Chapter 461 – Martial Arts

Chapter 461 – Martial Arts

The quest he had gotten randomly was pretty straightforward.



He wasn’t quite sure how he was supposed to learn a punch and kick technique, he had the inkling that just getting a Skillbook wouldn’t work this time around, but if he just listened to his instructor, he was sure he would get it.

Too bad she was kind of bad at explaining things.

“So what ya gotta do is breathe in, and just spread your mana into your muscles,” Rave instructed and her aura, a sky blue, flared up around her. “Bada-bing-bada-boom, there ya go.”

“I have no fucking clue what the fuck you mean by that fucking shit,” Eliza called out to her, sitting with her legs crossed and her hands in her lap on the green plain that Magnus was providing for them.

This part of the lecture was actually not for him, since he could just use Aura as a toggleable skill. Instead, he was reading through a basic Abyssal guide on martial arts while Rave’s teaching efforts fell through. Whether the book wasn’t a Skillbook or it would have just given him access to Aura and a basic martial art style, both of which he already possessed, he didn’t know.

“I don’t even know why the fuck I am doing this,” Eliza growled. “I can fight.”ALL new chapters on nov(e)lbin(.)com

“Yeah, but you fight like an idiot,” Metra commented from the side lines. “Your whole strategy is ‘hit it ‘til it dies’, just because you basically can’t.”

“Never change a working fuck,” the blood mage giggled, then laughed way too loudly. “Sorry, found that extremely funny for some reason.”

“Thing is, it works until it doesn’t,” John muttered in that disembodied tone someone used when he was only half part of the conversation, being currently immersed in his lecture. It was a mere fifty page book, so he was about through after the twenty-five minutes he had already spent on it. “The reason why you can fight like that is because you winning is a foregone conclusion, so if you finally face someone you can’t beat like that, which grows increasingly likely as we go up against more high-profile people, then you’ll be in a bind.”

“I can’t even fight right now because of the fucking Thana-situation,” Eliza grumbled.

“Ja,” Rave chimed back in, putting out her aura. Little tongues of blue faded out like swirls of smoke around her. “But it might help ya with the Thana situation.”

“How the shit would it do that?”

“Cause martial arts teach ya discipline and stuff,” she nodded to herself. Then, when she noticed everyone looking at her as the only real martial arts user around and made the connection to her discipline, she stuck out her tongue. “Imagine how I would be like if I didn’t do martial arts then, ya meanies,” she pouted.

“Anyway, she might have a point,” John mumbled some more. “Either way, you lose nothing, Eliza.”

“Except my television time,” the blood mage complained but closed her eyes again. “Okay, so I breathe in, that was literally the only part I got.”

“Ya spread your meowana,” she stopped for a moment to bite her tongue and attempt to get her speech lined up again, then she continued, “mana through your whole body and then it does stuff... ah, lemme just touch ya and ya will get it,” Rave sat down behind Eliza. “Inhale deeeeeep,” she instructed, “into the chest, as little stomach bloating as possible. Yeah, like that, do that some more, gotta get ya used to the rhythm. Ya feel it yet?”

“Feel what yet?” an irritated Eliza asked; she was not used to sitting still this long. “You know there is a shitload of mana pulsating through me at any given moment, right? You are trying to make me find the needle in the shitmire.”

“Should be about here,” Rave stabbed at Eliza’s upper back with two fingers, right on top of her spine and between her shoulder blades.

A tirade of curses left the blood mage’s mouth as her spine straightened up in response. “...Cock-biscuit munching son of a whore!” she finally finished. “That HURT!”

“Ya like it, don’tcha?” Rave said with a grin.

“Not if I am not prepared for it, and that really hurt, what the fuck was that?” she wanted to know.

“Ya ever heard of pressure points?” she asked, and everyone in the world had, so Eliza had as well. “Then there ya go. I just jabbed one. Just a fluke tho, I am not one of those martial artists, I just know about where they are.”

“So that shit just hurts if someone randomly presses it?” Eliza complained.

“Nah, gotta be veryrecise anddoakistrikeatd,” Rave slurred.

Metra shook her head, “Nobody has a fucking clue what you just said.”

“You have to be very precise and do a ki strike at it,” John translated for the rest of them, having arrived at the final page.

“Nah, I needed like... three weeks,” Rave stated and Metra turned to look at her. “Coulda done it faster, probably, but I was ten.”

“In the name of the saltwater skies, you weren’t kidding when you said you were actually good at something?” the berserker babe couldn’t keep the quip to herself.

“N-o-p-e,” Rave spelled out and left Metra sitting there to keep looking. “Anyway, Eliza, ya keep trying to do that. Should take ya a few days at worst before ya can meowntain it for an attack or two. John, we gonna try the other two parts of the quest, alright?”

“Sure,” John activated the terrible Aura skill, reducing his mana regeneration by 100% in return for a percentage bonus in his physical stats. “So, what do I have to do?” By video game logic, if he did it right once, he would get a skill for it. “I already read up on the different technique categories.”

There were five in total: hand, wrist, head, ankle and foot techniques. Each of them was especially named after the body part where mana was concentrated to achieve the intended effect. Each of the categories was also especially good at something, with only hand and foot techniques being somewhat alike and usually focused around dealing damage, to no surprise. Wrist techniques were good at redirecting energy flow and ankle techniques were all about movement.

Head was the odd one out, a wild mix of different things that had very niche uses. For example, shouting someone to death was better done as a sound mage so basically no one practiced that. Also biting someone to death wasn’t the usual strategy. More popular were things like disabling one’s pain receptors to go into a berserker rage, but even that was highly unusual in the grand scheme of things.

“Okay, so ya need a punch and a kick right?” Rave made it simple. “Well here are the two basic ones. First, Impact Punch, all it does is add a bit of a blast to your punch.” She kneeled down on one leg and slowly showed him what to do. “Gotta pull your arm aaaall the way back,” her elbow travelled up until she had to twist her torso to raise it even higher. “Aura on,” the blue flame-like energy burned around her, “concentrate it in the shoulder and palm of your clenched fist.” The process that would have taken place in less than a second in a fight left a visible change in her aura. The areas she had just named had less aura escaping, as she concentrated to keep as much in as was possible. “And then ya just gotta give it a straight jab!” she said and brought her arm down.

Her fist met the grass floor without any further effects. Only when she raised her hand again did John see that she had left a deeper imprint in the dirt than her fist should have punched into it. “Again, very basic,” she said, “but it does the job most of the time.”

“What’s that thing you use again?” John asked.

“the Dolphin Blow?” Rave returned with a non-serious lustre dancing pink through her blue eyes.

“Tell me that’s a reference to one of your abridged series and not the actual name,” John demanded; that would just have been too stupid.

“Ja, it is,” she confirmed. “Nah, it’s actually the Penetrative Blast, travels a few centimetres behind the punch depending on exact usage.”

“Why not teach me that?”

“Because your hand might explode,” she delivered it straight.

John blinked rapidly. “Seriously?”

“What, ya think pumping your muscles up with magic juice and having it leave ya in a destructive fashion isn’t a dangerous sport?” she bopped him on the nose. “I don’t sweat while meditating cause I like to be wet around ya or because ya have a strange fascination with licking salt off my midriff. I am actually tensing up everything inside me. Ya know, like when I regenerate mana while using it, but without anything actually ripping apart.”

“I don’t understand it either,” he commented the midriff thing while still coming to terms with the tearing. “It’s just hot.”

“Ey, I like to do it to ya too, so the feeling is mutual,” Rave smirked, tapping his abs with the back of her hand. “Anyway, point is, ya can’t do this yet. Ya gotta be able to do the basics before ya can do something like this.” She raised her left leg, foot hanging loosely down at the ankle. Then she suddenly brought it down, her whole sole meeting the ground at the same moment.

John lost his balance as the ground under him suddenly ruptured around his girlfriend’s foot. He tried to make a step to the side to regain his footing but got the tip of his foot into one of the cracks instead, causing him to get caught and fall completely.

“What the fuck was that?” Eliza asked as they looked at the earth. A whole metre around Rave’s foot was as if a hammer had hit a large piece of glass and damaged it without causing it to properly shatter and fall apart.

“Heh,” Rave gave him a show-off grin. “That’s the Seismic Step an- ouch.” She tried to walk towards him and help him up, but then they both noticed that the ground wasn’t the only thing damaged by that attack. Her jeans were torn up to her knee and by the way she took that step it looked like she had hurt herself as well. She popped down on her butt and took off her neon-pink shoe (her battle suit in base form). A bruise was quickly forming on her sole and her toes were swelling. “Well, this isn’t embarrassing right now or anything,” she mumbled to herself. “Can ya gimme an Undine?”

John most certainly could. “Does this happen to you often?” he asked.

“Ya would know if it did, think I can hide stuff like that from you when we bone every other hour?” she joked and let out a relieved sigh as the pain went away as quickly as it came. “Using martial arts through equipment is harder and I usually don’t even use a Seismic Step of that strength barefoot. Beginners are better off with Focus Stomp.””

“In other words,” Copernicus tapped around his summoner in a large circle, looking at her foot like he totally didn’t care (in typical cat fashion), “she wanted to show off to her boyfriend who is so seldomly impressed with her abilities.”

“Oy, Cappy,” Rave lightly chopped the suncat on the head. “I am ashamed enough as is.”

John just took her into his arms. “I am definitely impressed,” he assured her. “Must be a lot of hard work to learn all of that.”

“It is,” she agreed, “but I don’t need ya to be impressed with me all the time. Just wanted to show off the only time I definitely could.” She raised a hand to his face and kissed him. As a girlfriend, Rave was perfect thanks to all her little flaws.



She spent the next few hours laughing at him as he miserably failed to do it right.