14
"The offense on that kids skills look like his worlds Muay Thai but that defense is almost Wing Chun if not for the lack of stance..." I muse to myself while wondering if i should not fast forward to the next break month in Chuck's training.
I was not surprised by the unarmed combat that had been being perfected for over thousands of years by his father's people. The original giants preferred to fight unarmed and it was not until the gods made the first halflings to incorporate the two species that they started using weapons. What did surprise me, though, was how many other martial arts could be seen in this one ancestral style.
Chuck was not slow by any means and considering the amount of consistent hours he put in it was a recipe of swift progress. The fact that he could adequately perform the different attacks within the first week or so allowed him plenty of time to perfect them. Even though he was only a couple of years old, i was getting excited to see what he could really do and bored of watching his training.
Gryn himself was also pretty good, to the point of being called exceptional, but he was still a few steps away from a genius. Both of them were, but Gryn had already stockpiled quite a bit of experience for someone his age. Even though he only had moderate affinities to a few magics, his overall learning speed in elements was above average.
Of course, the parents I found for Chuck were beasts in their own right. The father is both ranked military and a prominent Guild mercenary while the mother is a high-ranked member of several Guild factions with no military affiliation. Just being a member of the Guild was enough to impress the common folks, considering the main standard for entry is to have one hundred points in every stat except Intelligence.
Intelligence still had a requirement of eighty, though.
Because i had brought the kid here for a show, the 'local authorities' already had a few things set in motion. However, he was now around three years old and i was getting tired of watching him learn things he probably would not use for another few years. Besides, i would not have made him a halfling giant if they did not mature really fast
When Chuck's third birthday rolled around after his mastering the inner circle of unarmed combat, i finally broke down at the sight of his father giving the kid his dagger instead of his saber at the end of his small-scale party. This was not fair, i the i had to pull strings to have an oversized weapon like that made and it would now be about a year and a half before he's done learning it.
The region in which he lived outside his father's ancestral 'hills' was densely forested around multiple mountain-fed rivers and then surrounded by vast plains of dune-like hills and shallow valleys. There was a plethora of things going on both in these regions and around the entire world that i could sense all at once.
Any number of them could be influenced by my will.
Reaching out to things of interest in Chuck's surroundings, i spend a few moments inspecting their current timelines for events of any import. If i was looking at something like a giant magical animal, i would need to check for things like a near-future famine in which it would have saved countless beings of this world.
If i was looking for things of an evil nature, however, i was initially told i could occasionally arrange for their early ends depending on the damage they caused. However, during my investigations in the outlying forestry, i unearthed one of the surprises the gods of this world already had in store.
Since this small troop of beasts was already promised to Chuck, it would not hurt if i simply helped things along a bit.
Breaking off about zero-zero-one-percent of my consciousness, i simply will it to exist in an astral form only a few dozen miles away from the troop of goblins i had found. Chuck would probably have loved this first big fight at the age of ten against these guys while they grew and matured naturally. However, i would love to see how he fairs against slightly stronger versions of themselves a little bit sooner.
In the natural order of things, the small troop of goblins led by a shaman and hobgoblin duo would had grown into an ogre and 'witch doctor' variations. They would have also raised several other hobgoblin variations as well as many lesser goblins. At this point, they would have sought out new and better hunting grounds and stumbled across this small coven of necromancers.
The necromancers had a traveling master belonging to a nefarious organization in this world. This cell was established just a little before Chuck was reborn and thus still only had a few teachings and practices. Right now, they could reanimate either zombies or skeletons and their de facto leader had only just received the method of modifying bodies into abominations from their founder.
In the future, it would be a complete landslide against the gist of the undead with fairly equal terms of magical strength. Normally, goblin forces would have been devastated but successful and rested to replenish. Except that they had a witch doctor which allowed them to combine the powers of necromancy and progeny.
They became a force to be reckoned with within a year and set their sights on civilization. I was simply going to speed things up a bit. Literally.
Isolating these people- which included a small village- and these goblins in their respective neighboring territories within the literal space of this world, i began fast-forwarding their existences. Even though i was rushing them through the timeline, i had to go slowly and carefully while looking out for outside interactions.
Some well-known and familiar trader visiting the village and getting the dates confused or noticing that everybody was absurdly older than last year could ruin everything for me. Likewise, traveling merchants and mercenaries traveling or hunting through future territories could cause adverse reactions in other current locations.
So, slow and steady was the method i employed to fast-forwarding over five years of bullshit.
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Stepping forward into a spear thrust and twist of my dagger, i raise my second knife half backward along my forearm as if blocking and attack from the side. Imagining and willing and opposing force equal in Strength to meet my dagger, i allow the force to push me sideways by pulling my body along and then push it away in another direction.
Meanwhile bringing the dagger i had thrust in and outward slash to 'clear the air' on the side, i roll sideways through the air on my heals from the simulated attack. Bringing the thrust dagger back around from under my during the roll, the blade slashes upward through empty air at the imaginary body of the imaginary attack.
Landing into a crouch by pulling my knees up and in after continuing the spin from the slash, i lunge up and forward into a front kick that bring my knee up to my chest. From there i could kick up and out with the ending momentum to slam my heel forward into the air at over my own head in height.
I did not forcefully express this technique because of the amount of extending involved, so i did not will a cushion of kinetic air to receive it. Twisting around on the ball of my grounded foot while completely raising my leg from that kick, i produce a set of blunt kinetic slashing in at me into which i cross and defensively slash both of my blades outward.
Separating these cushions of air to practice maintaining my balance and grounding myself in this posture, i snap my heel down with a slight lunge and then crouch to perform a stomping ax-kick. With my current strength built up over the past two years, even without magic i was able to disrupt a few inches of ground outward from under the force of my foot.
For the past half hour i had been rigorously practicing the combined arts of my first weapon and my unarmed techniques. This was was a major step in both my brother's and my training because it would determine most of the future combined styles we would use with various weapons.
However, unlike our actual unarmed and weapon styles, this combined style was only a single set of techniques we were told to come up with on our own. Because it was a combination, not only was it a test of our mastery of both skills but our overall impromptu effectiveness in combat. We would also not be focusing as much time learning combined art when we would be using the weapon itself at the same time.
To me, these were my Signature Skills just like my personally crafted recipes or enchanted goods. My father had forced me to come up with ten techniques that combined my preferred unarmed skills with my preferred armed combat techniques, but there were really only a couple of them that i was partial to.
The skill i had named only to myself as Earth Chopping Ax and on paper as Combination Three was the one i had ended my performance on. Gryn's earlier staff exhibition was incredible, to the point of being almost purely acrobatic. However, not a lot of our self made techniques were actually good for live combat.
"Perfect," My father states simply with a casually slow clap, the same praise the same way he had given it as with Gryn. "The month after next, you and Gryn may begin training and practicing with your sabers and this upcoming month you may begin going out exploring the Autumn Forest on your own."
This was exceptional news for me because it would be the first times i had ever left the town and my first live combats outside of sparring with Gryn. To celebrate my mastering unarmed fighting techniques, i was taken on a hunting trip with my father. Even then, though, i was not allowed to do anything but watching while he brought down a magically strengthened beast.
On the same trip, though, we had come across a small herd of deer on a hilltop. I was allowed to bring down any one deer of my choosing in any fashion.
Of course i went for the very best one, a seven-pointed animal who was the soul deer still bearing its horns. Emphasizing the significance of this animal's horns was the fact that they bore a vague shine or shimmer to them. The presence of mana meant that this dear had eaten enough good shit in its life to experience enrichment and will inevitably mutate or variate from its original species.
After its mutation it would probably have even better ivory to use as material since they were obviously the main focus of its future growth, but i was impatient and greedy. If i tried to let that thing mutate wildly somebody else would nab it and if i took it home the circumstances of evolution would completely change.
So i reached out with my consciousness and slapped a kinetic guillotine down along the base of its skull. Quick, clean, and virtually painless. The only noises made were the sound of the deer's head hitting the ground followed briefly by a mist of blood on its neighbor.
That neighbor was then dropped by a raw magic arrow fired from my father's bow before that deer had even finished looking at the dropping body. My father's bow was a simply made but powerfully useful weapon made from some exotic wood and binding. These two substances were given supporting enchantments in that the binding had a basic Conduction enchantment to low the cost of the bow's arrow generating enchantment.
The string was the only thing to make a sound and this hunting-specific weapon was designed so that the arrow would break down upon exiting the target's body. My mother did not want to make a weapon of mass destruction that would sap my father's energy reserves in just a few shots.
They both had one of those, though, an ultimate weapon or trump card.
My mother had shown me a uniquely enriched and brewed fungal potion that could bring down a non-metallic dragon and could remain active in the air for six hours. My father had the exact bow my mother did not want to make with the addition of elementally aligned crystals to increase the literal firepower of the weapon.
I did not think i would be allowed to make anything with the express purpose of mass destruction, so i did not even intend to make such a thing. However, that did not mean i could not experiment to see what i could actually make.
One of the antlers from the dear had been transmuted and treated into an enriched dagger i used as an off-hand weapon alongside the knife from my grandparents. The other antler was transmuted into a core for a future weapon or accessory.
Now that i was a little older, stronger, and better trained, i might get my mother's permission to make something like an ultimate weapon as well as find more materials for one.
*