Online Martial Arena

Kira threw Vince to the ground and then clapped her hands gaining the attention of everyone.

"We're done for today, you all did great." She then went to pack up.

Vince getting up stared at Kira's back, after getting rejected he hadn't done anything other than practice. Kira had said she liked guys stronger than her so that was his goal. He was training until midnight, overworking himself to catch up to her. He hadn't done such extreme training since three years ago when he wanted to qualify for the national taekwondo team.

Even with all that effort, he showed no progress. He had gotten stronger but it was as if Kira was an infinitely deep pool- even when he improved she would up her game just as much bringing him back to where he started.

If he had learned anything from all his training it was that patience was key. As long as he didn't give up he would have a chance.

With the fire in him burning strong he left.

...

Alice with her hand holding Noah's walked with Kira to the front school gate. They had just finished training together. By now they had using practice daggers for training. She had gotten a lot better at using them on earth, but nowhere close to how well she used it in the Eternal Battlefield.

"Bye, see you guys later!" Kira waved and got in the car waiting for her.

While Alice and Noah went back home.

...

In their apartment Alice blow-dried her hair after getting out of the shower, she then went to pick up two VR headsets and put them on the table. Each one was an electronic white ring with thick glasses attached it.

She sat next to Noah and saw him on the Eternal Battlefield forum. The information on it kept increasing as people continued to discuss what they saw. From rare monsters, skills to books in libraries. It was a feast of information.

"Are you playing with me?" Alice asked picking up the Headset and setting the ring onto her head.

"I'll join in a while," Noah answered.

"Fine, then I'll go ahead." Alice next to Noah laid with her head back and feet on the table. She then pressed the glasses down having them cover her eyes. Pressing a button she turned it on, entering into a sleeping with your eyes open state.

The game she was playing was Online Martial Arena, they had found people talking about it on the Eternal Battlefield form. It was a game that translated real-life athletic ability from data collected by tests done at gyms. This then allowed you to spar with other people around the world.

At the main menu, Alice stood in an empty room with two options: Human battle or Superhuman battle. Human Battle was the normal spar while in superhuman battle you would have your physical abilities increased to the point of being superhuman.

What she wanted was a superhuman battle. In the Eternal Battlefield, she was capable of doing a lot more with her body when compared to earth. This meant that there were a lot more techniques she could use that wasn't possible to do normally It was why she started playing the game. She wanted to learn from others or come with her own new techniques through trial and error.

Before starting her battle she went back and opened recorded battles. She had made both Noah and Kira join the game and had recorded a bunch of their battles watching them regularly.

Currently, two were her favourite. They were of Kira and Noah showing how they would use a dagger. She opened the first one.

It was Noah as a blond default character option holding a dagger against a high-level player with a semi-automatic pistol. They were playing a superhuman match.

Begin! The screen showed.

The man with the gun immediately pulled the gun and shot. Bang! Swish! the bullet that was supposed to hit Noah disappeared.

The man didn't stop continuing his barrage.

Noah walked forward calmly as his dagger flowed cutting bullets one after the other. Dominating the battle from the beginning Noah controlled his opponent and pushed him back to the edge of the arena grabbed the gun, pulling it to the side and slit his throat, ending the match.

'I don't think I'll ever be able to do that,' Alice thought. Just the thought of cutting something at such speed was impossible to her, even with high attributes she didn't have such accuracy.

Training with Noah for so long she had started to understand a lot about his fighting style. Especially now with Kira helping her analyse her battles.

First that he used a hybrid of styles, from traditional mainstream hand to hand martial arts to other lesser-known ones. Even Kira couldn't identify some of his styles of combat. Other than learning many types of armed combat styles he had even incorporated a lot of militaristic styles of fighting which was why he was so lethal and could kill others so easily.

When she was studying Noah she realised that being smart was a requirement for being strong. Noah was able to analyse his opponents in a glance and moved as if he expected each attack. If that wasn't all, he had insane instincts that worked in tandem with everything basically making it impossible to take him by surprise.

In a lot of the battles, she had noticed that Noah was calm and moved slowly throughout the battle yet was still faster than his opponent. He would also always end the battle with a single lethal hit.

Just imagining herself fighting like that was awesome. But she knew it was impossible, Noah's style of fighting was too complicated.

She switched videos to Kira's battle. It showed Kira in another blue-haired female default character against another opponent with a semi-automatic pistol.

Begin!

Kira ran forward just as the opponent was about to shoot she threw her dagger and at them and slid to the ground dodging the bullet. The dagger went straight at the opponent with speed.

As they dodged, she had slid close enough then used her body to rise into a kick. She kicked out the gun with one leg and at the opponent's chin with the other knocking them back. Getting up she caught the gun she had disarmed and shot down twice.

It was a smooth victory. Alice rewatched it and paused at the point Kira kicked up. She couldn't understand how she was able to bring enough power into a kick from such an awkward position.

When Kira fought, she liked to move a lot more compared to Noah. Doing flips and rolls were second nature to her, she would do them more elegantly than any gymnast she had seen before. Each move she made was stable and strong. She had built strong muscle memory of all techniques and reacted immediately to all attacks.

She had talked to Kira about how she fought and gotten to know a lot about her. Kira's fighting style was composed of six martial art types: Karate, Taekwondo, Kung fu, Boxing, Jujutsu and Wrestling. Kira had been learning almost all of them for a decade or more, training every single day since she had started. She trained purely out of love for the sport, this was why she never got into big competitions and her level in the world was vague.

Kira herself didn't talk about how good she was. So Alice had gone online and looked for videos Tasha had been talking about- she found a lot. Most of them were secretly taken by various people that were present at the time. In a private match with a male taekwondo Olympic medalist, Kira knocked him out in a single move, walking away disappointed. There was even a video of her fighting and choke holding a UFC champion until he passed out.

Both Kira and Noah were inhumane. It made her question whether the rumours about them being genetically modified were true. This level of athleticism was clearly supernatural. But something that really separated them from everyone else was their mindsets. The moment they entered battle they would transform into predators, the opponent was always the prey.

Fearlessness, efficiency, strength, speed and flexibility of mind and body they had everything. This had all been achieved by effort not only put by themselves but many other people who supported them.

'Kira said she trains because of her love for martial arts but why does Noah train?' Alice thought. Noah didn't have much of a reason to go out of his way to train so much, it was likely he was similar to Kira, there was no way he could achieve this much if he didn't like doing it.

Alice went back to the battle screen and started a battle. She understood that even if she learned everything Noah and Kira were able to teach her she would never be able to reach their level. Their ways of combat were unique to themselves. This was why she needed to come up with her own style. Till now she hadn't come up with anything.

So for now she was just copying and saw what worked for her.

...

Noah sat next to Alice looking at the forum.

After he had given the Black Estoc to be reforged he followed the advice he had gotten from Albert and stayed on clearing B Class and even a few C Class dungeons, now doing them with as much effort as he put in.

He had focused on dark element dungeons to get the magic crystal for the Black Estoc but nothing of that sort had dropped yet. But other than he had gotten a large storage of materials in his warehouse. He had even decreased the number of items he sold off keeping more for the future.

On the forum he saw a post, 'Have you seen the Silver Druid? A man wearing silver armour with a silver deer mask saved my life. I'm looking for him, have any of you seen him?'

'Is this Silver Druid suppose to be me?' Noah remembered that he had saved a group of people from an Elite C Class monster in passing. He had gotten all the loot for helping them and then left. So he hadn't helped them out of the goodness of his heart. The post didn't seem like it had bad attention but he didn't know.

The post wasn't popular so it was fine. Plus, as long as no one knew his identity he didn't mind being talked about. He ignored it and moved on.

The posts about crimes had died down, people started connecting almost all crimes to the Eternal Battlefield eventually ruining all credibility of such posts.

Noah then looked at the top post one last time, it was about a new app someone had developed called 'Explore the Eternal' it was a large database and discussion app about the Eternal Battlefield. Many of the forum members had moved onto it now, it was currently only at its beginning stages so Noah didn't download it yet.