[F-01] [SP] Punching Rocks, Testing Katana Arts and Hiking with Friends «Breaking the Unbreakable»

[Tsurei 0]

Zipping through the forest like a flying predatorial drone, it spotted them and surged towards them, flitting between the trees high up in the branches, everyone glanced at each other, nodded, materialised their weapons and armour before preforming the usual manoeuvre of separating to their own battlefields.

They only allowed this encounter since it was 4 on 4, they didn’t want to fight any new enemies in a outnumbered fashion.

Diving behind a tree, Rei avoided the shower of spear like silver spikes that shot his way, wincing as splinters showered him along with dirt as the spears impacted the bark and ground. Gripping his katana and drawing it, he went down the list of Sword Arts, ignoring the ones he’d already used for the newer ones.

First up was Tsuji Kaze, it’s meaning was whirlwind and it’s effects quickly became clear. Rei jumped out of cover, bringing the katana with one hand close to his point, pointing the blade towards the wasp in the air in a drawn back stance.

ID# 134971
BD: 5 +3 = Hit [Wa Shu]
MD: 3 = Miss

Damage Dealt = 7 x 5 = 35

Rei [Regen 1/3]: HP: 340/340 | EN: 26 (-5+1) /34 | 7 DMG | 17 MIT | 0 EVA| 3 ACC| 1 BLD| 2 REGEN

Shotgun Wasp: HP: 37/100| 30 DMG

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

He then swept it outwards in a graceful diagonal/horizontal slash, the movement resembled the movement of wind and even from this distance, a sharp, silver gust of air lashes outwards like an extension of his blade along with the hints of the neon water that glowed with his blue sword art’s energy.

The blade of wind surged forward and tore into the wasp’s body, leaving a nice red gash, Rei couldn’t help but feel the edges of his lips turn up in joy at the sword art, this art was a nice blend of fantasy and realism, he was a sucker for wind based techniques anyhow and whilst this was a middle of the board and not his strongest attack, he could see himself liking this attack. Not to mention it was a viable ranged option for a melee attacker, even if only a few meters.

Next up was Wa Shu, he wasn’t sure of what to make of a Sword Art named after an alcoholic beverage, it gave him some preconceptions, in any case, he knew he had to get closer.

ID# 134972
BD: 3 +3 = Hit [Gen Getsu]
MD: 4 = Miss

Damage Dealt = 7 x 6 = 42

Rei: HP: 340/340 | EN: 21 (-6+1) /34 | 7 DMG | 17 MIT | 0 EVA| 3 ACC| 1 BLD| 2 REGEN

Shotgun Wasp: HP: 37/100| 30 DMG

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

Looking around he soon spotted a nicely angled tree down hill, running towards that, he made sure that the wasp was chasing behind him.

Forced to hop over tree roots and dodges some thick trees, all the while avoiding periodic shotgun blasts that sent sharp spikes his way all over, he pre-emptively sheathed his scabbard on is belt and held the katana in both hands, and hefted it over his shoulder to charge the art, a trail of water behind from dripping from his katana soon turned neon blue along with the blade as the Art was charged.

Soon, he reached the destination. Leaping into the air as high as he could along the bent tree, planting his foot on it he propelled himself off it in the opposite direction, directly towards the Wasp, too late to dodge, Rei unleashes a series of aerial spiralling strikes, it was so uncontrolled and against his will that it was resembling a drunkard’s flailing, but the smoothness and lack of interruption make it seem almost graceful.

ID# 135475
LD: 13 = No Treasure

Edited February 2, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

Spinning in the air with as many different arcs similar to a ball of yarn, the innumerable slashes seemed to nearly form a sphere around Rei as he rained down blow upon blow on the wasp all whilst in the few seconds of air time, finally, the momentum brought him to a stop, blade raised hover his head allowing him to unleash one last downward slash with all his might as he passed the wasp.

Landing on the ground and hearing the crash of the sword art infused attack, he glanced over his shoulder to see more of the red gashes adorning the wasp, it was nearly dead and it will be with this next attack!

Rei faced the wasp, charging his final sword art as he saw the wasp move to dive towards him in one last joust. Rei held the blade over his head, the second last new sword art he had was Gen Getsu, meaning Illusionary Moon, just the name gave you a good idea of what was about to happen.

[Tsurei 0]

Glowing blade over his head, the water dripping off it seemed to lose all sense of gravity as he slowly traced a circle in the air with all his reach and movement of his arms, as he returned to the original position for a powerful over head slash, a glowing neon blue circle of water and light in front of him, he slashed downwards with all his might at the wasp the moment it was in reach, luckily, it’s stinger never reached him and he cleanly bisected his foe with that last hit, destroying into shards of glass that dissipated into nothing, leaving not a single trace.

 

Letting out a sigh of relief, Rei wiped his brow, that certainly went better than expected, for his notes, Tsuji Kaze was a valuable mid ranged attack and was his favourite movement wise, Wa Shu was hard to control, in fact, it felt like he hardly had any control at all, the ability to unleash the last downward stroke felt like a brief moment of clarity in a sphere of chaos, like being thrown around in a roller coaster only to see the next part of it in slow motion with barely enough time to react.

[Tsurei 0]

He preformed it in the air, so perhaps that had something to do with it, as always, further testing was required before he made any rash conclusions.

Lastly, Gen Getsu, it was comparatively slow, impractical and was just a overglorified downward strike with unnecessary movements, even with all it’s lights and trails, it wasn’t as impressive as Tsuji Kaze or even Wa Shu in his opinion, even though it was the strongest art on his list.

Perhaps if he could speed up the motion of the circle with practice it’d be more viable to use in combat, he could also test from starting the circle from different positions like for a horizontal strike instead and so on.

He heaved another sigh of tiredness, he spent so much time experimenting with Rage Blow alone before he realised that he could use the unnatural weight and momentum of the swing to preform evasive attacks, just how much would he have to spend on all of these other Arts now?

[Tsurei 0]

As far as he knew, it didn’t seem like a lot of people cared about the weaker arts, only caring purely about the damage modifiers, which made him feel that further exploration of those weaker arts and their unintended side effects to be very much worth pursuing.

With that in mind, he looked over to the others, everyone was gradually adjusting to the tempo of combat in their own ways, some better than others, some having a harder time than others, but nonetheless, looking at them now, it was still somewhat clear that a week or two of constant combat has given them some level of experience and form, they naturally adopted particular stances or made certain movements out of habit.

Whether it was good or bad habits, he couldn’t say yet, but they were becoming like a well oiled machine in their automatic responses at least.

Putting his thoughts to rest, he quickly moved into the fray to assist.

[Tsurei 0]

The old lady didn’t even look in their direction, seemingly ignoring Yuta’s words, she took a loud sip from her tea and let out a satisfied breath,

“Uh… Hello? Can you hear me?” Yuta frowned and strode over, waving in front of her face,

“I’m not senile yet, boy,” the woman glared at him, “Are you here to learn?”

“Er…” Yuta gave a glance back at them, “I… Think so?”

“If you mean the art of punching people, yeah,” Rei nodded, making his way over,

“We’re not hooligans!” the old lady frowned, she disappeared in a blur of incredible speed and acrobatic prowess, she snatched something to her side and races towards each one of them, by the time they could react to flinch, she was already gone and over to the next person, before they realised it…

“She… she drew on your face…” Yuta’s eyes were wide, staring at Rei,

[Tsurei 0]

“Hey, you’re no better,” Rei pointed back somewhat irked, “So? Where’s the boulders we gotta punch til they break?” he glared over at the old woman,

“Hm,” she gave a dismissive snort and nodded her chin towards the open area in front of her cabin, suddenly, there were 4 huge boulders, several meters wide, a near perfect sphere of a boulder, now that they saw it up close, they were meant to breath this with their bare hands?

No matter how you looked at it, it was impossible, sure, Rei knew that the game worked on statistics, so the thing had hp, and their bare fists had damage and that was all the game needed to know to make this possible, but seriously...

“This is impossible…” Takumi sighed as he looked over, “Also, why me too!? I didn’t plan to learn!”

“Me neither, only Yuta had to do it, right!?” Kenji cried out in alarm as well, hoping that they could take this back,

[Tsurei 0]

“Hey, can you get rid of this paint?” Takumi strode over to the old lady and demanded, but the old lady simply took a long sip of her drink,

“It suits you,” she commented nonchalantly,

“You son of a-“ Takumi groaned, cussing out loud,

“I recall hearing that the paint stays until you complete the quest,” Rei murmured, vaguely remembering,

“You can’t be serious!” Takumi cried out in shock and desperate disbelief,

“It’s seriously the case, remember Argo? The famous informant? That’s how she got her whiskers,” Rei replied with a small shrug, walking over to one of the rocks,

“That’s why?” Yuta cried out, he walked over, choosing his boulder and adopting a wide stance, drawing his fist back, he let out a enthusiastic, disciplined shout before punching it with all his might.

“… It hurts!” he screamed at the top of his lungs when he punched it, there was barely a moment of silence as he shuddered in pain,

Drinks damage potion (+1 extra damage)

ID# 135008
BD: 6
Damage Dealt = 1 +1
Boudler's HP = 48/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

“I imagine it would,” Rei raised a brow and a small wry grin spread on his face, “We have to punch it at least 50 times before it breaks I think,”

“seriously!?” Yuta glanced gave him a near despairing look, “This seriously hurts dude…”

“I’m sure it does,” Rei winced as he too gave it his best shot, slamming his fist in a straight punch towards the rock, struggling to prevent screaming as Yuta did when his knuckles cracked against the solid stone,

“… yeah, can I not do that?” Takumi sighed, glancing over at Kenji, “How bad is the drawing?”

“… Er… do you kinda look like… that er… blobfish, if that makes sense,” Kenji struggled to find the right words and right image comparison to inform Takumi of his current appearance, and truly, when he looked over at Kenji’s face, he could get what he meant by it,

“… So we really have to do this, huh?”

ID# 135009
BD: 7
Damage Dealt = 1 +1
Boudler's HP = 46/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

Crack!

Another sound of bone crunching impact against the rock, followed by Yuta shuddering, doubled over and suppressing his screams,

“The people who made this game have to be sadists! Or masochists!” he cried out as loud as he could in a form of screaming to substitute for simply screaming in pain,

“Yeah… grk… considering they made a game like this just to trap a few thousand people in it, you know, it’s about what you'd… kh… expect,” Rei spoke in between punches, wincing each time he struck at it, the boulder was not a creature, so it had no real indication of health bar, you could say it would be similar to jail time in solitary confinement since your sense to time was complete cut off, there was no telling how long they would have to be here for.

For an informant, why did Argo take a quest like this anyway if she was going to give up and end up with whiskers as her signature appearance?

 

ID# 135010
BD: 2 +3 [Accuracy Accessory] +2 [-2 Eva] = 7
Damage Dealt = 1 +1
Boudler's HP = 44/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

Rei was lucky he brought a +1 damage potion, at least, he could do this 2 times quicker, though he wished he brought the +2 damage potion instead, so he could do this at triple the speed, no, if he thought about it, he should’ve went out of his way to buy a +3 damage potion, so that he could do this at quadruple his speed.

Now that he was already here, it was already way past the point of return, there’s no way he could just go back and get one and come back later, he didn’t mind his appearance much, he only really interacted with the 3 people here anyhow, but the problem was that this NPC’s location would change, and he would have to make another several day trek just to get here.

Yeah, it was definitely out of the question unfortunately, with a small sigh, he bolstered his resolve and punched the rock again.

ID# 135013
BD: 1 = Miss
Boudler's HP = 44/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

He lost concentration and his fist slipped, he ended up cracking his knuckles against the rock which only served to cause him pain and make no headway into depleting the thing’s HP, how did he know? At the very least, when their punch dealt damage, it had a certain sound effect tied to it, it was loud and snappy, but that last one had none of the following.

He had let his mind wander too much and didn’t punch it with enough gusto and resolve, meaning that he earned nothing and was actually punished for his lack of conviction, something that everyone was quickly realising first hand,

“Dammit…” Yuta choked nearly on his tears, “I should’ve brought a damage potion as well…”

“Hell, we should’ve stocked on +3 potions, then we’d only need uh…” Rei rolled his eyes and sympathised, trying to do the calculation,

“Then we’d need at most 13 punches,” Takumi replied to the side,

ID# 135014
BD: 5 +3 +2 = Hit
Damage Dealt = 1 + 1
Boudler's HP = 42/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

“Doesn’t that just sound like a dream, far better than requiring around 50 punches,” Rei sighed wistfully, cracking his fist off the rock once more, by now they were long red and sore, the skin coming off somewhat from punching the rough, solid surface of the boulder,

“Hey, you drank that +1 potion, so you have around 25 punches to go,” Yuta groaned, “I have 50! 50!” he emphasised with a shout,

“It’s not my fault you didn’t bring a damage potion,” Rei shrugged over,

“I really don’t want to do this…” Kenji grumbled, “I don’t care how back this paint thing looks, I was ugly already,”

“Come now, don’t say that,” Rei comforted idly, “You were average looking beforehand, but the paint is pretty horrible, seriously was this the game developer’s best method of motivation?”

“Well, that and the Martial Art skill,” Yuta pipped in,

“Does that even really count?” Rei sighed over,

ID# 135015
BD: 8
Damage Dealt = 1 + 1
Boudler's HP = 40/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

“No, it really doesn’t!” Takumi cried over from the other end, “What idiot thinks punching rocks, with realistic pain, the proper way to learn martial arts!?”

“It’s a game, so they probably got that unrealistic idea from that,” Rei commented idly, as if he wasn’t currently forced to partake in that very same and painful unconventional training method,

“Hey, it’s normal for monks and stuff to punch rocks, it’s to harden their fists and increase pain tolerance,” Yuta pipped, not really trying to defend it, but trying to state the facts he knew, but it certainly came across as such,

“Still, I seriously doubt it’s the proper way to learn martial arts,” Kenji frowned with some measure of disgust at the unrealistic fantasy and misguided way of looking at it,

“Of course it’s not, there’s hundreds of different methods out there anyhow,” Rei tried to defuse the situation, everyone was stuck with nowhere to direct their annoyance other than each other, since doing it to the rock only seriously hurt them, as they’ve quickly realised.

ID# 135017
BD: 9
Damage Dealt = 1 + 1 +1
Boudler's HP = 37/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

There was generally a deep silence between them as they each punched the rocks at near irregular timings, the cracking of their knuckles on stone, the sound of several men’s sharp intake of breath, wincing at the pain, they tried to time their punches to a regular rhythm, it was much like forcing yourself to do something that needed to be done as soon as possible but at the same time you seriously didn’t want to do.

Rei didn’t really expect to be reminded of that feeling of frustration in the game world like this… to be fair, in the past 2 years of lounging around in the town of beginnings laded down by the despair and depression all around him, he supposed it was a feeling he was well aware of when their finances were running low, he saw it coming days away and he knew he should use the remaining money to get better gear to make things smooth sailing,

ID# 135019
BD: 9
Damage Dealt = 1 + 1 +1
Boudler's HP = 34/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

He could only sigh at his own laziness, even so…

Rei glanced over at his friends with a small, hidden smile, “I suppose this isn’t so bad either…”

“…Hm? What’s that grin for?” Takumi frowned uncertainly when he looked over at Rei, noticing his off-hand side stare, at the same time, he didn’t have anything to talk about even though he wanted to fill the silence with something other than the cracking of their knuckles, barely suppressed pain and a annoying old grandma’s tea sipping,

“Nothing, just feeling a little strange thinking about how the 4 of us are trapped in a game world and ended up hiking up a mountain, camping at a cliff by a waterfall and now dealing with punching rocks together to overcome hardships,” Rei shrugged, trying to give his best explanation of his heartfelt feelings, it was something similar to nostalgia or heart warming fondness,

ID# 135021
BD: 1
Boudler's HP = 34/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

“I guess it really is strange… not something to really smile about though,” Takumi replied, somewhat confused, he knew where Rei was coming from but for him personally, he was a bit more worried about dying,

“I suppose, well, if we all survive, I think we can all look back at this and laugh,” Rei smiled sadly,

“If we survive that is,” Kenji added, putting a damper on the optimism,

“So long as we’re careful, it shouldn't be a problem” Yuta replied in opposition,

“…Even if we end up being fond of these memories, they won’t help us in the real world you know,” Takumi turned back to his boulder and continued to punch, giving his realistic approach,

“You’re right…” Rei sighed, “I can only think of how I developed as a person and enjoy that rather than see any progress at all career wise…”

“And none of us have girlfriends, let me just point that out as well,” Yuta pipped in,

ID# 135023
BD: 1
Boudler's HP = 34/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei

[Tsurei 0]

“Ah yes, nice to know we’re hopeless human beings and our lives are going nowhere, what a nice conversation we’re having,” Kenji growled with a voice dripping in venomous sarcasm,

“Yup, we’re all useless little pieces of [asda], ain’t it great?” Rei rolled his eyes, annoyed by Kenji’s response when they were just trying to chat,

“It’s not live how much we’re worth can be decided by things like that though anyway,” Yuta retorted,

“You’re right and wrong, from a societal standpoint, that’s pretty much all we’re worth,” Takumi replied with a sigh,

“…geez, thanks for the downer guys,” Rei groaned as he cracked his knuckles again against the boulder, skin was tearing away by now and they would soon bleeding at this rate, so with that in mind, he stopped for a moment to go through his inventory,

“What’s up?” Yuta asked, noticing his actions and not entirely sure what he was looking for at this point,

ID# 135024
BD: 3 +3 +2 = Hit
Damage Dealt = 1 + 1
Boudler's HP = 32/50

Edited January 26, 2020 by Tsurei