Chapter 79: Bonus - : Learning

Chapter 79: Bonus Chapter: Learning

This is the bonus Chapter for 5k stones.

Next one will be at 7.5 stones.

...

"Shall we then?" Colleen smiled, pointing the sword at him, like she was asking him for a dance.

"Sure."

Colleen shot forward the moment he agreed. Her bare feet stomped on the wooden floor as the wooden sword thrust forward. John moved his head to the left. The sword slipped through the loose strands of his hair.

A dizzying heat spread over her chin. She stepped back in an instant. The punch flew by her face as she watched the tense forearm flexing a little. The following elbow almost grazed her nose.

’He’s holding back, huh.’ Colleen wasn’t mad about it. If he wasn’t holding back, she’d stand no chance at all.

Even though there was another thing that caught her eye as she slashed at his torso. John may be holding back, but it was just enough to make it a challenge for her.

He was just a step faster. Just a touch stronger. And he only dodged her attacks by the hairsbreadth. It was like he was teasing her.

It seriously riled her up to go faster. The wooden sword sliced the air with the blunt edge. It had enough force to break bricks. But John met each of her attacks with his fist. Perfectly catching them between his knuckles.

Not to mention the occasional counterattacks that kept her on her toes. One mistake and that fist would connect without mercy. She was certain of that much.

’I expected her to get a bit reckless, but she is holding up well.’ John tilted his head to dodge the flash aiming for his jaw.

Even though he was mostly dictating the tempo, Colleen had started to go faster and harder. It was mostly to see if the sudden explosiveness on her part would throw him off balance.

But he adapted instantly and pushed her back. It was like a game, but with just enough seriousness.

This game of theirs continued for a little under an hour before Colleen sat on the floor, drenched in sweat.

She wiped the sweat off her face with the hem of her black T-shirt. There wasn’t a muscle in her body that wasn’t aching at this moment.

’A few more spars and I’ll catch up to the training time I lost because of the injuries.’ Still, her eyes were locked onto his back.

His muscles were bigger than before, or maybe it was because the white shirt clung to him because of sweat that made it look that way. But the muscles weren’t the main attraction; it was the swift movement despite that mass.

His footwork was a lot more varied compared to the boxing and kickboxing work he had shown at Centurion Club. There were a dozen martial arts mixed in now. And he used them all seamlessly for the most part.

Not to mention that eerily good sense of space he had. Colleen was interested in that the most. As a swordswoman, it became a bit tricky when the opponent closed in on her. John was especially good at getting in her face, and it helped her learn a lot about the weak points in her defence.

Even if he didn’t go all out, it was enough to push her to the brink in the physical sense.

’I’ll think about that technique later; I need to refine what I have first.’ So, after a short rest, she jumped back in for a spar with no thoughts of rest.

They only stopped the cycle when evening arrived, and John had to go. If he didn’t say that, she might’ve just kept him here until the next day.

But after a nice bath, Colleen was lying in her bed. Her body was seriously cursing at her. Maybe going till morning wouldn’t be possible. But it was a fact that she hadn’t slept better in days.

Even now that she was staring into space, her mind kept replaying the spars as she mentally tried to catch and correct her mistakes. It was quite the headache, but for once it felt worth the irritation.

’What would it be like if I went in with everything?’ Honestly, she wanted to go at full power today.

There was no doubt in her mind that he could take her on at full capacity without so much as changing an expression. But it wasn’t the optimal moment. For now, at least she got to test her physical limits again and again.

Just the spar today had made her understand how good it was to have someone to chase after. To be honest, it lit a competitive fire in her heart.

’Am I a martial arts movie protagonist that just found her eternal rival?’ For a moment, she chuckled at the stupid thought.

Still, she was more interested in how he had trained. That body was, to put things bluntly, quite the work of art. If she could, she wanted to look at it a bit more when she had the chance.

There was no way it was built overnight. Even that martial prowess, it surely took years of discipline. But mostly, she understood why most people avoided him at that party.

Normally, he had quite the normal expression, but the moment the fight started, something else sat behind his clear eyes. Since he wasn’t going all out at her, she couldn’t catch it clearly. However, a tense feeling gripped her heart several times during today’s spars.

If she was forced to give it a name, that feeling would be close to fear. A fear that had been etched into human DNA over its evolution. The kind of fear where the fight or flight sense stopped working. And one just froze in place.

’Is it that martial spirit thing Gramps talked about?’ Maybe it was the switch-like thing she used when the situation got serious.

Anyway, it wasn’t easy to come across such chances to grow as a martial artist. If she kept this up, there was a shot she could handle that copycat skull mask if they crossed paths again.

That alone made giving John the key to the dojo worth it in her opinion.

’If he continues like that, he might just get another key though.’ Colleen shook her head as something else surfaced in her brain.

"I feel like I am forgetting something?" She considered it for a moment, narrowing her eyes while digging through her memory.

In the end, she just went to sleep, unable to remember the detail that had come to her mind.

***

On the other hand, John arrived home without a delay.

He had worked up a decent sweat, but the real work was still waiting for him inside the specialized training room. After a quick splash of water on his face, he entered the training room.

But unlike before, the white room was filled with rows of cases; each of these cases had a musical instrument. The bigger ones at the end, by the white walls.

The reason he had done this was that he had to recreate Princess Mononoke’s soundtrack. It was his own way of giving those who got the physical copy of the manga a more lived-in experience.

Truthfully, he really wished he could’ve animated the movie. But there were too many limitations on his skills. Still, John had made up his mind to get animation skills from the shop one of these days; he had his eye on that one for a while.

’One day I’ll become a one-man animation studio.’ That did sound like a surefire way to get death by overwork, but he was a bit too motivated to look at the downsides at the moment.

To that end, there were a ton of skills in the system, minus the academic ones since the system was sure he didn’t have them, and he had always looked through the long list while he ate. He couldn’t really find an interesting video online to save his life.

Still, thanks to that, he had found a skill that helped him recreate the music in his head.

Musical talent

A talent that allows fast understanding of anything related to music.

Price: 800 EP

Even if he could play the piano, John was incapable of using string instruments. His uncle had once tried to teach him how to play a violin, because a certain anime had sparked his interest, and that didn’t end well.

His uncle was a man who could probably teach a monkey how to play La Campanella, but he had to give up on John for the sake of his own sanity.

But John was able to do it here with this skill. Honestly, it might’ve been better to just hire others to produce this for him, but he refused to entertain the idea since it wasn’t economical, and he didn’t have enough time either.

In a nutshell, it was him being a cheapskate and making a last-minute decision.

And instead of purchasing skills for each instrument, which came at 30-40 EP each, this was way more economical.

Today, John picked up his biggest nemesis, the violin, and placed it on his shoulder once again. The bow soon rested on the strings as he took a deep breath.

When he first did this, it didn’t give him the best sound. But now, a somewhat decent melody rang out in the room that had witnessed the cries of that violated violin.

Regardless of all that, John had only remembered the basic lessons and mostly relied on his instincts to play the thing out of spite. And it was working somehow.

It almost felt like he had gained an unnatural intuition when it came to these things, almost like he could hear them speak to him and correct him when a mistake happened.

The correction was more like the dying squeals of an animal hit by a car, but it was something at least.

Not to mention his control over his movements was also becoming very tuned because of all the micro adjustments he had to make along the way. This had also helped him in his spars with Colleen today.

In a way, this was already proving to be a very good purchase. But the biggest profit was yet to come.

There were a lot of works that relied on music to give that extra emotional gut punch at the high points, and he wanted to make sure his dear readers felt every last bit of it.

These 800 EP he had spent would get him a ton in return; there was no denying that fact.

"Now this is what you call getting your mon—EP worth!" John placed the violin back in the case as he was done recording the samples for today.

He was in the middle of making his own sound library that he could use in the future, because of course he couldn’t find one online.

If one could ignore that mean grin on his lips, they’d commend the dedication of the guy who dreaded so much as copy-pasting files.

"Today was quite the productive day indeed." He leaned into his chair to catch a quiet moment for himself.

Listening to the sweeping French horns and emotional strings that captured the scale and sorrow of the world of Princess Mononoke.