It had been three days since he started training by himself at manor Reevers' gym.

He had blindfolded himself and had done nothing else but perform the Katas of the Flowing Discipline of Water. He even thought he felt the meaning of the blindfolded training, yet it kept escaping him. Maybe the best way to train was while having someone sparring with you.

He had currently maxed both Toughen, which had been by far the most effortless Skill to Max, and Helping Hand. He had done so through much bloodshed. But his mind had already found some inner piece toward his own self-mutilation. It was bordering over a perilous route, though, so he hoped he would not have to do anything of the like anymore.

Twilight was dawning upon him in the gym, and as he studied his complete Anchor Page…

 

Gabriel Walker
Race	Human	Level	33 (41.21%)
Class	Dark Arts Jack of all trades.	Class Level	28 (55.38%)
Spirit	Spirit of The Shiny-Lizard	Spirit Level	31 (38.85%)
Pools
Life	Energy	Mana	Spirit
10/10	46/60	75/75	50/50
Attributes
	Body	Spirit	Final
Affinity	38 (19)	7	45
Alacrity	21.6 (18)	11	32.6
Power	17	25.5 (17)	42.5
Recovery	51 (17)	8	59
Resilience	40 (20)	55 (22)	95
Stamina	21.6 (12)	10	31.6

 

Tethers
Bond	Enhancement	Boost
Lizard	Affinity +4 Alacrity +9 Power +5 Recovery +3 Resilience +8 Stamina +7	Alacrity +2 Power +1 Recovery +2 Stamina +1
Perks	Cost	Type
Analyze	1 Mana per use	First Tier - Active
Recall	1 Mana per use	First Tier - Active
Meridians: 60/60	1 Pool of Energy	Second Tier - Active
Skill Trap	10 Mana per use	Third Tier - Active
Auto-targeting	None	First Tier - Passive
Enhanced Senses	None	First Tier - Passive
Mana Manipulation	None	Second Tier - Passive
Mana Sight	None	Third Tier - Passive
Spirit Perks	Cost	Duration
Spirit Sight	None	Indefinite
Spirit Fade	1 Spirit	1 minute/Affinity
Spirit Hiding	None	1 minute/Affinity
Spirit Assimilation	None	1 minute/Affinity
Tokens	Type	Amount
Free Attribute	None	0
Skill Token	Skill Upgrade	0

 

Skills
Skill	Effect	Element	Slot	Type	Tier
Built to Fly	Defy gravity. Permanently increases Stamina by 80%.	None	Stamina	Basic Skill - Spirit Skill	8 (01%)
Burst Attack	Increase your Power and Alacrity by 300%. Permanently increases Recovery by 100%	None	Power	Basic Skill - Spirit Skill	10 (MAX)
Dash	Increase your Alacrity by 150%. Permanently increase Alacrity by 20%.	None	Alacrity	Basic Skill - Spirit Skill	2 (75.2%)
Whispers of the Old God	Taints your Mana with the ideals of Darkness. Permanently doubles Affinity.	Dark	Affinity	Basic Skill - Spirit Skill	Very Rare
Helping Hand	Increase a target’s Recovery by 600%. Permanently increases Recovery by 100%	None	Recovery	Basic Skill - Spirit Skill	10 (MAX)
Toughen	Steel yourself, increasing your Resilience by 600%. Permanently increases Resilience by100%.	None	Resilience	Basic Skill - Spirit Skill	10 (MAX)

 

Sub-Skills
Sub-Skill	Skill	Effect	Element	Duration	Cost
Battle Seal	Whispers of the Old God	Seal enemy	Dark	Until death or release	10 Mana, 10 Spirit
Burst of Fury	Whispers of the Old God	Adds Affinity to Power	Dark	1 second per Affinity	Half Max Life Pool, Half Max Mana Pool
Curse: Necrosis	Whispers of the Old God	Target loses Life over time.	Dark	1 minute per Affinity.	5 Life
Curse: Sickness	Whispers of the Old God	Target’s Ala, Rec, and Sta are halved.	Dark	1 minute per Affinity	5 Energy
Curse: Mana Poisoning	Whispers of the Old God	Target loses Mana	Dark	1 minute per Affinity	5 Mana
Curse: Spirit Chain	Whispers of the Old God	Target’s willpower is weakened	Dark	1 minute per Affinity	5 Spirit
Ray of Corruption	Whispers of the Old God	Beam of Darkness	Dark	1 second per 10 Affinity	10 Mana

 

…Arya finally showed herself once more.

She did not expect to find him, so she started walking back out.

"Wait!" Gabriel shouted.

Arya did wait.

"What do you want?"

"I'm leaving tomorrow. And though I'm still not remotely as fast as you, I've pretty much doubled my Resilience. Train with me some more." More sincere and direct than that, Gabriel couldn't be.

"You've doubled your Resilience? When did you-" Arya pinched her nose. "No. I don't wanna know."

She tapped her foot on the ground a bunch of times.

"Okay. But! Although I won't be using any Skills, I don't want you to use any. Gabriel. I won't be holding back," she warned him.

"So, no blindfolds?" He asked.

"No, blindfolds," she confirmed. "And for the love of god… no weapons."

"Scared about my fairy stick?" He asked, grinning like a fool.

"Pfft. I bet you wouldn't even be able to use your real stick. Just like you can't use that spear. Now get ready."

"Wait, what does it mean? If it's my lack of technique you're about, then it's not my fault."

"What technique. I'm talking about its true usage. It's a one of a kind weapon that requires through ability. You should be able to switch between frontal assaults, ranged attacks, and spirit annihilations. But you only use it as a spear. So, you are simply unworthy of it."

"What are you talking about!? I don't know how to insert Energy in it. I can't use it as a weapon. It probably needs a Perk or something."

"Gabriel… you're ignorance has no boundaries. That is a bound weapon. It is part of you. You don't need any Perks to manifest energies in your body, just as you don't need it to have Mana Manipulation to use it as a spear."

"But I do have Mana Manipulation…" he said, almost understanding the points she was trying to make.

"So, how did you use it before you had that Perk. Did you whip it at people?"

"No… no. I inserted Mana into it."

"Then why wouldn't the same work for Energy or Spirit. I understand feeding it Spirit wouldn't make much sense since the Arcane Spirit Crystal inside of it is dead. It probably died with its previous owner. But you should just think about feeding it your Energy, and it would activate its longbow form. At least it would be a proper use for those fantastic Adamantite laces instead of using them as damn handkerchiefs! Now get ready."

"You are so weird…" Gabriel started getting into the stance peculiar to Kata of the Foam. An open welcome. Arya did not answer; she dashed at him.

She's too fast for me to respond in kind with Kata of the Tempest. She would just evade each and every strike. If I only use Kata of the Foam, I'll just end up getting beat to a pulp. Kata of the Surge is a waste of time if not used by surprise.

Kata of the Tide it is then.

Faking to welcome her thrust, Gabriel switched his stance at the last second, entering her range with a hand-cut aimed at her armpit. It was a strange move, to which she could answer by pulling him into a grapple. Yet, she shifted away at the last moment, a flash of understanding clear in her gaze.

Performing a grapple to someone in the mind form of Kata of the Tide was dangerous. The form was meant to insinuate every opening it could find, and during a grapple, there were numerous advantages, but just as much opening offered to the grappled.

She retaliated with an ascending palm strike at his jaw bone.

Gabriel saw it but could not escape it; she was too fast. However, he could lean backward to less impact. Doing so, he opened up to too many attacks, but that was the only thing he could do. Lacking both speed and strength. He could only rely on a Resilience that, most probably at his level, was just as high, if not higher than hers.

Though the palms slightly hit him on the end of his chin, he felt the blood from his gums. Probably some teeth had been driven loose. The following attack was much worse, as she gripped him by the shirt and slammed him on the floor.

A visible wave of dust rose up in a circular wave as he hit the ground. Gabriel coughed but retaliated with a kick.

Arya was expecting it, backing away. It gave Gabriel time to roll away and get up, but he had beaten his head on the ground other than his back; snowflakes appeared in his sight.

She was once again on the hunt. Gabriel tried to evade, but he was off form, and other than correctly intercepting Arya's hand-knife directed at his abdomen, and shifting the attack away. He couldn't do more to evade the left hook, which arrived straight on his right temples.

The first thing Gabriel did when he opened his eyes was assessing the situation.

Of course, I've lost.

Arya was moving stands of particularly resilient looking sandbags around the gym.

Gabriel got up and cast Helping Hand on himself.

"Oh, the prodigy! You're up."

"Again," he said, letting the witty comment slid off.

She raised an eyebrow, taking a second to answer. "Okay, but just because I wanna see if that last movement was a fluke or not. Get into position."

"Just give me a few minutes to heal whatever you've broken inside of my head."

She laughed.

"No jokes! A few more of those, and I might turn into some Lloyd Christmas."

"I have no idea who that is."

Gabriel caressed his heart, "Poor Carrey, it's cemented his carrier."

"You're talking bullshit, are you?"

"You're just ignorant of the greatest comedy actor that is. Come on, get ready with it. I can't hear more of this."

"I'm really not following," Ayra sighed.

"I see now. All your life has revolved around training. Do you seriously not know Jim Carrey?"

"We don't watch TV here. It's a deterrent for proper training, and it's really just for those who don't aim high enough. Are you one of those?"

If I turn out like this, then please, oh please! Kill me, Liz! And make it painful.

"Art, my dear. There's a difference between good cinema and bad TV."

"So, you're trying to prove that deficient comedy is art?"

"That's exactly it. You try to make a man laugh with the shift of a facial muscle. We'll see who is the talented one then."

"Then Murray wins hands down," she answered, taking him by surprise. "Did you really think we were that unfun?"

"Ha! That's rich! Murray vs. Carrey. He's good, baby, one of the best, but Jim's the king."

She just scoffed and retaliated.

Their training repeated for several hours. Until they both started showing signs of mental tiredness and physical tiredness, yet, they did not dare declare the end of the training. Even Arya, which had bested Gabriel every single time, was being shown the gradual increase in his battle readiness and reading. Maybe something was stopping her from declaring the end for the training, maybe she wanted to utterly defeat him, thing, that after the first four knockouts had become increasingly harder to reproduce. In fact, they declared breaks every time Gabriel had to realign a bone or heal himself up, but in the last ten or so fights. He had not been knocked out once.

Their eyes were downcasted, yet smiling. Not counting brief exchanges to check one another's readiness, they had not exchanged half a word. They spoke with their fists.

Now it was dark outside, Liz with the Chimpanzee and some of the other Spirits, those of the other Reevers Gabriel had never seen, had been wasting their time in the garden, in Liz's case, bonding with nature. The lizard and the primate were now watching the fighting of their bond humans.

Feeling Liz's presence close by could only bolster Gabriel's fighting spirit, and it showed in the way his mental power had strengthened.

Gabe evaded assault after assault, timing it with the feeling blindfolded training had imparted onto him.

It felt an instantaneous feeling of the space around him, and the threats coming in the immediate. He could sense, of course, just partially, what the enemy was doing while entering his personal area, and the range of it did not extend much farther than a couple of feet around his body.

This must be that battle sense is. I'm starting to feel her movements near my body… however, I'm too slow to react practically to it.

Probably noticing he was lost in some self-observation, Arya profited from the window of time created by his lapse of concentration to switch to Kata of the Surge.

The attack she was about to perform would be disastrous if it hit me directly.

She evaded lowering herself to the left in the peculiar flowing motions of the Katas and directed that momentum toward what Gabriel had now understood was her preferred form of attack, an uppercut. A double palmed uppercut to his chin. She was planning to make him faint, and if that connected, he would blackout without question.

Gabriel felt his incoming loss coming. So he retaliated with a Skill.

He cast Dash; he had been training it and gained insights in its usage. So he bolstered his Alacrity without necessarily having to move his body; doing so, Gabe evaded the attack.

The man was met with instant retaliation by a first surprised but the next instant grinning woman. She would attack with her cannon-like punch. He could already feel it coming to his face. But he was ready.

Gabriel cast Toughen, Burst Attack, and another instance of Dash to make sure he caught up to her. They had tacitly already used up their Meridians Energy, or at least, Gabriel had. His speed increased several times, and his own came much faster than hers, beating hard against the girl's not fully extended fist.

She certainly was not expecting that degree of toughness or impressive increase in speed. Her hand broke. Gabriel felt it from her minuscule shift in expression and the feel on his knuckles; he guessed that her shoulder had received damage as well.

He had no idea if she could heal herself, but he would be at an instantaneous advantage.

Until she showed no sign at all of backtracking, she used something else instead. Her skin and overall frame became a shade darker, puffs of dark smoke emitting from her breath. Her eyes were entirely clouded in darkness. Then she was once again upon him.

She felt like a machine. Her fist was once again usable, it recovered instantly, and she was using it to bombard Gabriel with hooks and thrusts that hit like car crashes.

Gabe backtracked but to no avail. He had started using Toughen and Dash to increase his speed.

However, he had learned to keep up Toughen for longer, with an extreme strain on his body. Yet, it was the only thing to do. Otherwise, she would rip him to pieces.

It's pretty clear I need to put some points into Life. Toughen is too good a Skill no to abuse.

She was immune to Mana, even worse. She could reflect it back, and by the way it happened, Gabriel guessed that it might have been a passive trait of a Skill.

It was time for him to try his Skills. Gabriel right away cast Curse: Spirit Chain. It would cripple her willpower or spirit. It was immediately clear that the Skill worked. However, not the way he hoped, her chimpanzee grew immobile and fell to the floor. Arya probably noticed, but she was preoccupied with something else; something had affected her too, she couldn't do anything.

Spirit Chain was a Spirit base Sub-skill which targeted the opponent Spirit. It had no Mana frame making it work. That was why it took hold. However, he had no idea something like that would happen.

He decided to try something else.

Of course, he would not be using Necrosis; he hated the idea of using something of the like against a human being. He didn't even know if it could be healed or if it was permanent damage that he would procure to his opponent. So Gabriel used the only Skill that would make him directly stronger than her. Burst of Fury.

He immediately felt it when all of remaining Life points but one were drained away from him, and his Mana pool dropped halved. He could feel the boost in Power throughout his body. Gabriel felt his muscles feel as if they wanted to explode, felt the wrongness of that state of transformation, yet incommensurable, raw power flow through his veins.

It was as if his inward perception of his own Mana, the layer of Mana resting in his core, overflowed, spreading to the rest of his body, engulfing him in one second long waves that directly fed Mana to his cells. However, Power was not the only thing it brought forth. Rage was there too, but it was aseptic, untainted. It wasn't his, or at least it wasn't until the first wave of Mana spread to his muscles. Then it brought out everything he was holding inside and directed them at Arya.

The sheer amount of Power, paired with Burst Attack, Dash, and the last Toughen he could cast all went into one massive palm thrust directed at her chest.

As much as she had noticed the baffling change, Arya couldn't avoid it. It was too much, even with her considerable higher Alacrity. The increase in Power was enough to topple, even if slightly the difference in their speed because speed was the equivalent of Alacrity and Power.

He hit her square on, feeling her chest cave in as she flew to the other side of the room. But Gabriel did not care. He was already there, with another fast step. She might have cast something because she was up again, though she was coughing a considerable amount of blood. Gabriel mashed her again, dislodging her jaw with a barely avoided whip kick, which might have broken her neck if it had hit.

Arya tried backing away, casting instance upon instance of something which might have been her instant regeneration Skill. But Gabriel did not allow her to run. Another clean hit and Gabriel sent her flying to the other side of the gym, the impact of her body shaking the walls. Then he was there, and he struck her arms raised in a defensive formation; there were no Katas involved. His rage couldn't allow for the concentration, and she was being beaten so drastically that common defense was all that she could muster.

Two clean hits on her arms, and they broke, then he hit her thrice more, right in the chest. Each blow sent shockwaves of dust from the crumbled walls. Then, just as she let herself fall forward over him, Fury faded… leaving Gabriel utterly devoid of feelings for a few seconds. If he could describe it, he would define it as after orgasm blankness.

Arya was seemingly lifelessly, hanging only to his arms.

Did I…? Oh, please, no.

Not knowing what to do, the first thing that came to mind was using Analyze on her.

 

Arya Reevers
Race	Human	Level	57 (?%)
Class	Null-Fighter	Class Level	52 (?%)
Spirit	Chimpanzee of Null	Spirit Level	55 (?%)
Title	Flowing Disciple		?
Pools
Life	Energy	Mana	Spirit
3/200	122/200	16/70	75/100
Attributes
	Body	Spirit	Final
Affinity	38 (19)	?	?
Alacrity	35	?	?
Power	340	?	?
Recovery	22	?	?
Resilience	35	?	?
Stamina	30	?	?

 

Oh, thank god!

Gabriel hurried, casting Helping Hand on her. She was still breathing, though erratically. Probably perforated lungs or something.

"Liz? Cast Helping Hand on the Chimpanzee too, maybe it'll help." The Chimpanzee was still on the ground.

He was worried; he didn't know if he had to cast use a Life potion on her or not. What if it did not heal something or instantly healed her the wrong way. He only knew what he had been told, that natural Recovery would allow for full regeneration, while Life potions restored Life but could permanently close a wound leaving scars and tissue would instead be left at the mercy of the damage that had been done to them.

Gabe felt her cough in his arms; he thanked the heavens. She woke up.

"You're one son of a bitch… what was that? You plowed right through my defenses…" she said amid blood spraying coughs.

"I had never lost before to a Tier 2… Never in my life have I been embarrassed so badly," she tried to get up but failed and let herself fall on him.

"Well, I kind of went overboard a bit. It was my first time using that Skill. I didn't know it would make me rage like that."

"You're first- pfft!" She started laughing; amid coughs and laughter, she continued for a good minute, tears welled up in her eyes.

"Oh… This is the second time you make me laugh like that, Gabriel." Arya shook her head, unbelieving.

"And I'm not even doing it on purpose. Think about what I would do if I put my head to it!"

She chuckled, "Say… do you want to show me if you're capable of tackling me in a different environment?"

After a brief moment of stupor, Gabriel answered, "I think I might surprise you."

She tried getting up again, failing, "Well, since my legs are not functioning properly, and I very much hope it'll keep being so after our oncoming battle… Would you mind escorting me to my chambers?" Arya asked, smug.

"I Analyzed you though, your Power is much higher than mine, so try and not break any bones or vital organs."

"Well, we might use that Skill you've just displayed?" she asked, the pitch of her voice climbing a bit.

"...what a naughty girl. Then let me refill on potions."

Gabriel spent the last night at the Reevers' manor without getting a wink of sleep, but he very much enjoyed it.