Chapter 207: Martial Insight

Aliandra

Ali was not getting it, and it was making her tetchy. She pushed the heavy, drake-leather-bound book away and sighed, deciding that not being able to understand something written in a book was the worst kind of frustration. It didn’t matter that she was trying to study Ahn Khen martial arts from the ancient Nine Paths, hoping to find something from the ancient text that might transfer to her very much non-humanoid Abyssal Stalkers – a task that likely wasn’t possible at all.

There were people in the library. Several sat at various tables with books and notes, while others consulted with Ryn for information. There was a quiet hubbub filling the space – a sound that transformed the ancient, formerly silent ruins into something tangibly living. A place of learning and the passing down of knowledge.

Words are entirely inadequate to describe physical movement, Ali thought, her mind still gnawing on the problem. It wasn’t that the Nine Paths of Ahn Khen were poorly written, or that she needed to improve her command of the ancient language – it was simply that the concepts of dynamic balance, applied force, and kinetic power were full of nuance that required a wealth of experience or intuition to properly understand. It surely can’t require me to take up martial arts training to understand this, can it? Should I? I’ll beat up their ankle bones!

Ali sighed. Calen and Mato still hadn’t returned from their errands up in town and, in an effort to take advantage of the time, she had decided to work on Martial Insight. She had been hoping to improve her skill with the most effective monster she had for the Corrupted Fire Drake fight, but it had been several hours, and it felt like she was still just as clueless as when she had started.

“How’s it going?” Malika asked, uncoiling herself from her meditation on the floor nearby.

“This is stupid,” Ali said, utterly failing to keep her frustration contained.

“That bad, huh?”

“Yes.” She wouldn’t have been so grumpy if she had just had a tiny sliver of progress, but her studies had become a desolate wasteland of fruitless toil and dead ends.

“Is it something I can help with?”

Ali bit off her reflexive frustrated response as Malika’s offer percolated past her agitation. Her main frustration was that she had so little context for the combat of the ancient Ahn Khen; her intuition still lent itself to study, rather than practicing forms. Even after all this time observing her minions, she still thought with her mind, rather than her body.

But she’s practiced this stuff all her life.

“Maybe,” Ali said. Admitting she needed help felt like a defeat, but she was certainly not making any progress on her own. Her bruised ego would heal, especially if she learned something useful. “I just don’t get this part,” she said, pulling the book back and pointing to the section that seemed to deal with controlling the flow of stamina to enhance the power of an attack. It seemed intricately tied in with the physical balance and momentum of the body, and the transfer of power through the kinetic chain, and she had rapidly got lost in the details after that point.

“Aah, punching harder,” Malika said, an unhelpful and overly simplistic summary of her last few hours of frustration.

“Yes, that’s all.”

“Don’t let it get to you,” Malika said. “People spend their entire lives perfecting a single punch. It’s not easy. Why don’t you tell me what you’re struggling with?”

“This part here,” Ali said, deciding that she was letting her frustration make her sound unnecessarily grumpy. She threw a quick smile Malika’s way. “I don’t see how to synchronize the release of stamina with the punch. It seems to imply that mastering this is the key to doing this technique correctly.”

“Yes, that’s true, but it starts from the bottom.”

“The bottom? What do you mean?”

“It’s basic physics. Punches start from the ground.”

“But you’re not even on the ground half the time,” Ali pointed out.

“True… in a way,” Malika said, a frown creasing her brow for a moment. “It’s a principle, though. Think of it this way – there’s a kinetic chain of muscle and bone that connects you to something solid under your feet, and you must use it to create power with your entire body. That’s why good footwork and balance are so important. Here, watch.”

Malika settled into her stance and began to move her body, isolating the sequences absurdly slowly, making it abundantly clear that the action of her body traveled like a wave from the ground, up through her feet and legs, then hips and torso, and finally out through her arm.

“When do you apply the stamina?” she asked, but she could already see what the answer must be – Malika’s demonstration was clear enough that several points from the book suddenly made sense.

“It follows the muscular action like a wave.”

It was suddenly a vastly more complex task than simply finding the right place to turn it on. She had been approaching the problem as an on-off switch, missing a world of subtlety and nuance.

“Ugh, that’s complicated. How am I supposed to learn all that?” Malika had clearly been doing this since she was born, and it obviously came naturally to her.

“It’s not that hard, it just takes practice. Mastering it will, of course, take a lifetime, but you can get this – you just have to do it – you can’t just read about it.” Malika quirked an eyebrow at her. “Right?”

But I want to just read about it, she thought. That would be so much simpler. But it had been the same for magic, simply knowing the textbook had been no substitute for actually manipulating mana, seeing it, experiencing it.

“Come, you learn by having your minions fight. Make something that can punch, and we can practice it together.”

“I’d really prefer to be beating you up,” Ali chirped, brandishing her fists at Malika. Very threatening! She pointedly ignored Malika’s amused grin, quickly calling four Hobgoblins and two Abyssal Stalkers to join her on the upper floor of the library.

“Make them copy me,” Malika said, finding an empty space and demonstrating a shadow-boxing punch slowly.

Ali lined her minions up beside Malika and began to copy the movement. By now they had a small, attentive audience of adventurers who were ignoring their studies to watch the training, but she ignored them, trickling a little mana into her Sage of Learning, while immersing her awareness into the six monsters surrounding Malika.

She struggled to copy the movement entirely, but she made her first breakthrough by realizing that her Hobgoblins had a basic intuition for the movements, and once she released her overbearing instinct to control everything, and simply observed a few times, she could apply subtle adjustments to progressively improve their technique, while comparing it to Malika’s progressively faster and faster demonstration. It’s not unlike sculpting away the imperfections.

“Ok, you have the basic forms, now spar with me,” Malika said. Then she turned to their attentive audience and said, “Sabri, you know how to do this, come and spar too, Ali can study multiple fights simultaneously.”

Payback for the beating up comment? Ali grinned, starting to enjoy herself. Alright, Malika!

“Ok,” Sabri said, joining them and looking up at the powerfully muscled level forty-four Hobgoblin towering over her with obvious trepidation.

“Give me a second,” Ali said, grabbing her Grimoire and summoning a much more level-appropriate Kobold warrior for her to fight. While she had it open, she added two Kobold rogues and set them to spar with each other. “Ok, I’m ready. Give it your best – whoa!”

The library erupted into the controlled chaos of sparring battle: Malika against a Hobgoblin, Sabri against a Kobold warrior, and the remaining Kobold rogues, Hobgoblins, and Abyssal Stalkers paired off all trying the same techniques. Ali split her awareness into each of her minions, giving herself fully to the senses of her Martial Insight and channeling more and more of her mana into her Sage of Learning in the hopes that, like with language, it could help her make more connections quicker.

Not even breathing hard, Malika kept up a running commentary of feedback, referring to the Nine Path’s text by rote memory as she critiqued Ali’s technique at battle speed.

Her mind felt like it was on fire, consumed with the attack and counterattack, flow of stamina, and the balance of force and weight for eight minions simultaneously. Every time Malika corrected her, she tried to adjust, making all her minions absorb the incremental improvement simultaneously.

“Don’t forget to adjust for the lighter weight of the Kobolds. They have tails, use the counterbalance.” Ali struggled to adjust, realizing that Malika was observing her fight with Sabri closely enough to critique that, too. The change in technique to account for the different bodies was subtle, and it took quite some time for her to get the hang of it.

“The spiders have a wider base; you can create more force from the ground.”

Great. Of course. Again, she adjusted, struggling to translate the concepts from two-legged to eight. The rhythmic clacking of spider limbs hitting chitin, and the dull thumps of flesh and muscle struck by fists began to fade as the deeper patterns slowly emerged in her mind. A flow of energy and momentum, attack and recover, that in a way seemed almost as beautiful and elegant as a well-constructed magical formation.

Deeply immersed in the sparring match, studying it with every sense at her disposal – including the tremor sense and echolocation of idle nearby minions, she started to appreciate the difference between Sabri and Malika’s interpretation of the identical techniques. Malika’s movement was refined and powerful, consistent and relentless at the same time. Sabri seemed rawer, her attacks obviously less powerful because of her class level, but still displaying a brilliance of intuitive insight and adaptation that slowly emerged from their bout.

She’s learning. It was an astounding thing to witness – with every piece of feedback Malika gave Ali, Sabri adjusted too, picking up on it and incorporating it faster and more accurately than she could ever hope to. And Sabri would immediately adjust to Ali’s shifts in understanding, refining her own technique in response. Again and again, Ali found herself comparing Malika’s words to the memorized text in the Nine Paths, and then studying Sabri’s changes to figure out how to best implement it.

The bout continued, her minions advancing and retreating as she adjusted their technique by tiny increments. It’s… a language, she thought, struck by the similarities to a conversation. Only, instead of words, she was communicating with force, momentum, and impacts – and in the process, she was understanding Sabri and Malika by exploring how they learned, reacted, and thought in a much more fundamentally physical way than a discussion over tea.

As she experienced this sudden insight, her notification chimed.

Martial Insight has reached level 45 (+3).
Sage of Learning has reached level 25 (+2).

Requirements met for skill advancement.

Sage of Learning has reached level 25.
Synergy: Martial Insight has reached level 45.
Received expert combat tutoring.
Studied the Nine Paths of Ahn Khen.
Witnessed an all-out attack of an Ahn Khen elder.
Adapted an advanced combat technique to multiple diverse bodies during a bout.
Intelligence has surpassed 350.
Used parallel training to master an advanced combat technique.

Sage of Learning gains Language of Combat.
(+Combat Techniques)

Sage of Learning – level 25
Your ability to learn languages, magical systems, combat techniques, history, and similar academic knowledge is significantly enhanced. You have enhanced memory for the content you have studied.
Mana: Channel mana and uninterrupted focus to enhance Sage of Learning while studying. Cognitive function, memory, and reading are enhanced in speed and clarity.
Mana: Channel mana while teaching to share your Sage of Learning’s passive ability with your student.
Arcane, Knowledge, Channeled, Perception, Intelligence

Accept this advancement?

She smiled as she accepted the advance, and immediately the Hobgoblin facing Malika took a punch to the face, knocking it flat on its back.

“Don’t lose your focus,” Malika chided.

Her Hobgoblin got to its feet, and she resumed the bout. But it was nothing like before. As Sage of Learning hungrily devoured her mana, Ali’s mind seemed to accelerate, catching every detail of every fumble and mistake her minions made, incorporating it quickly into a holistic understanding. Every time Malika did something unexpected, her mind slotted it into the bigger picture like a puzzle piece, and then she turned around and used it on Sabri, learning how she would respond to it. Then she attacked Malika using Sabri’s solution. Each time her minions accidentally did something more efficiently, she used that as fuel to refine her understanding, compounding rapidly as she rolled out the adjustments to all her minions in real time.

She saw the flicker of surprise on Sabri’s face first. Then the focus in her eyes as she redoubled her efforts against the Kobold warrior. Then she saw the little smile flicker across Malika’s eyes as she countered one of her attacks with something Ali learned from Sabri only seconds ago. Malika’s feedback and comments began to wane as she doubled down, communicating more and more directly with her actions and techniques, and Ali devoured it all, turning it into understanding and an intuition for the fight.

“You got something, didn’t you?” Malika said, backing off to pause the fight for a moment and Ali was happy to see her breathing just a little heavier.

“I did,” she answered, sharing her new Sage of Learning update.

“That’s a little unfair,” Sabri said. “You just learned everything with magic?”

“It’s not quite that easy,” Ali said. “My skill cannot teach me anything I don’t already know or have experience with. It just speeds up my ability to form connections with what I already have – and I need eight simultaneous minions to keep up with you guys.” It felt a little like assembling a complicated puzzle, but every time she reached into the box, the right piece just happened to be on top.

“She was using your techniques to fight me, and vice versa, and then throwing in any of her own insights,” Malika said, looking at Sabri.

“So I was fighting both of you?”

“In a way, yes,” Malika said. “Your technique improved quite a lot just from that bout. Do you guys want to go again?”

“Yes!” Sabri answered.

Ali smiled at her obvious enthusiasm and took her stances, swapping minions to challenge Malika with an Abyssal Stalker this time, and offering Sabri a shot at the quicker Kobold rogue.

Mato

Mato walked up to the rickety doorway of the Church of the Dragon God, or the Holy Church of Havoc as he had heard it called by some of the adventurers – with a few winks and definite relish as they pronounced the name – pressing his way gently through a throng of people waiting outside. Mieriel had told him Havok was hoping he could lend his healing magic for a church outreach event, and so he had decided to stop by and see what it was all about.

All of the crowd seemed to be poorer people, dressed in ripped or dirty clothing, many of them without even shoes on their feet. He heard the ripple of surprise in his wake as his sanctuary aura gently passed through the crowd.

Most of them are hurt or sick. Not for the first time, he realized how hard life could be in Myrin’s Keep for some. He touched his chest over his heart. Malika came from this.

Mato opened the door and found Havok inside finishing up his characteristically brief service, invoking Azryet’s blessing for a new follower. He watched curiously, knowing how intense the dragon-god’s mana really was, and the impact it had had on him when he had received his godly patronage.

The service finished quickly, and the new follower thanked Havok profusely and then everyone broke off into individual conversations, so he approached.

“Hi, Havok,” he said.

“You come?” Havok asked him, eager hope on his face.

“Yes. I can help,” he said, and the Goblin’s little face broke into a beaming smile.

“Let’s go,” Havok said, in his typical direct manner, and headed for the doorway immediately. He seemed excited to help all the waiting sick and injured.

Mato followed, finding an open patch of ground near the church building. It didn’t matter that he was a little off to the side of the crowd, his aura would be big enough to cover the entire church and many of the buildings beside it. While Havok began casting his healing spell on the patiently waiting people, he transformed, planting himself, driving his roots deep into the ground, and spreading his branches up and out over the church building.

His aura surged, rolling out over the crowd, creating a wave of gasps and sighs like a breeze across a field of wheat, and then he simply waited, resting in the sensation of the upwelling regeneration slowly erasing poorly tended injuries, diseases, broken bones, and infections. His aura also sprouted weeds across the courtyard.

Then, even in his tree form he quivered as a young boy ran right up to him, spread his arms as far around the great trunk as he could reach, and yelled, “Thank you, thank you Mister Tree!”

Your actions have increased the reputation of your patron.

Aliandra

Ali stared morosely at the Corrupted Fire Drake leisurely returning to its spot in front of the forge, curling up and lying down. The heavily armored eyelids slowly shut as it huffed in a clear show of contempt, sending a puff of hellfire out from its nostrils to dissipate in the flame-filled room.

“Can we try something else?”

They had been at this for four hours, only taking a break to clear the monsters respawning behind them – and they would need to do that again soon if they wished to continue.

Nothing had gone the way she had wanted. Her Abyssal Stalkers were much more skilled, now that she had trained with Malika – and that had shaved about one percent off their best attempt. When that had happened, she had immediately discarded most of her minions and simply made as many stalkers as possible, thinking to overwhelm the fight through the sheer weight of numbers. But that had gone spectacularly badly – that attempt was when they had discovered that the Ruinous Frenzy curse duration was dependent on the number of attackers that carried the curse. When she had brought a horde of monsters, the curse duration had dropped to less than a second, causing the boss to be chain healed as it expired between flame pulses.

Her second brilliant plan had gone even worse. Reasoning that the Armored Drakes were immune to fire, and therefore ideally suited to this fight, she had summoned several of those. And it was true they were immune to fire and ignored the hellfire and living flame. But because they were immune to fire, the curse could not be refreshed, and so the Corrupted Fire Drake kept casting it on them directly, and then it would immediately expire, chain-healing the boss.

“How about we go kill the Demon Hunter again?” Calen said.

“I’m not so sure that’s a smart idea,” Ali said, recalling the enormous horde of demons they provoked with their brief jaunt into the Abyssal Realm.

“You still have the poison bosses outside the library,” Calen said. “If it goes badly, we can use one of your teleport circles to escape. As long as we don’t enter the rift and poke that Maalgaroth, I think we can hold the rift against the few demons that trickle through, just by leaving a few of your minions to guard it.”

“That… should work,” Ali said. It was a well-thought-out plan, but it still made her uneasy.

“I think we should do the Inferno too; we’re running a little low on essences for elixirs after all those attempts.” Malika’s grimace told Ali just about exactly how expensive their day had been.

I can make those now, Ali thought, but she didn’t say anything, realizing that Malika probably wanted a change of scenery nearly as much as she did. It wasn’t like her friend had missed the fact that she had been pumping out fresh elixirs for their attempts all day.

“I don’t care, as long as we fight something,” Mato said.

The biggest problem is the Acolytes, Ali thought, following along as they made their way back up through the stone chambers to the Landing. Honestly, none of her Kobolds had any right to be in that fight, considering just how under-leveled they were. The issue was that, while she could make do without mages or her Storm Shaman Goblins, they could not survive without healers. She had equipped them with the best gear she could get, but magical damage grew with increasing level, and so too did the requirement for more resistance to oppose it. The amazing 288 resistance on the level twenty healer robes Lydia had made was worth a respectable thirty-four percent magical reduction at level twenty. But against a level eighty-five foe, like the Armored Drakes, that number dropped dramatically to a ten percent reduction – and, using his advanced identification skills, Calen had estimated the Corrupted Fire Drake to be in the mid to high nineties.

Back to the underpowered minions. What’s new?

***

Two hours later, Ali’s mood was incomparably happier. She grinned as her pair of Armored Drakes tore through a pack of Flamecaller Hunters and their Hellfire Wargs. While they had all leveled up significantly since their first time fighting these monsters, and Mato’s health was vastly more stable due to his powerful new armor, the biggest difference to the ease of clearing the passage was her ability to bring two level sixty-eight Armored Drakes to the party with their unreasonable armor and overwhelming physical damage attacks. Being immune to fire simply meant that they never got badly hurt, so she had them take over tanking the wargs, allowing Mato to be the one pulling the individual monsters out of the pack for them to kill. The Flamecallers were no match for the powerful cleaving talons and ripping fangs, so all the groups of monsters melted as they tore through them at a record pace.

The Inferno wing had been so quick it felt trivial.

The only groups that still gave them any resistance at all were the warlocks and their imps. And that was simply because the imps were hard to pin down, but with Malika’s ability to attack mana, the fights were simply a minor speedbump in the way of their power-charge through the entire wing.

Ali smiled as they finally reached the rift chamber and the Demon Hunter within.

“Shall I just leave the drakes in the middle to clean up the demons that enter?” she asked. Ali harbored just a little remnant of anxiety over the rift break they had experienced, but this time, they had no intention of entering the abyssal realm and provoking the dungeon.

“That sounds like a good plan. Protect the person who gets Mark of Prey and everything else on the boss,” Calen answered.

“Sounds good,” Ali replied. Her good mood was making her look forward to the fight, and the teleport circle she had left just outside the door went a long way toward alleviating her anxiety.

As they entered the room with the boss, Ali immediately received the Mark of Prey. Quickly, she encased herself in her barrier, floating in the center of the chamber as she ignored the impact of hellfire fireballs slamming into her magic. She extended her awareness, instructing her minions to begin the attack.

Unleashed, her drakes tore through the Hellfire Wargs and Imps that were desperately trying to climb the walls to get to her, while all her remaining minions directed their attacks at the boss itself. Her barrier felt stronger against the explosions of hellfire. She had leveled, and her Barrier skill level had gone up too, but the most significant change seemed to be the whopping forty intelligence that she had gained from her new fire silk slippers.

She was still enjoying the feeling of improved power when the curse dropped, and Calen was targeted next. He took off into the air on diaphanous wings of light, and Ali simply created a curved barrier below him to take the brunt of the imps’ fireballs without interfering with his ability to shoot, slowly beginning to feel the true difference in their group’s improvement. Last time she had had to use Arcane Recall and a crazy maneuver with a fire-immune slime to save Calen from certain death. Now, her two Armored Drakes were up by the Abyssal Rift with Mato, tearing through anything that stepped foot in the room. There were barely any live demons to respond to the Mark of Prey. Calen didn’t even slow down his attacks, relying on her to block any stray fireballs.

Mato never had to worry about Mark of Prey – the Demon Hunter died halfway through Malika’s turn.

“That… was a lot easier,” Calen said, gazing at the crumpled corpse of the Flamecaller Demon Hunter.

Ali grinned. Not only had it been much easier, but she was feeling a lot better about her day. Even though they had made little progress against the Corrupted Fire Drake, it had been remarkably productive and therapeutic.

“I think we should do this for a few days,” Calen said, stooping to pick up the Demon Hunter’s bow and producing his skinning knife. “And then I have a proposal.”

“What’s that?” Malika asked.

“I shared this with Ali already. On my scouting mission, I found a rogue undead dungeon out in the middle of the blighted forest,” he said. “I think we should clear these two wings to build up some resources and money – and exploit any remaining experience we can earn here. I want to go visit Ciradyl for training, but when I come back, I suggest we level up a bit against this.”

He shared his explorer dungeon identification.

Ruins of Lyton – level 84
Affinity: Death.
Age: New.
Known Creatures: Undead.
Known Bosses: Ghoul (64), Skeletal Wyvern (48).
Raid Bosses: Death Wight (73).
Dungeon

“Undead again?” Mato said, grimacing.

“It’s probably faster leveling than beating our heads against the drake,” Malika replied. “We need to close the level gap before we can make progress. Calen, can you take me to Ciradyl when you go? There’s a lot of stuff taking up space in my storage that I can’t sell here in Myrin’s Keep.”

“Sure I should let you loose on the poor Elves?” Calen answered.

Malika gave him her meanest scowl. “Wow, remind me not to feed you any potions, Mister Expensive.”

“I have my portable assistant for that.” He waved toward Ali. Clearly, Calen was feeling upbeat after their successes, too, she guessed, returning her attention to the description of the dungeon, noting the death affinity and the familiar boss types.

“Is it just me, or does that look suspiciously similar to the Ruins of Dal’mohra dungeon?” Even the name of the dungeon seemed similar. Lyton was the little town they had explored when they had first gone searching for Lira’s trees. That hadn’t been all that long ago, and there was certainly no dungeon there when they had visited.

“It does look that way,” Calen said. “But this one is higher level and vast. It consumed several towns on the border between New Daria and the troll kingdoms. I wasn’t able to locate the core or the shrine.”

“Well, that’s ominous,” Ali said. If her suspicion was right, that meant the dark hand of Nevyn Eld was moving once more. On the other hand, she had imps, drakes, wargs, and higher-level Fire Mages – and undead were not immune to fire.

Malika nodded, rotating her neck and shoulders deliberately. “Yes, ominous – for them.”

“Bring it on!” Mato agreed. “A dungeon’s a dungeon.”

But Calen met her eyes as their two eager companions led the way out, and Ali knew he had concerns he had not yet shared in detail. Yes. They needed to be cautious and well-prepared. Wow. Now she was sounding like Vivian.

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