On the weekends, sparring with Fez became the norm. Of course we wouldn't use the [final hit] skills, that would obliterate our surroundings and we would like to keep the training grounds usable. For some reason, Fez was into martial arts. She even had her family hire a tutor and passed her duties off to a servant when she entered school.
Was the martial arts for surpassing me? Or was it to get stronger overall? Well, whenever she learned something new she wanted to test it out on me for some reason. I'll just pretend that it was because she believes I can't get hurt. Naturally over time, showing off her skills every week would tug at my interest a little bit. It was miniscule, but I started copying some moves that I thought were useful. She had said it was something along the lines of 'Stealth arts'?
It was apparently meant for assassins that couldn't finish their opponent in one strike, since she was a mage she had a similar situation where the opponent may close the distance in an instant. Though I could still break through her openings with my speed, it should work on other people if she enhanced her own perception. If she could predict the opponent's moves that should be enough for her to put what she learned to good use. It was just the rare cases like me that were too fast for her to predict attacks. By then it was just better to retreat, though I doubt retreat was possible if the opponent was that fast.
In rare cases, James would come in for some reason. To be honest his buffs are insane, but they only boosted his strength. Now that I had both strength and speed, I could deal with him in an instant, sending him back out the entrance or wherever he came from. What creeps me out the most was his expression of ecstasy when he gets send out of the area. Just remembering it made my spine shiver.
After sparring for an hour or two, we would refresh ourselves by going to the nearby cafe and ordering deserts. Of course we would dry ourselves off and change before going, it was common courtesy to make ourselves presentable. [Shadow step] couldn't take me back to the original world, so I had practically no entertainment. The deserts were what I looked forward to every week.
There were also some experiments that had to be carried out in the dungeons. Using a new skill [Fate lock], I could drive enemies into a predetermined location or action. For example I could make them 'misfire', 'accidentally' killing subordinates like a curse. The drawback was the 5 second cooldown, during battle 5 seconds could feel like forever with time dilation. There was also [True death] that disabled any form of evasion skills and boosted my stats by 100% while lowering enemies' stats by 50%, this skill also had a 5 second cooldown. [Reality displacement] was basically [stealth] and [illusion], except that it could disable any skill below tier 5, it could be left on 24/7 as it a negligible amount of mana and had no cooldown. With [Abyss control] I could spin 'solid darkness' so fast that it cuts anything it touches and blocks every attack with brute strength, unlike the others that just locked onto target, this skill required concentration. With [Abyss control] I also had the ability to perceive everything in a 1 kilometer radius, anything within that radius could be easily ambushed by magical attacks or dealt by a scythe and [shadow step].
On the next monday, I was confronted by a strange group. Instead of seeking to be the strongest, this time it was just a future adventurers' party that wanted combat experience.
" Are you sure? Wouldn't it be better to just train with slimes at a low level dungeon?"
"We have done that, but we realise the fastest way was to fight someone strong!" (Party leader)
What logic was that? If their opponent was overwhelmingly strong, they can't get any practice in at all. Unless they were underestimating me due to having numerical supriority? I could see that there were 6 in front of me and 2 sneaking behind the corner. Did they think I wouldn't notice with my combined [Abyss control] radius and [Omni detection]?
[Omni detection] gave me every bit of little info, like humidity, light, temperature and various other things. When there was an abnormal rise in one factor it would alert me. Space itself was a factor, so even if the concealed sound, the tiny bit of molecules moving around without vibrating was enough to alert me. It would also look for any magic symbols and magic circles that would affect the environment or attack someone to factor in what values were abnormal enough to alert me. The only thing that could avoid detection was to use [Reality displacement] and 'displaced' themselves out of time and space. Let's say time and space was an axis and everything existed on the positive side of the 2 axes, by 'displacing' themselves they would be on the negative side. [omni detection] is only able to detect things on the positive side at tier 3.
In order for skills to go up tiers, you had to actively try to improve the skill. Let's say for example [fireball] , you would have to keep trying to make it go faster or hit harder. So to grow your skills, you needed to make it do something it couldn't do before like fly faster and burn in a bigger radius. In order for those things to happen, you just needed to pour more mana into your skills. For this case though, mana wasn't the problem. [Omni direction] had no 'predetermined goal'. It could detect everything at tier 3 and it's range was based on other detection skills. I couldn't 'displace' a random object's space and time and make [omni detection] detect it. Nothing would happen.
All I could do was to find new ways to incorporate my skills and improve my combat ability. For that absurd amount of agility, I'm sure someone else will match me one day. That was when something as insignificant as Fez's martial arts would suddenly become very important. At the same speed, something like martial arts would drive a gap into combat ability. Though I doubt anyone would match my speed anytime soon. I haven't used it in a long time, but there was still [Diamond speed enhancement-tier 5]. At the time someone matches or surpasses my speed by some miracle, I could use it as my trump card.
Anyway back to the combat practice for the strange group of students. I don't know why they chose the back alley instead of the training grounds but they were wrapped in shadow tentacles before they could blink. Walking away from the binded students flailing around, I hung them around the school like a chandelier. Bending down back onto my seat, I released and dropped them back onto the ground. In this world they should be durable enough even if I hung them by the neck, though I hung them by their toes just in case.