Another cliff hanger warning.
Another perspective on the same events, so of course it more or less has the same cliff hanger. More information revealed this time though. Aerien's POV this time around, so you get a pretty first hand experience now.
Aerien’s POV (15 minutes earlier)
[Everyone! Get to the stairs!] Suddenly, Falmarin burst into the room shouting those words and then quickly dived into the floor. I didn’t understand what was going on exactly, but it had been getting a little noisy outside. I had ignored it at first, but with the warning Falmarin just shouted, I got a real sense that something was very wrong.
I looked around the room, this time with all my senses heightened for anything that could be a threat. My attention immediately came to the window. There was a vine hanging in front of it that wasn’t there before, and it was definitely pulled taught and shifting back and forth in a regular pattern that did not match with the swaying of the wind. No, that was definitely the movements of someone climbing it.
I looked over to the sealed stairs, which were just opening up now. Falmarin immediately flew back up the stairs as soon as the path was open. Meanwhile, the boys and Gaerien still seemed confused. Meanwhile, I saw a boot come up over the side of the window. I realized exactly what the person attached to that foot was about to do, and there was no way we would have enough time to run. Even if we could, I doubted it would do us any good.
As I watched the person in the window flex their legs and jump, swinging back with the vine they were holding, Levin came and grabbed me around the torso under the armpits, and began to drag me toward the stairs. I chose this exact moment to suddenly shift my weight and throw a hand onto Levin’s shoulder, disrupting his balance that was already rather poor since he was bracing himself so much in order to drag me.
He toppled to the floor, dragging me with him. In that same exact moment, the glass window shattered and the feet that had come through it were quickly followed by the body of a trim elven man who skillfully followed the momentum of his swing and landed on the floor with barely a scratch on him.
While Levin was trying to get up, I used his shoulder to push off of, bringing myself to my feet. I had to get eyes on the intruder quickly in order to size him up and figure for any advantage I could use. He was wearing some kind of vest made of fur as his armor. The same armor was also sewn to several key positions on his legs. As for weapons, he didn’t come in with a lot. However, I did still catch a glint of metal at his hip that could only have been some kind of knife given how it did not protrude far and he wore it on the front of his belt.
As for my advantages, well, I was a baby. I guess my strongest advantage, aside from previous life knowledge, would be that I would be underestimated. I still didn’t have a great deal of manual dexterity, and I could hardly even bend my knees correctly due to the fact that the knee cap hadn’t properly formed yet and thus my quads lacked the leverage to pull correctly. Also, I couldn’t really walk 2 steps without falling. Normally, this would be pretty stacked in this guy’s favor. That is, if I was a normal baby, or even a normal reincarnated person. In my case though, I had one major advantage. That being, soft fist martial arts.
There is a dirty little secret about the soft fist martial arts. All of the foremost masters are old men in their 70s and 80s. Some even older. This may not seem like much of a statement at first. In fact, it is quite stereotypical to have the old martial arts master in movies. As such, most people would react to this statement with a big fat “Of course they are all old men!” However, nobody really stops to consider the true implications that come from this.
The thing is, there are several diseases common to the elderly. These diseases are less prevalent in people who stay in shape, such as a martial arts master, but there is one disease in particular that actually becomes more prevalent instead of less for those who are very physically active. Rheumatoid arthritis. Most masters of the martial arts tend to suffer from this particular disease. In the hard fist martial arts, this means you become more of an instructor only, no longer having the ability to actually perform at the martial art. However, for the gentle fist styles, these masters can adapt their style to still work even with their arthritis riddled body.
These arthritis riddled masters, being the ones who are at the top of every school and who teach the younger students, will pass down their methods until the methods that are gentle on the joints and can function even with the most severe joint problems.
The art I practiced back on Earth was around 800 years old. As such, it had gone through so many generations of this that the entire style taught you by the time you got your yellow belt how to perform all your moves as though you were decrepit and old. Because, as one of the mottoes of the school says, one day you will be.
When it comes to being an arthritis ridden old man, there really wasn’t a lot of difference from being a toddling infant in terms of mobility. As such, my only real detriment was my balance and my inability to walk more than 2 steps… I could handle that. There was one thing that could go wrong and throw all of this off though.
(Levin! Don’t touch me!) I shout back at him.
(What!?) He responds in confusion. Unfortunately, I absolutely do not have enough time to explain myself.
(Just don’t! I’m going to fight!)
There was no more time for words, because the intruder had already straightened up and had confirmed his surroundings. He began to walk toward us, and he looked straight at me and smiled.
[Don’t touch her!] Falmarin shouted, flying straight at the man’s face. However, he didn’t even seem to notice and continued walking straight through her ghostly form. That would mean this guy is non-magical then. I hadn’t put my faith in that working anyway, so that’s also fine. I couldn’t afford to be distracted. I still couldn’t sense spirit energy, and thus people’s intentions, as I had in my past life. I likely wouldn’t be able to sense his anyway, beings he’s an elf, which is a type of fey. This meant I would have to pull off my move here with pure timing alone.
(Ah… Aerien..) Great! Levin is reaching for me. I swat his hand away and stumble a little, trying to keep my balance. In that time, the man has completely closed the distance and bends down to reach for me in order to scoop me off the ground. While he’s doing so, I stumble in a way that almost resembles drunkenness and collide with his bent knee.
I roll my body to the side, sliding down the outer portion of this guy’s leg as I cling onto his lower thigh which is only just barely in reach due to his bent over state in order to support myself.
[Haha! What’s this?] The man speaks for the first time, now crouching even lower in order to be able to reach me as I am so far around to his side. This brings his waist into reach and I immediately reach and grab onto his belt, my hand landing on my target right as he stops his descent. In the next moment, he managed to get his hands on me and lifted me up. As I was lifted, all I had to do was keep my arm straight and allow my hand to close and this allowed me to “lift” something else right off of his belt.
As soon as it was in my hand, I immediately pulled my arm tight to my body so he wouldn’t notice. I shifted my hands and figured I might as well try something since the alternative if this didn’t work would be about three times harder.
The man pulled my infant body to his chest. And, in the same exact motion, I made use of the force from his own action of pulling me in to drive the blade of the knife I had taken right off his own belt into his rib cage. Even through the fur armor he was wearing, the blade penetrated beautifully, and I successfully managed to get it between his ribs resulting in no deflections off of the rib cage.
[Ah! What!? Ahh..] I leaned forward and covered the handle of the knife with my body. And, with the hand that was not covering the knife, I began punching him in the center of the chest while I was struggling.
[leh e go!] I protest. Rather than react to his knife wound, he makes an effort to keep his hold on me. It seems like, for now, it all had worked beautifully. The muscles and the internal organs have no actual pain receptors, and if sliced cleanly enough you will also not immediately realize you just got a puncture wound, especially if your body is pumping full of adrenaline as it would be if you were infiltrating somebody’s home with a method such as this guy just used.
In this state, the alternate explanation of having just taken an elbow or punch can seem quite plausible as an explanation for where the pain came from. In fact, I had heard several stories about this exact thing happening in the real world. Most of these stories were from prison guards who happened to train in the dojo with me, both during my days as a student and master alike. It was a rather popular art among prison guards as they were the ones who needed non-lethal take-down methods and improved self defense the most. At any rate, they had several stories about people getting shanked and hearing from the victim that they literally did not even think they were being stabbed and thought it was just a punch.
[What’s going on!?] The voice of my mother cuts in as she arrives at the top of the stairs and sees the situation.
[The… the fey dragon *huf* Everon… has… has ordered these children *huf* be brought to him under… under suspicion of… of being grey elves.] The man says. [Oh… what’s..] He seems very short of breath already. Between talking and fighting to keep hold of me, he is quickly using up the oxygen in his blood. And, with his lung cavity depressurized, he is no longer able to get his lungs to fill completely. His breathing has become quick and shallow.
[Let her go!] my mother shouts and then charges the guy. She runs right up to him, but he simply reaches out a hand to intercept her, pushing her down after having received her full momentum. Considering how fast she was running, that’s actually a rather impressive feat of strength. However, he seems to have been thrown off a little by his current state, and begins stumbling immediately afterward and slumps to the floor.
[What’s hap..?] as soon as I get the opportunity of his lap to put my weight on instead of his arm, I immediately shoot my legs down to step on his thigh, pulling the knife from his ribs in the process, and then I deliver an upward cut to his neck. After this, I quickly roll away out of his grip.
[Ah! What!?] He finally seems to have realized what’s going on, slapping a hand up to his neck to stop the bleeding. Unfortunately, the cut I made to his neck was not deep enough. Fortunately, the sudden realization that he had just received two fairly critical wounds caused him to panic and immediately start reaching toward me with the free hand, which of course I impale on the knife blade.
He screams and pulls back his hand reflexively at the sudden pain. I use this unobstructed opportunity to further stab the knife into his right thigh, just above the knee. With this, his mobility should be limited enough he should no longer be much of a threat.
Considering my work to be done, I roll away and then immediately look toward the window. The vine is shifting again. Another person is climbing it. That thing needs to be closed, and fast! That falmarin thing can make the stairs come and go by warping the wood of the house, it shouldn’t be that hard to turn the broken window into a solid wall. I have never managed to use that “green word” magic of the elves, but I had listened in on the concept of it both from mother’s lesson as well as my own much simpler lesson with the “smart nut” Ether guy had given me.
Ok, so I’m just supposed to push in mana and think of what I want to happen. Well, I’ve got plenty of mana from my meditation. It is not only spirit energy that comes through the energy of heaven, it’s every kind of energy. And, even if that wasn’t the case, my elf body is constantly converting all the excess spirit energy into mana, so it really ought to work out fine.
Ok, so, my intention is to have the window close. Actually, with all that’s happening, maybe I should just tell falmarin to do whatever it takes to protect me. As I begin to focus what I assume to be mana through my hand and into the floor, I suddenly feel a splitting pain in my head. Actually, I come to realize this pain has been there for a while. It seems that guy slumped over on the floor there wasn’t the only one who’s pain signals had been blocked by adrenaline. However, at this moment the pain is beginning to intensify.
I realize it’s not just my head. The pain is splitting, and it’s centered straight in the middle of my eyebrows. The pain is more intense than the blockage of the facial nerve, a phenomenon which causes a sharp pain to the area right above the eye ridge due to spamming neck muscles blocking the cranial nerve as it exists the skull. Also, if it were that, then it would be isolated to one side. This was straight in the center.
In addition, my throat hurts as well and feels like it’s tightening. My chest, right where my heart would be, is beginning to clutch in the same kind of pain. My stomach… no, not stomach, my solar plexus region feels like fire is being shot through it and that fire seems to spread to all my limbs as well as my liver and spleen nearby.
If I hadn’t just spent a week and a half learning everything there was to know about this subject, I likely would not have recognized what was going on. However, after having studied it so intensely, I realized every single location that was in pain was the exact location of one of the major or minor chakras.
The pain was becoming more and more intense. I could no longer concentrate on the idea of pouring mana and such into the tree. My mind was occupied with the concern over what exactly was happening to me, and it turned out I had exactly the method to answer that question.
-
Having spent so much time in my inner world in the last couple weeks, I had become quite good at slipping in and out of it, especially as my older self. This was a good thing with how intense the pain was, I was able to simply slip right in. However, what I saw upon arrival was something that I simply did not know what to make of.
For starters, as soon as I got in, I felt myself pelted with rain. This rain, was not coming down from above. It was hitting me from my side, blown by an intense wind like no wind storm I had ever felt before. The island that always served as a foothold whenever I came to this space… was gone. There were floating chunks of stone debris hovering all over the space like asteroids. No, not hovering, they were moving quite violently, constantly clashing into one another with massive impacts that reverberated throughout the space. It was a chaotic mess. And throughout the area, there were also bursts of flame constantly erupting from everywhere, even places that were just open air.
All four elements were going crazy, it was a complete uncontrolled mess. Even in my mental projection form, I felt the need to shield myself against this violent storm that was raging inside my spirit. However, despite all the chaos, it was not too hard to see the source of the problem if I just looked up.
As I looked to the center of my inner world, I saw my two ethereal forms filled with representations of my chakra. The maelstrom of out of control elements seemed to be centered around the two figures like twin tornadoes. As I watched, trying to get a better handle on what was going on, I came to realize the swirling energies of the elements actually seemed to be getting absorbed by the ghostly figures that represented my spirit bodies.
There was something off about it though. Between the two figures, the manner in which the elements entered the male form and the female form were different. For the male form, the void from below and the energy of heaven from above seemed to intensify. The void climbed the male form’s legs, and the heaven energy became even more intense. Also, it was no longer just the heaven’s chakra that had changed color to a pure white. The entire chakra system, including the maridians, the spirit vessels that ran from one chakra to the next, were also awash in the bright and pure light of the energy channeled from heaven.
The elements seemed only to eager to enter the male form, and the male form’s chakra system seemed to let off a bright and assuring glow that seemed to say it was satisfied and happy to receive the energy that was infiltrating it from every side. The case of the child-bodied female form was a far different case.
Unlike the male chakra body, the female form seemed to be actively suffering as a result of the energies assailing it. Also, several times, a large blast of some elemental energy would throw itself toward the female form and, instead of being absorbed as it was with the male form, it instead seemed to strike her and cause her intense pain. The worst part though, by far, was what I could see happening to the chakras within the female form’s body as I was powerless to do anything to stop it.
The heaven’s chakra, which had always been unstable for my female form, was glowing more intensely than ever and firing its energy off in every random direction. This included straight down through the female body itself, and the other chakras both major and minor did not seem to be taking well to it. As the energy was being pumped into her form, the major chakra from the sixth at the third eye, down to the third at the solar plexus, all seemed to swell well beyond their normal size. Having already noted that bigger in this case actually did mean something more akin to an injury than an increase in strength among these chakra, and having seen that the male form was not showing this behavior, I was certain this was not a good sign.
All the chakra that had become swollen up in the female form radiated intense bursts of light, not at all unlike those being fired off by the heaven’s chakra. They also began to shake uncontrollably like something was trying to escape from inside them. Right before my eyes, I saw the female form’s sixth chakra, the one at the location I had noticed having an issue first, was beginning to form a visible crack in it.
Mere seconds later, this all culminated in something unfathomable. Something that left me absolutely stupefied as to what to do next. The cracks began to spread across the little girl’s sixth chakra, until finally it exploded, burst into tiny fragments of light. Along with this, I heard an absolutely blood curdling scream. It was at this point I realized I had not clearly felt my younger self’s mind for quite a while.
Thanks to the rules of this inner world, I was able to freely teleport my mental projection to anywhere inside it I wanted to be. As I had heard the small child shrieking from somewhere within this space, I decided to transport myself immediately to her side. I found the manifestation of my child self clutching her head in absolute agony, and all she was able to do was writhe in pain, no longer even aware of the world around her. I immediately reached out and grabbed her, cradling her in my arms as she continued to do nothing but scream out and shriek in the pain that had riddled her body. The chakra manifestation that just had that happen to it, it was the one that represented her. As such, it was her feeling the pain. It was only at this moment that I realized that since I came in here I no longer felt the pain I had back in my physical body on the outside.
As though mocking the very concept of my desire to do something about this situation, a loud explosion and the sound that resembled glass shattering reverberated throughout the area yet again. The exact same sound I had heard a moment ago. Corresponding with this, the little one’s screaming and writhing only intensified as I cringed. I looked up to see that now the throat chakra was gone. And, almost as soon as I looked up, the failure of the two chakras began a cascade effect. The minor chakras seemed to begin popping all at once.
Once about half of them were gone, the heart chakra exploded, and then the most important third chakra, the Manipura as Gaerien had called it which acted as the chakra body’s actual equivalent of the heart. With that one gone, the final two major chakras as well as any of the remaining minor chakras simply seemed to flick out of existence as though they were candle flames being blown out by the wind of the third chakra exploding. That is, all of them except for the heaven’s chakra.
The great ball of white light was the last one remaining. It began to grow larger, until finally, it also exploded in the largest flash yet of any of them. After this, with the little one’s chakra system entirely destroyed, the small remaining energy fragments, just like the swirling torrent of the elements, seemed to be absorbed by the male form. After this, all at once, the storm seemed to settle down. Meanwhile, I was left with the limp body of my mental projection of my child self in my arms.
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Good Guy Everon sends a minion to expose Ether's dastardly deeds, only to be accused of murdering the baby, who turns out to be a one of a kind godly freak that makes dryads sprout like mushrooms, thus validating why she was under special care in the first place. It's cracking me up. Who is going to believe the baby killed herself practicing magic?
Given Túeth was carrying Aerien's body outside, I hope she also misunderstood things. There is no coming back if she saw her pulling a knife and stabbing a man to death, specially with her parentage.
I was thinking the same thing. It is a different story between knowing the blood on Aerien is not her own and thinking she suffered some injury before/during Tueth's rescue attempt. Plus, we can't have to mom run farther away from her child, because she thinks of them as monsters.
As for Aerien's well being, the surplus of Mana and Spirit Energy should keep her going for a bit, but I can only hope that Gaerien and Eirlathion can quickly help in their in ways. They need to sort out the turbulent energies and/or heal the internal injuries from the explosion before she disappears.
The old man mental projection might also need to reconstruct the Little Girl Projection from scratch during this time. Although I am curious of the second intruder and whether everyone felt any energy released, my mind is not obsessively focused on how much damage control the Old Man can do.
Also, it took me a second to realize that Hard Fist and Gentle Fist wasn't from Kenpo or Naruto, but I am just making sure: Jemini-sama, you are referring to the Hard Style and Soft Style martial arts, aren't you? If so, I guess Aerien meant to say that she learned some grappling techniques within her school of Ninjitsu.
@Truth It's a little more like the Samurai style taught in Ninjutsu is the precursor to Jujutsu, which later became Judo, which later became Aikido. If you think Aikido but meaner, and also somehow more gentle at the same time, then you probably have a pretty good idea of what Aerien's style is. The idea is actually that if you grab a person too hard, that gives them something to resist against. Instead, it uses subtle tricks of the brain to throw a person off and wind up walking right into a particularly nasty joint lock. And, yes, it actually does work. This is based on a real world martial art (that I happen to have learned.)
(Seriously, Aikido's methods are heavy compared to Taijutsu. Taijutsu is a style where you just barely rest your hand against your opponent's body and it results in their arm being nearly twisted off. Yes, I do speak from experience.)
I am definitely figuring out fast though why you don't find many accurate martial arts books. It is really hard to describe it in a way that someone with no exposure to the art can understand, especially at these really high levels.
TL;DR, to say that she learned grappling is not wrong, but it's not right either. The umbrella of soft martial arts are a whole lot more than just grappling, and grappling doesn't even come close to accurately describing it.
@Jemini I see. I didn't think you were exposed to it, but I will take your word on it. As for myself, despite mainly learning a MMA style that combined Muay Thai, Jujitsu, and Kickboxing, I learned some Aikido as well, so I can already have a general idea of how 2 soft styles wotk.
Admittedly, I can see how mainly martial arts were watered down to be less lethal in some of their moves. Plus, I can see how many of them have weaknesses or are specialized against certain opponents when observed enough......They are still dangerous though.
With that said, with Ninjitsu being as old as it is, I am not surprised that there are many differences. I guess that I am just learning something new about it, but I will admit that it does go with their common image of being tricky/sneaky in combat when thinking of how Aerien applied it.
P.S. Tell me about it. When there are so many subtle things that you have to incorporate into even one or two punches, I will be amazed to find someone who can make a martial arts book comprehensible to an engineer or librarian (who weren't taught). You would have to make it concise yet not easy to get confused over.
Jemini asked for it, some thoughts on why this happened.
Mana just like spirit energy contains thoughts, that is the reason for the breaking of the spell vessels of human mages after all. Perhaps something similar to the breaking of a spell vessel is happening. The will of the mana and the will of the vessel don't align with each other and that causes the breaking.
Or it was not mana that was channeled. But that would go against my theory about how dryads come to be. They are given a bit of mana over and over again until they have enough to "evolve".
Ok, hint. Almost all the information you will need is in the last lore chapter. There are also a few things sprinkled around the other chapters, but most of it is in the lore chapter. (I guess that is a little cheaty.)
@anteopta That made me think that maybe
Aerien's mana created with fire method isn't treated like his own mana and causes "breaking of spell vessels" because of that, but since she is channeling it through chakras, breaking them instead. If she used only mana naturally transformed she would be OK, but in that case such huge amounts wouldn't be possible. That would establish a nice limit, since this mana could evolve nymph into a Dryad that rivals rusting Dragons.
Speculation:
Spirit Energy is the energy of mind that controls spells, and conducts thoughts, and chakras seem to conduct spirit energy, so can we assume that chakras are a sort of nervous system that conducts will from mind to body, with main chakras being the spine and rest of nerves that connect muscles and senses to spine?
How do you do the box?
@anteopta I didn't have it before available, but now I have, so I thought that they changed it recently, but it can be some sort of premium feature? Anyway it should work if you write spoiler and quote tags manually like the ones on novel updates forum - before I had the buttons manual writing worked (I think).
@Szmiiit It's a new feature added just last month, it's in the update logs in the suggestions section of the forum. It's available to everyone. But, yeah, it's just putting [spoiler] boxes manually into the post.
EDIT: I tried a little experiment where I also put the backslash / "end spoiler" box in before the spoiler box, thinking that might make it so both boxes were in the post but the effect didn't activate. Turns out, what it does is cause anything between the boxes to become completely invisible without there even being a box to expose it.
Thanks for the chapter! Scared me there real good!
Seeing what happened to Aerien that fey dragon deserves what he got last chapter. No pity for him
I am shooketh by this chapter. Y-you better take responsibility!
Thanks for the chapter.
down their methods until the methods that are gentle - their methods that are
cranial nerve as it exists the skull - it exits
out and shriek in the pain that had - with the
Well, kid arien's dead hm?
Are the walls of overexplanation exclusive to Ariens PoV to show her scientific mindset? If so i'd dig way more other PoV chapters (that dont descripe the same scenario though).
Enjoyed the last chapter's style way more i must say~ :0
Oh... and is the powercreep leaned towards chinese novel typical developments? Its already ridiculous enough that an 6 month old toddler elve to sucessfully fight an adult hunter elve *cough*.
and i was lost on the part why all chakra nodes suddenly had to explode... does that represent a cleanical death?
Yeah, sorry for the questions im just the type that likes to skip walls of stuffy explanations... like the „soft hand combat" section as an example :/ I always just kinda shut off and skim it in order to get a rough graps to simpliefy it for me.
I hope i didnt offence you, just sharing that i find most of the detailed explanations rather boring to read... however dont let that influence you as this is your work! Giving you just some input from a simpelton, still gonna read your story (as long as it wont get chinese novel crazy overkill, just cant handle their way of storytelling like 95% of the time) :D
The soft fist combat stuff was really an explanation of how Aerien was able to beat a full grown adult without the need for the power creep stuff. She literally could have done that even if she was still human and still on earth. There was no super power involved other than previous life skill and the advanced neural development that set her mobility closer to that of an 18 month old than a 6 month old.
In other words, it was 100% pure skill, 0% speed, 0% power, and the only magic involved was the magic that allowed her to keep her previous life ability.
Sorry if you couldn't get through the explanation, but that explanation was pretty important since it explained exactly how she was able to do that.
As for the Chinese style OP levels they get to, this first arc is mostly for showing off the objective early. Basically, a glimpse at what the final power levels are going to look like. After this there will be more of the training methods used to reach that point.
(However, yes, an infant successfully fighting a physically athletic adult was a reference to how ridiculous some Chinese fantasy novels could get. I just thought I would do the same in terms of power scale with zero magic mumbo jumbo other than the infant with the past life memories of an adult. Again, the things Aerien did are well within the strictly physical capabilities of any 18 month old. Just not the skill capabilities.)
@Jemini Well, with your level of detail i can atleast have a calm heart that everything makes sense and isnt plucked out of thin air or elsewhere the sun doesnt shine.
Tbh, my main fear with „chinese power creep novels“ is that the story telling is more then often choppy, the complete disregard of human-oid life (charas introduced and killed left and right for stuff like „offending“ the wrong family and so on) and ultra stiff caste systems and stupid „leveling systems“ that are just... well stupid like „gem realm“ or „darkness atuned 13 layered core“ ‘n stuff on like 5 continents with complete lack of understanding of what is what and why. Still dont know why most of them love a 5 continents/realms setting. Guess its just a cultural thing and doesnt need explaining in china?
Anyway thanks for replying on my ramblings, i’m always looking forward to every release date of yours :)
Though i still have trouble believing any combat skill could balance out such a margin of an toddler vs adult. The way i read and accepted it without all that soft fist combat is simply Arien outwitting the unsuspecting elve via getting picked up and stabi stabi some vital points.
Who believes a harmless baby knows how and where to viciously stab right? Dunno why Ariens cores getting destroyed by being picked up though..
@KaiKai Actually, her outwitting him is not all that far from it. That actually is what is at the core of it. Most of the excessive explanation is about what she was doing to compensate for the fact that her gait (walking) was still unstable and the fact that she had to be at the side of his leg before he tried to pick her up in order to force him to bend down, and thus had to find a way to dodge his hands.
All the gentle fist stuff is more an explanation of why it is that Aerien knew that the exact positioning she was trying to take would force him to perform the actions she wanted him to perform.
EDIT: About the Chakra breaking, that was the realization of a few different things that were subtly set up and explained in earlier chapters, one of them being the last lore chapter. Serious cookies to anyone who manages to correctly call it out before it's explained. (will be explained during the aftermath.)
(That's something I kinda like to do. I'm also a fan of mystery shows, so I like to litter bread crumbs of explanation, then show a baffling event, then have a bit of a pause between the baffling event and the explanation. I like giving the sharp people paying close attention the chance to call it before the reveal. The reveal hasn't even hit in the SubscribeStar advanced chapters yet, but one of the Subscribers has actually gotten pretty darn close to the correct call.)
you skim l/n silly do that to something like a food wars manga chapter skip to food done p.s. you can throw them into word and make them into pdfs and let it read them to you while playing some gamez.