Defying Natural Order With DeoxyriboNucleic Acid

Did I sacrifice my position too early? Should I have waited until the four seconds were up? I could probably have lasted a few minutes by spamming Thick Skin.

When freeing my arm, I reflexively took a few steps back, leading to the current dilemma.

On one hand, I am in a situation I can use Slow to fight, a tried and true irl fighting method, on the other, my opponent went through my door, and I clearly can't count on any help coming, as he certainly wouldn't let me the time to call the police.

Not that I'd call them, though. It may be misplaced confidence, but I'm pretty confident in my abilities. Considering my synchronized skills and stats, I should be able to win.

The risks are low enough that I can tolerate them, which, with my risk tolerance, doesn't mean much.

Anyway!

My opponent is standing in the doorway, and I am now about 2 meters away from them.

A whole 2 meters away!

Seeing my opponent rubbing his arm, it still that he still feels pain.

My, how lucky, I almost thought he was a terminator.

As I was hesitating on what to do, he stepped inside and started closing the door.

This would be a good time to attack, which also means it wouldn't. I'm pretty sure that he's ready for me to go for it and I can't cover the distance between us faster than he can react.

So instead of rushing, I just take a few small steps forward.

The reasoning behind that is simple: if I want to be able to do anything, I must get closer to him in the first place.

I don't want to take the initiative though. The whole thing around using Slow to fight is that you need to see your opponent move to use it.

I'm pretty sure that me being targeted right now is linked to the fake thief that visited me a few months ago. If so, I doubt they'd send someone inexperienced.

I spread my legs and bend them a bit, lowering my center of gravity, and focus on his movements.

As he's closing the door, he looks back at me, and takes a stance.

I sigh with relief. I can't make sure of whether he has any weapon at all, but I can be sure now that he has no gun.

He closed the door with the intent of securing a bit of privacy. There would be no one to see him doing the act, and he would be able to look around for any curious passersby before leaving. With that intent being clear, I was worried for a moment it was his sole purpose, and he was going to use a gun. But it seems that he isn't.

This, however, only means that he and whoever hired him were confident enough that he could kill me without a gun at some point. That makes two people, at two different times.

One might be a chance, but two is a pretty good coincidence.

Though, in my book, it looks like a pattern, considering there definitely cannot only be two people involved in such a costly and risky matter. I am not known well enough.

Considering the best weapon I could have access to by chance, it means he is strong enough to overpower an amateur with a knife 100% of the time, without sustaining an injury or taking more than a few minutes.

One step...

Another...

After a few seconds of taking one step after another and staring at each other, which, admittedly, wouldn't feel as tense, probably ridiculous in fact, if some comedic music was playing, he finally makes the first move.

One can't get more basic than that, but damn is it fast.

Slow!

I have a lot of practice when it comes to manual casting Slow, and it is pretty much baked in my basic reflexes at this point.

In-game experience translates well to real-life when it comes to manual casting, yet the low distance I had to move my hand through to activate was covered in roughly the same time his fist needed to cover to be where it is right now: right before my face.

I almost got knocked out there, but it achieved what I wanted.

As soon as he felt the resistance coming from Slow on his fist, he reflexively tried to pull it back.

Except that what Slow has the most resistance against are fast movements. It is the magic equivalent of a speed limiter, if that speed limiter gave penalties depending on how over the speed limit you are.

It won't give me time to do much, though. As soon as he becomes conscious that he only hit what is holding his fist back, he won't take too long to take it back.

I take a step forward while throwing a fist, aiming for his ċhėst.

I hit, but...

I don't know where the solar plexus is, but I definitely failed to hit it.

It hurts!

I didn't feel any kind of protection below, so how come I hurt my fist?

My opponent, on the other side, doesn't seem to have felt much, if anything.

I already know that hitting with your fist actually stings a bit from my shopping trip 2 days ago, but how come it hurts so much?

I don't have much time to focus on that, though, as a knee hits me right in the face.

Thick Skin!

I take a step back, as the effects of Thick Skin mean that his blow won't get me to.

That was close!

Though again, I have a part of my body that stings.

For his standards, there shouldn't be too much power put behind that blow to my head, but for my standards, it was close to knocking me out.

Had I not used Thick Skin right on time, I wouldn't have benefited from its current 34% increase to Resistance.

╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Thick Skin (172/1000)

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ With great powers comes great responsibilities...║ Reduces all CC effects by 100%

║ Reduces your blush coefficient by 100%

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ Slackface

║ Worst bastard in the world

║ Emotionless Machine

║ ???

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 1 point per activation

║ Duration: 4 Seconds

I wasn't far from getting knocked out.

In life, in general, it is hard for anyone to be that much better than average at something, and while I might be slightly under average, I should still be considered to have a top athlete's resistance.

Yet there was enough strength behind that blow to have me suffer a slight loss of balance.

Does it really have to be that complicated?

As I think that, my opponent puts his hand behind his back and takes out a knife from who knows where.

Fuck.

It really has to be that complicated.