Chapter 226 Phantom Punch The VR room was the best place to practise and now that he also had access to Logan’s private server it meant Quinn could also practise his shadow abilities freely. If there was no way for him to get blood at the moment then that meant he would just have to focus on learning more skills. The first thing Quinn was going to do was have a look at the new tutorial video he had unlocked after learning the vampire martial arts. [Phantom Punch tutorial] Was the name of the video. It made sense that the new skill was somehow related to a punch since the vampire martial art mainly focused on using hands. "Hello there!" The blonde man in a cheery voice said in the video. Once again the blonde man was in a martial arts hall with wooden floors and such. Quinn started to think about just where the place was located. Was it on earth, like the system AI said or maybe another place? Still, the mystery also remained just who this blonde man was. If only Quinn was able to trust Fex enough. He would try to find a way to show what the blonde man looked like to Fex. Maybe he would have an answer. "It seems you are progressing quite well. Unfortunately, my talents never really seemed to fit in well with the vampire martial arts and I thought you two might stray from this path. But just in case I decided to include this video if the user ever decided to learn it. "In my opinion, this is one of the most useful skills to have. But just a little warning, this skill seems to work better with beings with a high level of intelligence. Namely humanoid creatures. When testing this against a beast it has little to no effect." Sharing this disappointed Quinn a little. He was just about to go on an Orange portal outing where there were plenty of beasts. Still, the skill would be useful, Dalki, vampires and humans all fell into the humanoid category and lately, it seemed like Quinn was going to be attacked by them a lot more than beasts these days. "To perform this skill based on the system stats you will need at least 15 points of agility and 10 points of charm. These are the minimum requirements. Now as you increase your points into Charm and Agility this skill will work even better. This is a skill that instead of evolving by using it more and more. It evolves with your stats." This sounded a little confusing at first but Quinn felt like he understood. After using the blood swipe multiple times it had eventually evolved, this was the same with blood spray and also the shadow skills. It seemed like whatever skills were related to the Charm stat, would evolve, or become more powerful as the stat related was increased. Such as his Daze and influence skills. "This skill will be a tricky one to show, so you will have to listen to my explanation very carefully." The blonde man said. The man then brought out a human mannequin that appeared to be made of foam. He blasted out throwing his fist just touching the mannequin ever so slightly. The set of moves and punches he had used were the same that he and Fex had learnt. "Now, I’m going to chat a little bit just for the video and show you how the skill would look." The blonde man took a deep breath, and then suddenly threw out a punch lightning fast towards the head. It was a perfect hit. *Bang The sound of the impact was heard but when looking at the video, there was no such mark on the mannequin head. When taking a closer look, instead of a marking on the head, there was a fist mark on the body instead. ’But I was sure I saw him aim for the head? When did he hit the body?’ Quinn thought. "As I said before this is just a demonstration of what the skill looks like and not me actually using the skill. This is the phantom punch. While in a fight, you will aim your punch in a certain direction to start, before the first movement is made, your charm skill will take slight control of the user’s mind, to them an image will appear and make it look like the punch has continued heading in the initial direction. "But in actual fact, this will be a phantom punch, while the user is dodging or trying to block it, the real blow will come from somewhere else. This skill works even better if you have high enough agility. You will be able to perform several phantom punches at once confusing your opponent. But be careful just like with daze it has a chance of not working well. "This is why I recommend you increase your charm points when possible. What I just did was not the real phantom punch, instead, I decided to just change the direction of my Punch at such a speed that the video was unable to capture it. I’m pretty amazing right?" After hearing this line, it reminded Quinn a little bit of Fex. HE was starting to think whether all vampires were really like this. Arrogant and big headed. "The phantom punch can only be used against real opponents, so there is no way for me to show just you through the video." After the initial video explanation was over, as usual, there were a few more videos which broke down the action slowly bit by bit. Quinn began to watch the videos. The first video explained the feeling when using the charm ability on your opponent. He explained it saying it should feel similar to when Quinn would use the Daze skill. He should gather that feeling again and try to focus it through his eyes. Then using his strong will and the image in his head, he would be able to project a fist outward. This, in turn, would allow the opponent to see the same thing. The next set of videos explained the hard part, it was combining the two together. After hearing the explanation Quinn didn’t think it would be too hard. But just practising it, not using it against an opponent, he found out it was extremely difficult. It was similar to someone learning the piano. One part of the brain needed to focus and do a certain action, while the other part needed to do a different action. The problem was it was the same arm that was meant to be doing the action. If he projected thoughts to target the head, and tried punching below, as soon as he thought too much about hitting the head his fist would automatically hit upward. Still, Quinn wasn’t the type to give up. If there was one thing he was good at, it was the fact that he was able to repeat an action again and again. He never got bored of doing the same thing over. As he repeated the move several times he slowly started to be able to separate his thoughts and actions into two separate things. He had now lost count of how many punches he had performed, the good thing though was he didn’t feel tired at all because of the game. However, it did have a huge impact on his mind. He didn’t know whether it was because he was in the game, or trying to split his thought into two, but he would often get headaches as he pictured himself using the charm ability and forcing the energy outward from his eyes. Surprisingly though in the middle of him practising a notification screen popped up and not one he was expecting. [Your dedication has paid off!] [You have pushed your Charm skill to the limit several times] [Charm stat + 1] [Charm: 13] It was the first time a stat point had increased without him levelling up or consuming blood. The system was clear that it was the fact that Quinn had continually pushed himself when trying to learn the skill. However, this was a bigger deal then he thought, maybe there was another way to increase his stats. If the others worked in the same way, if Quinn went out and constantly ran until he tired himself out would his stamina increase? And was this the same for other stats. What if he continually lifted weights would his strength increase as well? The only problem with this method would be of course time. It was a lot easier to take a blood sample of someone and increase his strength this way. In a situation like the one he was currently in now where he couldn’t do that, maybe it was a good idea to look into it... Quinn had done enough practice for now, and he felt like he had done as much as he could. And yet, he still didn’t have the skill in his system, like the flash step and hammer strike. There were certain combination skills that didn’t appear in the system. Like blood hammer, and using blood swipe with his shadow. But he felt like because this was a skill being taught by the system, it would have shown up like the others before it. Right now there was only one thing he could do. Just as the system had said if he wanted to practise and learn how to use it, he would need to use it on a real opponent. [Switching servers] [Blood Evolver is online] [Match making in progress] [Opponent found] "Let’s do this!" **** Want another mass release? Then remember to vote using your stones below. The stone goals are in the author’s note. For MVS artwork follow on Instagram.