Chapter 829 The Ultimate Defense Skill
Sariel was the master of defensive moves and for the first 8 days of his training with Rudra he had quite painstakingly hammered the basics of defense into the human , however the next phase was a lot more advance.
Sariel said " Uptil this point in your fighting career I'm sure you must have learnt a lot of fighting combos.
Two step offense moves , three step offense moves , a quite a lot of complex move series as well. But have you learnt any complex defensive moves? ".
Rudra thought about the question for a while and then realised that the only defensive moves that he really knew were blocking and dodging , everything else was essentially a counter move and not a purely defensive move.
He did not know a single two step or three step defensive move and it was quite embarassing when he realised it.
Rudra shook his head as he murmured " No i don't know any ".
Sariel smiled as he said " Good , cause if you did then it would be me learning from you instead of the other way around ".
Rudra looked at sariel perplexed as the angel continued his explanation. Sariel said " The best way to mount a defense is actually not about blocking an enemy's attack , or countering his attacks either.
It's like the old saying ' prevention is better than cure ' which is why the best defense is actually to not let your enemy unleash an attack in the first place ! ".
Rudra's eyes widened in enlightenment when he heard this logic. Sariel was a really good teacher as he could explain complex concepts in really simple words .
Sariel continued " Suppose an enemy is unleashing a five step attack combo towards you , what is the best step to stop his combo ? ".
Rudra thought for a while and said " The first step? "
Sariel shook his head and said " No the best time to stop is before they even start ".
Rudra winced a little , it was a trick question by sariel and that answer had crossed his mind however he thought he would be too presumptuous if he said so , hence he chose the safer first step option.
Sariel continued " as an attacker I'm sure you think of what you want to do next atleast 2-5 steps before you execute that sequence , do you or do you not? ".
Rudra nodded , it was one of his best qualities as an attacker , he thought about his sequence of attacks well in advance before he did them as he anticipated his enemies reaction to his first attack and then built a whole sequence following that.
Sariel continued " Essentially every good attacker thinks ahead of his enemy and while this is a very endearing trait in low level battles it's an obvious flaw for defense specialists like me ".
Rudra had an inkling as to where sariel was going with this , and it left a bad aftertaste in his mouth.
Sariel said " If you break an enemy's flow of attacks, you will find them growing more and more frustrated and making more and more mistakes for you to counter and exploit.
It's the most frustrating style of fighting for facing an offensive fighter and in my experience the most effective.
From my understanding of your skills , you are a great thinker. But the question now is , can you change your thinking from how to deal the maximum damage to my opponent? To how to break the flow of my opponents attacks!
If you can do that and you can understand how the enemy is going to follow up an attack with a sequence of moves then you can stop it before it starts and THAT is the ultimate defense ".
Sariel tried to give Rudra the full outline , however there was no easy way of explaining this stuff to him. Wether or not he could contemplate this and incorporate it into his fighting style was upto him.
Rudra in theory understood the essence of sariel's teachings , however the part where he hesitated was that if he started to think on how to break the enemies flow instead of how to attack him , then his own attacking potential would suffer as a result , however little did he know that it was far from the truth.
Deciding to 'hesitatingly' try this method of fighting , he started sparring with sariel with this new mindset as his training with Raphael helped him a lot to be able to mould his previously programmed mind meant for attacking into thinking along the lines that sariel suggested.
Rudra overtime changed his method of fighting from running head on at attacks to retreating for dodging . Countering when possible , and breaking the flow of his opponent to stop them from gaining momentum.
Initially it was a failure , however slowly as he became more proficient in understanding how an enemy built momentum in essence , he became better with using this strategy to fight.
Rudra saw a trend that increased his sparring time with sariel from 15 seconds at the start to a whopping 2 minutes and 43 seconds by the end of day 14.
If it was only the defense that improved then Rudra would not be too shocked but what he realised was that the amount of damage he could inflict on sariel by the end had in theory increased too!
Ofcourse sariel's defenses were too good for him to make any notable damage , however while he could only chop of -100 HP during day 8. By day 14 he could chop off -5000!
Although -5,000 was nothing in the grand scheme of things it was a HUGE improvement in Rudra's fighting skills and it meant that against an offense oriented opponent like Lucifer he could technically gain an opportunity to deal genuine damage without relying on his time dilation and other top ace cards.
His fighting style had undergone an evolution from his time spent with sariel as it was like everything from his foundation to his style of fighting was far superior to what it was before.
His fundamentals were clearer , his defensive ability had skyrocketed and although there was not a huge difference to his stats or levels , he was a more complete fighter coming out of day 14 of his training with Sariel.
In the end Sariel smiled with appreciation and said " Good job , i doubted if you could come this far but you have exceeded my expectations".
It was the biggest compliment for Rudra , and it meant the world for him.
/// Special shoutout to Cervantez91 for idk 1000 dollars in gifts?
It's just ridiculous, and a truly extravagant way of declaring ' sorry i was gone a while but now I'm back '.
Its the highest amount ive been ever gifted in a day and im truly left speechless by it.
What can I say , I'm beyond humbled man and i plan to show my appreciation to you by more than just plain words.
To give out the bonuses i will do 5 chapters a day for next 3 days , so a total of 12 bonus chapters.
That way i will not burn out and the bonuses will be delivered.
Thankyou so so so much once again and I'm happy to see you come back 🙂 ///