Defying Natural Order With DeoxyriboNucleic Acid

I have the Slow1 and Thick Skin2 skills as well as my Wisdom, Luck, and Comprehension stats synchronized. On the other side, my opponent has a fuċkɨnġ knife.

I really can't tell whether I'm advantaged or not...

As far as battle experience goes, I'm getting it around 22/7, but I lack most of what I'm used to handling daily, so I don't know how my 1 year of full-time compares to the training of my battle-hardened opponent. At least, it isn't too rare to get debuffed in-game, so I won't trip on my own feet.

If I think of our skill being equal, I guess my tools are better than his, but he has a clear advantage in terms of build.

How complicated.

It's impossible to know, huh...

It's impossible, unless!

Unless, in a rare moment of wisdom, I use my Wisdom!

It isn't intelligence, so it won't be compiled based on knowledge and ȧssumptions, but gut feeling works way better with over 2000 points of Wisdom.

And based on gut feeling, I'd say I have a 50 to 60% chance of winning.

So at least 50% win-rate, right?

I spent enough time thinking, let's go before it lowers!

-GG EZ!

If I could send it in written form, I would've. But sadly I'm missing a chat feature, so I'll be happy with announcing it before the facts.

I activate Thick Skin and rush forward.

I didn't step back much earlier, and so it took just as little time for both of us to be in each other's range. I know he's ready to land a killing blow.

But fuċk you, I'm hitting first!

I bȧrėly entered his range that I use Slow on my right foot and take advantage of that resistance to stop me straight and convert the little energy that is left downwards through the immovable pivot that is now my foot.

Yes, you've heard right1. I let myself fall to the ground.

I keep my head as high as possible to hit it with my ċhėst.

Of course, it hurts my right ankle to make such a sudden and heavy movement without the foot itself following, and it's not like hitting the ground straight on my rib cage didn't cut my breathing for a while, but if it's what it takes to not literally die, I'll do it.

As expected, his knife went right above my head.

He must've been aiming right about the previous level of my shoulder. He knew I would lower my posture, but probably didn't expect me to do it that much.

Even an idiot would have at least seen it done in movies. They wouldn't have done it right, yes, but they would've.

A standard move would've been to bend your knees around 10 to 20% and slightly tilt your back forward like a gamer with scoliosis1 from too much competitive gaming.

Doing it even just a bit has the advantages of putting your leg and back muscles in a good position for immediate action on both sides, lowering your center of gravity in passing, and on top of that making you a smaller target, as well as depending on your position, reduce the vulnerable areas your opponent can hit.

Though it does not mean it is almighty, in my case, it is.

Instead of "lowering my posture", with a bit of help from my Luck to smooth the process, I literally went right below anything he could hit immediately.

I don't doubt he'll redirect his movement an instant later to hit lower, but I'll also continue moving.

Right as my breath is cut from hitting the ground, I cancel Slow and crawl a few more centimeters to grab my opponent's legs.

Under a certain amount of distance, and stuck on the ground, crawling is literally the fastest way to move from point A to point B.

For the first tenth of a second, actually, you might actually be faster than someone who's starting to run at the same time, as they need more headroom to start moving at maximum speed.

And it is exactly what I need.

If the pulling force on my hand is any indicator, I was right to think my opponent's first step would be to... step back.

After all, when you can handle a fight with a knife, the best thing to do is to be careful.

The one with the upper hand is statistically the most likely to fall to cheap tricks and sheer luck. It's just how things are.

I'm a cheap tricks specialist, and I have luck by the hundreds! I am literally his worst opponent!

Now that I have a grab on his legs, I pull on it and quickly slide under them.

I have to say, kids, this is extremely dangerous, don't do this at home. Even more than anything else. Trying to do wrestling in real life is for little bitches, compared to that! This isn't an encouragement, in fact, it's the opposite! Better be a live bitch than a dead wolf! Here you go, a free quote you can take out of context!

Being under the legs of someone with a knife is literally putting your royal head out to be cut in the French Revolution. It has higher chances to succeed than for your bank to refuse to give you a small loan of a million dollars! It's guaranteed suicide!

You need a lot of skill to NOT hit something right there under your legs, where two ways are blocked, you can cut a third by just sitting, if not all directions with the weight considered, and a whole body is within your range!

It's probably why my opponent didn't try to stick his knife into my body immediately when I was on my way getting from a crawl to the current me on my knees. A knife that hit a non-lethal place is a knife that can't hit again right away, but a knife that's ready for this situation is a knife that will be able to hit without limit once the opponent is trapped, it's a freebie!

But why did I go there?

Well, it's almost guaranteed suicide. Now I can do it, so I'll put the skills as explanatory notes. It helps the readers who need it and doesn't bother the others!

╔═════════════════════════════════╗

║ Slow

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ The mysteries of space and time can

║ individuals. Slows the effects of time

║ in a certain area.

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ None

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: nothing

║ Active

╚═════════════════════════════════╝Small reminder: this skill has some sort of other metric separated from level that improves its effects. While it was mentioned, it was never revealed what it was exactly for, or what was its basis, though how to obtain it is pretty obvious.

║ Thick Skin (172/1000)

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ With great powers comes great responsibilities...

║ Reduces all CC effects by 100%

║ Reduces your blush coefficient by 100%

║ Increases your Resistance by 34.4%

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Evolutions:

║ Slackface

║ Worst bastard in the world

║ Emotionless Machine

║ ???

╟━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━╢

║ Cost: 1 point per activation

║ Duration: 4 Seconds

╚═════════════════════════════════╝A lot of thought went behind into how hard I could break the 4th wall for the context of this novel. I ended up deciding that anything like referring to the media itself (reading) wouldn't be good. Instead, I'm looking to walk the fine line between the MC just talking to imaginary people for his own entertainment or actually aiming to talk to someone who'd hear his thoughts somehow, so it would be hard to figure out whether the 4th wall has been broken or not.I didn't remember the word, then I ended up getting lost for 15 minutes into researching scoliosis, and learning I seem to have quite a pretty heavy case in the opposite way than I expected. That whole loss in research killed my focus..

While it's quite close to half the chapter, it was among the first sentences I wrote and one of the reasons I had trouble starting the chapter.