Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 11 Learning The Basics

"Alright so first, I'll have you learn the Traditional Thai Stance." Sun got into position and began almost unconsciously bouncing back and forth. As he moved around, he explained the key points to the stance. He gestured to his feet and legs first, saying "Your legs should be shoulder width apart, dominant foot behind for most cases as it will be the one to generate your hardest-hitting strikes. I don't know how much you know about combat sports in general, but for Muay Thai, your body faces the enemy; don't turn your body to shrink your profile."

Next he moved on to the hand position, saying "As for your hands, you probably already noticed how high my guard is. You want to keep you hands head-level. The bouncing you see helps to better check against any attacks while also masking when I attack, while simultaneously allowing me the ability to quickly s.h.i.+ft my weight."

Elizabeth was confused with regards to some of these terms so she had to remind Sun to give her a refresher course as she had absolutely no experience with fighting. "Oh right, hahaha… So, your profile is the area of your body you expose to the enemy." He turned to his side and his torso faced almost perpendicular to Elizabeth, he continued explaining "For our style of fighting, your legs make up half your weapons. But as you can see, by turning like this, while I might become more evasive and harder to hit, I've effectively lost the use of my legs as they are not aiming at you; or the enemy if we were to be fighting."

He turned back to his earlier stance and began to talk about his hands "The guard I mentioned is the position your arms and hands take to s.h.i.+eld you. Maybe you've seen karate or boxing where the fighters have their hands a bit lower and farther from their faces. But for us pract.i.tioners of Muay Thai, the elbows are often times more important than our punches. The higher raised position of my arms as well as their close distance to my face allow me the ability to s.h.i.+ft my weight more easily when conducting elbow strikes."

Still talking about his hands, Sun said "As for checking, that simply refers to being able to catch or intercept attacks. You see how my stance is practically begging for someone to hit me? So much of my body is exposed while my hands are apparently only covering my face, but in the grand scheme of things, the stance is set up to pretty much bait your opponents into carelessly attacking. When you learn how to properly fight, you'll be checking with your arms and legs, much more often than in other sports, which will balance out the risk you take for exposing yourself."

After the explanation, Sun had Elizabeth try taking his stance, but to no one surprise, the novice failed miserably in her first attempt. Unlike the past couple things Elizabeth had learn, the art of Muay Thai didn't come from a magical book that instantly downloaded all its relevant information to her head. Rather, she had to actually figure things out step by step; she didn't have all the answers ready to fix all her mistakes. That, coupled with the fact that she could tell how awkward she looked, and thus foolish, only made her further devolve and break down the already bad form even more.

Elizabeth, knowing that her stance was probably laughably bad right now, began to concoct her own made up world where Atid, Jane, and Sun all began to ruthlessly mock her within their minds, and as the time pa.s.sed, the insults she fabricated for them as well as the made up expressions of derision only intensified. In the end, it was only after a couple moments pa.s.sed with Sun yelling at her to wake her back up, that the fever-dream ended.

"Hey... Hey! HEY! HEY!!! Come on, what are you doing? Get back into stance!" Sun didn't at all look like the idiot who first came in through the front entrance at all. Now, as he stared Elizabeth down as if she was a recruit in the military, the silly first impression he made was tossed out Elizabeth's mind only to be replaced with that of a cold and harsh instructor.

Startled and afraid, Elizabeth just stopped thinking and followed through with all of Sun's instructions, doing her best to not break down and cry after this rather meaningless first failure. She re-a.s.sumed her terrible stance and held it this time, trying her best to look like Sun as she started at herself in the mirror walls within the dojo. As she bit her lip and sunk into silently working on her form, Sun smiled, but Elizabeth was too focused on herself to notice.

Sun let her work on her stance in silence for a couple minutes, as he noticed that she could silently reflect on his stance without yet making a single misstep. When five minutes came and went, Elizabeth's stance went from G.o.d-awful to just bad. And at that stage, Sun felt it was appropriate to start Elizabeth's fighting tutorials.

"HEY!!!" He had to yell to get Elizabeth out of her bubble before he moved her over to a sandbag and began teaching her all the basic attacks of the Muay Thai sport. Punches, Kicks, Elbows, and Knees. Muay Thai's alternate name "The Art of Eight Limbs" was no joke, and its savagery would only slowly start to expose itself now that Elizabeth started to know of each move's purpose.

Sun spent a couple minutes teaching Elizabeth each of the moves within each of the "limb" categories before leaving her to train on her own against the sandbag. He would do his own training right next to her on another sandbag and point out any mistakes should Elizabeth fail to correct them on her own after a couple tries.

Like this, the two of them entered a most ridiculous endless training barrage that shocked the incoming dojo members, as their training persisted throughout the entire day. Elizabeth never seemed to tire, especially since she spent most of her time focusing on learning the martial art instead of converting her Inner Strength, and Sun was already a well known anomaly within Atid's Dojo; known for his endless pursuit of strength, through h.e.l.lish training sessions.

It was maybe at around 5:00 Pm, that Elizabeth, still lost in improving what most would now consider a beginner-level stance, heard a message from the status functions. She almost couldn't believe her ears and eyes when she confirmed the appearance of that desperately needed skill…

[Martial Art: Art Of The Eight Limbs (Muay Thai)

Level 1

Experience: 0/10

Grade: F

Description: A combat sport descendant of Thailand, characterized by the use of fists, elbows, knees, and s.h.i.+ns.

Current Effect: Unarmed combat at the Mortal level yields a 6.25% buff to Strength and Defense.]

"Hahahaha..." a maniacally, almost evil sounding laughter clouded over the otherwise heavy atmosphere within the dojo, as Elizabeth confirmed the existence of her Muay Thai developing a skill. She looked to have gone insane as her change in att.i.tude came outta left field and with not a hint of precautionary warning.

In her naive mind, now that she had Muay Thai as a game skill, all she would need to do is endlessly "grind" the skill into oblivion and the art would be perfected in no time! Just the thought of abandoning the rigorous practice she had cultivated up until this point, left her giddy at the prospect of an easy future.

However… reality brought her back down a few notches the moment she resumed her training. Since she had completely abandoned all thoughts of self improvement, just carelessly throwing punches and kicks at the sandbag before her, even after minutes upon minutes of practice absolutely no experience was gained.

Just as Elizabeth was starting to have her doubts, P spoke to out of the blue, downright confirming the dreadful thoughts floating within her head. She said "Don't tell me you already forgot? I hope I won't have to repeat this too many times from now on, but just to reiterate. YOUR EFFORTS ARE THE ULTIMATE FACTOR WHEN DEVELOPING YOURSELF IN ANY REGARD." It didn't sound like P was yelling, just her voice was so overpowering, its strength had a comparable force.

The dazzling lights of hope within Elizabeth's eyes were all but crushed, as she slumped back over to the sandbags and continued to actually put in some effort to better her foundation. About an hour later, after a couple notifications that her Muay Thai skill had improved rang within her mind, Elizabeth finally started to try improving the skill while also converting her Inner Strength to Strength, Defense, Endurance, and Speed Stats.

She would periodically change from doing shadow boxing away from the sandbags to develop her Speed. Change to resistance training, or calisthenics, to develop her defense. Punching and kicking the sandbags and heavy bags to generate Strength, and practically everything she did improved her Endurance somewhat. Though, for the most part, she stuck with Strength and Defense training as they were what needed to be improved by the deadline.

When her Inner Strength ran out, her body would tire quickly afterwards, so she would periodically stop all her training to meditate and rapidly regain a full stock of Inner Strength. And by the time, the Dojo's closing time came, it was 9:00 Pm and Elizabeth's body was left in a haggard state.

When she thought back to events of the day, Elizabeth was torn on the issue. Just a week ago, she was a gaming potato that would not leave the shelter of her home lest the world was coming to an end. Yet now, here she was actually training and improving her body. The only way she managed to get through the day was by the constant reminder of her deadline approaching, as the boredom she felt while practicing was suicide-inducing.

At least, that remained the case until she manifested the Muay Thai Skill and every once and a while she could see her form improve and her numbers increase. It even seemed to have caused her some mild levels of pleasure when she started to training with Inner Strength Conversion as the more notification that popped up within her mind, the better that sense of accomplishment felt.