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It appeared that when Jake was fighting himself or just straining himself within the Soulspace, his aura flared as he was effectively having an internal struggle. When Jake also began to purposefully amplify this effect, it became highly effective to the point of Meira barely being able to move. It was just too good not to use.

So currently, Jake was sitting in the library on a pillow in Serene Soul Meditation while Meira was anything but serene. Duskleaf was trying to teach her as sweat poured down her face, and she was out of breath from the presence. The old alchemist god was unaffected due to the sheer difference in power but did admit that it was a very impressive aura when they began this kind of training. He had even added that if Jake was a god, it would maybe have been a little intimidating.

However, as things were, they did conclude that Jake could only do this kind of resistance training with those significantly weaker than himself. There was also some passive resistance to auras gained from just being around him frequently, but it was meager in comparison to a full-on training session where he was just blasting.

Anyway, while Meira was struggling in the outside world, Jake struggled in his inside one. He and sim-Jake had been training for a few weeks now since their first bout, and it was no longer just “fights,” but there was some actual teaching going on.

“Don’t let it adapt, move faster,” sim-Jake said as Jake was busy fighting the massive monstrosity of pure curse energy. “If you let it get used to your patterns, you will be screwed.”

You said that ten fucking times, Jake grumbled as he dodged and punched forward with his kater – a weapon he was still very-much getting used to still. He hit the arm-like appendage of the chimera but was soon pushed back by several spikes claws flying towards him, followed by a whipping tail.

“Momentum is key. Seize it,” sim-Jake spoke once more as Jake moved to attack. He delayed his actions by a fraction of a second, making the tail miss before he truly attacked, managing to land several blows before the beast could adapt and strike back. Jake was pushed once more and had to find a new way to counter as their endless cycle of switching advantages continued.

Jake had made himself weaker than the chimera on purpose to make it into an actual fight that he could lose. All other times he had “fought” the chimera had been merely using overwhelming power. He had blasted it around and sealed it, never truly engaging in combat.

And now that he did… he concluded that the chimera was far stronger than he had ever thought it would be. It was so adaptable it was insane. Its body would evolve on the fly to counter its opponent and its instincts were absolutely top-notch to the level of Jake suspecting it tapped into his Records a bit.

While sim-Jake had made the brawl with the monster look simple, Jake was struggling as he simply couldn’t keep up. Which, in some ways, was a good thing as it showed how much room he still had for improvements.

The key to the fighting style sim-Jake had developed was all about seizing momentum and using the opponent’s own fighting style and instincts against them. Jake had not truly considered it before… but this style was incredibly Perception-centric. It was all about reading the flow of combat, reading your opponent, and understanding the tempo of your foe instantly. It was about reacting, and to react, you had to see and be aware of what was coming. Jake’s Bloodline-empowered instincts leaned towards always just avoiding danger and not attacking, meaning that while his instincts could help him read his enemies, it wouldn’t help with what kind of response he had to formulate.

Reading your opponent during a fight also wasn’t a one-time thing but something you had to repeatedly do as the fight progressed. The entire concept of controlling momentum and understanding the one you were fighting wasn’t anything new either. Everyone did it, and it was the basis of most martial arts. Someone like the Sword Saint was a prime example of someone who was already a master at this, and as Jake recalled their fight, he did notice how the Saint became able to counter and strike him more and more as the fight went on.

“On the surface, a fight can seem simple. It’s just about hitting the right timing and then swinging your weapon or landing that punch, right? While technically true, it is a harmful oversimplification. One of your other major flaws is overextension. When you see an opening, you pounce on it without considering the next step. Sure, you may land your blow, but won’t it just end with you getting smashed in return? I am not saying trading hits can’t be a good strategy, but it has to be an intentional choice and not the result of you fucking up and still managing to get out on top,” sim-Jake had also explained, continuing.

“Every single move in a fight revolves around making choices. How much power do I use? What angle do I strike at? What will the opponent do? Follow-ups? You always need to consider the fight as more than just that singular exchange. Our Bloodline is a bit limited in that sense. It will make it appear smart to take advantage of an opening, even if doing so can lead to getting screwed five moves later. The same is true for dodging. It is all about dodging every individual move, sometimes a few consecutive moves, but the pre-cognitive danger sense is simply not able to predict far enough ahead. Once an enemy picks up on this, they can begin to take advantage. That isn’t really a problem in D-grade yet as even your flawed style has so many adaptions it would take a peak-level genius to figure it out… like that Sword Saint.”

Jake and the chimera kept fighting as Jake stayed close to it, trying to keep up with its ability to adapt and change to better combat what he was doing. It could go better as Jake repeatedly lost out.

“We have better senses and instincts than anyone else… which also leads to my next point. It is something I am working on myself, but that you may as well also begin considering. Right now, we adapt and react instinctually and “stop” the instinctual reaction when we want to counter. This leads to a very small and minor delay compared to merely following along with what our body wants to do. I have been wondering… why does our body dodge the way it does? If you noticed, our ways of dodging are slightly different, and you borderline instinctually form mana barriers and use magic. Something I certainly do not. The cause of this lies in what is essentially the system version of muscle memory. Soul memory, maybe? So imagine if we could train our muscle memory. Actively, that is. Currently, we are still training it just by fighting, which is why battling the chimera is a good way to spend your time,” sim-Jake had also added. “It would lead an entirely new world where can instinctually make perfect attacks… theoretically.”

Jake pushed back the chimera in their fight and got the advantage. He kept pressing and adapting faster than this foe could adapt to him. He stabbed it over a dozen times as he countered its blows before finally choosing to release his power and reseal it.

“That was better than before,” Jake commented with a proud smile, looking at the wriggling form the chimera within its prison of mana strings. It stopped struggling after only a few seconds and just went dormant.

“Yeah, if you weren’t us. You got a long way to go before you get on my level,” sim-Jake shook his head. “But you are improving for sure. Fighting our instinct is hard, isn’t it?”

Jake nodded. It bloody was. Countering wasn’t a natural reaction for him, so he had to always register a blow, want to instinctually react by dodging, stop that reaction, and then counter instead. He would then, of course, need to quickly decide how to counter based on how he had wanted to dodge and what he sensed from his opponent. Jake needed to take in a whole lot of information and decide on it near-instantly. Something made easier by being able to quickly gather that information.

This was as mentioned a fighting style intrinsically linked with Perception. It was about not only reading your opponent but reading your opponent better than they could read you, and if you saw them do the slightest adaption or shift, you had to pick up on it and counter-adapt. Always be one step ahead, never allowing the other side to get an advantage or get any momentum.

To summarize the fighting style… It was about always knowing what your opponent does and taking advantage of those moves. It was such a simple concept made complicated by the sheer level sim-Jake, and now real-Jake wanted to take it. Theoretically, this would be an unbeatable style as long as he wasn’t beat handily in stats, but reality was not that simple. There were too many variables in any fight, and often one didn’t know the variable before the very final moment.

A hidden skill, a saved trump card, a new item, a boosting skill, help arriving, the environment changing, everything could happen. Sim-Jake had naturally recognized this, which was why the goal was never to know everything – just more than your opponent. Coupled with senses good enough to react to any trump card, sim-Jake believed that the most important thing was to be able to quickly seize back the momentum after surviving the trump card. Needless to say, simply expecting to instinctually survive these trump cards was only possible due to Jake’s Bloodline, and honestly, the entire style could only really be called a fighting style due to the Bloodline. It wasn’t something Jake could teach someone else as there were no “moves.”

Everything was reactionary. Well, okay, maybe there were kinda moves, but the moves were just all based on reactions and tended to be simple and vary from opponent to opponent.

“Any progress on the Shadow Vault front?” Jake asked sim-Jake after discussing melee combat a bit longer.

“Some,” sim-Jake said. “But nothing worth sharing, just trying out some things. It isn’t like I can upgrade the skill myself, and honestly, I have a feeling if you just copied the progress I have already made, you would get an upgrade. Don’t do that, though. It is still not there, and I don’t want it to be a skill with a dead-end or one near-impossible to upgrade further.”

“Very forward-thinking for a simulacrum that will one day in the not-so-distant future cease to be,” Jake morbidly joked.

“I will be immortalized through that skill and your melee style,” sim-Jake waved it off. “I naturally assume you will become immortal. Anything else would just be a fucking embarrassment.”

“Maybe I just die to some random critter?” Jake teased back. “Or maybe I find an opponent your super style is utterly useless against, and I get killed.”

“Well, that would be all on you for not further developing it then,” sim-Jake smiled. “Even after I am gone, it will not be done… remember, I made it with melee and katars in mind. We now have far more methods than that.”

Jake shook his head. “One thing at a time.”

He knew what sim-Jake meant. All Jake was learning was pure melee combat. There was no use of skills or any other means of combat besides just brawling. In actual combat, Jake would, of course, be different, and he also had some minor adaptions to make based on his use of poisons. While sim-Jake wanted to land a deep wound to do a lot of damage, it was more important for Jake to land a blow that was good at injecting some poison.

“I am just saying,” sim-Jake said. “You know, you can even add archery in and make it an absolute god-tier style.”

“Or, even better, I can take it one fucking step at a time and not bite off more than I can chew and fuck myself over,” Jake shot it down. That was one thing Jake knew he was better at than sim-Jake. While Jake would overextend in combat, sim-Jake would overextend in adding to his own workload, making him stretch himself thin. “Anyway, just keep it up with the melee practice and Shadow Vault. I am going to see Meira now and got a class to attend in a bit too.”

“I know,” sim-Jake just said with a deadpan face. “Remember. Same body, shared senses, partially shared memory. Ah, but do give Meira a thumbs-up from me. She is doing well.”

“Already planned on doing that,” Jake nodded and smiled as he disappeared from the Soulspace and opened his eyes as he exited meditation.

Duskleaf noticed he had woken up, and Meira also breathed out in relief as he stopped openly releasing his presence into the library. “Had a good time? Any good progress?” Duskleaf asked.

“Plenty of progress as always. I have the best teacher in existence, you know?” Jake joked. “I guess that sometimes if you want a job done well, you have to do it yourself.”

“Ma-“

“Hm!?” Jake interrupted promptly.

Duskleaf groaned and corrected himself. “The Viper has made jokes nearly identical to that one nearly every time he summoned avatars, and I was around…”

“Great minds think alike,” Jake smiled cheekily.

Meira, for some reason, nodded along with a serious expression like he wasn’t joking. Jake turned his attention to her, making her tense up a bit before Jake calmly spoke. “How are you handling the presence training these days?”

“Uhm…. Better?” Meira asked. “It is difficult, but I am doing my best!”

The sweat on her brow had quickly disappeared after Jake stopped releasing his aura, and she had calmed down a lot. Meira hadn’t even noticed that she didn’t have any adverse reactions to Duskleaf’s presence despite him purposefully leaking out a little. Jake met the gaze of the old alchemist god, and he nodded approvingly.

Jake, fulfilling a promise, gave her a thumbs up. “You are doing great.”

She smiled a bit shyly as Jake exchanged some quick words with Duskleaf before leaving the two be. He went towards the entrance hall and the wall to teleport to lessons. Meira still had some ways to go, and despite it being nearly four weeks since Jake said she could bring friends over, she had yet to bring any. Not from a lack of opportunity as she had still copied some notes from books for them. Maybe they didn’t wanna go?

Jake did see how it could be intimidating entering the home of another member of the Order of the Malefic Viper due to the rules, so maybe it was them not wanting to go? That explanation would make sense.

Shaking his head, Jake didn’t think about it anymore as he used the Order Token to open up the gateway to the lesson hall. This was one of those big lessons only held rarely for newer students, and Jake felt he would see many familiar faces there. It was the first time it had been held since he entered the Academy, and the teacher was also a familiar face.

It was Viridia, the S-grade Hall Master Jake had met briefly way back in the day when he astral projected to the Order by accident. The highest-ranked mortal within the Order of the Malefic Viper.

Well, besides himself, that is.