It had been a while now since Alex started thinking about how to take advantage of this ability of his body. In fact, taking advantage wasn't the right term. What he truly wanted was to gain control over it.
Just imagining it was terrifying — the ability to adapt at will to an opponent's fighting style. If that ever became possible, would most battles even remain battles at all?
But of course, like everything in life, things were never that simple. How could someone consciously control something their body performed purely on instinct?
Worse still, this adaptive ability only manifested in the heat of combat. How was he supposed to control something that only surfaced under such strict conditions of danger and pressure?
Alex had no clear answer yet, but that didn't mean he was still at the starting point.
The first step with this ability was learning to sense its presence — to understand when it awakened and what triggered it. Once he grasped that, a series of hypotheses began to take shape in his mind, each one a potential framework for eventually mastering it.
The first hypothesis was that his body responded to strong stimuli, so if he was only having light exchanges with someone, there was a chance nothing would happen.
The third was that it depended on whether he or his opponent were using weapons or not. After all, someone's fighting style could be completely different depending on whether they fought barehanded or with a weapon—and if so, which weapon they used.
There were other hypotheses he had considered, but these three were the most prominent.
What did it change, having such information? Well, it determined how he should approach a battle depending on his opponent.
For example, in his current fight, while it was true that he was forcing close-range combat because he didn't want to deal with his opponent's wind ability, he was also doing so in the hope that his body would adapt to the werewolf's fighting style.
With every hook, punch, elbow strike, and knee they traded, Alex edged closer to his goal while the battle slowly but surely began to tilt in his favor. The exchanges grew smoother for him, his movements sharper, more efficient, as if invisible threads were guiding his body toward the most optimal reactions.
It was until…
The werewolf went to feint a claw swipe with his right hand, intending to follow with a brutal knee to Alex's ribs when Alex reacted to the initial strike. But instead of taking the bait, Alex's body shifted in an unexpected way—his torso leaning just enough to evade the swipe while his scythe's shaft slid forward, intercepting the incoming knee before it could fully form.
The werewolf immediately transitioned, twisting his hips to deliver a spinning backhand meant to catch Alex during the opening. Yet Alex's head tilted a fraction of a second before the strike even began, his shoulder already moving to deflect the blow while his foot stepped into the werewolf's blind spot. It felt less like reacting and more like anticipating—as if Alex could read the intent behind every motion before it manifested.
Alex then drove the butt of his scythe into the werewolf's abdomen and swept his leg beneath him, causing the werewolf to keel over as pain flashed through his body. The creature tried to create distance between them, but Alex was relentless. He pursued without hesitation, and whatever the werewolf attempted was blocked, avoided, or sometimes interrupted before it could even properly begin.
It was as if Alex had a counter not only to everything the werewolf did, but also to what he intended to do.
'How is he doing it?' the werewolf wondered, astonishment quickly giving way to panic.
Unbeknownst to him, he wasn't the only one shocked.
Alex didn't know what to expect when his body fully adapted to someone's fighting style, but it certainly wasn't this.
What he was experiencing might have been the most bizarre moment of his life. His body was moving without his input at all.
During the last exchange, when he had struck the werewolf's abdomen and swept his leg, it hadn't been because he consciously chose to. Initially, he had been about to pull back and cleave downward with his scythe to force the werewolf away, but at the very last moment, his arms had shifted on their own, redirecting the weapon into a seamless close-quarters counter while his leg moved instinctively to complete the takedown.
Seeing an opening caused by his opponent's lack of concentration, the werewolf lunged at Alex, his claws closing in on the latter with lethal intent, the air shrieking as the strike tore through it.
Yet… even while seemingly distracted, Alex twisted his body at the very last instant and brought Marnak across his chest, the blade intercepting the claws while his knee drove forward, crashing into the werewolf's ribs and forcing him off balance.
Despite his successful counter, which even managed to draw blood from his opponent, a frown couldn't help but form on Alex's face.
He didn't particularly like the way his body was moving without him being aware of what he was about to do. It might sound appealing to have a body that moved on its own and dealt with your enemies for you, but Alex didn't see it that way. No. What he saw was that he had become a bystander inside his own body, as if he were watching someone else fight in his place.
It was unacceptable.
So the next time the werewolf attacked, Alex tightened his grip on his scythe and moved to intercept with a direct counter, aiming to forcefully break the momentum of the strike. However, his body disagreed, instinctively shifting his footing and attempting a different response, one that felt foreign to his intent.
The result?
He froze just moments before the clash. It lasted only a split second, but in a fight of that intensity, it might as well have been an eternity.
A vicious claw mark carved across his torso as the werewolf tore through his smoke mantle and flesh alike.
Alex coughed up blood and retreated from his opponent, his breathing turning shallow.
His smoke mantle immediately reformed, knitting itself back together, but the same couldn't be said for the injury on his torso. Fortunately, the healing properties of his smoke began to mend the wound a moment later, though the process was frustratingly slow.
A grimace twisted Alex's face, but he wasn't thinking about the injury.
'What the hell was that?' Alex thought, anger simmering beneath the surface.
He was more enraged that his own body had refused to obey him than by the injury itself.
'What now?' he asked himself, taking a deep breath and forcing his mind to steady.
Truthfully, he hadn't expected things to take this turn. He had considered countless possibilities, but never that his own body would act independently. Betrayal wasn't quite the right word. In reality, his body was simply choosing the most efficient movements — minimizing stamina loss, avoiding fatal damage, and countering attacks with calculated precision.
The problem was that the most efficient path wasn't always the best one.
Sometimes, dealing decisive damage required accepting damage in return — something Alex had willingly done throughout the battle.
Besides, even when his body moved on its own according to that principle, it relied solely on physical efficiency. Yet Alex had never fought purely with his body. Against both the rhino and the werewolf, his movements had always been intertwined with his smoke element, especially in this current fight.
Each step he took was reinforced by smoke — either amplifying his movements or anchoring him to the ground by shaping it into solid footholds. That was something his autonomous body simply didn't account for.
More than anything, Alex disliked the sensation of being a third party inside himself.
It felt incomplete, as if he were missing a crucial piece. Surely, the grand purpose of this strange adaptation ability couldn't be limited to his body acting independently once it understood an opponent's fighting style?… or perhaps it was.
Unfortunately, he didn't know where this ability originated from or how it worked. It certainly wasn't something the previous Alex possessed, and until he uncovered its source, he doubted he could truly understand how to control it.
Or perhaps no...Nothing about this ability felt certain.
What he did know was that he needed to deal with his current opponent.
Unfortunately, his retreat had given the werewolf exactly what he wanted — space.
Now the creature stood within a violent uprising of wind, spiraling currents tearing across the ground as stones lifted and cracked apart, dust swirling upward while invisible pressure distorted the air around him. The wind howled like a living thing, wrapping around his frame as the ground beneath his feet fractured in thin lines.
He didn't know what the werewolf was planning, but Alex certainly didn't want to be on the receiving end of that attack.
It was right as that thought crossed his mind that his ears picked up the sound of approaching footsteps. Glancing toward the source, Alex saw the second hooded man rushing in their direction, a greatsword gripped firmly in his hands.
The situation was clearly turning for the worse.
Yet that wasn't what crossed Alex's mind. When he noticed the approaching enemy, his eyes instead gleamed with sudden opportunity.
Before either of them could react, Alex bolted toward the newcomer, catching him completely off guard.
Unfortunately for the hooded man, Alex was far too fast. He blinked once, and in the very next instant Alex was already in front of him, the sharp hiss of air splitting ringing in his ears as the scythe carved a lethal arc toward his body.
The hooded man barely managed to raise his greatsword in defense before a crushing impact slammed into him, the sheer force of the blow reverberating through his arms and driving him several meters backward as his boots carved deep grooves into the ground.
'Shit!' the werewolf thought in annoyance as he abruptly halted his attack. With his poor elemental control, targeting Arcanor now risked killing his own ally — something he couldn't afford. Alex was simply too close.
Worse, after fighting him for the past few minutes, he knew his companion couldn't withstand him alone and needed support. Reluctantly, he rushed toward them.
The only silver lining was that with Arcanor focused on his ally, a fast enough strike might still land.
'You will regret turning your back on me,' he thought as he reinforced his body with wind, pushing his ability to its limit. That much, at least, he could manage.
His speed more than tripled, and in the blink of an eye — before Alex could even follow up on his attack — he appeared behind him, claws tearing forward toward Alex's exposed back with savage intent.
"I can't believe you actually fell for that."
As those words reached the werewolf's ears, Alex suddenly vanished, leaving him staring in shock at the equally stunned expression of his ally.
His eyes further widened when Alex appeared directly behind his ally, his scythe already in motion, its deadly arc cutting toward both of them as they stood facing one another, leaving no safe angle of escape.
"LOOK OUT!"
The warning came too late.