On we went to training. Me v. Sleeping Beauty—fight! We were the only two people in the gang who couldn’t pull off moves like something out of a kung fu flick brought to life. At first, Sleeping Beauty could just barely hold her own against me. She had only been level 1 when we’d first recruited her, y’know? A strong level 1, but level 1 nonetheless. But as she trained, she leveled up rapidly, and soon she was devilishly difficult to beat.
“Remind me, aren’t you supposed to be a Saint? Isn’t that a healing role? You dumped all your healing traits and went for a brawler build!”
Mm-hmm!
Sleeping Beauty launched her attacks with beauty and grace—and magic and qi and a whole lotta muscle. Her weapon rushed by with the roar of a bullet train!
“Yow! That whistle in my ears says one touch equals instant death. You need to learn how to pull your punches, girl!”
“Hoo! Ha! Hii-yah!”
Her quick, precise strikes—no doubt on the cusp of becoming legit Skills—solidified before my eyes. Sleeping Beauty was no ephemeral phantom, no dainty waif-turned-wraith. Her weapon was no monk’s prayer staff—it was a halberd.
My outstretched left arm pivoted to send her halberd glancing off harmlessly. Its staff-armed twin followed in hot pursuit. Bengquan, baby! Sleeping Beauty parried the hit with her staff and launched a fury of counterattacks.
“This holy Saint is an unholy terror!”
Her violent fighting style combined major magic and muscle. Is this the secret to Vice Rep B’s freakishly strong style?! Like her Archsage counterpart, Sleeping Beauty used Holy magic to grant herself physical buffs before flinging herself into physical combat with high magic defense and autohealing powers. Between her and Vice Rep B, I almost wasn’t sure who was worse!
“Phew! I’m starting to miss dungeon battles. All this practice for the real thing is tuckering me out!”
Wobble wobble.
Back home, people said, “Shed blood, sweat, and tears in practice to avoid spilling blood on the battlefield.” Here, that seemed to have been misconstrued as “If battles have no bloodshed, why not practice till you break?” It was never the battles that were dangerous. It was the practice at home that worried me!
I took a quick break, by which I meant I was knocked flat on my back and couldn’t continue. Sleeping Beauty, on the other hand, was a regular font of energy. Maybe she was just happy to have her body back, or maybe she was making up for lost time after centuries trapped underground.
“You wouldn’t expect a delicate, dainty Saint to run around with a halberd, nor merrily match up with the hammer-heaving Archsage Vice Rep B. You guys are magic users. Act like it! Stop swinging around those giant weapons with booms and cracks and bangs! Don’t sunder the sky with a mighty roar as mighty hammer meets mighty halberd with a terrific crash! Quit knocking about those enormous knocke—I’m not finishing that sentence. But believe me, there’s a lot of swinging going on here!”
How come all the girls were glaring at me again? I was just watching Sleeping Beauty and Vice Rep B train! Watch and learn, y’know? Sit back, relax, enjoy the sho—Yes, ma’am, sorry, ma’am! Getting back to work, ma’am!
Sleeping Beauty stepped with the fluidity of water. Like a leaf adrift on the wind, a drop of water in a swift-flowing stream, and the silence of the night, she turned on her heel with no noise, no resistance, and no disturbance to the air around her. Her long, slender fingers stretched toward me, ready to nuzzle my che—ohhhh no you don’t! I don’t have a death wish!
“That elegant tongbeiquan is gonna make me tongbei gone! You’d blow me to smithereens!”
“That was, for, the wall incident.”
“Sheesh! Someone’s holding a grudge.”
I danced on the wind like a puff of dandelion fluff, buffeted about by Sleeping Beauty’s flying fists but avoiding the deadly strikes themselves. Miss Armor Rep’s strikes were far more precise, barely stirring the air at all, and Qing Qigong was likewise powerless to stop Dancer Girl’s fluid tongbeiquan hits—meanwhile, Sleeping Beauty’s flailing fists were powered by the fury of her personal grudge. She didn’t emit so much as an excess drop of tempered lianqi; rather, she expelled it in the form of pure power the moment it was ready for use. I never saw her moving until it was too late. Sleeping Beauty attacked in a literal flash!
“Ack! Making myself weightless with Qing Qigong means I get blown even farther when I’m tongbeiquan’ed!”
I almost just wanted to let go and drift off into the deep, inviting blue. From up here, the sky seemed to go on forever…’cause I’d been blown thirty stories high!
When I kept my magic and qi on a tight leash, the excess magic ran haywire within my body. On the flipside, if I let my magic and qi run loose, my overactive reflexes kicked in. Before I knew what was happening and exerted a conscious effort to move in a specific fashion, my body was already moving without me. Every action had its opposite and equal reaction, and in my case, both were simultaneous!
Now, when I tried to lean back to dodge out of the way, I lurched into something resembling a backwards somersault, effectively performing a suplex on myself and smashing my head into the ground. I had to worry more about killing myself than being killed by my attackers. My controls were just too fussy; I couldn’t figure out how to get myself into the Goldilocks zone where everything was just right.