Defying Natural Order With DeoxyriboNucleic Acid

-I'm going all out.

I said it out loud more to psych myself up than anything else, but it is also a manifestation of my actual feelings.

Should I actually be conservative with the resources I put into saving my life? Of course not! Then why the fuċk did I do it?

Expressing my intent out loud has an invigorating feeling that I truly need.

I rush towards my opponent, who is now stuck in an awkward position, and kick her right in the face.

Her neck being stuck in Slow 1serve multiple purposes.

The first and most obvious one: she can't move her upper body.

The second: it keeps her head in place, which means that the impact cannot be dissipated by the head moving along its direction.

The fourth: it might make her breathing difficult.

It doesn't give any feedback in-game, and I've had no opportunity to test it, but it's likely that Slow also acts on the air itself.

By doing so, it'd make breathing only possible at an extremely reduced rate. It might even be enough to have one suffocate.

Of course, it could also be that the air is voluntarily excluded to save on energy consumption, but that's why I want to find out.

After hitting her head, I take a step back to have a better view, and look closely at her behavior.

She is unable to move her neck, hands and feet, but her whole body seems to be revolting.

It seems that I was right.

Before taking the hit, she must have unconsciously tried to inhale fast.

After taking a hit straight on, she was definitely stunned at least a bit, and it should be enough for her panicking unconscious to try to do everything to breathe.

Part of her unconscious' tentative is the wave-like convulsions she's currently going through. Her body is trying to move to get an appendage to her neck, and it is unable to, resulting in it trying a bunch of muscles in succession. Its failing has it panic even further, making it try even more randomly over and over again.

The other part of her unconscious' tentative is trying to breathe. Hard and fast. The fast-moving air is Slowed, and it being pushed hard creates pressure, giving the illusion of something blocking her breathing, having her unconsciously try harder.

She might have understood Slow by now, but that is only her conscious mind.

When it comes to it, humans can go against their feelings, but their instincts are overwhelming.

-Slow! Slow! Slow! Slow! Slow!

Her body has been slowly getting out of my Slows, so I place new ones to match the new positions before canceling the previous ones.

Only a minute later, after renewing it a few times, I bash her head and lungs a few times for good measure, then cancel the Slow on her neck.

I chose that point because her eyes lost part of their focus. It is the perfect state: she is conscious but unable to move much.

At that point, her body was still twitching, but not moving much, as it pointlessly expanded most of the oxygen it had by moving. Her brain also got extremely reduced amounts of oxygen for that entire minute.

It might not seem so obvious, but the flow of blood to the brain doesn't have that much overhead when it comes to oxygen. Beyond potential blood vessel ruptures, being upside down is enough to be asphyxiated, let alone having your blood flow literally reduced. Strokes are literally following that principle: an interruption of the blood supply to the brain.

I don't mindblindness, and vertigo and loss of coordination actually are a nice bonus to me, but I need her to still have the ability to talk and understand what I say to her. Paralysis is also something I want to avoid.

After all, I have a use for her.

I use Thick Skin1 as a precaution.

Her head is still low, supported by her leaning body. Her body itself is hanging by her hands, and while her position is maintained by her feet, I doubt the Slows there are of much use, considering the way her knees are bent to match gravity.

I grab her head by the hair, and raise it to match the height of mine.

I make sure some focus returned to her eyes, and tell her:

-Listen. I know you won't tell me who sent you no matter what, so we'll make it simple: Tell your boss that this is a warning. If they ever mess with me again, it won't stop there.

I said it in one breath.

This is not only a huge bluff, but my badass moment, might as well not mess it up.

Exhale.

Inhale.

-Understood?

From the way she tilted her head, it seems to be understood.

I cancel the slow on her hands and legs, and help- okay, maybe more drag her to the door.

A short while later, once I made sure she could more or less stand up, I pushed on her back.

-Fuck off!

To my surprise, I see her almost flying forward, hitting the wall in front and falling down, probably breaking a few bones in passing.

As I struggle to absorb what just happened, I close the door, and lean against it.

<The player synchronized a skill by a special action <Palm Push1>>

<The player synchronized a stat by a special action <Will>>

<The player synchronized a skill by a special action <Opportunism>>

Ooooh!

I finally understand! Palm Push is from the Daoist skill tree! You have to think like a Daoist!

If you want to do it, it has to be a matter of course!

I never push anything with my palms, so of course I would do the motions by habit! I was too busy thinking about other matters to think about the possibilities of failing! I just did it unconsciously, unconsciously having no doubt it would happen!

It's all about being one with the Dao! You have to trust the Dao for the Dao to trust you!

Confidence is the key!

Now that I know that, it's easy!

Getting Opportunism is a nice bonus! ╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ 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

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

║ Palm Push

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Pushes your target with a power equivalent

║ to 176% of your strength

║━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions

║ None

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 3 skill points

║ 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

╚═════════════════════════════════╝