Dagger

With the sword about to reach Ryu, he pulled all the air he could with his mouth and contracted his core region, preparing to use the vanishing raindrop steps. Since when he acquired the skill, this would actually be the second time he tried using it in quick succession, the first time being when he unlocked it.

Once he felt fully prepared, Ryu triggered the skill, so, for an instant, the world paused, and all of its colors disappeared. Ryu saw himself in a black and white world, frozen at the moment that he activated the skill. Out of the corner of his eye, Ryu saw a sword stopped just a centimeter away from him, but he ignored it and turned his attention to the imaginary white circle around him with many small circles in it, like the drops of rain falling in a tranquil lake, the marks of possible places to warp.

For the sake of efficiency, Ryu picked the furthest distance he could, advancing around seven meters in a single leap. When he reappeared at the designed spot, the world moved only a little bit, and the sword that was almost cutting him have descended no more than a few centimeters, while the man running advance was barely noticeable.

A second warp, and seven more meters, a third warp, Ryu was just two steps away from his target, and a final fourth warp, Ryu reappeared in front of his prey. Ryu suddenly appeared in front of the young running man with his staff positioned, pointing at his stomach.

Since the running man wasn't expecting Ryu to catch him, even less to outrun him in such a miraculous way, he moved at full speed against the staff, unable to react in time to something he was not expecting. The young man stopped abruptly with the staff going deep within his belly, and his eyes widened in pain while drops of saliva flew out of his mouth as he moaned in pain.

The pain was too much for this young man to endure, so he went to the floor holding his belly, completely disoriented. While Ryu, standing on top of him, looked down, raised his staff, and moved it down against the fallen man's nape, crushing his head merciless, like a pestle used to grind corn.

One of the problems ended, but Ryu did not have time to rest as Nura was fighting against two men just a few meters away. Thus Ryu pulled his staff, but when he applied force to retrieve it, the smoke extinguished, and even worse, with the force he used to retrieve the staff, Ryu lost balance and fell to his but, with his legs shaking.

Although the consecutive uses of the raindrop vanishing steps allowed him to cover a great distance in an extremely short amount of time, it consequently brought physical exhaustion at the same proportion. As if that just wasn't enough, his qi depleted after using the staff and so many martial techniques consecutively, going completely dry after the four usages of warp plus two attacks with the staff.

On the ground, over his butt, Ryu's mind was in turmoil, as all he wanted to do was jump to his feet and rush to the battle before something happened to Nura, but he couldn't because tired as he was even breathing was a difficult task. So Ryu took a healing pill from his ring and a bright green crystal, the first he swallowed, the second he held in his hand and forced his soul to extract qi from it.

However, the amount of qi flowing into Ryu was very small, and at that rate, Nura would likely be dead long before Ryu could get up. So, with no other options, Ryu closed his eyes and tried to force himself into a meditative state.

Under the pressure of the noises of an intense fight, Ryu closed his eyes, trying his best to enter a meditative state capable of forcing the crystal to supply him with more qi and thus regain at least a small portion of his qi in order to return to the fight. But even with Feng Po's insane training method, shift attention to nothing with adrenaline rushing in his veins while hearing a death battle where his friend could die was insanely difficult.

It took half a minute until Ryu could barely enter in a lame state that allowed him to recover a tiny portion of his qi, and fifteen seconds later, he opened his eyes and forced himself up. His condition wasn't good enough to fight, but there was no other option.

By that time, several lights started to lit on the surrounding houses, followed by human voices and the sounds of windows opening. Whatever Ryu planned to do, it had to be done quickly because people would see the battle, drastically reducing the chance of running away.

Ryu stood up, carrying his wooden staff in hand, and saw Nura struggling to fight against the two men. While they had no visible wounds, Nura had three deep cuts on his body, and his position wasn't good as he was with his back against a wall, cornered with no room to escape.

Not losing time, Ryu ran to save his friend, but he was almost thirty meters distant. When he covered half the distance, the man with a sword prepared a thrust attack at the same time that Nura protected himself from the ax. There was no way that Nura could protect himself, and Ryu could not use three consecutive warps and save his friend's life.

So, Ryu pulled his last trump, one that he never used previously but made a small practice while traveling with Nura, so with a swift movement, a small dagger appeared in Ryu's left hand. As Ryu's left hand moved to the front of his body, the dagger went flying ahead.

However, Ryu's proficiency with this weapon was still lacking, meaning that he can't aim accurately and can't even use his qi to apply the same penetration power that Feng Po showed in the cave, which makes use of the dagger very risky. About making the dagger fly back into his hand, even in Ryu's most fanciful dream the dagger still didn't do that, so forget about it happening in a fight situation.

Despite the tremendous risk of throwing a sharp knife in your friend's close direction without the ability to aim correctly, this was still a good idea, considering Nura was about to die anyway. Luckily, the dagger went in the right direction, finding its destination at the spike-haired man's shoulder that had his sword thrusting towards Nura's belly.

The spike-haired man yelled in pain while his sword paused before reaching Nura. When the dagger stuck into his shoulder, he lost control over his actions and pulled back his attack. Because of his barrier skill, this man wasn't used to getting injured in a fight, so when the dagger went deep within his shoulder, he completely lost his mind to focus only on the pain.

That was an intentional side effect of a strong skill that saved his life many times, but it was too late now to cover this problem.