Chapter 48: Skill Tree: Unarmed Combat

Five minutes had passed since Vincent began fighting the bone crusher, but he had already sustained quite a few serious injuries. The warmth in his body did not fade away, but instead the temperature rose to the level of it being uncomfortable.He could feel his body healing at insane speeds, but it was not enough to keep up with the damage that his body was taking. He dodged more than half of the punches, kicks and shoulder rams, but the ones that did hit, knocked the air out of him.

Vincent stumbled backwards as he panted, feeling his arms burning thanks to the damage they took while trying to block bone crusher's attacks.

'A little more.... just a little more...' he thought, trying to force himself to fight the monster in front of him, but to his surprise, he saw another system screen appear in front of him.

[System Administrator: End it, you idiot. NOW!]

"Ah damn it!" Vincent cursed as he glared at bone crusher, "If only you didn't hit me so hard! Now I'm forced to end things."

As he complained, he raised both his hands to his sides, horizontal to the ground as his palms faced forward. Sparks immediately appeared in front of his palms and turned into huge balls of flames the next moment.

"Wai- wait! I did not agree to fight an awakened!!! I give up!" Bone Crusher screamed, but his words fell to deaf ears as none of the spectators cared and nor did the owner of the underground cage.

Time seemed to have slowed down for him as he saw Vincent slowly bring both of his arms together, combining both the fire balls into one with a confident smirk on his face.

Before he knew it, flames shot out from the large fireball that was still floating in front of Vincent's palms. Unlike before, they didn't vanish as the fire ball wasn't thrown out. Instead, he simply extended the flames towards his opponent, consuming the oxygen in the air in front of him to keep the flames alive.

In less than a second, the burst of flames consumed Bone Crusher. No one could see what was going on inside the flames, but every single person could hear the blood curdling screams of the man who they considered as the legend, the unbeatable monster who had reigned the underground cave for more than five years.

Three seconds. That was how long Vincent kept his fire going before he made the flames disappear. There was no more hulking monster in front of him, but instead, all he could see was a short man who had a lot of burn marks on his skin.

His flames weren't too hot at this moment, so the damage done wasn't much. Even then, it had given the guy enough burns to put him out of order for a month or two.

Vincent leaned back against one of the cage's walls and sighed, "I won."

Keith on the other hand, collapsed on the boat, losing consciousness as he had used up too much of his mental energy to support Vincent in his fight.

*******

Next day, in the evening.

Vincent anxiously paced around the room as he called out for his system.

"Hey system, come on talk to me! I won the bet and got a total of 57 Zen and 15 braks. Didn't you say that it belongs to you? If you don't talk to me, I'll use this money for myself."

He had been trying to get his system to talk like before, but he received no response and no quests either. The only thing he could see was his regular system screen.

[Host's current stats:]

Physique: Grade D

Genetic Physique Type: Endurance

Awakening Status: Awakened (Fire creation and manipulation)

Skill Trees:

Battle God's Body: (Click to view Skill Tree)

Awakened Ability Boost: Locked

Unarmed Combat: (Click to view Skill Tree)

Sword Arts: Locked

Spear Arts: Locked

Staff Arts: Locked

Shield Arts: Locked

Knife Arts: Locked

Archery Mastery: Locked

Throw Mastery: Locked

War God's inheritance: Locked

[Battle God's Body]

1) Battle Instinct: The more you fight, the more you learn from the fight. This knowledge will be permanent and cannot be erased under normal circumstances. Current Grade: E

2) (Locked)

3) (Locked)

[Unarmed Combat]

Pick one style of unarmed combat.

1) Fist Style: Balanced, aggressive with counterplay potential

2) Palm Style: Defensive and focuses on Counterplay

3) Kick Style: Aggressive, dominant and risky

Since his system wasn't responding to him, he decided to pick his style and try things out.

'Well... I don't really like playing defensive and my body is genetically endurance focused... which means that aggressiveness won't go well with it. Either fist or palm style...' he thought and didn't think more about it.

He immediately picked Fist Style and saw the contents on the screen change.

[Modifying the skills to synergize with User's awakened ability.] S~eaʀᴄh the NôᴠelFirё.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

Vincent didn't have to wait for long as a new skill tree appeared in front of him. He could only see three skills while the rest of them only had "???" written instead of their names.

First skill was Fists of Steel and it branched out into two different skills. One was the Red Hot Fists and the other one was the Flaming Fists. He couldn't tell much from just the names so he checked their descriptions instead.

Fists of Steel: Grade F

Increases the hardness of your arms from the fingers to the elbows, directly improving their defence and offence.

Red Hot Fists: Open to select

Increases the internal heat of your arms, making them resistant to flames and heat. Once a certain level is reached, every touch will cause severe burns to your target. The heat of the fists increase with skill grade.

Flaming Fists: Open to select

Creates a layer of flames around your arms, causing burns to the anything that they touch. The heat of the flames increase with skill grade.

Note: Picking one will lock the other skill, so choose wisely.

Just when Vincent was having trouble deciding, he saw something he had been waiting for almost an entire day.

[System Advice: Red Hot Fists scale better with each grade, which means higher temperature and fire resistance. Flaming fists have their range increased with each grade, which means better versatility.]