Kairos narrowed his eyes as he watched the mana figure in front of him move by slowly inching closer towards him. He didn’t really notice it before, but the sense of finesse had disappeared.
For whatever reason, it seemed like the figure was extremely proficient at the techniques themselves, but was unable to chain them together properly.
Kairos imagined that if in their several clashes, the figure followed up with a strike like it did before, he would be in far more trouble.
However, that didn’t seem to be the case. Instead, the figure would awkwardly pause after each time.
While he was thinking, the figure suddenly shifted its stance, raising its sword up and shifting the weight of its foot.
Kairos narrowed his eyes, before abruptly bringing his spear up, but not in the trajectory that the figure was swinging.
That was when the figure’s swing suddenly shifted, twisting strangely.
However, it ended up hitting his spear.
Kairos backed up after blocking, to which the figure simply stared awkwardly. If the figure was actually a master, it would’ve just continued with its original strike since he had been wide open to the feint.
As he stared at the figure, he gradually came to a conclusion about what the figure was.
Kairos’ thinking shifted vastly. The person wasn’t actually some sort of conscious entity. Rather, it was a set of disjointed techniques.
It seemed that the dungeon had somehow picked up on the moves of someone that was actually proficient with the sword. As for how, there were too many possibilities that Kairos could think of.
Regardless, it seemed that the dungeon was experimenting with using those techniques, trying to see how to use them properly.
The corner of Kairos’ lip turned up suddenly.
He realized that this was actually a great opportunity.
Kairos was a relatively normal high schooler if you didn’t consider his ability to peek into the future and his tendency to break arms.
And… several other things.
Regardless, he wasn’t the type of person that understood proper technique. In nearly every fight he has had, his moves were purely out of intuition. Though they were usually effective enough, they were also rather crude.
It wasn’t as though he never had any fights with professionals. In fact, he has had quite a plentiful amount. However, the problem with professionals was that Kairos had to take them very seriously, even taking into account his future vision.
There was hardly a split second he could lose his concentration.
As such, while he had directly experienced their techniques, he also had no clue what they had done.
On the other hand, while this blue figure had the technique itself perfectly executed, it had no idea when to execute it or what purpose they were supposed to be used for.
In other words, Kairos would have plenty of time to observe the actual execution of the technique.
With those thoughts in mind, Kairos rushed forth towards the blue figure but abruptly stopped before getting too close.
The figure took a long stride forward before bringing its sword down rapidly.
Which missed entirely.
Kairos tried to note the movements of the figure, but it didn’t seem like anything too special. Despite seeing it twice as well, he tried to remember all of the movements, but wasn’t able to catch them in their entirety.
Kairos wanted to see it again and thus tried to back up before rushing in once more.
However, this time the figure pulled back before lunging forth with the sword like it was a spear.
This was easily dodged once more.
Kairos furrowed his brows, trying to catch the movement from earlier, but his memory wasn’t so good that he could remember absolutely everything with just one demonstration.
He attempted to repeat the same actions to get the figure to repeat the technique, but once again, the figure attempted to use a completely different one.
Kairos clicked his tongue.
After a few more attempts, Kairos eventually realized that the figure had almost never repeated any technique whatsoever. After thinking about it a little longer, he realized that for every attack he had dodged, the figure would never try the same one again.
As for the ones he had blocked, while the figure would try them, it wouldn’t do so many times. In fact, he hadn’t seen it do the same technique more than three times in general.
Kairos came to realize that this dungeon seemed to care more about results more than anything. That would be its first goal before anything else.
In other words… if he were to get hit, the figure would probably do it again.
Kairos’ thoughts began to divert into strange territory. He imagined that he should let himself get hit.
It was thought that was quite different from what people would usually think.
Though, considering he had used his future vision to feel the pain of stabbing himself with a knife before, it wasn’t too outlandish.
Kairos had the intention of letting himself get hit with the next strike, but at the last second, he suddenly dodged out of the way.
Another consideration had popped into his mind. He could only let himself get hit so many times before it would become quite dangerous. Though he had the green orbs, that didn’t change the fact there was a limited amount of injury he could take.
As such, he couldn’t just take injuries willy-nilly.
If he had picked a technique that was extremely difficult to follow, then he wouldn’t be able to learn it quickly enough in order to learn how to execute it himself.
Kairos hesitated for a moment before extending his future vision to two seconds. Although his increased willpower reduced his stress considerably, it didn’t change the fact Kairos felt it was very taxing on his mind.
From there, he began examining all of the techniques that the figure would throw at him.
The figure did a swing that caused its grip to suddenly shift, causing it to change from an overhead attack to a sweeping attack. Kairos dodged it, deeming it to be too difficult to learn.
Then, the figure performed a swing that appeared to start from down low before suddenly going upwards. However, it was actually a sweep. Kairos dodged this one too, as he caught the fingers of the figure moving in a particular fashion.
Though he wasn’t sure, he frankly did not think he could learn a technique that required his fingers to shift in a certain way to learn.
The figure continued to do several more techniques, all of which Kairos felt were either too advanced or simply not that useful in general.
But eventually, there was one that caught his eye.
The figure swung its sword forth while holding the handle in a reverse grip. It made it seem as though the sword was going to slash, as though it was getting ready to fling in that direction.
However, the hand that was shifting directions suddenly stopped, before reversing and shooting toward him like a dagger.
Kairos could’ve actually dodged this rather easily, just by standing still.
However, he instead decided to pretend he was trying to get away from the slash and brought his arm up.
A sharp bang resounded followed by a quiet dripping sound.
The sword had pierced into Kairos’ forearm but was stopped by his bone. His blood began dripping down onto the ground, while the figure paused momentarily, seemingly shocked.
Kairos backed up, while the figure immediately performed the same strike in an attempt to hit him once more, but he had already gotten too far away.
The figure then rushed forth, moving its arms in a way that obviously showed it wanted to do the same thing again.
Kairos narrowed his eyes as he stopped extending his future vision.
It definitely hurt to get slashed by the sword. And also the fact his palms were still scarred meant his previous actions with the spear also hurt.
However, he couldn’t even really focus on them.
Because there was a debilitating headache that he was experiencing, which was far greater than any pain he had experienced.
Though Kairos had gone through various painful experiences, the worst part of them was actually the surprise factor. It wasn’t that they hurt less than his headaches, but the pain would eventually dull and go away.
Instead, it was the constant pain on his mind that felt so much more taxing. Like he was being slowly tortured.
However, that could finally be put to rest.
Kairos’ eyes widened slightly as he brought his arm forth once more.
A slash resounded, soon followed by a splatter.
He had gotten hit once more. Quite a bit of his blood had splashed, landing on the floor. Though there was no mess made as it rapidly disappeared the moment it touched the ground.
Kairos could feel adrenaline coursing through his body with greater strength.
And it didn’t feel too bad.
Regardless, he didn’t forget his original purpose, which was to learn the techniques. Thus that was exactly what he did.
Kairos watched the figure’s initial position carefully. He didn’t just take into consideration how it held the sword, but also the positioning of its legs to know how it shifted its weight and bent its knees.
Though, he did it all one at a time, focusing intently on the movement of a specific part and learning it first.
Kairos had used the same arm to defend himself, taking more and more injuries that caused his bleeding to gradually speed up. It would’ve actually stopped if just a bit more time was given to heal, but he didn’t seem to be concerned about that.
Instead, he slowly began learning.
The grip he needed.
At what point he should cancel the momentum.
How to shift his body weight to prepare for the next attack.
And the muscles that suddenly tensed to make a thrust.
Caught up in the learning process, Kairos had taken far more injuries, almost making it look like his arm had been torn up by a wild animal repeatedly.
His breathing had become heavy, and he was even panting.
Yet, his eyes were shining brightly, filled with confidence.
Before the figure could move, Kairos suddenly took a step forward while his spear was held behind him. It suddenly shot forth, prompting the figure to bring its sword up to block.
Yet, right when the spear was about to hit the sword, it suddenly stopped.
Then, Kairos twisted his body, before thrusting it forth and piercing the figure’s heart.
Though there was no tactile sensation of stabbing a person, Kairos still felt that he had done the technique more or less correctly.
Though, it felt like he was practicing on a block of water.
Nonetheless, Kairos was about to pull back and was getting prepared to stop holding back to finish this thing off. Yet, he stopped himself.
Because the figure gave him a look before disappearing all on its own.
[Dungeon Currency Transfer – 1 added]
Kairos took a deep breath before covering his arm. His muscles were torn pretty badly, while his bone was visible at most locations. Though he used his hand to cover the wound, it essentially did nothing as the injury was too big to stop the bleeding.
Kairos closed his eyes, trying to ignore the slightly lightheaded sensation he felt.
Though he thought that he might be able to minimize his injuries by using only his arm to block, he quickly found his thinking to be rather naive.
It had become quite hard to move his arm, considering the very muscles needed to move it were slashed apart.
Not to mention, his excessive use of his extended future vision had effects stronger than he anticipated. Once the adrenaline from the fight had completely disappeared, he found himself in quite a bit of pain.
Though he learned a new way of attacking, it wasn’t done in the best way.
However, Kairos had no plans of stopping.
If anything, he considered it to be a success. Though, it could be optimized slightly…