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Our teacher was… an interesting man to say the least.
After beating the crap out of us while laughing maniacally, we realized we were not even damaged.
“W-We were not damaged? The pain is not here…” said Eleanora.
“H-How? What did you do? Did you manipulated our minds?” I had wondered.
“Manipulate minds? What? I am not some Mindflayer to do something so unsightly… This is what’s called Martial Arts.” Said the old man back then.
“Martial Arts…” I muttered.
I suddenly realized back then that such a power would finally help me become someone strong. That could fight back against all these threats that wanted to sell us off as products…
And I knew that there was a reason why this old man picked us up after all, so I had boldly asked him to teach me.
“Please… teach me!” I asked.
“Hoh? You’re more willing than I imagined! Good! What about you, girl? You want to learn, or you want to get out?” asked the man.
Eleanora, who would never leave my side, also accepted without saying another word.
“I accept!” she said.
“Good! Gyahahaha! Prepare yourselves! You’re going to experience PURE HELL!”
The old goblin laughed eerily, as he suddenly began to beat us senselessly… for the entire day.
But then when we woke up, there were no wounds, no pain, nothing.
It was so strange, was he sadistic and just liked to see others suffer?
I only realized later on that what he was doing was forcefully opening our Qi Veins by stimulating our Pressure Points. Each hit he gave to us was painful because he was hitting our Pressure Points and shaking our Qi Core.
When an entire week of beatings ended, we suddenly felt strange, as if our entire bodies were exuding a strong golden aura from within.
“Good! You’re very resilient! Any other kid would have died from that! Vampires are really amazing! You just awakened Qi, you stupid brats!” he laughed.
“Qi?!” we asked at the same time.
“With Qi you’ll be able to use all sorts of Martial Arts! It is the very basis to utilize the power you’ve seen me use to beat the shit out of you all this time! Gyahahaha!” he laughed.
Martial Arts… Qi… those concepts which we never knew about back then were revealed to us by that old goblin. We learned about the power of Qi, the Pressure Points, the Qi Core, and the usage of the body and mind together in Martial Arts.
With Martial Arts, our power would quickly skyrocket, and we would be able to do virtually anything, or so he said… the first lessons we had were simple. We were forced to spend all our Qi while trying to imitate his techniques against him.
Long story short, we got beaten for another week and then a second and third week following that.
However, after a month passed, we finally began to grasp the principle. He was a terrible teacher, he only asked us to forcefully learn things by ourselves while hitting us all the time.
He was probably also taught this way, so there was nothing we could do other than try to attack him while copying him.
“The very principle of all intelligent beings to develop as people is to imitate one another! By imitating one another we learn how to speak! By imitating one another we learn how to eat, how to cook, how to express ourselves! Martial Arts is the same! Watch closely as I beat you a thousand times and copy what I am doing until you finally can do it yourself!”
It was arduous training, and it took me half a year until I finally learned my first technique.
It was back then, in the middle of another fight where we were being beat down.
Eleanora got kicked in the head and was knocked out instantly, meanwhile, the old goblin attacked me with a barrage of fists, hitting all my pressure points and making me squirm in agony.
However, I suddenly felt as if things were moving slowly around me, adrenaline was pumping through my veins as it merged with the Qi flowing through me.
In a second, my fits also flowed through the air as if they were two beautiful rivers, and several hits reached the old goblin, he opened his eyes wide, he didn’t feel any pain though, he was way too strong for that.
But when I hit him, after over half a year… I finally made him step back.
“Gyahahaha! You’ve finally grasped it, you stupid bloodsucker! I was already thinking about throwing you back into the trash! Good! Good! You’re just starting though!”
Indeed, this was just the beginning of such a long journey. He accompanied us for a long time, teaching us many things.
Over time, he softened towards us and became gentler, although his classes were always rough and ruthless to the very core…
“He was a crazy old man… I can’t believe I am going to say this but… I miss him, I guess…” said Eleanora.
“Well, that was so long ago… But he still remains within our memories, huh?” I sighed.
“Y-Yeah…” sighed Eleanora.
“Comparing that life to this new life, we really got a better starting point in this one, huh?” I wondered.
“That’s for sure… Let’s start again together, shall we?” asked Eleanora.
“I was waiting for you to say that… Haha…” I said.
We quickly stood up and walked back to the dining room. There was some freshly made goat milk cheese accompanied by another wolf meatloaf. There was so much wolf meat that we had been eating it for two weeks now, but it was better than sewer rat blood, so I couldn’t really complain.
“What were you talking about for so long that it took you a while to come out?” wondered my mother, looking at both of us while squinting her eyes.
“About… spirit techniques!” said Eleanora.
“Yeah… that! Eleanora is getting pretty good at them.” I said.
“Hmmm… Okay then! Enjoy the food! I hope you haven’t gotten tired of wolf meat already…” she said.
“It is better to eat it than throw it into the trash,” I said.
I disliked being a wasteful person.
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