Chapter 439 |
Day 101 – Early Morning, the Evil Forest, the Inn
Missed, huh. Kicking off the ground to forcibly straighten my posture as my body was falling to the ground I attempted to correct the trajectory, but that too was off.
This altered body reacts differently than before, moving in unexpected ways, showing output that going by numbers in the status shouldn’t be possible. Each time it happens, my body sways, my center of mass wobbles, and I spin around like a shaky top, off-course, unstable, and unable to consolidate force into a unified direction, or even move in the general direction that I want.
The footwork itself, which should prop up my body, is a total mess. Every time I start drifting off I kick off the ground again to adjust, only to drift off again leading to another correction, so while I’m aiming for smooth elegant footwork like in a graceful dance, in reality, I’m stomping non-stop like a tap dancer, to avoid falling, fix my direction, and adjust my body angle. It’s a total mess. It’s like I’m trying to fight while playing Dance Dance Revolution.
Yeah, my nerve signals are definitely sped up. 『Wisdom』is confused by the response times normally impossible with the speed at electric signals travel through the system. The data comes and goes giving no time to think or even attempt any control, leaving me only capable of half-assed responses to whatever state I’d catch myself in at the moment. A total chaos!
Doing the best I can to maintain the combat stance, I twist my body, which just barely allows me to avoid the incoming attack, and using the recoil I hurl myself between gaps in the endless stream of attacks, leaping through the air. Naturally, trying to 『Air Walk』with shaky footing also means slipping midair and flipping into a wild backward spin.
Completely defenseless and upside-down midair, I flee from monster attacks, darting through the recklessly darting through the air, wildly kicking through empty space with 『Air Walk』 at every possible angle to scramble my trajectory, bouncing all over in an attempt to escape.
There’s no wind-up in my movements. My body is already reacting and moving by the time I think. So my thoughts can’t keep up. And because in this panicked state I’m too overwhelmed, I can’t maintain Thought Acceleration, which means my thinking and reaction falls even further behind..
The goblins are definitely thinking, 『What’s this guy doing freaking all over the place by himself?』. Or even giggling to each other like, 『Pfff, pupupu』. Damn, that pisses me off! I’m gonna kill them.
「Approach with graceful and wide motions as if in a waltz, and then frigging stab them with a furious wraith! (Gyaaauuuuugh!)」
Since my perception and the flow of time aren’t exactly in sync, everything’s a mess, so I keep it simple, cut the useless movements and just use big, sweeping, smooth motions. It’s just goblins anyway?
I consciously move with exaggerated motions, attacking not with force but with form, relaxing my body and letting the centrifugal force carry my staff as it spins through the air, and I go tumbling on the ground… Let’s eliminate all witnesses.
With an image of gliding smoothly and cutting as in a dance, I leap out and trip, roll, and slash meanwhile. It’s not graceful, but they’re just goblins, so it’s a massacre.
「Guess it’s about time we head back? Everyone is about to wake up soon?」
(Jiggle-Jiggle)
Yeah, instead of switching the beat, it’s safer to go with a medley and just string in a little minuet for transition. For goblins, that’s more than enough. But if I were up against a high-skill, high-speed Dungeon Master on the 90th floor or something, I’d be getting turned into a total joke, and then clowned into a scherzo.
「Like『more haste less speed』works pretty well for syncing the body with proper form… but if rushing means rolling, then maybe I don’t even need to thinking about speeding in the first place? Well, even rolling I did manage to kill 20, so in the way it was spin to win?」
(Bounce-Bounce)
So the point of disagreement becomes a rotational counterpoint, and if put in simpler terms I’m being told not to roll, it seems? Ideally, I should be gently accustoming myself with the new body day by day, syncing mind and movements until they naturally align, but for a Highschool Boy, there’s the very cliche Highschool Boy reality of having to choose the second-best to avoid the worst, rather than reaching for the best. If you are getting strong in order not to die, dying in an attempt to get stronger sorts of defeats the purpose, but if you’re getting strong in order to kill, and you can’t kill, then you’ll be the one who gets killed.
It’s the inescapable dilemma of causality. Some even say one might never have an answer to it, but if you ask 『Which came first, the chicken or the egg?』to the Girls they would probably say oyakodon, and the orphans would say omurice. So the answer to the dilemma of causality is apparently 『Why not eat them both together?』.
***Will add part 2 in a couple of hours***