Blockade

Running to liberty, Ryu's plan to reach the outer city where he would be able to disappear in the crowd failed miserably. With his shallow knowledge of the town, he ran to the same place he came, and definitively there was a crowd there before, but that was at the end of the day when the works left their job to go home, now, one hour later, there was barely anyone on the industrial district.

Then Ryu reached the outer city, confident he could escape his pursuer, but he came face to face with an almost empty street. And since he had decided to run away, the two big muscular guards came to the conclusion that the man they were chasing was actually their enemy, which meant that Ryu couldn't convince them otherwise.

Lamenting his bad luck, Ryu had no other option but to increase his speed to the maximum and try to lose the two chasers at some point. Thus, Ryu ran ahead with the two men yelling at him from behind, as Ryu would suddenly decide to obey their orders for whatever reason.

As agility was Ryu's highest stat, his running speed was pretty decent for his level, which allowed him to open some distance. So, Ryu turned one right, ran two straights, turned left, ran one straight, turned left again, ran two more, then turned right, every time making curves to dismiss the two guards.

With the distance opening thanks to his advantage in speed, the guards were almost losing sight of Ryu, but with the town, except the inner city, was occupied by highvale members, so, as expected, Ryu ran straight to a street with highvale member patrolling.

This new member of highvale looked in the direction of Ryu running, but since the two other highvale chasing him were almost two streets behind, the new member wasn't unable to properly understand their yelling. So, as the man ahead stood just blankly staring at him, Ryu decided to try luck and pass by him running, praying that he could not interfere in his business.

However, this man wasn't stupid, so as soon as he recognized the pursuers as his companions, he immediately branded Ryu as an enemy, and just as the other two did before, he yelled, "Stop, right there!". This man ahead expressed a reaction similar to the two bodyguards, so Ryu thought that his luck had not abandoned him entirely and continued to run, planning to pass the man.

But, unlike the other two, this new one had much more determination. And when he saw that Ryu had no intention to obey his command, he picked his sword in his hand, a long and wide two-handed sword, and positioned it with a fighting stance to attack.

It was the first time that Ryu came face to face against a sword of this size, and he was amazed by it, from its stylish and the impression of power it passed just by the look. Ryu could not help but desire to wield something like this to see what kind of moves his martial art skill would display.

The amazement lasted only for a single second since the man had drawn his weapon a clash was unavoidable, so Ryu took out his staff from his ring and injected qi on it, summoning the flickering smoke to cover it. There was also the option to warp behind the man -using his vanishing raindrop skill- and keep running, but it was too early to show all his cards in front of three enemies.

When they were only three steps away, Ryu took the initiative to launch the first attack, which was necessary to take advantage of his weapon, a stick with a longer attack range. So, without even reducing his pace, Ryu thrust the staff straight forward, aiming at the center of the chest of the man ahead.

There was no need to knock down the man or kill him, and even to fight him was useless, all Ryu had to do was, open a breach so that he could bypass the blockade and flee. But the tall highvale member blocking the way was no pushover, and when the staff came his way, he swang his large sword up, parrying the staff with expertise.

As a consequence of this perfect timely parry, the staff in Ryu's hand was thrown violently upwards until the tip pointed towards the sky. And because of the enormous strength brought by the two-handed sword, Ryu lost his balance and had to stop running as not to fall on his back on the floor.

In the split second that it took Ryu to recover, the tall man had retrieved his sword and launched a slash at Ryu's shoulder. When the sense of danger kicked in, Ryu's reaction time reached its peak condition, allowing him to react in time to avoid imminent death by crouching, causing the sword to pass above his head, near enough to cut off the tip of his hair.

As a drawback of missing his target while using a heavy weapon, the tall highvale man lost his stance trying to stop the two-handed sword. Ryu saw the gap and entered into action by swinging his staff horizontally with all his strength, aiming at the exposed ribs of his enemy.

In his awkward position, the tall man would never be able to bring up his sword to protect himself from the oncoming blow. But to Ryu's surprise, the man released the sword hilt with his right hand and moved it to block the staff with his palm.

On the collision of the staff with the palm, Ryu's staff rebounded back as a gust of wind scattered on the street due to Ryu's martial art style effect. On the other side, the tall man's palm emitted a white shining light, repelling the staff thanks to that man's palm strike skill.

After the collision, Ryu recovered his staff and immediately prepared another attack, but, this round, his target was his right knee. At the same time, the tall man returned his grip on the sword and prepared a horizontal slash toward Ryu.

When it looked like it would be a draw, with Ryu taking the worst shot since his target was a knee and his weapon a blunt type, while the man had a sword and his target was the torso, the man's right hand slipped from the hilt, causing the advancement of the sword to stop.

The slipping hand was not accidental, and Ryu was expecting something like this to happen because, on the collision between palm and staff, the tall man managed to repel the staff but not the strong wind brought with it.

Thus the wind managed to hit the hand and make shallow cuts in the palm, and Ryu saw the blood flowing and knew the man couldn't hold the sword right with it, but the man, in his adrenaline, missed the pain and moved the hand to hold the sword.

Like this, the staff continued unhindered, summoning the force of the rocks until it hit the tall man's knee, breaking the knee in a single blow, and then knocking the man to the ground.