VRMMORPG: The Other World Online

The spear found its mark.

Cheng Xiu took in a deep shuddering breath and squeezed her eyes shut in an attempt to ignore the pain.

EverHill stumbled back.

A red, ornate sword had impaled his back.

EverHill felt frustrated. He forgot about her Copies once again.

He frowned.

Though he was no super human, he should have been able to keep an eye out for those copies. After all, they were a constant threat to him.

It wasn't like he always forgot them, but he seemed to ignore their existence at crucial moments whenever he attacked her.

His dark eyes fell on the elegant figure of Cheng Xiu as she struggled to her feet.

"You…you don't have some kind of Mind Magic skill do you?" EverHill asked.

Cheng Xiu gave him a blank look, her eyes held a golden glow and appeared vacant.

She was still in a trance.

He pulled out the sword from behind him with a hiss. It hurt.

This was the biggest thing that he hated about the Grandmaster's Arena. It even puts their equipment and accessories at level 10.

He really missed being an Immortal where you no longer feel the pain from such wounds.

Cheng Xiu dashed towards him.

EverHill stepped back, making sure to keep a strong awareness to the flying swords that circled them like eagles searching for their prey.

He jumped towards her, his spear aimed at her head.

Cheng Xiu grabbed one of the swords that floated above her and used it to slap away the spear, her other sword aimed at his chest.

EverHill cursed and summoned the spear lodged into the ground previously and aimed to pierce her arm.

Cheng Xiu pulled her hand back in an arc and jumped back.

She waved her hand around.

EverHill used the spear to fight off the sword copies that tried to stab him again and again, mimicking Cheng Xiu's movements.

EverHill summoned his two javelins and his long spear to fight off the copies and used the short spear to keep Cheng Xiu away.

They engaged in this fierce battle for some time.

EverHill was far more impressed than he was in the beginning. Though he had known about her techniques and her learning capabilities, he still felt that he had underestimated her strength.

All the experience in the game did not seem to have much of an advantage over the opponent.

EverHill thought of another reason for it. Perhaps he had been looking at this the wrong way. What if he did not have experience as an advantage?

Could SelaXiu's innate ability to learn mean that she also learned the experiences of her opponents? How was that even possible?

His mind went to a piece of advice Yaksha had given him when they had first met.

They were sitting in the lounge area of their guild sipping on tea.

"I want to gain as much experience as possible!" a younger EverHill said heroically. "As long as I have more experience than my opponent, I can find a Breakthrough somehow!"

Yaksha raised a thick, black eyebrow. "We don't just gain experience by doing things ourselves."

"What?" EverHill asked him in confusion.

"We gain experience through books and experts in the field that we are learning in," Yaksha said. His eyes gained a far away look and a soft smile graced his lips. "What do you think you would do if you are faced with an opponent who learns from their mistakes, corrects it. and learns from your mistakes and corrects it and is constantly learning from the world around them? How do you defeat that kind of a person?"

"Isn't that what everyone does? What is so special about that?" EverHill asked.

Yaksha gave him a pitying look. "What if they learn from you almost instantly? in one or two fights?"

" Are they even human at that point?" EverHill asked with a twisted face." Don't talk about impossible things like that!"

Yaksha chuckled. "We are living in a world where people have Qi Manifestations. Why is a person with high learning speed impossible?"

EverHill rolled his eyes. "Because…you know...they would have a strong cheat that puts them at SS-Ranked or SSS Rank. And people of that rank won't play such games."

Yaksha hemmed and drank his tea.

They had had conversations in that vein many times since then, but it was the first time EverHill actually considered Yaksha's hypothesis.

He observed the woman in front of him and asked the question Yaksha had asked him on that day.

How do you defeat a person who can bypass your experience advantage after engaging with you in a few bouts.

His heart thudded.

He wanted to know the answer.

Could he defeat her?

EverHill, for the first time since the match began, stopped looking at Cheng Xiu as someone without experience. He stopped looking at her as someone whose only advantage was having match appropriate skills.

This was someone beyond that. This was someone who could learn from you and do it better than you.

And with that handicap out of the way, EverHill found himself treating her as he would someone dangerous. Someone at the Level of Yue and the other Immortals.

He tried to think about what they would do when they faced him with SelaXiu's skillset instead of as a Rookie with said skillset.

He found himself responding to the girl's attacks faster, and his actions became more precise. He stopped her lunges midway, kept the distance between them and treated her as a true enemy that he needed to guard against.

Everyone watched as the fight became even once more.

Cheng Xiu was no longer able to do lunges and leaps as easily. It was like EverHill gained a guide towards Cheng Xiu's thought process right then.

He put her in more blocks and standstills than before. He brought their momentum to the rhythm he wanted to, and slowly weared her down. There were more and wounds decorating Cheng Xiu's body and her cloths tore in many places.

Even though the wounds would heal fast, it was using up more and more of her Qi to do so.

At the edges of the Golden Dome, a figure leaned against the trunk of a tall tree and observed the match on a hologram screen. His crimson eyes shined.

"She is losing again," Diana complained.

"Of course," Luther said in a smug tone. "What else do you expect? EverHill is a five-year veteran!"

Diana huffed. "I wish I could help that girl chop down those Righteous Sects scumbags! Brother!"

"A Rookie VS an Expert! This result is expected," Luther said.

Yaksha sighed. "EverHill has gained momentum because he has stopped seeing her as a Rookie."

Luther looked at him in confusion. "What?"

Yaksha ignored the red-robed man. He didn't know what to feel about the fact that he might have had a hand in SelaXiu's defeat this evening.

Yaksha felt his heart twinge in regret. He didn't like the thought of her being defeated by anyone who was not him.

She was his opponent. His nemesis. He should have been the only one who could defeat her.

Yaksha stared at the fighting figures of EverHill and Cheng Xiu and found himself wishing for something. He wished that the person who won this match would be SelaXiu. It could only be SelaXiu.

Nobody else was allowed to defeat her except him.