Chapter 959 The second run
( Rudra's POV )
Rudra kept thinking and rethinking about his bout against the perfect warrior.
What could he have done differently?
How could he have neutralized the benefits his opponent had?
Why did his omniscient future sight fail?
Rudra kept thinking about these questions and he realized that maybe, just maybe the perfect warrior had been using the move [ Mind Reader ] on him in the simulation, just like Max would use on him when they had a conversation.
If the [ Mind Reader ] move was on, then he would know what exactly Rudra was hoping for him to say and in such a scenario, the perfect warrior would change his statement every time since the information he was working with was different in each iteration.
Once this hypothesis crossed Rudra's mind, he could not help but delve deeper into this theory as he tried to precisely recall what he was thinking when facing the perfect warrior in each iteration and correlating it with his actions.
If he scrutinized it heavily, Rudra realized that when he faced the perfect warrior in the third iteration of the time loop, he was thinking about the statement that the perfect warrior was bound to say next, in which case the text box above his head should have reflected the same-
Under such circumstances, the perfect warrior was bound to change his speech-
Same could be said about the fourth iteration, as there he was baffled and thinking " What's the perfect warrior going to say now?"
And his opponent chose to kill him in silence since his guard was wide open.
If Rudra coupled this theory with the fact that the perfect warrior was indeed dragged into the time loop as Rudra had intended him to, then it all made sense as Rudra felt about 60% sure that the reason why his future sight had failed was because of [ Mind Reader ]
Since 60% was not enough surety, Rudra decided that the only way to verify his hypothesis was to fight the perfect warrior and drag him to the future sight loop once more.
Hence, after a full week after their first encounter, Rudra ascended the tallest celestial peak once more and decided to challenge the perfect warrior to one more round of fighting.
" Back so soon?" The perfect warrior said as he looked at Rudra with nothing but contempt in his eyes as he sat at the center of his martial arena on a small chair while sipping tea.
The sun was shining behind his back as usual and the atmosphere around them was blue, disturbance free and serene.
This time around, Rudra knew better than trying to needlessly rile up the perfect warrior as he did not engage in conversation but rather directly took a fighting stance.
" No words of encouragement today? Seems like you mature faster than the rest of your colleagues" the perfect warrior said as he sipped his tea in peace and did not seem threatened by Rudra's presence at all.
Rudra, not fooled by how harmless the perfect warrior looked, kept his stance and guard up as he did not wish to make the mistake of dropping his guard against a stronger and faster opponent, only for them to exploit the opening later.
" What do you want me to say? I accept your challenge? Come let's engage in an honorable duel?
Come on Rudra Rajput, what do you think this is?
This isn't some martial arts tournament between two venerable sect masters?
There are no rules here!
Come! Be bloodthirsty! I'm sitting here defenseless without a weapon, sipping tea in an awkward posture! Come slice my throat off-
Come show me the cunning of the strongest guildmaster" The perfect warrior baited but Rudra kept his calm.
The perfect warrior was provocatively trying to get under Rudra's skin and Rudra understood this which was why he did not get baited by his opponents words.
However, he did start preparing a small probing attack towards the perfect warrior to rattle him off his chair and make him take the initiative.
" Oh come on Rudra Rajput, what good will binding me with darkness vines do? At Least use something more interesting like [ The Chains Of Cerebros ] or [ Gravity Immobilisation ], tch, you bore me" the perfect warrior said as Rudra wondered whether or not he had read his mind and predicted that Rudra was going to use the [ Darkness Bind ] attack.
When the move finally activated, the perfect warrior elegantly jumped from his chair while sipping his tea as the dark vines bound his chair and crushed it to powder but could not hurt the perfect warrior who landed perfectly on his toes and placed his tea cup to one side.
" You already know I'm capable of using [ mind reader ] but you do nothing about it, why?" The perfect warrior asked as Rudra felt his eyes widen in disbelief.
The perfect warrior just confirmed his hypothesis? Why would he do so?
There was no need for him to give away his card like that, yet he threw away his biggest advantage, but for what?
" Think, think, think, it's so easy to baffle you Rudra Rajput, you think you're the strongest because you think too much, but you're just a fool" the perfect warrior said as he clapped his hands and instantly a dozen tier10 barriers were created sealing Rudra and the perfect warrior inside them as if they were inside a box within a box within a box.
Looking at his surroundings, Rudra realised that even if he could break one barrier, it would take him considerable effort to break through all of them, which would give the perfect warrior enough time to cut-off his escape!
" Come block this-" the perfect warrior said as he charged at Rudra and punched at his swords with nothing but his barefists as despite his opponent being bare handed, Rudra was forced to defend as he crossed his swords in an 'X' shape and barely took on the perfect warrior's blow.
" Special move- Time Reversal" Rudra chanted, as he used the power of the time seed to literally reverse time, as he reversed the flow of time in the celestial realm by five minutes and teleported back to the peak where he was at before the fight started.
Drenched in sweat from head to toe once more, Rudra was left panting once he escaped the fight as once the barriers closed in around him, Rudra felt like he was a goner for sure.
He truly felt like the perfect warrior was going to rip out the seed of chaos from his body and that he was going to be unable to escape from that hell.
Thankfully, he had planned in advance for this event and started a time reversal spell, starting from this exact moment.
It was Rudra's insurance, his fail safe if everything else failed and in the end he had to use it without even exchanging a single blow with the perfect warrior.
In this visit to the celestial realm, he realized that the perfect warrior was capable of using [ mind reader ] however, he could not verify if that was what he used precisely to counter his future sight or not.
Yes, he had mind reader, but was it the only move under his arsenal that could counter the future sight or were there more?
Rudra fells shivers run down his spine when he thought about these topics as he realised just how monstrous of a task it was just to trap his opponent in one move, much less drag him into a dog-fight.
In Rudra's mind, the ideal way to perform a fight was to first get inside the opponents head, which seemed to be impossible in the case of the perfect warrior.
Then, step two was to throw them off their own game by countering their strongest moves and throwing the opponent into self doubt, something which was again impossible in the case of the perfect warrior.
Step three was to drag them into the future sight attack and predict their course of actions for the next two minutes and obliterate them using that knowledge.
Step four was to drag them to a dog-fight and finish them off with an advantage, however, so far Rudra was only at the drawing board stage of how to fight the perfect warrior.
Rudra knew that he wasn't built strong enough to face the perfect warrior head-on and that stage 4 was something only Max could achieve, however, he did plan to drag the perfect warrior upto stage three and give Max the perfect strategy to replicate his success.
Unquestionably, it was going to be a hard road, but Rudra planned to safely engage the perfect warrior every single week and slowly figure out a strategy to beat him.
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/// A/N - Fun fact : guys initially the fight between Rudra and the perfect warrior was supposed to have a book of its own labeled MMORPG : Secret Wars, where Rudra as the MC of the book tries to find the perfect run against the perfect warrior in a short 100 chapter thriller, but I've decided to assimilate it into the vampire god book itself since it made sense from a storyline perspective.
Hopefully you guys enjoy these re-runs against the perfect warrior as much as I do. ///