Festivities were held by the Daemons that day. Although they were wary of Humans, Aethelbeorn vouched for Braiten’s sincerity and the fact that he was friends with Faeries also showed goodwill unto non-humans.

Aethelbeorn and the squad of protectors for the Daemon race boasted about Braiten’s martial prowess when he had fought the harpies. This prompted several reserve members in challenging Braiten to a friendly spar. There was no need for anything serious like a First Blood duel or the likes, so they only requested for a friendly bout at Zrerton’s arena.

Braiten consented as a friendly gesture and was challenged by a Daemon who was somewhere in the peak of the advanced tier. The two got ready and one of the citizens of Zrerton sounded a loud gong to start the spar.

The Daemon dashed towards Braiten and did a flashy flying kick. Perhaps he was too overconfident in his cultivation, being much higher than Braiten and didn’t believe the tales that Aermagh and company had told. Therefore, the Daemon made a fatal mistake of attacking in such an overly careless manner.

Flowing along the incoming kick, Braiten parried the kick with a circular sweeping motion from below with an arm. He lifted the leg up and put the Daemon off balance. Braiten then followed up by spinning his body below his opponent, reaching the back. This was followed by a pull to pin the Daemon to the ground with Braiten’s fist striking at the neck.

Stopping just short of hitting his opponent’s neck, it was announced that Braiten was the winner. The Daemon sheepishly got up to his feet and gave an embarrassed smile towards Braiten. He apologized for not going all out and trying to do things in a flashy manner, but Braiten did not mind.

He just thanked the Daemon for the match and admitted that he was slightly surprised by the kick. He then suggested that such a kick could be made closer. It would decrease the force behind it a lot, but it would make for a good sneak attack.

Hearing what Braiten had said, the Daemon thought for a moment and grinned at him. The Daemon felt gratitude that Braiten did not carry any grudge for the disrespect and also felt that Braiten was extremely honorable for trying to dampen the offense for the Daemon’s dignity.

Braiten’s martial prowess had put him on the level of Expert cultivators and therefore the successive spars were with Daemons that had at least that much of a cultivation. Braiten’s actual physical prowess was only slightly inferior to a level thirty Flesh cultivator. However, he hid his strength and used technique to face these opponents.

As Braiten faced these strong opponents, his new fighting style to hide magic solidified even more. He tried out different variations and used the elements in non-lethal ways to prevent any injuries. Eventually, due to Braiten’s stellar performances against Expert cultivators, Aethelbeorn joined in on the fun and utterly broke apart Braiten’s technique several times. However, Braiten had earned the admiration for being able to stand more than a few of Aethelbeorn’s blows despite being an Advanced cultivator.

Calla and Wisteria were also challenged and they had managed to put up several good fights and showed off the prowess of their martial arts very well. They too earned the respect and friendship from the colony of Daemons.

Time went by quickly and the battle festivities were over. A feast was held in celebration of three new friends. The feast was enjoyable and the food was delicious. Several female Daemons showed off with a battle dance and were quickly joined by their partners. The performance was brilliant. Each move was sharp and purposeful. It was more like a mock choreographed battle, and lacked the elegance of the dance that the Faeries’ martial arts portrayed, but it was excellent all the same.

Soon, the special torches that lit the Daemons’ hometown had changed from a white flame to a blue one. This indicated that night had fully fallen. The festivities broke up and everyone retired for the night.

Aethelbeorn guided the three outsiders to a nice cozy hut near the entrance of Zrerton. The hut had three rooms in addition to a dining area. The trio had to use the public facilities to clean up or answer nature’s call, but they did not mind it.

***

Some time passed and a freshened up trio of one Human and two Faeries met up in that cozy hut again.

Braiten turned to the Faeries to ask, “hey, what did they mean by unique martial art and 【Dance of Armaments】 martial art this afternoon?”

The two Changelings looked slack jawed at Braiten as if they could not believe he had even asked such a question.

“Is something wrong?” Braiten asked confusedly.

“Uh…” Calla began and started to collect his thoughts.

However, Wisteria used that brief pause to interject and explain instead, “a martial art is different from a martial skill. A martial skill is a fragment of a martial art. You could say that a martial art is a whole sequence of martial skills chained together. It is connected to your cultivation method and can enhance the speed at which you cultivate when you gain insights into its essence. There is no need to shout out names as Humans do with the martial art, and it’s much more flexible. With the movement of qi within the body in mind and an image of the sequence of movements in your head, martial skills can be used without shouting out anything.”

Braiten was stunned by this new concept. This may just possibly help his cultivation move faster. It was just a pity he did not know the martial art to >. Braiten did remember, however, that Gladiolus said that his cultivation was too low to practice it. Perhaps the cultivation will reveal it to him in future once he reached the required level.

Thinking about the new concept, Braiten also came to terms with the theory he had come up with along Eron and Isolda, surprised that they had touched on a very important secret in the Human martial arts society. He missed the two individuals, and thought that maybe it was time to let go of his previous prejudices over martial artists being silly and fully integrating the use of martial arts into his fighting if he ever learnt the accompanying martial art for his cultivation method.

***

In the blink of an eye, it was nearing the time in which Braiten had to reunite with Eron and Isolda. He was looking forward to it.

During the nearly ten-year period, Braiten had grown much stronger. His martial ability seamlessly joined with his magic. Braiten had spent a lot of time in the ravines and the outer forest of Aermagh, near the inner forest. This helped him become more in tune with nature and somewhat understand the path of >. Eventually, Braiten had reached the ninety-second level of Advanced cultivation.

Soft, soothing whispers in his mind told him that by practicing >, he was destined to become one with the heavens instead of going against heavens. He felt that his cultivation will deviate soon, but was not sure when that “soon” will be.

Braiten also secretly trained with the Changelings and thought up how to infuse qi with magic. The effect was immediate and devastating upon success. While flexibility and use became lowered, it was only limited to Braiten’s imagination of his use of qi that prevented him from truly making the combination versatile.

Braiten formed a core using qi and inserted a magic rune into it. This allowed the qi to take form of the element that it was infused with or display the effects of the enchantment that it was imbued with. Then, Braiten just needed to learn how to shape the qi into various weapons, inspired by the Faeries’ 【Dance of Armaments】 martial art. Braiten could remotely shoot these weapons from afar despite qi’s usual tendency of originating from the user before being launched at enemies.

The Changeling couple had grown as well. They were no longer in the Advanced cultivation tier and had moved on to the middle levels of the Expert cultivation tier. Constant duels with the Daemons and adventures with Braiten had made them grow much stronger in terms of martial prowess.

In a one-on-one duel, both are able to face Expert cultivators at the hundredth level. In a two-on-two battle, they were capable of just barely matching Aethelbeorn who had grown to the peak of Flesh cultivation over these years.

Aethelbeorn was inspired by the trio’s desire for strength. He felt a competitive spirit and managed to breakthrough from a high level Flesh cultivator and gradually grow into a peak level Flesh cultivator. Without the competitive spirit, he would never have broken through that fast due to the difficulty of growing in power at higher cultivation levels.

Currently, Braiten and his party decided to stay for one more week before they set off to return to Aermagh, which would take a month of travel. Hopefully, Eron and Isolda would have caught up to Braiten by then, and they can begin to make their way into the inner Aermagh forest.

===

Author’s notes:

Another short chapter but no point dragging anything useless out as the real meat is in the future chapters. A minor spoiler I would like to give is that the Changelings, along with the two Human martial artists are not the end to Braiten’s party. There’s two more members that I have in mind, both non-humans. I’m going to set up a poll to know what race the next party member you guys expect he/she would be.

Thanks for reading and supporting this fiction, guys! Sorry that I kinda lost motivation for churning out this chapter, so the update was delayed and the chapter is shorter than I had initially planned. However, I got most of the important points down despite it being shorter. I also started a new fiction to channel my stress from thinking out how to formulate this whole fiction's future progress. If you guys find it, I hope you can support it too.

Info Compilation Update: Haven't gotten around to updating it yet, but I will do so tonight.