Chapter 102: Chapter 101: Hidden Knowledge

“So, you want to learn a martial art, huh?” Terra asked, looking at me with an impressed smile. After coming back home, I had sought her out, remembering how she had taught Keliope a strength-based martial art.

“That’s right. Right now, I can win with overwhelming stats, but my actual ability is still lacking. So… I need a martial art that will fit me, and that means coming to you for help.” I lowered my head respectfully, doing my best to make a good impression as I asked for the favor.

“No.” However, the answer I received was… different from my expectations. “Sorry, Dale. It’s not that I don’t want to teach you one, but I really can’t. Your style of fighting doesn’t fit well with any martial arts from the last three worlds. You rely too heavily on the supernatural energies, which were almost entirely excluded from the worlds of those Keepers.”

“So… there’s nothing you can do?” I asked, looking back up at her. She seemed to have a pensive expression as she considered.

“I can’t… but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn one. There’s actually a really easy way for you to do so, I was just hoping not to need to tell you about it for a while.” After she said that, she gave a helpless shrug, while a blue window appeared in front of me. It showed the normal market screen that I was used to, but a few search parameters had already been put in to narrow down the results.

“Terra, this is…?” I asked as I looked at a list of strangely named items.

“These are libraries martial arts knowledge, which other Keepers have submitted to the market. I went ahead and narrowed the results based on the general humanoid shape, and the energies available to your world. You won’t be able to do a lot of the movements for most of these as a centaur, so pick carefully.” As she said that, I was already reading through the descriptions for the first few items.

“Why did you want to wait before letting me see this?” I couldn’t help but ask again. Some of these martial arts had truly exaggerated descriptions, but I could not deny the possibility that it was more than idle boasting. “Are some of them faulty goods that Keepers spread out to weaken competitors or something?”

“Huh? No, nothing like that. A malicious Keeper will often do their best to help a new Keeper get into the games as quickly as possible, that way they aren’t prepared for what is coming, and don’t have the training they need. So, if anything, the techniques and suggestions that they put out there are among the most effective to advance your world. Sure, there are a few idiots that post bad information, but if you check the forums for news on each item, you can see reviews from others that have used it. This isn’t like some cheap internet forum where you can have multiple accounts to praise your own work.”

As she explained, she shook her head slightly. “No, the reason I had wanted to wait as long as I could was because I wanted to give you a chance to discover certain things on your own.”

“You mean…” I looked at that screen again, and opened another window, typing in my own search parameters.

---