpowers, and excreta… but I don’t have the time to do it. With the universe slowly being destroyed and monstrosities running rampant, there’s only around 7-10 years before the safe zones created by The Redeemers collapse.  

Once that happens, I need to be powerful enough to survive constant attacks from monstrosities as strong as those from the Seventh Zone of Hell Difficulty. If I had even double that time, it might be worth it to learn how to properly utilize swords, spears, and bow techniques.

However, I lack the time to properly grow and learn techniques. I keenly understand that my lack of proper techniques is massive disadvantage.

Out of my total power, due to horrible techniques, I’m only able to utilize around 40-50%.

That means, if I knew what I was doing, I could potentially improve my power alone by around double. Additionally, proper techniques would also allow me to dodge dangerous attacks and abilities increasing my survivability even further.

*Sigh...* It doesn’t really matter, though.

While I might be able to learn the basics, at most that would allow me to use around 60-70% of my total power. My utilizable power and defense would increase far faster if I found artifacts or discovered a heritage site.

Heck, even learning warding would improve my power at a quicker rate than attempting to train in techniques… that’s exactly why I haven’t bothered to learn them. They are a stable method to gain power, but I don't have enough time for them to provide tangible benefits.

Refocusing on the surrounding. Rin had walked over to the target and begun plucking out the arrows. 

Well, even if I don’t have time to become powerful in techniques, I can at least learn some of the basics. Leaving Rin would be sub-optimal, thus, for the time being, I'm stuck waiting around for her to finish practicing her techniques.

At the very least, waiting around definitely isn’t going to help. 

Walking back toward Sidney, I decided to spend some time training her (Also known as beating her up and gradually watching her grow more power as that happens). I’d basically already promised to train her and since I can improve my foundation in the process, that’s even better.

This time I’ll minimize my strength and speed usage to the limit. Hopefully, with that, I’ll learn how to dodge and attack properly utilizing the lower level of power.  

Learning how to fight with a limit power should improve my techniques for when I fight in the Dream Realm and against far more powerful monsters in the real world.

Picking up a branch, this time I decided to utilize it as a spear rather than sword. 

If I’m going to ‘choose the spear’ as Rin told me, I’m going to need to be able to fight with a spear. 

Testing out the branch/spear twice before I begun the spar.

[Later that night…]

Alright… so, apparently, attempting to fight Sidney without utilizing my entire power while switching to an unfamiliar weapon was a bad idea.

That idea only lasted around two minutes before I realized that I had to utilize my overpowering strength and speed to fight against her with any semblance of equality.

Her corrosive power immediately destroyed my branch and I can't exactly call her out for cheating when I've told her to use every power she has available in the past.

If I was utilizing a dagger, I would’ve been fine. I never would've let Sidney grab ahold of it. However, a spear requires very different techniques than a dagger or sword. Techniques that, I would have no clue about.

I should’ve realized that attempting to switch weapons while simultaneously reducing power and speed was a bad idea.

... Maybe I should also mention that Rin’s acting strange.

Well, rather than strange, it’s better to say acting differently.

Before she'd reloaded to this point, she was constantly clinging to me. Trying to get my attention, while being in constant physical contact.

Now, though, she’s quietly practicing her archery on her own.

Did three years really change her that much?

Where’s my clingy and innocent Rin gone?

Maybe she’s just shocked at the prospect of losing so much time.

I imagine she’s reloaded countless times in those three years… so, rather than three years, the time that has past was probably even longer for her.

Even if she’s learned many things, losing three years worth of power and strength has got to be difficult.

I’ve been avoiding sleeping because of this Dream Realm problem… but I’m going to have to sleep soon.

Hopefully, the Dream Realm isn’t particularly dangerous this time (or better yet, I don’t end up going into the Dream Realm every night).

 

Spoiler

Today has literally been one problem after another in my quest to release this chapter.

I don't know how else to describe it at this point as anything other than fate utterly hating either me or this chapter.

 

Since this is the second time I'm writing this author's note, I'll get straight to the point. (more on that later.)

This chapter was ready at 9:47 AM and scheduled to release at 11:55 AM.

My plan at the time to edit the chapter on my phone.

So I did that.

I noticed an error, changed it on my phone and saved it.

...And a bug in scribblehub that I knew about (but, had forgotten about appeared).

Anything in "<>" disappeared.

For whatever reason, Scribblehub has grudge against some system messages that occurs in those specific brackets on my mobile phones (it doesn't actually delete all of them just the majority).

In this case, it was only the system message at the beginning.

Since I hadn't edited too much, I decided to use the revision feature.

Big mistake.

Okay, background information... Scribblehub has this revision feature that saves all versions of a chapter.

So, at anytime, authors can go back and look at any past saved version and, if necessary, restore from it.

...Thus, my first response the deleted system message was just to reload from the previous revision.

That didn't go well. Another bug, occurred (a bug that I'd never encountered before that is probably limited to the mobile only version).

Instead of restoring my previous chapter, my entire chapter was replaced with one word "False".

Now, in hindsight, I could've copy and pasted the chapter from the text format that appeared in the revision tab.

...But, you see, at this point, I was panicking.

Thus, the copy and paste feature completely slipped my mind.

After several frantic attempts to recover the correct version and only receiving the word 'False' in return, I gave up (I had other things that I needed to do).

I moved the schedule time to 11:55PM and decided I would solve the problem when I arrived back home (where my computer is).

Now, previously, this was where the story ended.

However, no more!

Remember the part where I said this is the second time I'm writing this?

You see, after arriving back at my computer, I wrote an entire long explanation explaining everything that happened and apologizing for the delay (similar to, but not identical to, this one).

Then, accidentally went back a page.

Which deleted the entire explanation...

*Sigh...*

If you had seen my face...

Keep in mind that, at that point, I had spent more than thirty minutes writing that explanation and I now had to completely rewrite it (which has taken around 40-50 minutes).

Problem after problem.

 

After all these problems, I've decided to simply take the time to edit it.

The difference between releasing something 8 hours late and 12 hours late is minimal.

Late is late...

 

If in the future any problem happen and it doesn't release at 11:55AM (or shortly thereafter), I'll try and release the chapter at 11:55 PM.

"But... why 11:55 PM?!" I hear you cry!

Well, that's because I normally release at 11:55 AM (as I mentioned earlier) and, in scribblehub, it's very easy to accidentally click PM instead of AM when you schedule chapters.

So... basically, I'm choosing 11:55 PM in case I screw up on the scheduling side of chapter release.

Anyway... this was way too long an explanation to the point that nobody is going to read it, which for some reason I attempted to make entertaining.

 

Long story short, fate conspired against me to ruined the release time of today's schedule... and, unlike Tobias, I'm not strong enough to escape the entrapment of fate. 

Curse you, FATE! My perfect release schedule reputation is ruined forever!

 

Aright, joking aside... Sorry for the delay!

Hope you liked the chapter!

While I'm apologizing, I'm sorry that I have been slow to respond to comments. I've been really busy lately.

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