Chapter 56: The Change of Battle

Ewan’s physique, like Baylor’s, was not overly muscular, but rather leaner, tighter and more fluid.

“Do you want to fight me?” Ewan asked this, but was ready. Because he knew Baylor would say yes. He knew Baylor would want to beat him up, not based on anything else. 

And sure enough, Baylor said yes.

Having just finished doing push-ups, Baylor sat on the ground, hearing Ewan’s invitation, he slowly stood up from the ground. His tongue gently moved against his upper jaw, his eyes tinged with a rising fighting spirit, “You are a general, wouldn’t losing to me be too embarrassing?”

Having said that, his body was very honest and began to rush towards Ewan.

On the one hand, he was holding a fire in his heart and wanted to vent it. On the other hand, he had long wanted to know how powerful Ewan, as the god of war, really was. Baylor had known Ewan for a while, and he had only seen Ewan in real action once.

That was in the Crusader, facing interstellar pirates attack, he still remembered Ewan’s harsh attacks on that battlefield, and that time Ewan also had a serious injury. Now the wound should be healed.

A blink of an eye, Baylor rushed to Ewan, he feinted towards Ewan’s underhand, but dodged to Ewan’s back, attacking towards his heart.

He was going to pin Ewan to the ground!

However, just as his elbow was about to hit his opponent, the figure shifted and spun along with his hand. Ewan grabbed Baylor with one hand and blocked Baylor’s flying kick with the other. Baylor raised his eyebrows and jerked his hand back, his fist brought a strong wind towards his face, neck, chest…

Ewan met Baylor’s swift attack, his movements were extremely clean and just right, no wasted effort, if he was any slower, Ewan would not be able to block the attacks. Although Baylor’s attacks were blocked by Ewan, Ewan did not dare to relax under the torrent of attack. Anyone facing Baylor’s attacks could not act casually.

It was not because Baylor’s own physical ability was so strong, in fact Baylor’s physical ability was weak, his punches were softer than those of a trained soldier, and his underhandedness was not as steady.

However, Baylor’s attacks were deadly, and he would seize every opportunity to make each of his attacks hit a person where it counts. Baylor was also extremely sensitive to opportunities. Baylor had the existence of something called combat instinct. It was like he was born to fight.

With this kind of ability, it was no wonder that he was able to bring down a group of well-trained candidates under such weak physical ability. Those candidates had not experienced the battlefield, and feeling fear, they would be subdued by the opponent’s overwhelming killing intent.

But in fact, as long as the opponent could calm down from that killing intent, they could find that Baylor’s body was full of loopholes.

He used a hand to grab the side of Baylor’s waist to attack his lower leg, and Baylor fell to the ground, a harsh fist attacked towards Baylor’s face. Wind sounded from the fist and Baylor’s wet forehead hair moved slightly —

–The fist stopped in front of Baylor’s eyes, then extended a finger and flicked Baylor’s forehead.

Baylor: …

Baylor looked at Ewan, who was pressing above him, with a stubborn and unhappy gaze. He was not defeated, but he was also clearly aware that Ewan was different from those opponents he had fought on a regular basis, and even stronger than those he had fought when he was a sentinel. Because he didn’t even hit his opponent with a single punch.

Ewan dodged all of his attacks.

“Your attack is too purposeful.” Ewan now had one hand on Baylor’s hand, looking down on Baylor, “Fighting is the same as playing chess. When your purpose is obvious, it can be easily predicted and then defended against.”

Baylor argued, “I just need to make it impossible for your opponent to block.”

“Yes, you can ignore that when you have overwhelming strength.” Ewan whispered, “But then you’ll never hit me.” 

Because the one with the overwhelming power was now him. Baylor was silent.

“I saw your last fight with Eric, and you won that one pretty close.” Ewan’s gaze was so focused that it almost made Baylor feel a little burned, but Ewan said in a serious tone, “But Eric’s not too strong, he’s still young.”

Ewan’s implication is that there are many people stronger than Eric.

Baylor ignored the aggression in his gaze and said, “I’m going to get stronger too.” His body was just starting to train now, and he would naturally get stronger.

“Yeah,” Ewan had no doubt about that, “but you’re an omega.”

Baylor frowned.

Ewan explained, “I’m not looking down on omegas, but there are very few omega warriors, and do you know why?”

“Why?”

“The omegas have their own physical limitations, and your bodies are not meant to be used as warriors.” Ewan said objectively without a trace of emotion, “So even if you reach your peak state, your body will be a little weaker than an alpha in the same state.”

Baylor’s eyes widened. Apparently he hadn’t thought about it.

Baylor indeed had not considered this. He used to be a sentinel, a natural born warrior, so how could he have any innate physical limitations?

“I can use mecha,” Everyone in a steel warrior was the same and there would be no gender difference.

“Do you think mecha fighting has no load on the body? It’s only going to be more of a load.” In a sparring match, Baylor would only use up his body faster than others.

Baylor’s eyes took on a few hints of annoyance and glared at Ewan who said this as he raised the thorns on his body, “So? What are you trying to say?” 

Want to say that he is not fit to be a warrior, so that he can hurry up and give up?

“What I’m trying to say is that if it’s just going to be about who has the harder fist, then you’re going to lose badly one day.” And one bad loss was enough to bury someone, so Ewan said seriously and truthfully, “You need to learn how to be able to knock out your opponent with a softer punch.”

Baylor froze, and he blinked softly.

Ewan actually wasn’t trying to dissuade. In fact, because of what happened yesterday, Baylor didn’t want to pay attention to Ewan, but what Ewan said interested him, and he wanted to become stronger than anyone else. Not to win anyone, but he wasn’t used to being weak, he needed to be strong to feel safe, to make sure he could beat up the people he wanted to beat up at any time.

Like just now, if he was strong enough, he wouldn’t have been pinned down by Ewan, but the other way around.

Baylor’s brow almost knotted at the thought, “How long are you going to hold me down?”

Ewan raised his eyebrows slightly, released his hand in response, and reached out towards Baylor, trying to pull him up. Baylor ignored his hand and sat up on his own, propped up on the ground. Then he looked up at Ewan, but didn’t say anything, just stared at Ewan.

Ewan said very sagely, “You have a keen sense of combat and sufficient combat skills, but your learning in combat skills is only used to judge the opponent’s attacks, but not in your own combat strategy.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your attacks are too straightforward.” Ewan actually preferred to say it was without brains, but that would obviously cause Baylor’s displeasure. So he organized his language and said, “Such a straightforward attack requires you to use faster attacks to dazzle your opponent. But the physical strain on you will only be worse, and more importantly–” Ewan locked his gaze on Baylor, “–you have no room to defend.”

Now Baylor’s attack was very simple and brutal, it used a more severe and faster attack to hit the opponent by surprise. But such a situation would inevitably require Baylor to use all of his energy to attack.

And he was full of holes.

In the face of a newcomer like Eric, such an attack was useful, but for fighters with seasoned combat skills, Baylor was too easily overwhelmed. Especially since Baylor himself doesn’t possess the power to crush his opponent. With Ewan’s words, Baylor looked at Ewan with a gaze that gradually became complicated.

In fact, he was not unfamiliar with these things Ewan said.

When he was a sentinel, his military instructor once said the same thing.

To the rigid, easy to break – this is the military instructor’s evaluation of him. The military instructor said he needed more variety in his attacks, not in his stances, but –

“Baylor, you need to have more rhythmic variation in your fighting.”

In that moment, the military instructor and Ewan’s words overlapped, and Baylor’s eyes, which were changing and flowing, finally settled on astonishment.

Baylor did not expect that after only one fight with him, and perhaps a few fights with others, Ewan would be able to come to the same judgment as his military instructor. When the military instructor told him about it, he went on another mission and then came to this world. So, he never had a chance to learn how to pace himself in a fight.

Baylor looked at the man who had pinpointed his problem, Ewan was indeed stronger than him and stronger than his military instructor.

Wrinkling his brow, hesitating for half a second, Baylor finally did not allow himself to ask the phrase “how to do it”, his pride would not allow him to do so. In his own battle to adjust the pace, this kind of thing he can do himself.

Baylor didn’t say anything about what Ewan had said, but after a half-hearted silence said, “I’m going to eat.”

Getting up from the floor, Baylor walked over to Super Wolf, grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. But just as he was about to push the door open, a voice came from behind him, “I’ll be here every night after 10:30.”

Baylor’s footsteps were halted.

Come on, come on, this guy was trying to steal the training ground from him.

The door closed behind him.

Baylor found Ewan to be the most difficult person he had ever met. Ewan wasn’t a bad person to him, not the kind of person he would have hated. But Ewan would always piss him off.

Very angry.

For example, he lied on him before, and then recently he avoided him, and was too much trouble to drive him away, and the words he said yesterday –

Baylor felt that he and Ewan belonged to the type of people who definitely do not get along.

If Ewan also had a spiritual body, it and Super Wolf would fight every day. But at times, Ewan also understood him, like… the tacit understanding between those highly matched sentinel and guide.

Like just now.

So much so that he didn’t know what kind of person Ewan really was, and whether he got along with him or not? He was just trying to find a suitable partner as a guide, how was it so complicated? If only there was still a tower, he would have been assigned one directly, would it be so complicated?

Super Wolf did not follow Baylor to leave, but stayed in the training ground. When he saw Baylor finished fighting with Ewan, he pounced on him and started jumping left and right, asking Ewan to play with him.

Ewan had finished fighting with the boss, so it was time to play with him.

It was so lonely every day, no spiritual body to play with it.

Ewan looked at the Super Wolf who started to invite the fight, he thought for a moment and then raised his eyebrows and asked, “Want me to fight with you?”

Super Wolf gave a bark.

Ewan enticed, “Then if Baylor has something to do these days, you’ll have to come to me.”

Super Wolf barked again in agreement.

After a quick bite to eat, Baylor returned to the dormitory to take a shower, but as soon as he reached the lobby and swiped his ID card to enter the dormitory area, the panel showed that he had a package. Baylor was a bit confused, he didn’t buy anything, where did he get the package?

He walked to the package deposit area, used his ID card to get the package, and found that it was an A4-sized box. When he returned to the dormitory and opened the box, the first thing that appeared was a note with beautiful handwriting – “Thank you for saving me yesterday, Aynor.”

Then there was a series of numbers, which were Aynor’s contact information. The gift in the box was a set of well-made daggers. Baylor took it and waved it around a bit, but it worked. Baylor then remembered that yesterday Julius also gave him a gift too.

The result yesterday, he forgot to open it and now it should also be on Ewan’s side. He didn’t know what was inside.

At 10:30 that night, Baylor sat quietly in his dormitory for ten minutes, watching the clock go by little by little. Baylor frowned, and finally put on his coat and went to the remote old training ground.

The old training ground was in the corner of the training area, more than half an hour’s walk from the dormitory. So by the time Baylor arrived, it was after 11:00. In fact, he did not know what he came here for. He thought about it as he walked along and then concluded that he just wanted to make sure that what Ewan said at noon was true and that he would really be there.

If Ewan was not there, he would practice for exactly one hour before going back.

At eleven o’clock, because the military department was eleven o’clock lights out, five o’clock in the morning to wake up, so at this time there were basically not many people on the road, only the occasional few soldiers on the night shift.

The place where the military headquarters was located was in the suburbs, late at night in early autumn, it was more like the wilderness, there were insects around the sound. The training grounds were even darker. Baylor looked at the time and thought that even if Ewan had been there, he might be gone by now.

However, as he walked deeper, he saw the lights on in the old training ground. Baylor froze slightly, then he picked up his pace a little and stood where Ewan had been standing at noon, looking in.

Ewan had changed into a training suit, he had probably finished a phase of training on his own, and was sitting on the same mat where Super Wolf had been lying at noon, resting.

Baylor frowned in silence.

He didn’t walk in, but he didn’t leave either. He just stood there, just like Ewan at noon, watching the man inside get up from the mat after a break, and then he turned on a fighting robot and started fighting that robot.

Baylor watched Ewan’s moves and then he suddenly realized that Ewan’s attack was the same as the one he had attacked Ewan with at noon.

No, it was the same, and different. It was a version optimized over his noon attack. Still the same move, feint to start, then roll over to the back to attack the back of the heart… The only thing that was different was that Ewan had more leeway in his attacks, both fast and slow, in and out, than his blistering attack rhythm from start to finish.

At that moment, Baylor immediately realized that this was the attack pattern with a change of pace. Baylor watched each move intently, almost unwilling to blink. He was like a recording robot, engraving Ewan’s attacks firmly in his mind.