Defying Natural Order With DeoxyriboNucleic Acid

Once!

Twice!

Thrice!

I take advantage of her weak position to hit her a few times, but it becomes quickly clear I lack attack power.

In fact, judging by her reaction, it feels like my hitting is either going unnoticed or just being brushed off.

Every passing second, her face seems less pale. My fists and legs, however, started to hurt more as soon as Thick Skin1 was down.

I have a serious lack of attack power, and I don't know what to do about it.

Or maybe I should say my opponent has a serious surplus of resilience?

No matter which it is, I can't seem to inflict serious pain upon my opponent, let alone wounding them.

Seeing my opponent able to stand on their feet again and knowing how helpless attacking bȧrėhanded is, I take a few steps back.

My breath is ragged.

Over the time I've been attacking her, her leg and arm had been drifting out of my Slows1, enough that it won't take her a second to get them out of the Slows now, and keeping them up is now worthless.

It is one disadvantage in real life compared to my in-game character: if I need to do damages, I need to have a weapon.

I mean, it does have tons of disadvantages, or I wouldn't have spent my life avoiding it:

-Real life isn't exciting

-When it is, it's either short, or the wrong kind of exciting

-You need to pay to live

-You need to work to pay

-The balancing is shit

-The story is boring

-The lore isn't deep

-You don't choose who you are

-There are things you never recover from

-The random events are neither fair nor evenly distributed

-Level 1 isn't the same for everyone

-The exp requirements to level up aren't the same for everyone

-It's kinda pay-to-win

And the list could go on and on for a long time.

Overall, life is an all kinds of bad, boring mess.

Compared to that, even a bad game could seem to be paradise.

Some say that life is the hardest game, some say it's the ultimate game, but the truth is that it's the worst game. It only seems to be the best from the specific point of view of a pay-to-win, ultra-buffed player.

And worst of all, the end is equally shit for everyone.

This is why I'm currently searching for a knife in my cupboard.

Since it all started, it's the first time I let myself consider the situation, and it was a grave mistake.

Knowing I absolutely need that knife to survive, I am anxious about getting it, causing haste and trembling hands, two side effects I do not need right now.

I struggle to get that knife for a few seconds, each passing second increasing my anxiousness, thus making me try to go faster and lengthen the retrieval time further.

The fact that I hear my opponent's step getting closer does not help much, but I finally succeed to take the knife with my trembling hand, and turn around quickly.

Out of precaution, I slash right behind me while turning, and was right to do so, as my opponent was closer than my hearing had me think: the knife almost touched her, as she took half a step back to avoid my sudden slash.

My hands tremble further at the thought of how close that was, but my grip quickly gets firmer.

I also feel relief.

I can be considered to be experienced when it comes to fighting in-game, but the pressure you get in a fight for your life truly is of another level.

Getting that knife might be a stopgap measure, but it stopped me from mentally breaking down from the pressure of realization.

I adjust my grip a bit, switching between the various grips I've seen in-game, before choosing one that fits me best. It is a straight grip, with the hand right at the center of the handle.

The blade points towards the proximal interphalangeal joints. Having the blade parallel to the first fold of the fingers is the amateur's way of holding a knife to cook.

I know Chefs have it aligned with the second fold, the distal interphalangeal joint, and I know the most flexible way of holding it for combat is to have it perpendicular to the middle phalanges, right between both joints, but I can't help it. It is basic, but the way I hold it is the easiest to handle when inexperienced.

There are no pretenses to have against an experienced opponent. A technique you don't master is way worse than anything else you could do, as lacking as it could be.

I do not have much experience using any kind of weapon, though, so I'll have to stick with improvising.

I did start to learn to use a hammer, but I can still be considered a beginner when it comes to that, as I only learned that to be able to defend myself a bit, at most delaying my opponent.

I'll try to adapt it to the knife, as the length is a bit similar, but the difference in weight and balance is great, so I can't be sure about succeeding in that enterprise.

I might be weak, but she must have seen that I was not a complete amateur from the previous fighting we did. That fact alone should have her worried that I specialize in using a weapon.

Not knowing my skill with the knife, she wouldn't attack first. And it gives me just the time I need to make sure my grip is right and strong, before attacking.

I first start with the basics. I raise my knife, and slash diagonally from up right to down left while moving forward.

It does give an opening my opponent can exploit, but I'm counting on that.

I am exposing my head and my arms.

Whether she replicates now will tell me how she intends to fight.

She could aim for my head, arm, hand, or legs.

If she aims for my head, it shows she's confident enough to go for the kill right away.

If she aims for my arm, it shows she is worried by the knife enough to prioritize disarming me by pressing it down against the ground using one of her legs, which are significantly closer and faster than I could deal with while being as forward-heavy as I am right now.

If she aims for my hands, it shows that while she is worried by the knife, she isn't worried about my possible skill with the knife. It means she knows I couldn't possibly reverse my grip quickly and have her impale her foot.

If she aims for my legs, however, it means she intends to incapacitate me. It could be to stop me from running around further, or to take revenge for my... questionable... hit earlier.

Of course, I don't intend to let myself be dealt with so easily. I am not a master of opportunism for nothing. I not only see and take opportunities, but I also give fake ones to others too.

As my knife gets closer to the ground after hitting air, I start stabilizing my stance, and I see one of my opponent's legs bending.

Even with my position, with my vision only seeing my opponent up to her torso, I know what she chose.

My head!

I engage plan A, and hit the ground as hard as I can with my free hand while I raise my other hand as quickly as possible.

I doubt I can defend in time, but my goal isn't really to defend, but to convince my opponent I can do it in time.

If my knife is obviously going before my head and seems to be arriving in time, she'll redirect her blow.

Risking critical support such as a leg is dangerous, and if there are clear signs that she could lose mobility and power for that blow, she'll change her plans.

After all, if I have the presence of mind to react fast, it means that I was either expecting it, which in turn means I was confident that I could either stop or soften the blow.

What happens after that, I have no real time to react to.

My knife was high enough to protect my head a bit late, as expected, and my opponent chose a different tactic, as expected too.

Of the remaining possibilities, which are breaking my left arm which is still against the ground, or hitting my legs according to my thoughts, she chose none.

Instead, I was hit right in the stomach.

It was a good thing I didn't eat, and also a good thing I wasn't inhaling at that moment.

The first is because vomiting is the last thing I want to do, the second is because the sudden change could have caused me to cough heavily.

What happened instead was that I felt the pain, was sent less than a meter backward, and almost lost my grip on the knife.

I fall backward, and after taking a small moment to understand what just happened, duck to the side to bȧrėly avoid getting hit straight to the face.

I don't know if it's because I could block her leg with mine and make her an easy target if it missed or if my opponent has the basic level of respect I don't have, but she didn't try to hit my crotch, which was wide open just now.

I feel a bit light-headed. Or my body feels heavy, I don't really know.

The point is, Mr. Stark, I don't feel so good.

I use Thick Skin, and try to swing my knife forward nonetheless.

At this point, I dropped all pretense of coordinated attacks, and am just trying to hit whatever I can.

I need a bit of time to recover, and I'm not exactly in the best state to meet that goal.

The opponent is a fighting expert, of course, she has training against knife techniques, let alone against basic slashing around. I am not specialized in using knives, after all. Especially not after taking a full-power hit to the stomach without Thick Skin to increase my Resistance.

And so, facing my uncoordinated movements, she hits my wrist strong enough to eject the knife out of my hands.

The only reason my wrist is fine was my use of Thick Skin earlier, but it still hurts nonetheless. A 34% increase is only so much.

Seeing the knife falling, I am almost relieved.

It could be considered weird, but that knife ended up being nothing more than weight.

Not just a physical weight, but a mental one as well.

If I had the time to replay any moment over the last few seconds, I could have used something else than the knife at several moments, and turned things around. Yet I was so focused on the knife that I even forgot anything around it.

I feel tired, and I am hit with that type of lethargy that makes you think you could let yourself die.

That feeling is strong, but the relief is stronger. I stop the following boot attack with Slow.

It was close, but it was also good.

With her left foot stopped into the air, my opponent surely must be bothered.

Even if she understood the nature of Slow, she'd still take a while to free her feet.

Her right foot, her neck, her right arm, her left arm.

-Slow! Slow! Slow! Slow!

I use Slow four more times.

I was so focused on reality that I even forgot something so basic:

There is a huge discrepancy between the game and real life: even if I use Slow several times on my opponent, my opponent can't deal with them. They won't be wasted.

It is a simple and basic matter, but it is one of utmost importance.

I have this habit of not using too many skill points in one big thing that could end up outright wasted, but it doesn't apply to the real world.

While it is definitely useful in-game to be conservative, why should I be conservative when my life is menaced?

-I'm going all out. ╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Slow

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ The mysteries of space and time can

║ sometimes be unraveled by a few select

║ individuals. Slows the effects of time

║ in a certain area.

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ None

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: nothing

║ Active

╚═════════════════════════════════╝╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Thick Skin (172/1000)

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ With great powers comes great responsibilities....

║ Reduces all CC effects by 100%

║ Reduces your blush coefficient by 100%

║ Increases your Resistance by 34.4%

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ Slackface

║ Worst bastard in the world

║ Emotionless Machine

║ ???

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 1 point per activation

║ Duration: 4 Seconds

╚═════════════════════════════════╝