Living Life As A Game: Through And Through 73 Evolution Of A Martial Skill

Elizabeth sparred with Jane for about two hours straight. In that time she was beaten down several dozen times, but never from making the same mistake. Each of their bouts got longer and longer until they finished their 59th session after fighting for over fifteen minutes. After taking a short break, Elizabeth returned to her extreme internal ice and fire body refining, alternating between purely increasing her physical parameters, and using the training "armor set" she borrowed to practice Muay Thai with an upgraded sandbag, while Jane sat down to increase her spirituality alongside Sun.

With her strength increasing at a posthaste rate, Elizabeth became obsessed once more with these kinds of monotonous activities. Her apparent insanity seemed to have finally caught the attention of Sophie who had spent the past couple hours completely ignoring Elizabeth. Sophie left her own little training area — similar to Elizabeth she had a bunch of upgraded equipment on her own side of the dojo's training area — and approached Elizabeth when the latter was in the midst of taking a short break.

As Sophie walked towards Elizabeth, a mischievous smile hid a fleeting sense of malice as she said, "Hey "Ellie," You wanna continue spar training with… me?"

"Huh? Ellie? Who the fuc..." Elizabeth quickly stopped speaking her mind as she recalled Sophie's request. 'She wants to spar with me? Mhmm… It can't possibly as a form of goodwill...'

Elizabeth called for Sophie's Status and another pulse of overwhelming killing threatened to escape her body.

[Status

Name: Sophie

s.e.x: Female

Level: 11

Rank: Early-Phase Martial Soldier

Affection Rating: Distant And Mildly Hateful (Improving)

Description: Your past att.i.tude and acts against Sophie have created a bit of bad blood. The blatant disrespect you've thus far shown for her, your Martial Senior, in particular, has acted as the fulcrum for her mild hatred against you. Still, all isn't bad and an eccentric mind like hers has already found a "fun" little game to play with you.]

'Game? Heh… This b.i.t.c.h better not try anything funny...' As per usual, Elizabeth went off to draw her own conclusion as to what others were thinking. This time, she conflated the "fun little game," Sophie thought of with an excuse to bully her. Still, even with her pessimistic outlook, she didn't decline Sophie's proposal to spar. After all, more than anything, what Elizabeth needed to learn at the moment was how best to defend herself. While others in her position might think about first developing their skills with weapons — like her guns and sword — Elizabeth couldn't stand but first improve her most basic weapon; her body.

Sure, being a proficient blade or gun user would improve her strength and security, but what use was there in training all those external forms of support when her body's ability wasn't up to par? Should she ever find herself without her weapons, what was she to do? Give up? Running away would be the best option in those cases to search for her weapons. Yet, she couldn't confidently say that for every possible instance where she met danger without her weapons she could easily run away. What if she were ambushed like the first time she entered the Shadow Realm? Granted, the main reason she suffered so greatly back then was her own obliviousness, but the logic held fast when applied to situations in which she was prepared.

In any case, Elizabeth — as a previous no-life gamer — naturally knew to think ahead. Thus, for the moment she would place improving her skill in Muay Thai just under the importance of increasing her stats.

Elizabeth returned a chilling smile of her own as she said, "Ok~" and after moving over to a sparring ring as she had previously done so with Jane, the life of sparring continued. Only, contrary to Jane, Sophie wasn't exactly the "forgiving" and "patient" type. Unlike when she practiced with Jane, Sophie actually fired back some counterattacks which obviously came as a surprise to Elizabeth as she had yet to actually fight anyone; all Jane had done in the past was to block and dodge.

The first couple times Sophie fought back and actually injured Elizabeth, the latter didn't take it too harshly; after all, this was a spar. But as the evening progressed and Sophie became increasingly violent, Elizabeth couldn't help have her mind wander to the depths of depravity as she thought of playing dirty and fighting back with Inner Strength.

At one moment specifically, after being dealt a harsh kick to the gut, Elizabeth had thoughts of bringing her Cold Flames to life and seeing how Sophie would like it if she were the one being "played with." Fortunately, Elizabeth had P working as her personal arbiter of reason, thus, just before Elizabeth threw caution to the wind and let her fury be known, P's calm voice echoed in her mind, saying, "Don't get upset because you're weaker than her."

"Huh?!" Elizabeth felt betrayed. Here she was getting repeatedly beaten down and her supposed partner was raising her enemy while condemning her for want revenge.

"Huh yourself! You only have your lack of experience to blame for losing on a consistent basis against her. Need I remind you that she's significantly stronger and more experienced than you? You really think she's trying her best to fight right now? Instead of being a baby, you should recognize whether you hate her or whatever, that she's honestly working the part of a sparring partner. Actually… If you think about it, she might even be better than Jane as she's actually getting you trained to defend as well as attack!"

"..." A vein threatened to pop on Elizabeth's forehead as her frustrations were at an all-time high. But, there was nothing she could say to refute P's words, as she understood from a fundamental level that Sophie was indeed playing nice — "nice" being extraordinarily generous as an adjective to describe her treatment.

Elizabeth swallowed the bits of blood that had surfaced to her mouth after taking that last brutal kick as she silently got back up to her feet and returned to the cycle of constantly taking beating after beating. If her previous motivation from training with Jane led to her obsessing over training, then this sparring with Sophie turned that motivation into insanity.

Though she took several breaks throughout the course of her sparring session with Sophie, no matter how many times Elizabeth tasted defeat at the hands of Sophie, she never fully broke and gave up. All it would take was some moments to heal the bruises and scratches that had acc.u.mulated across her body and it was back to the ring.

Eventually though, Elizabeth was brought out of her madness with a timely notification from her status and quest functions.

[Milestone Alert!

The User has evolved a Martial Art to D Grade!!!

Hidden Quest: Martial Arts Milestone #2 (Complete)

Difficulty: D

Degree of Completion: Excellent

Objective: Get any Martial Art to D Grade ✔

Description: For a newbie like you, getting a Mortal Grade Martial Art to Level 17 in a short couple days is pretty impressive. It isn't anything heaven-shattering or the like, but even in the Shadow Realm, you need to be a genius to see such results.

Reward: Elemental Energy-Technique Integration Cube

Bonus: Integration Cube's Quality Increases to Origin Energy-Technique Integration Cube

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

Level 17

Experience: 1,525/1,775

Grade: D

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 p.a.w.n level yields a 5.88% buff to Strength and Defense. Due to the user not yet being in the p.a.w.n-Stage, only the Mortal-Stage buff is applied. (Total Applied: 100%; Total Achieved: 105.88%)]

"Let's call it a day here..." Upon understanding that she wouldn't receive more buffs regardless of how much she improved her abilities in Muay Thai, Elizabeth quickly expressed her desire to move away towards other aspects of training herself. Besides, she'd been fighting for several hours already. It certainly wouldn't surprise anyone that after all the things she'd been through, that she wanted a break.

"Hmph! I thought you would last longer~" Unsurprisingly, Sophie didn't miss any chance at belittling Elizabeth. However, she appeared to indulge in this small victory a bit too much, as her giggling would not stop even after several seconds….

Elizabeth didn't mind the gesture, as she had already gotten her time's worth from being Sophie's temporary punching bag. Though she hated to admit it, Sophie had done a rather good job at pointing out the flaws in her understanding and strategy as a Muay Thai boxer. She might have been "a little" rough, but the time Elizabeth spent sparring with her yielded experience that was just as good if not better than the amount she would have received when training with Jane.

As a matter of fact, instead of continuing her path towards making an enemy out of Sophie, Elizabeth chose to "retreat" back to her room in "exhaustion." She had been planning to stay down in the training area until the dojo's closing time, augmenting her body with internal refinement and various exercises. But, after Sophie gifted her with more time to improve her Muay Thai, even she felt it would be unnecessary to recklessly slap her face by proving that she wasn't the least bit tired and could continue for much longer.

Though she didn't really feign exhaustion, Elizabeth cleaned up the area she used for training and took her leave for the day. She returned to her room and stared at the various magical or nonsensical items strewn about, promising herself that "eventually" she'd get down to organizing her things. Alas, it was never "now," always "later," as Elizabeth, just like most fifteen-year-olds, had a case of procrastination; though at the moment, it seemed to be an extreme case of the terrible disease...