Soul of Negary

485 Vol7 Ch23: What is a Pugilist?

The current leader of the Salvation Church was Duke Slick Alrobis, someone whose real identity had never been revealed within their plots.

Through the information derived from the Supreme God world’s stimulation, they had made an educated guess on this Duke’s true identity.

Up to this point, there had been a total of five Empires through the entire history of the Flame world.

Respectively, they were the Lommichte Empire, the Reiter Empire, the Moiy Empire, the Cauchy people’s Trilancia Empire, and finally, the Royas Empire.

This Duke Slick might have actually been the ruler of one of the previous Empires who were awoken due to the change of the era.

And he seemed to be plotting something by gathering these people under Nala’s assumed banner.

However, even after thoroughly studying the plot inside and out, Xu Yao’s group still couldn’t come up with any possible answers as to what that goal might be. After all, the simulation of the later parts of the plot was made based on incomplete information, so it wasn’t particularly reliable.

In Xu Yao’s words, the plot variation value was too large.

However, the plot wasn’t exactly useless either, since they were still simulations conducted by the Supreme God world through real information that it had collected, suggesting that they had some value as reference.

The bald man called himself Big Qiang, his Reinforcement Ability was [High Martial Arts]. Including him, this squad had 5 people with 3 male and 2 female, the entire line-up of members of this vanguard group.

“Should be, I really want to try and spar against her just once” Big Qiang answered with his husky voice.

If one took a closer look, they would find that his body was continuously trembling; and if one closely listened, they would be able to hear some sort of noise radiating from inside his body, almost like the roars of a tiger or dragon.

Additionally, he was holding a book from this world in his hand, which recorded a common type of Pugilist [Bone Forge Art].

Those who are truly strong in the Infinite Room have never relied only on exchanging for their strength through ‘luck’, as each of them has latent potential that far surpasses that of normal people. The Infinite Room had simply acted as a platform for them to exert this latent potential as much as they could.

Big Qiang was originally a mixed martial artist. He initially entered a normal martial arts world to study their martial arts, then later traveled to the High Martial Arts world where strong people roamed the land and trained himself. After going through a total of just 3 Mission Realms in total, he had already completed the first stage of Divinity Extraction.

All of the ‘luck’ he earned had been used to exchange for martial arts knowledge and training time, his entire body’s worth of power was trained purely through his own efforts.

The others in the group might have relied on power exchanged through the system in the beginning, but they’ve all conducted their own research in one way or another later on. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have survived for so long in the everlasting invasion of other realms.

The fellows who rely on nothing but exchanged power to act high and mighty always end up as nothing but fodder.

“These Pugilists aren’t your run-of-the-mill mobs, by consideration of martial arts alone, 300 years of development combined with over 1000 years of extension from [Respiratory Arts] in the past had afforded this close-combat power system exceptional combat prowess” Big Qiang had also attempted to practice [Bone Forge Arts].

The step that Big Qiang was currently stuck on was the training of the bone’s metal characteristics. He had originally thought that ‘metal characteristic’ was an exaggeration and it was essentially just the strengthening of one’s bones to improve the rate at which they produce blood, but when he started to take a closer look at it after arriving in this world, he discovered that the so-called ‘metal characteristic’ actually exists here.

“It seems that if I want to practice [Bone Forge Arts], I’ll have to rob some corresponding ‘luck’ and exchange it for talent” Big Qiang commented with a regretful tone.

From what he’s seen from the plot, the Pugilist power system had displayed quite a bit of potential. Having read about so many types of martial arts, he had gotten quite obsessed with collecting various martial arts.

“You can search for the Bone of God within the plot to conduct a bone swapping ritual” Xu Yao reminded him from in front of the group.

For the Apostles, a power system is nothing more than the manifestation of strength. There are already so many power systems in the Supreme God world, but once practiced to the very limit, they were all very similar to one another.

What’s more important is the practitioner, whose true point of focus should be upon the Life-bound Ability that they slowly manifest through Divinity Extraction. No matter how many types of power systems they practice, it wouldn’t improve their strength by a significant amount, so this was a hobby more than anything else.

Similar to how Blondie likes to collect famous beauties within the plot; or how Bai Zi Xi likes to keep handsome men around her and feed them aphrodisiac to force them to accompany one another throughout the entire night; or how Ying likes to date people before torturing and turning them into her Shikigamis.

Everyone has a hobby one way or another, and Big Qiang’s obsession with martial arts was a relatively vanilla hobby within the Infinite Room.

“That’s true, let’s take a look at the quality of our [Protagonist] if we get a chance” Big Qiang replied.

In this plot, Ramillies and Parry had both been temporarily marked as the [Protagonists], as they have both been predicted by the simulation to grow up and become powerful Pugilists.

In fact, Bai Zi Xi had already imagined an entire delusion about the two young men’s confused love, physical attraction, and tragic parting during their process of maturity. In her eyes, men who like women are abnormal stinky men, while the only true men are those who can understand the wonders of same-sex love.

In this manner, this group of vanguards that didn’t have a single normal person entered the Duchy.

They could see how much attention the Duke had paid to the Salvation Church, as they immediately witnessed a large statue of Nala as soon as they entered the Duchy. The statue was made exactly like the real thing, so much so that the stone material couldn’t prevent everyone from feeling affection towards her at all.

Staring closely at the statue, Blondie suddenly felt like the Nala he had taken from the plot were nothing but inferior products that couldn’t even compare to the statue.

“I’m going to get rid of them when I return” Blondie commented.

“The real Nala statue is currently being kept at the Duke’s manor. According to plot simulation, several conditions must be met in order to awaken her”

Xu Yao was talking with everyone else while holding a paper talisman in his hand. After entering the Duchy, while they appear to be talking, they’ve actually been discussing mentally through the paper talismans crafted by Ying.

They had to admit that they underestimated both this Duke and Pugilists, as they could sense that all of their movements were being monitored as soon as they entered the Duchy.

They already knew about a first-rate Pugilist’s ability to sense all living beings within a certain range by reading their vitality, but they didn’t expect the sensing range to be so huge.

They then quickly analyzed where the unique manifestations of a Pugilist’s abilities were through [Bone Forge Art], during the process of which they also made educated guesses through [Respiratory Art]. After all, [Bone Forge Art] was originally derived from [Respiratory Art], and the strength of [Respiratory Art] lies in its ability to sense, then adjust one’s rhythm to harmonize with the world.

After that, they managed to draw a general conclusion that ‘metal characteristic’ was very possibly power from the Age of Flame that had fused with the Black Abyss’ power and eventually settled down. The power of a Pugilist would then be the combination of both of them.

While the Metal Soul was actually the manifestation of this world’s rules. By accumulating metal characteristics then allowing the soul to undergo a unique state, they would come into contact with the world’s rules and take advantage of them to perform the various feats that a Pugilist was capable of.

Additionally, this power system seems to be extremely accepting of integration. Any other kind of power would very easily be able to combine with the most basic [Bone Forge Art] to form their own school of style, which was also where the potential of this power system lay.

Even the ones who were originally indifferent towards this power system started to feel interested in it.