38 Natural Selection VI (1/2)

No defence is better than offence.

Especially when it is unexpected, like throwing your melee weapons, your only way to fight back.

'Not what I expected, but cool!' Nero exclaimed.

'Humph, being predictable is booooring.' Nova said playfully. 'I am a part of you, the user... how could I become boring? That's a big no-no.'

'To be fair, I'm not so much of an amusing guy, am I?' Nero didn't know himself very well yet.

'Well... don't worry! I'll be amusing in place of you, easy!' Nova gave a solution.

'That... works for me, cool.' Nero didn't know what else to say, he didn't see much use of being entertaining.

'I mean, sure, it's a useful social skill... but do I really need it?' Nero's thought process was quite simple, he looked for use.

'Welp, we were given two hours to understand and practise using the weapon, let's get on with it.'

Nero had an internal clock handled by Nova, he had only taken a few minutes to understand how to efficiently use the weapon he was given.

Now, only practise was left.

'Don't worry, already ahead of you! I've already revamped the stance and created guidelines for movement. I'll display them now.' Nova was sentient, knowing what was next was something easy to predict in this situation, thus making preparations possible beforehand.

According to his vision and memory, Nero moved with a slow yet precise pace.

The Katars were versatile. Up close, they could be used as mini swords or as daggers with high penetration power, whichever style suited to the situation really.

Nero practised the basics slowly at first, gradually picking up the pace and becoming increasingly proficient.

With his strength, each slash moved at high speed and carried great strength.

With his control, every move was filled with masterful precision.

With his understanding, every attack naturally provided defence for where he was left open.

It took no more than an hour for Nero to become flawless at performing every move with ease.

After that, he worked on perfecting the flow between one move to another for half an hour.

for the remaining time, he practised the three modules from Nova. In the end, he could, with the help of Nova, throw his dagger with the wanted trajectory.

This rocket-boosted speed of learning was all due to Nova.

After his time was up, a horn was blown outside the tents, after which, all the candidates scurried out of their tents.

Outside, three relatively large circles of land had been grazed dry, marking out the rings where the tournament will take place.

Each of the rings was made for tournament purposes only, with a flag next to each ring indicating which group was to use which ring.

Next to each ring was a board, explaining the rules and the randomly chosen order of battle between randomly chosen melee fighters or ranged fighters.

The rules were simple and direct: no major harm was to be done on purpose, if the opponent does not defend, the clear victor would be decided by the referee.