"Are you ready?"
"Yeah."
"I'll go first."
Yu'er sped up towards Max before using her long legs to execute a kick filled with explosive power.
Max smiled as he stood unmoving on his position before directly blocking it with one of his arms.
"Ughh."
Max's face grimaced in pain, jumping back to move away from Yu'er's further blows. This wasn't what went on in his head when he thought of blocking her kick.
Now, his arm felt bruised just from receiving one blow.
"That is too painful. What's with that kick? How was it able to hurt me? I should be the stronger one here, right?"
"That's why you got hurt. You might be stronger, but that's only the case when you can use your skills."
"In purely physical combat, I would always win. I have been training myself for years, after all. You don't have enough experience and techniques to defend against my blows."
Yu'er went to his side and used her Reverse Time Skill to heal the damage she had given on his arm.
After a few moments, Max could feel his arm being restored to its normal state, and along with it, the pain slowly vanished.
"This skill is too convenient. As long as we have infinite energy, we would be undying. We could heal every damage we receive."
"That's true, but that's impossible. Even if it is, we would also not able to react fast enough if a powerful, deadly attack were to hit us, so don't rely on it too much."
"Yeah. That's too bad. Good thing we already decided on buying the Magical Space and now we're close to purchasing it. I'm sure that would be one of the strongest defense we would ever get at this moment, enough to deal with most Awakeneds we would cross paths with."
Max lightheartedly spoke as he stood up from the thick patch of grass underneath him.
They were currently in a forested region outside the city for a quick training since Max also wanted to test something he read from the guide this morning.
Everywhere around them were trees, and only the cries of birds and leaves swaying from the cool breeze can be heard.
This beautiful environment was calm, peaceful, and has an amazing landscape, which was why they picked this specific location.
The land they were in was also slightly elevated, making it easy to spot if someone were to get close to their surroundings.
Occasionally, among the trees, there would be a little figure flying around.
Little Dou with her big eyes curiously looked at the newly hatched birds in the nest that she thought looked quite ugly.
The baby birds' appearance was different from the large bird that was feeding them. She went on to the nest close up, staring at the little fluffy creatures.
The birds weren't alerted since they could not see her. Little Dou's eyes blinked as she stared at each of them alternatively.
Soon, Little Dou nodded, seemingly enlightened about something.
This nest must have belonged to another bird that abandoned these ugly little birds, and the big bird that was feeding them passed by and took pity on them. That's right! That must be it!
Little Dou felt like she had become smarter as she flew away towards the colorful flowers she had seen at the corner of her eyes.
...
"How were you able to put out that much force on your kick?"
"It's a technique of concentrating your energy only to the areas that would support your legs and put more strength to the kick."
"The power behind the blow would be significantly stronger than what you could normally do in your current rank."
"You would be able to catch your opponent off guard as they won't expect your attack to suddenly be stronger than your usual ones."
"If your opponent knew what rank you are like how you knew exactly how strong I am, then the effectiveness of it would be much greater since, in your mind, you have an estimation on how much damage I could do."
"And you would not expect me to go past that range of damage. That's why it works most of the time. Just like it did with you."
"Naturally, there would be flaws in the technique. Once they expected you to use that move, they could focus on counter-attacking your weaker and unprotected areas."
"You should be careful then. Also, it usually only works once before your enemy would be aware of it, so you only have one chance."
"You could say it's a trick that could give you an edge sometimes, but once it hits, it could turn the battle in your favor."
Yu'er went on to tell him more about the technique. She was not giving Max the idea that it was good to use it in battle.
Max has a lot of skills and a collection of weapons in his Inventory. Physical combat should be the last thing he would want to engage in.
She was merely explaining its process and its weakness so that Max would know what to do if he encountered it someday.
Max understood this, so he tried to learn how exactly it was working and imagined multiple ways to which he could punish his enemy for using it.
After they were done, Max curiously tried to do it just like how Yu'er instructed and gave the nearby tree a powerful kick.
*BAM*
They watched as the tree trunk cracked and split in half before falling on one side, leaning against the other tree.
"It's this simple?"
Max used the minimum energy required and gave out the most powerful kick he could. The impact was stronger than he expected. He couldn't believe that all he needed was a small trick to pull it off.
"Look at this."
Yu'er went towards another tree beside them and gave out a simple punch.
*Shhhh*
The tree fell down the same way as its leaves shook with the force behind her punch.
Max became speechless. He knew that the power behind her attack wasn't something he could imitate just by following her instructions.
"You only learned about this today, so you need more time to be familiar and be comfortable with it. Once you can do it smoothly, then you can slowly add more power to your attacks."
"It's only a matter of time before you can do it with the same power as mine. That is if you need it. I don't think you would need it in the future anyway. Don't use too much time on it."
"But you need to remember how to counter it once someone used it against you. It's quite tricky, after all."
"Oh yeah, you said you wanted to test something today? What is it?"
Max collected himself before remembering one of his goals before coming here today.
"Have you read the beginner's guide that an unknown Awakened wrote?"
"That guide? Yeah, a little bit. I already knew a lot before it was made, so I only scanned through it quickly many years ago."
"I think it was only made for those ordinary people that suddenly activated an ability to give them some idea of the world."
"It should be written by someone from one of those good organization since everything in it was about doing good deeds and following the law."
"I just read it this morning, and there were some interesting things in there. I'm curious to see if it was true."