How to fight dirty (2)

It was interesting to compete against someone other than Justine, who had been my only training partner until then. The boy wasn't doing too badly, just about up to his royal qualifications.

His main flaw was his sense of priorities. He thought more about countering my strikes than attacking, which made the fight drag on. However, victory was something that was achieved in the first few seconds. After that, injuries and collateral damage were inevitable. For a mercenary, to let a fight drag on was to sign for his own death.

In parallel, I evaluated all sorts of criteria in order to adapt his future training. Lack of confidence, reactivity, concentration...

His speed was slightly higher than what I was used to with royal soldiers. This was the result of a rigorous maintenance of his body, probably a daily program imposed by his former master-at-arms. Let's say the prince was just a privileged student... In any case, the lead he had taken would be completely overcome within a few months.

Just after his reluctance to attack, came his lack of flexibility. It would take time to get him deblocked, but it wasn't impossible if he devoted half an hour per day to it. The most difficult thing would be to choose where to start in his training. This ignorant had everything to learn about the job...

I vaguely remembered my first year of training. Justine had got me used to push the limits of my body, whether in flexibility or endurance. Never satisfied enough, I didn't hesitate to rework the exercises on my own. I quickly got bored of the challenges once I had found the perfect combination. This is what pushed me to learn things by myself and develop my own techniques without waiting for the approval of my superior.

Adaptation is the key to survival. Let's see how long you can survive against a predator, little doe...

Gradually, I increased the intensity of my assaults, and my speed and multiplied the vicious hits. This unconscious evaluation technique was proving quite effective on him. He was very receptive to my variations and naturally adapted his parries to my movements. It didn't take more than two minutes for him to show his first limits.

His reaction time was getting longer due to fatigue. Adapting required a lot of energy, but as far as he was concerned, he was wasting his energy making superfluous gestures. Edwoyn suffered from a flagrant lack of technique, forced to improvise ridiculous positions...

When I saw his eyebrows furrow nervously, I knew that he had just realized that the difficulty of the exercise was increasing more and more. The corner of his lips, adorned with a flashy freckle, no longer showed any amusement, if not the opposite. I was purposely pushing him back because there was nothing static about real fighting. Concentrating, Edwoyn redoubled his efforts. His eyes searched for an opening in the cloud of stirred-up dust, resisting as best he could with his weak strength.

Too bad for him, because no one could pretend to predict my moves! Making him lose would motivate him twice as much, and that was my plan. So I rained down the blows with my stick: I struck a hasty kick at the level of his neck which he countered with amazement. This was followed by a sideways attack from the opposite side, then a punch in his chest before I followed up with a right-handed chase.

Exhausted, he endured the first series of blows, but could not dodge my foot, which had presented itself unexpectedly. I leaned on his body and pushed myself backward in order to prepare a turning fouetté.

Because he had chosen to counter frontally rather than deviate my stick, the fallout would be twice as bad for him. Choosing an evasive strategy is a sign of weakness.

To run to escape is to run to your doom.

If he had hit me when he had the chance, he would have lost with the credit of being able to inflict me some injuries. Now that it was too late, he would get a taste of my infallible foot techniques and his defeat would be complete.

As I turned to deliver the fatal blow, he managed to grab the leg I had stretched high in the air. Just as I thought I was in control, the situation suddenly inverted.

How could he anticipate me? I only lost visual contact for half a second!

Edwoyn took advantage of the fact that I had only one foot on the ground to make me fall. Balance was the only flaw in my fouettés, but my speed left a window too short to hope to intercept me.

In any case, that was what the prince had just done. Beginner's luck...?

I lost my stick when my pupil bumped into it. Immediately, he lifted his stick to hit me in the ribs without restraint, as I had advised him.

Do you think that's enough?

He didn't realize that I had years of experience compared to him and that I knew exactly how to get out of his clutches. I took a few blows to measure his strength. I couldn't feel the violence or the rage that was boiling inside him, I could only guess at it, reading the deformations on his angelic face.

Eventually, I had enough of his miserable strikes. He was leaving me far too many openings to retreat and come back at him. I avoided his umpteenth kick by rolling to the side. Then I jumped up with a daring leap, propelling myself on my two feet. None of Edwoyn's attacks had affected me. At least, I wasn't suffering from them.

I had already endured so much worse, I was not going to fail for so little.

Having no weapon left, I was going to use my fists to fight back. The best weapon ever is our bodies. I did not restrain my strength, it was a pointless precaution, I just had to be careful not to break his bones.

My fearsome fist came to lodge itself right in his belly, the third most sensitive area of the body after the genitals and the head. He couldn't see it coming because I had been far too fast for his level. That was the whole point, to show him a glimpse of the gap between us.

I’m bored of playing.

He coughed up all the air in his lungs, but his mass did not collapse as expected. The midget was still standing and had firmly grasped the arm that had been thrust into his stomach. In all my life I had never seen such a willingness to annihilate. The prince had probably just lost his temper, which made things much more interesting.

That's right, show me how cruel and bloodthirsty you are. I'm looking forward to it.

A sudden flash of light blinded me. I took a step back as the blast of an explosion sent me far, far away from my opponent... Perhaps I was a little too much for the first training?

Provoking this fallen prince was my second mistake. I had given him every reason to hate this world. The fire of his anger fed and grew, devouring everything in its path... The only question that worried me was: when would this fire burn innocent people?