A beginner had moves. An expert had tactics. Where a beginner saw a battle in only one dimension, an expert like Pinker—a title he richly deserved, if he did say so himself—saw two. When a beginner saw a face, their first thought was, ‘I will punch it!’ When an expert saw a face, their first thought was, ‘how can I punch it?’ A subtle difference. But one most brawlers never truly understood their whole lives. The newbie thought a fight a was a contest of Technique-spamming. The expert knew a fight was won by knowing when and where to throw them!

Pinker saw the opening. A half-step back coupled with a lean-back, chin tilting up—

Now!

He pounced. This time he put his whole heft into it. His fist burned brown, hardening, skin taking on a metallic sheen, and it felt like a wrecking ball attached to his arm.

***

The dunce lunged for him.

Dorian was unimpressed. He took the bait?

And this guy is ranked in the top 10,000? This is what passes for ‘elite’ at God nowadays?

Perhaps was being too harsh on the man. There was, after all, a vast gulf between expert and a master. An expert had tactics. A master had strategy.

A mere expert thought a fight was won by knowing when and where to throw Techniques. You could coast on such a two-dimensional view of fighting for quite a while, Dorian supposed, but go high enough and you’d face-plant into reality. Eventually you met a fellow who knew a battle was won not by tactics—when and how to move—but rather strategy—when and how to apply tactics!

Over the centuries Dorian had learned that lesson quite painfully hundreds of times over in spars with his brother.

Bizzarely, out of the blue, he wished Sun were here. These past few weeks he’d rather enjoyed having a captive audience to gloat to. He’d hide it under a pretense, of course, like he was doing it to educate her—something like—“See how he throws punches half-hearted, without intent to land? That’s junk volume. He’s trying to force reaction out of me, to get reads, to establish certain tactics he can use. See, his strategy is that he’s a very specific kind of brawler. He wants to first throw the early fight, figure out his opponents’ habits, and then brutally punish them once he’s got his reads!”

And Sun would nod and go “ooh!”

And then he’d say, “So I’ve figured out his win condition. What should my strategy be?”

And she’d say something that was ostensibly correct, which he would say was totally wrong, and how silly she was to think that.

And explain his strategy was to adopt a counterstrategy, of course. He knew his enemy wanted reads. So Dorian would feed him fake ones. Keeping making the same ‘mistakes’ until his enemy thought he had Dorian down!

And then bait him into striking with one particularly exaggerated ‘mistake’—

And be ready to counter like a coiled spring.

Dorian half-stepped back. Left his chin up. And he knew his opponent would see it as a tactical mistake. And of course the poor fool did. And he knew the fellow would pounce. He might as well have been puppeting the man on a string.

Let’s use… 1% of the Technique’s power. Just to start.

[Fist of Falling Star, Rising Moon]!

***

One moment Pinker’s fist was a blink from knocking the newbie out.

And then something rammed into his stomach.

His eyes bulged. A gasp was torn from his mouth. And then he flew, did a triple mid-air somersault that would’ve drawn raucous applause at any gymnastics competition, and landed in a mess of limbs.

An instant later he was up, still gasping, eyes wild. There was a red smoldering shape of a fist on his belly, knuckles reddest of all—like he’d been stuck with a branding iron. Across the arena his enemy looked at him puzzled.

Almost as puzzled as Pinker was.

He’d been hit. By a punch.

He must’ve been—nothing else made sense. But how? There was a ringing in his hears, a buzzing in his head. The boy had no angle to strike. He was so out of position, feet splayed, chest back, all his weight off—it went against physics!

Pinker shook his head in a vain effort to clear out both that wretched buzzing and his bewilderment. What was he doing? He was in the middle of a bout! He set upon his the kid again. This time frowning, slower, eyes peeled and extra wide.

Feint, feint, feint, a few half-hearted punches and the kid was backpedalling once again, stepping a little too far out, and there!

He lunged. And found himself on his ass an instant later, staring up at the watery white sky.

What just hit me?!

***

Almost there. Dorian frowned at his smoking fist, and blew away a tuft of rising smoke. He was getting there. The first try it felt awkward in his hands. The second, and he was starting to get a feel for it. He scratched his head at the fellow moaning on the ground. “Up you go!” he said brightly. “I don’t have all day.”

The fellow flopped over. His face reminded Dorian of a ripe tomato. At this rate he won’t last much longer at all. I’ll have to tone down the force a little… 0.05%?

“What was that?” croaked the man.

“I punched you,” said Dorian. Which he thought was rather obvious.

“But—but—” He stared at Dorian’s fist, then down at his stomach, where he sported two knew tattoos of the knuckles. “I don’t understand…” he choked out.

Will this moron get up already? What does he expect me to do? Explain it to him?

Dorian paused.

Actually… not such a bad idea.

“Oh, it’s quite trivial, really. I fed you an opening, anticipated you’d lunge in, so I pivoted at the exact same instant, slipped inside the punch, and socked you right in the liver.” Dorian grinned. “Can you stand?”

“I—yeah—” he said, dazed. He struggled to his feet.

“Good!” said Dorian. “Now come at me again! But remember what I told you! Don’t you rush in again. By the way, if it helps—I’m fighting out of a counterpunching style. So when you throw expect me to fade back and pull-counter. Don’t commit too hard to your punches!”

“I—I don’t—” The poor man was gaping so wide Dorian was a little worried his jaw would break off from his face. “What’s going on?!”

“We’re fighting,” said Dorian. Which he also thought was rather obvious. “And I’m giving you tips, since I need you to put up a little better of a fight if I’m to get any use of this session. You’re ranked in the top ten thousand, aren’t you? Isn’t that supposed to be decent?”

Pinker choked. He looked near tears. “Decent?! I’m top ten thousand! In the Multiverse!”

“Well, I should hope so. Though I must say I’ve yet to see the evidence.”

Pinker choked harder. He seemed utterly unable to move. Shocked, or bewildered, or just plain confused. Dorian understood. He tended to have that effect on people. He sighed.

“If you’re not coming to me, I suppose I’ll just have to come to you. Do try this time, will you? It’d be a real shame if I dropped fifteen mid stones on this when I could’ve just been hitting a punching bag,” said Dorian reasonably.

***

Decent!?

Pinker felt faint.

Was he dreaming? Had he been knocked up the head? What the Hells was going on?

“Who are you?” he whispered.

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me,” said the monster in kid’s flesh with a shrug. “Right. On with it, then! I am going to punch you in the face this time, since your ribs need a break. Just jabs, clean and simple. I want you to defend it. Can you do that for me?”

“…”

“Well?”

“Of course I can block a jab!” Pinker was indignant. “I’ve given lectures to thousands of demigods in dojos across all Pithia on defensive fundamentals!”

He still hadn’t a clue what was going on. He had the horrible suspicion he was the subject of some elaborate prank. But he decided he did know one thing. He didn’t take at all to this—whatever—whoever’s—tone. He might be so baffled he hardly knew if gravity still went down, but he still had his dignity, didn’t he? He was an expert! There was a time he sold out arenas that seated hundreds of thousands!

He was feeling a little hysterical, which was most unlike him.

“Good for you!” said the monster. “Brace yourself.”

And he walked at Pinker. Settled into a fighting stance. Raised his lead hand. “See this?” said the monster. “I am going to hit you with it.”

Pinker growled. He was putting his foot down. He’d had quite enough of this tomfoolery! “I know—”

His eyes registered a flash of black. Then there was a massive shock and his eyes exploded with white.

He blinked. He appeared to be flat on his back. His head was throbbing something awful, blood hammering at his eardrums. With a trembling hand he touched his nose. It was so broken it felt like touching pebbles in a sock.

That punch.

It hadn’t even been fast. It simply had no telegraph. The technique—perfect. The placement—perfect.

There were tears in Pinker’s eyes now. True tears. He now suspected this some kind of drunken nightmare, like the ones where you woke up and found none of your limbs listened to you.

The monster sighed. “Alright. Forget about it. I see now it’s not going to work out. Happily, at least I’ve learned this Technique is an order of magnitude stronger than I expected! …Well—either that, or you’re really bad at taking a punch.”

The worst thing is the monster hadn’t even intended it as an insult. He simply said it like an obvious fact. Pinker felt his soul slowly leaving his body.

“Tell you what—let’s scrap the bout. I’ll use ten percent of the full power in this Technique. You’re a peak God, right? What aspect?”

“Earth family,” croaked Pinker numbly.

“Ah, excellent! So your defense is passable?”

“…Yea…”

“I am going to count down from five. When hits zero I am going to hit you in the stomach. Very hard. Listening?”

Pinker swallowed, still very numb, and nodded.

“Good. I want you to use 100% of your qi to block! Withstand this and I’ll forfeit the fight.”

“I… don’t understand,” warbled Pinker. “I… can’t even block a jab?”

“Apparently not.”

“But…” He was full-on babbling. “I’m—I’m—I can fight!” He said it desperately now, his voice so high and trembly he could scarcely believe it was his own. “Really!” He said it like he was trying to convince himself. “I’m top ten thousand in—in the Multiverse! I’ve studied for centuries! I—I was a prodigy!” Fully hysterical now.

“And I’m sure you were very impressive,” said the monster, nodding. “About that shield—”

“I can fight,” insisted Pinker. “I can! I’m very good at it! I’m a top ranker!”

“Yes, you can,” said the monster, as though he were speaking to a weepy babe. “You’re a top ten thousand God in the Multiverse! That’s nothing to sneeze at. I’m very proud of you. Now why don’t you be a good top ranker and put up a shield around your stomach, eh? I am going to hit you in five seconds. Five… four…. three--”

Pinker scraped together the presence of mind to throw up a defense. His strongest one, [Shield of the Almighty], around his waist. He didn’t even question if it was a ruse. Plainly it wasn’t. This horrible creature didn’t need to lie; he could do whatever he pleased to Pinker.

“Two… one.”

***

One time, as a mortal child, Pinker had been kicked there by his father’s panicked horse. It’d broken half the bones in his ribs, ruptured an organ, and had taken him more than a year to recover. It was the sort of pain he never thought he’d feel ever again.

“HRNGNDNGNN!” moaned Pinker. He stared through tearful eyes. He was finding it very hard to think. It felt like there was only room in his skull for that blinding slash of pain. It felt like there was a hole gored straight through his midsection and all his guts were spilling out. Desperately he clung there, as though with his fingers he could keep his insides inside him. Dimly he registered the smell of charred flesh.

His flesh.

A few seconds of writhing later he scraped together the wherewithal to look down.

It looked like a meteor had landed on his stomach. Oddly caved in from pelvis to pecs, blackened and smoldering. He couldn’t feel his legs.

“HRNGNDNGNNGGGGGGG!” moaned Pinker. He retched blood.

And then he blacked out.

All in all the encounter had taken less than thirty minutes.

It would be haunt Pinker forever. Every detail of it, carved like scar tissue into his mind. Afterwards Pinker never took a virtual bout again, quit fighting, quit his job as a trainer, shaved his head, and promptly joined a nunnery, where he lived out the rest of his days seeking inner peace.

He rose to be a monk. Then the head of the monastery. He taught kindness and forgiveness and nonviolence. And eventually, after years of painstaking self-reflection, of diligent meditation, of opening his heart and of letting go of the ego--

He truly believed he found inner peace. And he was happy.

And yet… every so often he still woke up in the middle night shivering, soaked through with sweats at the memory of that horrible smirk.

***

[Level-up!]

[Fist of Falling Star, Rising Moon]

[Lv. 1->2]

Nice! So that session was useful after all. Dorian chuckled. Though I still only saw a fraction of what this thing's capable of. I’ll have to thank that poor sod…

…

…

What had his name been, again? It was escaping him. Dorian shrugged. Ah, well. Next up, ‘GODKING HOUYI’S SOUL DESTROYING LIVER OBLITERATING NINETY-NINE HEAVENLY FISTS!’