Chapter 309: Secret Technique [Bonus - ]
Her neck didn’t bend and her head didn’t tilt.
Her boots didn’t slide backward a single millimeter through the dirt either.
She stood there completely stationary, taking the full 10x-buffed roundhouse kick directly to her cheek as if a soft feather had gently brushed against her skin.
Silence settled over the crater.
Hog’s iron boot remained pressed against Brida’s cheek with his leg muscles trembling from the density of her physical form.
Slowly, Brida turned her head, looking at Hog’s trembling leg with an expression that had turned completely uninterested.
Her eyes lost their fiery excitement, replaced by a dull disappointed blankness.
Brida let out a soft bored sigh, adjusting her axe on her shoulder as she spoke in a flat casual tone.
"You know... my Lord taught me something interesting before we stepped onto this field today. He told me that there are Newbie Lords... and there are Classic Lords."
Brida blinked her red eyes blankly, looking directly into Hog’s horrified face.
"My Lord is a Newbie Lord..." Brida continued casually, "...while your Lord Sky is a Classic Lord, which means your territory has been in the game far longer than ours."
Brida’s red eyes thinned slightly with her expression turning terrifyingly cold as she asked a blunt deadpan question.
"So tell me, Hog... why are your kicks so damn weak?"
Hog froze, his breath catching in his throat.
"Were you holding back just now?" Brida asked. "Because you better not be holding back on me... or I’m going to cave your brains in right here."
Hog stood on the dirt, his leg still pressed against her unyielding cheek, as cold paralyzing terror seized his entire soul.
’Holding back...?’ Hog thought, his mind screaming in incomprehensible horror as sweat drenched his back. ’Holding what back?!’
He had kicked her with literally everything he possessed...
He had used his 10x stat buff, his full physical momentum, his maximum muscle output, and every drop of his rage...
It was a strike powerful enough to probably shatter a stone fortress wall.
...And she hadn’t even felt it?
Brida let out a deep boisterous laugh that echoed across the cratered battlefield like the ringing of a giant brass anvil.
She casually reached up with her broad gloved hand, wiping a smudge of dirt from her cheek right where Hog’s 10x-buffed steel-shod boot had struck her just a second prior.
She didn’t have a single scratch on her skin.
Her visor gleamed under the morning sun with her red eyes burning with a wild infectious thrill for battle.
"Gwahahaha!" Brida chuckled, rolling her broad shoulders as her iron boots shifted in the damp soil. "Not bad, big guy! Now... let’s have a true battle, Hog!"
Standing ten paces away, Hog felt the blood in his veins freeze into solid ice.
He stared at the six-foot-tall shieldmaiden with his single uninjured eye widened to the size of a saucer with his chest heaving as hot steam vented from his nostrils.
Cold terrifying sweat drenched his back beneath his iron chest plate.
’What in the hell...’ Hog thought, his mind spiraling in horror. ’What on earth did Lord Vespera feed this woman to the point where she can just casually ignore a full-power ten-fold stat-multiplied roundhouse kick directly to her face...’
It defied every single law of physical combat he had learned over a lifetime of fighting in the basin.
Even dragon-kin and armored raid bosses flinched when struck with that kind of concentrated force.
...However, Hog was an experienced squad leader.
He had survived dozens of brutal territory engagements under Lord Sky, and his pride as The Unmovable Wall’s strongest troop refused to let him accept the terrifying reality standing right before him.
’No...’ Hog reasoned frantically in his internal thoughts with his teeth grinding together so hard his jaw muscles throbbed. ’There is no way that hit was completely one-sided! I felt it... When my boot connected with her jaw, a sharp tingly vibration traveled all the way up my right fibula! She definitely felt that pain!’
Hog took a slow deliberate breath, steadying his footing as he stared at Brida’s armored form.
’She’s acting,’ Hog convinced himself with his mind grasping at any logical explanation to keep his morale from completely shattering. ’She knows those floating streaming drones are tracking every single micro-movement... so she’s just putting on a tough unbothered front for the camera stream so she doesn’t embarrass her territory in front of a lot of viewers... She’s holding back her grimace... she has to be!’
Brida didn’t care about the stream metrics, nor did she care about Hog’s desperate internal cope.
She raised her broad hands with her eyes locking onto his broad chest.
"Alright, Hog," Brida announced cheerfully. "I’m moving."
Brida took a single deliberate stride forward.
She didn’t raise her battleaxe and she didn’t draw her shield or anything.
Brida didn’t even cock her fist back for a strike.
...Yet, the exact second her boot touched the dirt, a suffocating bloodthirsty wave of physical Murderous Intent erupted from her body like a physical wall of pressure.
FWOOSH!
The staggering weight of her aura distorted the atmospheric air pressure around Hog!
It felt as if a ten-ton iron slab had suddenly been dropped onto Hog’s shoulders.
His instincts... honed by years of life-or-death battles screamed in pure panic.
SWISH!
Before his brain could even process a logical thought, Hog’s body reacted purely on survival reflex.
He violently threw himself backward, executing a desperate high-speed dodge to the right with his boots scraping two deep trenches through the mud as he landed in a defensive crouch twenty feet away.
"Haah... Haah... Haah..."
He panted heavily with his hands raised and his eyes darting frantically to see where the incoming blow was coming from...
...Only to realize Brida hadn’t thrown a strike at all.
She was simply standing in the exact same spot with her arms hanging casually at her sides, looking at him with a wide disappointed grin.
"Pfft! Hahaha!" Brida taunted, letting out a loud mocking scoff as she tilted her head. "What’s the matter, big guy? Are you scared already? Is this really how men are in this world? Jumping at shadows before a fist is even thrown?"
Behind her visor, Brida’s thoughts took a quiet deeply appreciative turn.
’Hah...’ Brida thought inwardly, an affectionate warmth touching her heart as a image of her Lord flashed through her mind. ’I am so bloody glad that the only man I ever have to belong to is my Lord Silas. If I had to deal with skittish, weak-willed men like this every day, I’d have lost my mind weeks ago...’
Brida reached up to her chest plate, unbuckling the heavy leather straps securing her outer adamantine pauldrons.
CLANK!
She unceremoniously tossed the heavy iron pauldrons onto the grass.
She unfastened her armguards, her leg greaves, and finally reached up to the iron clasps at her neck, lifting her heavy helm completely off her head.
THUD!
She threw her helmet to the side, letting it crash into the dirt.
As the heavy steel helmet came off, a long cascading waterfall of luscious black hair tumbled down over her broad shoulders.
Her radiant sun-kissed skin, high cheekbones, and striking piercing eyes were revealed to the open air for the very first time on the global broadcast.
She was drop-dead breathtakingly gorgeous... a wild valkyrie-like beauty that radiated both terrifying physical power and undeniable feminine charm.
Far across the field, on the floating golden screens in Rhyx City, and across over five hundred million mobile displays worldwide, the entire live chat completely stalled.
Viewers, nobles, and rival Lords stared at the screen in disbelief.
It was almost physically impossible to reconcile the fact that this stunning black-haired goddess was the exact same bloodthirsty monster who had spent the last twenty minutes boisterously laughing while pulverizing heavy armored guards into ragdolls.
Hog stood frozen on the grass with a single eye widening as he stared at her bare face.
"You..." Hog choked out, his throat dry.
Brida rolled her neck, her hair swaying behind her back as she stretched her arms.
She looked down at her massive rune-etched axe and her towering Steel Aegis shield lying on the grass beside her.
"Weapon-on-weapon combat is fun..." Brida remarked smoothly, cracking her knuckles with loud cracks. "...but weapons get in the way when you want to feel the raw weight of a good brawl."
Without a single hint of hesitation, Brida kicked her battleaxe and shield thirty feet away into the mud, completely disarming herself.
Hog stared at her discarded weapons, then looked down at his own arms.
He knew that if he kept his eight-foot iron Tower Shield and his broadsword, this terrifying woman might interpret it as a lack of respect or a cowardly crutch... and in her current mood, acting out of petty arrogance might cause her to snap and tear his head clean off his shoulders.
THUD! CLANG!
Hog unbuckled his iron Tower Shield, letting the eight-hundred-pound slab of metal crash flat into the soil.
He unsheathed his heavy broadsword, throwing it into the dirt beside his shield, and even reached into his belt straps to unholster two hidden silver-plated combat daggers, tossing them away as well.
Brida watched him strip his gear, nodding approvingly.
She looked down at her lightweight tunic and dark trousers.
’Hmm...’ Brida pondered in her internal thoughts, tugging slightly at the collar of her tunic. ’These clothes are durable, but they’re still a bit heavy for maximum movement speed... Should I just strip down to my sports bra and combat shorts like we do during private training drills back at the Keep?’
She paused, her crimson eyes blinking as a sudden sharp realization hit her mind.
’Wait, no!’ Brida corrected herself rapidly, a slight adorable flush touching her cheeks as she shook her head. ’Absolutely not! My body in a sports bra is private property reserved exclusively for my Lord Silas’s eyes and the rest of the girls! I’m not letting random degenerates on a magic mirror watch me walk around in my undergarments...’
Brida cleared her throat, shaking off the thought, and dropped her hips into a wide perfectly balanced martial arts stance.
She raised both of her bare calloused fists in front of her chest with her eyes locking onto Hog with uncompromising intensity.
"Alright, Hog!" Brida barked out, her voice echoing across the basin. "Come after me with everything you’ve got! Maximum physical output! No holding back!"
Hog gritted his teeth, his jaw setting into a desperate line.
He looked down at his bare, muscular forearms. Deep within his chest, a dark dangerous resolve ignited in his core.
’I didn’t want to resort to this...’ Hog thought, his inner voice trembling with lethal determination. ’It permanently damages the muscle fibers... it takes months of healing to recover from... but if I don’t use it right now, I won’t just lose... I’ll die.’
HUMMMMMMM!
Suddenly, the red aura surrounding Hog’s body underwent a terrifying, volatile mutation.
The bright crimson energy deepened into a dark blood-maroon hue as thick, superheated white steam and pressurized gas erupted from the pores of his skin, venting out into the air with loud whistling shrieks.
HISSSSSSS!
As the burning steam vented outward, Hog’s massive six-foot-eight frame underwent a visible shocking physical transformation.
His bulged, mountain-like muscles didn’t expand... instead, they rapidly compressed and slimmed down, burning away surface bulk to condense his muscle fibers into a wiry and adamantine state.
Brida tilted her head, her golden eyebrows raising in genuine curiosity as she observed the steam venting from his chest.
"Oho?" Brida enquired smoothly, watching his physical frame shrink into a streamlined wiry build. "What kind of strange technique is that? You’re burning off your own physical mass?"
Before Brida could even finish her enquiry—
BOOM!
Hog didn’t answer.
Utilizing the explosive transformation, Hog vanished from his position.
He executed a forward dash that was easily five times faster than any movement he had displayed previously.
SWISH!
He materialized directly in front of Brida’s face in perhaps a second as he pivoted his hips, channeling his condensed mass into a ruthless high-velocity straight right punch aimed straight between her eyes.
BAM!
The iron fist struck Brida squarely on the bridge of her nose and the impact generated a sharp violent shockwave.
...And for the first time in the entire battle, Brida’s head tilted back slightly, and her boots took a single, clear step backward through the dirt.
STEP!
Hog’s single eye flared with an ecstatic light as he felt her body shift backward.
’IT WORKED!’ Hog roared in his internal thoughts with his heart hammering against his ribs like a war drum! ’My Family Secret Technique!’