Too Stubborn to Die

“Again! Your movement is jerky, uncoordinated, and simply not fast enough! Is this what you took from my teachings? Truly, I expect more from one of my disciples. Show me how a real martial prodigy moves, and don’t make me scold you again!”

“I almost forgot what you’re like!” Aaron grunted furiously as he flew toward Yendal. Not that it mattered. By the time he reached her, she wasn’t there to be hit.

“That's it? Lots of bluff and bluster for somebody who can’t hit an avatar!”

“I’m getting to it!”

Sometimes it was hard to tell whether or not building the avatar out of the divine shard was a good idea. It was by far the strongest avatar of Yendal he had ever fought, even when she wasn’t returning fire.

Aaron pushed himself, but no matter how hard he tried, she was everywhere he wasn’t.

Yendal’s avatar eyes glowed with a celestial glare as Aaron came up short once again. “Faster! Tighten up your movements. So much wasted energy. You know, you have to keep at it! You might have mastered an E-grade’s body, but you can’t stop there!” she chided as he blinked away from him.

“Pathetic! Your body has gotten so much stronger. If this is the best you can do, I’m not sure you deserve it. All those Titles and Mythical gear are almost holding you back. You’re not taking full advantage of their power.”

“I’m trying!” Aaron said as his punches flew toward Yendal faster than most eyes could keep up with.

It was exhausting. As far as he could tell, his attacks were pretty much perfect. He thought dozens of steps ahead, stringing together impossible combinations that flowed from feints and parries. But as the fight dragged on, he started to realize what she meant.

He was a perfect fighter, for an E-grade, maybe even low D-grade. But he was mid D-grade now. Not only that, but she was right about his Titles and gear, all of which provided massive amounts of additional power.

All that power was great, in theory. But if not properly utilized, then it could easily go to waste.

Aaron remembered the fight against Ikran. Sure, the thal’kesh had no chance fighting him, but it was still annoying that he hadn’t been able to catch the escaping former ranker.

He had the speed and the power. He should have been able to. But his skills hadn’t kept up with the extraordinary power he had grown to possess, and he had been skidding around like a fawn on ice, unable to control the speed propelling him from his ghost wings.

“Speed is pointless if you can’t control it! And you waste too much time drawing mana into your anchors. It should be fluid. Instantaneous. From core, to anchor, and then into action. It should come naturally, flow from one to the other without waste, nor reflection! You think too much. Let your body guide you!!”

“Yeah, I got it!” Aaron roared as he attempted to take her lessons into action, but when he missed by a mile, she countered with a firm strike to his chest that sent him slamming back against the temple wall.

“That’s getting it? You could have fooled me.”

Aaron brow furrowed, and he flew straight back into range, his strikes a dizzying array of activity as he chased her around the sizable temple, always one step behind.

“Show me what you’ve become, Aaron! Hit me!”

“I’m trying!”

“Try harder!”

Aaron’s mind blanked as frustration claimed him for a second, but in that second, his strike flew within a millimetre of Yendal, powered by his mana anchors.

“There, that’s it. That was an improvement.”

The moment she said something, he realized what she was talking about. His senses weren’t as honed as Yendal’s, but he felt the aftershocks of mana trembling through his body.

He had been holding himself back, focusing too much on improving his anchors. He needed to let go, to focus on the foundations of that, and then let his mana naturally flow into his movements.

Aaron was getting closer, but it wasn’t just speed. In anything, it was the improvements in the precise control over his body that were improving the most.

They clashed back and forth tirelessly, hours drifting into days, and soon Aaron wasn’t consciously firing off with his mana anchors as he had been. The anchors had almost been like rocket stabilizers, shooting mana to correct his movements. But as they trained, it was becoming more and more passive.

He wasn’t thinking about any of it; mana was just pouring out of him, helping him to control his extraordinary body.

“That’s more like it,” Yendal coached as he once again came up short. “You’re getting there… slowly.”

Aaron realized that his ghost wings were more than just a great and very powerful Skill. Since they scaled with his speed, the potential was huge, but using them without the ability to properly control himself at such high speeds degraded everything else.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

But as his control over everything else became not just better, but more natural, the value of his new travel Skill showed itself more and more.

He could push himself harder and faster without losing control, and he got so close he felt a pulse of divine energy pour out of Yendal’s avatar as she pushed its strength further.

Aaron smirked. She had to level up her own avatar as it wasn’t going to keep up with him anymore, and her lesson wasn’t over.

“Too fast for you?” Aaron said as his fists sailed harmlessly through the air.

“You improved, I admit. But you still have things to LEARN!” Yendal said as her avatar’s fist slammed into his chest.

Unlike before, Aaron didn’t fly backward, though. His body naturally corrected against the force of the blow, using mana to halt himself, and he swung straight back at her.

“You’re going to need more than a little upgrade to keep up with me!”

Aaron’s core pulsed with vigor, sending cracks tracing along his soul as he chased her, his body increasing in speed and precision as he threw everything into landing a strike.

“You are insane. What are you doing to your soul?”

“That’s for me to worry about!” Aaron said as he threw a haymaker with one hand, and a bite-sized meal of soul-mending energy into his mouth with the other.

“Truly disturbing. You remind me of that glutton!” Yendal said, but the venom usually directed at Oozagh was gone, and the faintest hint of a smile tugged at the edges of her lips.

She was enjoying this.

And Aaron still had a few tricks up his sleeve. Another brutally fast exchange followed, but next time his fist came up short; it disconnected and shot out toward her.

For the briefest of moments, he saw something in her expression that looked like surprise. But she still managed to dodge it. That said, a bubbling heat of excitement welled within Aaron having seen that look buried deep within her usual expressionless gaze.

He was close.

Yendal was a perfect sparring partner, and he had half a mind to admonish himself for not utilizing her more. It wasn’t just her speed, movement, precision, and accuracy, but the way she used it all. The way every movement of hers flowed from one to another as if the universe had deemed it necessary.

The halls shook, not from the power of their attacks, but from the sheer residual energy radiating from them, and Aaron pushed himself ever further, feeling his understanding of his anchors expanding naturally with every swing and movement.

It was almost like he was back in the trials. But now he possessed an entirely different body. And the lessons one such as himself took were at a scale beyond the imagination of the man who had defiantly smashed his head against those first trials.

He was no longer simply Aaron Dober; he had been a superhuman for a while now, and as he grew stronger, he pushed the definition further still. His speed was so far past anything a normal human could comprehend, and it took gigantic levels of mental fortitude to keep up with it all.

And to truly capitalize on those powers, he had to weave everything together. To build blocks upon another, creating something greater than the sum of its parts.

Aaron’s eyes flashed white; he could feel his understanding of his anchors expanding greater than ever before. Power, detachability, and partitioned flexibility all flowing from one to another.

And he was there. Then he was somewhere else. His eyes caught Yendal’s as he chased her down like a shadow, unescapable, and for the first time in a while, a smirk creased her lips.

This was what a disciple of the Martial God should be capable of. There were no exceptions for wasted movements. Others might have been more accommodating, but this was Yendal the Empty-Handed, and she had standards to uphold.

His control of mana was so complete that he could effortlessly hold back on his [ Bombardier Fist ] as he threw it at Yendal. Explosions would be troublesome, potentially damaging the temple, and he didn’t want to rely on area damage to hit her.

There was only one acceptable way to end this training session with Yendal. He was going to lay hands on her.

But stubborn determination was not enough. Yendal wasn’t about to give him an easy win, and every time he attacked, she was nowhere to be hit.

The temple shook against the waves of energy rippling out from Aaron as he continued the endless chase around the temple, days passing as his techniques were refined to a level suitable to the power he now possessed.

There was one being in the multiverse capable of such a training session, and she was inches away from him.

Bombardier fists flew out with ever-increasing vigor, the sheer amount of aether and mana cycling through Aaron rebuilding his hands in less than seconds as he shot them out, controlling them with detached anchors, and grabbing for her.

At one point, Aaron had dozens of hands shooting around trying to grab hold of Yendal as he pushed the melee at an ever-exhausting speed.

“Not bad,” Yendal said as she destroyed his detached hands.

But with every exchange, he got a little closer, and his control got a little tighter. A couple of days of this passed until he felt the fabric of her gi against his floating hands.

And after another, she defended with a strike, destroying a hand only millimetres before it grabbed hold of her.

And the day after that, his detached hand finally felt something solid as he grabbed hold of her. He tried to pull himself in as he took hold, but she shook free and wasn’t there.

“Hmph, so you did it. I don’t think that’s enough, though. You need to do more than just grab hold of me. You need to stop me from moving.”

“Wait, what?”

Despite his complaint and her response, he knew she had been pushing the avatar to its limits. And despite that, he had grabbed hold of it.

“Why are you smiling?” Yendal barked.

“Oh, it’s nothing.”

For that, he earned himself another debilitating punch to the face, but it wasn’t enough to wipe the smirk from his face, and the exchange continued with increasing volatility.

Aaron was many things, but he was not one to give up on a challenge, and the harder Yendal made it, the more excited he was to win.

Outside

Meanwhile, a terrified crowd had formed outside. They were giving the temple a wide berth, and goblins had set up a hazard fence around it.

The energy flowing out of the temple was insane, and half of Dober was starting to get worried that it might go critical and explode.

“Nothing to see here, folks,” Sooty said, waving away the crowds, but even the ancient soot goblin looked a little worried when another wave of suffocating power flooded out of the temple.

“How long is bossman gonna keep this up? It’s scaring away all the breeders!” Sooty said with an agitated huff.